How do you respond to offers of help?

When you or a loved one are going through treatment or you've shared about a new diagnosis, family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors often mean well. They may offer encouraging words or make offers like, "let me know how I can help!" Sometimes they say the wrong thing entirely. Let's talk about it!

  • How do you respond when someone offers a general statement like "let me know how I can help"?
  • What offers do you find most helpful?
  • What isn't helpful?
  • What do you say when you don’t want what is being offered?
  • Any other advice?

February 23, 2024: Update from the Community Director

The knowledge exchange shared in this discussion helped to create two articles written for the Mayo Clinic app and website. Knowledge for patients by patients and beyond Mayo Clinic Connect. Thank you for all your tips.

'No, thank you' and other ways to respond to offers of help

Hold the casserole: What people really want when healing

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Just Want to Talk Support Group.

@northoftheborder

I understand. I'd always seen myself as the guy other people turn to for help, and suddenly being helpless myself (as I mistakenly thought at the time) was a difficult adjustment.

Fortunately, I have a wise spouse, who explained to me that I wasn't helpless, and that letting people help was a way of helping them, because they care about me and are trying to find a way to be part of this new phase of my life.

It took a while, but I overcame my unjustified shame at lying in a hospital bed or being pushed in a wheelchair, and realised that I could still give as well as receive. But it wasn't easy.

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That is beautiful!

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@pb50

Thanks for your kind reactions @scottrl 😊. I will add that I’m not as churlish as my post sounds - I do enjoy people around - just not when I’m unwell.

Have a great day!

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Oh, I know.

You're clearly someone who values her privacy. I understand, and I agree. I wouldn't want people roaming around my house; either.

I just wish I'd had more people show moral support. That would have been nice.

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@pb50

Thanks for your kind reactions @scottrl 😊. I will add that I’m not as churlish as my post sounds - I do enjoy people around - just not when I’m unwell.

Have a great day!

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exactly.!

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@scottrl

Oh, I know.

You're clearly someone who values her privacy. I understand, and I agree. I wouldn't want people roaming around my house; either.

I just wish I'd had more people show moral support. That would have been nice.

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Indeed. But to the initial Post - odds are they’ll either gossip to everyone they know, or suffocate me with good intentions. 🙂

And a southern girl needs to get her good loungewear on and do at least minimal ablutions before
Receiving 🙂

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@pb50

Indeed. But to the initial Post - odds are they’ll either gossip to everyone they know, or suffocate me with good intentions. 🙂

And a southern girl needs to get her good loungewear on and do at least minimal ablutions before
Receiving 🙂

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"...odds are they’ll either gossip to everyone they know, or suffocate me with good intentions."

Or both!

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Hope no one gets the wrong idea by my post,
I will accept, and appreciate, help when the time comes ..when I NEED it. I Just don't want company when I don't feel well or help when I don't need it.
Just having cancer and being uncomfortable is not enough for me to accept help...yet.
It is nice to know that they offer to help, just wish they would wait until I ask and stop insisting that I need them now.

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@scottrl

I wouldn't know.

When I had a stroke, I didn't get any offers of help.

More than half the people I emailed/texted about the stroke never responded at all. (I couldn't call them because my speech was pretty slurred initially.)

In all fairness, most of them live far away, but still.

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We live in the UK. My husband had a stroke last year. We did eventually get 6 weeks of help from the team of stroke nurses and they were great, but no help from anywhere or anyone else. I have learnt that when the chips are down you are very much on your own. In my time I have been there for so many people in so many ways, it was hard to take that there was no one there for me.

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I have a confession to make. There are some people, like me, who have a very hard time accepting any kind of help. I am not proud of this. It is a big problem for me. I love helping others, finding special things I can do for people, but I never want anyone to do anything for me, unless I can pay them. I also love giving gifts, and go out of my way to find special gifts that will really mean something to the recipent, but I do not like to get gifts myself. I acknowledge that this is crazy and I have offended people with this problem. I know I need to figure out what my problem is, but I just wanted to mention this, in case you have encountered someone like me. Just know that it is not you..........it is [me], or someone like me.
P

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@pkh3381

I have a confession to make. There are some people, like me, who have a very hard time accepting any kind of help. I am not proud of this. It is a big problem for me. I love helping others, finding special things I can do for people, but I never want anyone to do anything for me, unless I can pay them. I also love giving gifts, and go out of my way to find special gifts that will really mean something to the recipent, but I do not like to get gifts myself. I acknowledge that this is crazy and I have offended people with this problem. I know I need to figure out what my problem is, but I just wanted to mention this, in case you have encountered someone like me. Just know that it is not you..........it is [me], or someone like me.
P

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I think it is about accepting that not only do you really need help, but that you deserve help. Those of us who ordinarily give help to others are givers, we are not takers and sometimes it is hard to reverse the role.

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Why it's so hard to approach and accept another person with whom you only have One common interest -- after all there's no one losing face, only mutual win?
It could be as simple as playing a hard Sudoku or 'wordle' game in the New York Times. Once there, we can open up to the other about What Else we enjoy, or bothers us.

We are going back to living in one place as we did a generation or two ago. Why not think up what I call, Spontaneous Friendships, where even if we are in a new place for a few weeks or months for work, what is the Harm in exploring a mutually rewarding human connection?

From a Minister of Loneliness in UK to the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who ended up writing a book, Together, because when Obama asked him to fix the overdose deaths issue, he soon found the problem is lack of social connection among us.
Unfortunately, we tend to see our need for friendship as if we (especially men) are not successful enough, indeed a loser. Yet we all know I cannot be friends with someone unless that person is Equally interested in the human need. This is One need that no one can do anything about it Alone!

From depression and anxiety to a plethora of other diseases are attributed to our deficit in this need. The ancients knew it: Cicero said, Life without a friend is not worth living; Aristotle concurs.

Sometimes one wonders how the easiest, quickest, and cheapest solutions we ignore despite colossal damage. Yes, it was the former Head of the NIMH, Dr Insel, who said he was told by a psychiatrist who works with homeless addicts that what is needed is 3Ps: place (home), people (friends) and purpose.

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