Nurses are well-known for focusing their energy on giving and taking care of the needs of others. Whether it’s colleagues, community members, family, neighbors, or friends, a nurse is often on high alert for an SOS they can respond to.
Can a nurse ask for what they need when such a need arises? Natural givers aren’t always comfortable communicating their distress to others. Still, we all know that nurses are human — not superhuman — and sometimes asking for help is the smartest course of action, no matter how difficult it can be.
Easier to Give Than Receive?
Giving is often second nature for those in the helping profession. Does someone have a problem? I’ll see if I can fix it. This person is suffering? How can I alleviate their distress? Does that person need support? What can I do to contribute?
Ask fifty nurses why they chose nursing as a career, and a majority will say something about liking to help people, wanting to give back to society, or seeking a way to be of service. It’s all well and good, but can such givers also allow themselves to be on the receiving end from time to time?
Asking for something one needs displays vulnerability, and not everyone is comfortable demonstrating what could be perceived as a personal weakness. Showing that you’re vulnerable or needy often flies in the face of a natural helper’s self-image.
For a nurse who spends considerable energy always tending to the needs of others both at work and at home, learning to receive with grace and humility can be an important life lesson worth learning.
A Gift to the Giver
If you’re a nurse always looking after others, would you agree that when a person receives your help, their doing so is a gift to you? There’s an old saying that we receive in giving to others; if this is true, allowing others to tend to your needs is a gift you can freely give in return.
Consider how you feel when your assistance can change the course of another person’s day, week, or life trajectory. Doesn’t that act of giving reverberate in your soul like a beautiful, resounding bell? And if that person had resisted receiving your support despite their obvious suffering, couldn’t that possibly feel like a failure on your part?
Helping professionals who focus on tending to others at the worst times in their lives truly inform what it means to be a nurse. We assuage, mitigate, soften, and cushion the pain that others feel, and when we’re allowed to practice the art of nursing when another human being needs us, we are fed by that gift in profound and sometimes life-changing ways.
Removing the Mask
Learning to be vulnerable and connecting with the necessary humility to admit to our vulnerability and frailty can be a growthful process. As fixers often called upon by others, we occasionally need fixing.
The coronavirus pandemic showed us how nurses could, at times, be put on a pedestal as superheroes or angels who are far beyond the likes of ordinary mortals. We work long hours under difficult conditions, rarely complain, and staff hospitals, clinics, home health agencies, and countless other essential facilities and organizations. We’re trusted, confided in, and looked to for answers and a comforting hand.
However, when we need a comforting hand or the answer to a problem, are we willing to be vulnerable enough to ask for help? Can the mask of the superhuman nurse be removed long enough to reveal the very human nurse underneath?
As nurses, our humanity must be allowed room to breathe. Always on the lookout for those who need us, we can sometimes choose for attention to be paid to us instead. In such ways, we can serve as role models of getting in touch with our desires and needs and being humble enough to be vulnerable, all while giving others the gift of giving to us. Whether we see it as a spiritual practice or not, we can embrace it as a life lesson that receiving is a form of generosity to ourselves and those willing to care for us when we need it most. This is the beauty and grace of vulnerability and removing our masks.
Daily Nurse is thrilled to feature Keith Carlson, “Nurse Keith,” a well-known nurse career coach and podcaster of The Nurse Keith Show as a guest columnist. Check back every other Thursday for Keith’s column.
