We all know we should ask for help when we need it—but why is it so hard? In this raw and deeply personal episode of Taboo Talk with Sarah, Sarah opens up about her own struggles with carrying too much alone, the breaking point that changed everything, and how she learned to lean into support. If you've ever felt like asking for help means you're failing, this conversation will shift your perspective.
💜 You are not weak for needing help. You are human. And you are not alone.
📌 Key Takeaways:
✔️ The Stories We Tell Ourselves – Why we convince ourselves we have to handle it all alone
✔️ Sarah’s Personal Journey – From caring for her mum through cancer, raising small children, and nearly losing her marriage, to finally reaching out for support
✔️ The Breaking Point – What happened when Sarah finally let herself break down and accept help
✔️ How to Get Comfortable Asking for Help – Practical steps to shift your mindset and find your support system
✔️ The Power of Community – Why we are wired for connection and why we need each other
💬 Standout Quotes:
🗣️ “I used to think asking for help meant I was failing. But holding it all in only left me exhausted, isolated, and burned out.”
🗣️ “We are not designed to do life alone. We are built for community, for connection, for support.”
🗣️ “You can’t fix a problem until you acknowledge that there is one.”
⏳ Key Moments in the Episode:
⏱ 00:00 – Welcome & Why We Avoid Asking for Help
⏱ 05:30 – Sarah’s Personal Story: Caring for Her Mum, Raising a Baby & Feeling Like She Had to Do It Alone
⏱ 12:45 – The Breaking Point: When She Finally Broke Down and Let People In
⏱ 18:10 – How Things Changed After Accepting Help
⏱ 22:35 – Practical Steps to Start Asking for Help Without Guilt
⏱ 28:50 – Finding Your People & Building a Support System
⏱ 33:20 – Final Message: You Are Not Alone
🌟 Notable Mentions:
✔️ Happy Juice by Amare – Sarah shares how supporting gut health has been a game changer in her own mental wellness journey https://amare.com/en-au/g10/1586739 (Sarah’s go-to for gut-brain support & stress relief)
✔️ Mental Health Support – If this episode brought up heavy emotions for you, helplines and resources are listed-National Support Services:
• Lifeline Australia: Provides 24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention services.
• Phone: 13 11 14
• Text: 0477 13 11 14
• Online Chat: lifeline.org.au
• Beyond Blue: Offers support for anxiety, depression, and suicide prevention.
• Phone: 1300 22 4636
• Online Chat: beyondblue.org.au
• Suicide Call Back Service: Provides 24/7 telephone and online counselling for people affected by suicide.
• Phone: 1300 659 467
• Online Chat: suicidecallbackservice.org.au
• Kids Helpline: A 24-hour service for Australians aged 5–25 offering crisis support and counselling.
• Phone: 1800 55 1800
• Online Chat: kidshelpline.com.au
Tasmania-Specific Support:
• Access Mental Health Helpline: A mental health support, triage, and referral phone line delivered by the Department of Health, Tasmania, in partnership with Lifeline Tasmania.
• Phone: 1800 332 388
• More Information: health.tas.gov.au
Emergency Services:
• In an emergency, call Triple Zero (000).
Remember, reaching out for help is a sign of strength. Support is available, and you are not alone.
📢 Call to Action:
✨ If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. You never know who might be struggling in silence.
📌 Subscribe & leave a review to help us reach more people with these important conversations.
💬 Join the conversation! DM Sarah or connect on social media—your story matters.
📍 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify & YouTube!
#TabooTalkWithSarah #Podcast #AskingForHelp #MentalWellness #YouAreNotAlone #BreakTheSilence #Healing #Community #Growth
Sarah Jordan-Ross (00:00) Hey everybody, welcome to Taboo Talk with Sarah, the podcast where we break the silence, foster hope and have the real, raw and messy conversations that matter. If we haven't met yet, I'm Sarah. I'm a wife, a mum to three amazing boys and we live in the beautiful island state of Tasmania, Australia. Now life here is pretty special, but let me tell you it's also real, raw and messy.
and very unpredictable and filled with challenges that sometimes we just don't talk about enough and today's episode is one of those conversations. We're talking about asking for help. It's one of those things that we all know we should do but most of us don't. In fact we avoid it like the plague. We tell ourselves we've got it all under control. We don't want to be a burden. We're strong enough to handle it all ourselves. I've got it all under control.
The simple truth though, strength isn't about doing it all alone. It's about knowing when to reach out, when to ask for help. So in this episode, we're diving into why that's so, so hard. What it is that holds us back from reaching out and asking for help. Talking about some times in my life where I've resisted asking for help, resisted receiving.
help and the difference it made when I actually opened up and accepted it. Now community vulnerability and support systems are what creates real strength. We'll talk about some practical ways you can start getting comfortable with receiving help without guilt or shame. If this hits home for you, please keep listening because I promise you're not alone. Asking for help is something we all struggle with.
from time to time. But before we go any further, I want to take a second to thank today's sponsor, because this episode wouldn't be complete without letting you know about something that's made a complete change in my own mental wellness journey, and that's Happy Juice. If you haven't heard me talk about it before, it's been a game changer for me and my family, and it's because it works on your gut-brain connection.
Our gut is basically our second brain. A lot of our neurotransmitters are formed in our gut. And that's why what's going on in our gut can affect everything else. So Happy Juice is an all-natural blend that supports your gut health, boosts your serotonin, and actually helps you feel better. I started using it when we were navigating Harrison's MS journey, and it has made such a huge difference.
If you're curious about how it can support you, check out the link in the show notes because taking care of yourself isn't a luxury, it's a necessity, particularly if you are caring for other people. Because if you collapse in a screaming hate because you haven't taken care of yourself, then who's left to take care of them? Just something to think about. So why is it?
that it's so hard to ask for help. For most of us, it starts with the stories we tell ourselves. The belief that asking for help means that we're failing, that we should be able to handle everything on our own. Strong people don't need help. I call BS on that. But let's be honest, many of us have been let down. We've reached out only to feel dismissed or unheard.
misunderstood. And over time we start to believe it's easier just to do it ourselves. What I've learned though, those beliefs, they're not facts. They're stories, stories we tell ourselves. And the beautiful thing about that, we can always rewrite the story. We can change the endings. I used to think that if I asked for help, it meant I was weak. That
I was supposed to be able to hold it all together, keep it all together, but that mindset only left me exhausted, isolated, on the edge of burning out. Maybe even did burn out just a little.
I learnt that the true strength isn't about going solo, it's knowing when to reach out.
Back when I believed I had to do everything on my own, I was caring for my mum through her cancer journey. Harrison was a small baby. I was pregnant with my second child. My first two were born very close together, there's only 17 months between them. I was carrying the weight of all that on my shoulders and I told myself...
hey, I should be able to handle this. Mum cared for me when I was sick. Wasn't it my turn to do the same for her? My sisters were all that they had their own lives and I'd convinced myself that it was my responsibility and it's something I would do again in a heartbeat, but I'd do it different. I was drowning. I was exhausted. I was
overwhelmed. I wasn't dealing with my grief at all.
Cancer had changed my mum. It made her go from this vibrant, amazing woman who, when I lived in the UK and she came for a holiday, we went to the Channel Islands, we walking along a beach in Jersey, she sees a boat in distance and says, hey, let's go to France for the day. She didn't speak a word of French. That didn't stop her, because she said I knew enough to get us in or out of trouble. Watching that same woman be afraid to go down the street for a cup of coffee in...
in our local town. It was hard.
because she'd become a shell of herself but I wasn't dealing with that I was just getting through the day and bottling it all up and I just
kept pushing forward. There'd be times when I'd break down and I'd start snapping at people and I was having trouble sleeping. But hey, I had a tiny baby too so who sleeps when you've got a kid under one? Or around one?
To be completely honest, I'm not sure that most mums get anywhere near a decent night's sleep for probably the first 10 years or so. But anyway, I was struggling and I felt like I was failing.
Eventually after mum passed and Lachlan was born, Jeff and I decided to pack ourselves up and move to Tasmania for a fresh start. The only problem with that, when you don't deal with your problems, when you try to run away from them,
All that happens is you carry them with you. And we did. Things didn't get better. If anything, they got worse. Jeff was at his lowest point, struggling in ways I didn't know how to fix. I didn't know how to help him. Several times I was ready to walk away from our marriage because it felt like it was all over by the shouting.
They felt like we were both trapped under the weight of everything, but we were refusing to acknowledge it at all. Just kept bottling it up, pushing it down. Then one day, I was talking to a friend and completely out of nowhere, tears caught me off guard. I broke down completely, it all just came tumbling out.
all of it, everything. I ended up a complete dribbling mess. But looking back, I'm kind of glad I did. Because that was the first time I'd let out all of that stuff that I'd been bottling up. It was the first time I admitted I was struggling and I couldn't do it alone. And that was the moment where everything changed. I started leaning
into community. I started to realize that the people around me wanted to help me. That I didn't have to hold it all together and pretend that everything was fine when it wasn't. I didn't have to be strong all the time. And the thing that made the biggest difference for me and it's part of why we started this podcast
Sometimes it just helped to have somebody listen so I could go, actually, I'm not okay. Things really suck right now.
But just being able to say that, to admit that there was a problem, meant that then I could actually do something about it. And if I could go back and tell myself, my younger self, anything, that's what I'd tell her. Stop holding it all in. Stop pretending everything's okay when it's not. You can't solve a problem until you admit that they're
is one. Sometimes the problem is trying to hold it all together all by yourself.
We're not designed to do life alone. We're built for community, for connection, for support. We're made to help each other. There's a reason it's said that it takes a village to raise a child. We're all children and we all need our village. I hope if you're listening and you feel like you're carrying the world on your shoulders, please know this, you don't have to do it alone.
There are people who care and when you let them in that can be when everything changes.
If you're listening and thinking, know I need to ask for help, but I don't even know where to start. Let's make it simple. Three small steps to get comfortable with getting the help you need. Start small. It doesn't have to be a huge meltdown and opening up your whole world to somebody. It can be as simple as accepting an offer.
to go out for coffee with someone. Let a friend pick up your kids for you. Ask for advice on something minor. Start small and build that muscle.
Getting good at anything takes practice. And asking for help is one of those things that it takes practice. And shift your mindset. So often it's the, don't want to be a burden. I'm strong, I can handle it. You need to think about it. Giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin. If a friend was struggling, would you hesitate to help them? Of course not.
You'd be right there. So why not let your friend be there for you?
and the biggest thing that I have found that makes a difference.
Find your people. Not everyone is going to be equipped to give you the kind of help you need. So surround yourself with people who genuinely have your back. Whether it's family, friends, mentors, a support group, lean in. Find your tribe. And if you're still thinking, but I don't have a community like that, then let Taboo Talk with Sarah be.
your community like that. That's what we want to build here is a place where you can know it's safe to have those difficult conversations and to know that you don't have to do it alone because sometimes the person right next to you could be struggling with the same thing you are and you just need to talk.
So I hope this episode has given you something to think about. Maybe even permission to let people help you, to let people in a little bit more, because we can't help if we don't know what's going on. If this message resonated with you, share it with somebody who needs to hear it. Because like I said, you never know when the person right next to you might be the one struggling in silence.
and you saying something could make the difference for them. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you want to keep this conversation going, join me on social media, drop me a DM or check out the resources in the show notes. Now, before I go, I just want to say again, I am not a mental health professional if today's episode brought up some heavy emotions for you. And it may have.
Please reach out for support. There are incredible professionals and helplines available. I've listed some in the show notes. So if you need that step, please, please take it. If you are struggling and you need help and support, please reach out. And as always for everybody, take care of yourself, take care of each other and remember your story.
matters. You matter. So please keep telling your stories. I'll see you next time.