On asking for help
If you are fully in charge of your own destiny, then the adaptive move is to affect reality directly—for example, to complete work.
If you are fully dependent on others, then the adaptive move is to persuade others to change your situation. There are various methods of persuasion, with various levels of insidiousness. One more insidious method is causing or threatening harm to oneself. This is somewhat less societally unacceptable than causing or threatening harm to others, more achievable, and sometimes less unacceptable to oneself. For example, if you are in prison, you might threaten and/or carry out a hunger strike in order to obtain concessions from your jailers. If the people who have power over you negotiate with terrorists, then this strategy can be game-theoretically useful.
It can also be advantageous to appear to be in need of help so that people will be more inclined to help you. But people don’t want to help people who are consciously faking their suffering, so it’s better to be actually distressed.
However, suffering harm to oneself and being distressed are unpleasant experiences.
I notice that I sometimes expect others to help me remove myself from difficult situations (e.g., I have a task I need to do that seems hard to complete, or I have a decision to make but I’m not sure what to choose). I think this logic is a piece of the puzzle regarding why I’m inclined to feel stressed in such situations—even when I don’t say anything to anyone and so there’s no realistic path for stress to lead to assistance. Further, even though I might expect someone to come to my rescue, in fact I am the one who has to think through and complete the assignment, make the decision, and fly the plane. Thus, I should minimize distress, because I will be more likely to accomplish my goal if I am not distressed than if I am distressed. (I suppose an alternative approach could be to minimize the effects of distress…)
To this end, I’ve been trying somewhat to refrain from asking for help in order to teach myself that the most effective path is to put my nose to the grindstone and start working. (To be clear, I maintain that it is reasonable for me to ask for help when that is a good choice, e.g., if I would like a ride somewhere instead of taking the bus or walking 40 minutes.)
I notice that this resembles the “cry it out” approach for infants, which appears to now be advised against. Is that an illegitimate part of the general softening of various disciplines? Can adults—but not infants—learn that helping themselves is the most effective path forward, or would such a strategy be ineffective even for adults?
Disclaimer: Should you reverse the advice you hear? Some people should probably ask for help more.