The unbearable task of asking for what you need.
Communicating your needs is change-making work.
Learning how to set boundaries and advocate for your own needs is more than uncomfortable for many of us. For me it can involve deep fear of rejection and an instinct to catastrophise what will come from my communication. My trauma likes to be prepared. The voice in my head is never: “this will go great!”
At 53 I’m tired of excavating for the root cause of my struggle to voice my needs, I already know so many likely candidates. I just want to do it better and more gently—because as women we must be able to communicate what we need. The world (including other women) is not trained to turn their spidey senses on us and anticipate our needs like we often do for others. I think a lot of the domestic female silence for my age group is because we are angry that we even have to point it out. I can see your next need from 200 feet, why don’t you notice this??? But dwelling on what the world isn’t doesn’t change anything either. You just pass more time without your needs met.
For me the hardest communications come when I’m asking for what I need of people I care about. And they are usually such small things! Little thoughtfulnesses and fairnesses who’s burden can no longer be born. How can this be where my courage is most required?? But somehow it often is.
Crafting the email or text response (because OMG please don’t make me do this in person) is a tear-soaked and draining process. But it is a process. I make sure I do it in private so I can release and see all the emotions that come up. I’ve learned to cry and do responses and then leave them for a bit. I want to give myself some emotional recovery space.
When I’m ready I usually go back and try and edit all my fear and justifications for my needs out of it. It is not the other person’s burden that I need to learn how to do this. And, also my needs don’t have to be justified. They also don’t have to be met! We need to just build and decide a mutual way forward with them expressed.
This is the work of intimacy and community.
I love the part of me that even though I imagine the world is going to end, that I will be rejected, and my name dragged through the mud… even then I decided to tell the truth about what I needed because I am determined to live in congruity with myself. I won’t abandon myself over this and if someone else chooses to that is their business.
And by the way 9/10 times it does go great. People who love you try to accommodate your needs. Especially the ones that are so important to you they make you weep to write them out. You might need some time to recover from the relief of that too.
Go gently,
Susie