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Refining Self-Advocacy (On Leave Series)
Show Notes:
Today we are talking about self-advocacy. We’re going to dig in to the difficulties people tend to have with self-advocating, the need for it in time off work, and how to go about refining these skills to implement them on behalf of ourselves well.
So let’s open with what it means to self-advocate. Self-advocacy means clearly identifying our needs and clearly expressing those needs to others in an effort to have them met.
Here are some of the major stumbling blocks to self-advocacy:
1. We are bad at knowing our needs.
2. We are bad at serving our needs.
3. We aren’t great at communicating and expressing our needs effectively to others.
Ok, so when it comes to self-advocacy, step one is to know what you need. To be able to clearly identify your needs does not just magically happen. Despite the fact that we spend all day with ourselves, we are not great at taking the time and space to slow our rolls and get to know ourselves.
The thing about knowing needs is that it takes time and investment. Think about how you’ve learned what any person in your life has ever needed ever. Likely you have taken the time to notice or ask or walk alongside their journey to observe and recognize their needs. You recognize feedback from when you’ve stumbled into doing something that serves their needs well, and the feedback that comes from when we fudged it up. We take that and track it so that we can offer the best we can to the people we care about and reduce the things that really don’t work for them.
It is the same for us. We need to carve out time and space to explore and examine our own needs. We need to enter this time and space with curiosity and openness. This is not a one and done – needs change and evolve as we do – so we need to check in with ourselves on a semi-regular basis to see what new needs have developed, what old needs are no longer feeling necessary, and adjusting our meeting of needs to adapt to how they flex. When it comes to examining and identifying needs I have a few tips:
1. Start with basics. If this process feels big and overwhelming, start with the most basic building blocks first and grow from there. Think about your basic needs like sleep, nutrition, movement, hydration, and connection.
2. Notice others. We tend to be better at noticing the needs of others than our own, so take some time to observe others in your life. What needs to they indicate having? Ones that they serve for themselves or that they ask others to serve with them? What needs bring out a sense of “oh man that sounds SO good!” when you hear about them or cause a reflection of “goodness, I really should be doing that.”?
3. Observe yourself. Notice where you feel disappointed by others for not mind-reading your needs. Observe when you feel let down by yourself or those around you. Take notice of times where your mood shifts and be curious about what need this might be indicating. A quick tip is that many emotions serve the function of highlighting unmet needs, so recognizing moments where emotions feel disproportionate to a situation or more intense than they would normally are some solid prompts to alert you to some needs that require more attention.
4. Remain curious. Needing is a fact of living as a human in this world. Being needless isn’t a thing, it’s not possible. Allow yourself to enter this process with ongoing curiosity and try to manage any self-judgement that comes up along the way. I know that in my life I can get critical of the amount of down-time I need, and yet when I don’t meet this need it negatively impacts everyone in my life. I get curious about variations of down-time that work for me and I experiment with this as this evolves over time, but I know that I need it and try to find acceptance that this is my need given all that I am asking myself to do the rest of the time.
Once we identify our needs, the next step is to DO something with them. That’s right, it is not enough to name it, we have to serve it – otherwise it remains a need crying out for attention, which will tend to show up in less and less convenient ways in various parts of our lives. I mean, that’s the real thing about needs, they aren’t wants, they are NEEDS. Our bodies and minds are demanding them and will take action against us to emphasize their demands if we fail to pay attention or actively ignore for too long. This can look like increased irritability, volatile emotions and mood swings, extreme overwhelm or extreme numbing or disconnection, and a whole lot more.
When it comes to prioritizing and engaging with our needs, here are my suggestions:
1. Brainstorm. Let’s say that I need to get more sleep, that’s the need I’ve identified. The reality is there are lots of ways to meet that need, and I may need to do one or some or all of them to satiate the need I have. I might need to go to bed earlier which might mean changing some of my evening routine to work toward settling down to bedtime at a different time. I may need to work on the quality of my sleep rather than the quantity and this might mean exploring melatonin or medical sleep aids. I may need to shift my morning routine to sleep a little longer if that’s when my best sleep happens is in the morning. I may need to track my sleep to get a better sense of where the struggle is. I may need to ask for help and seek out a sleep expert to get a handle on my sleep. I may need to do some trauma therapy work to reduce nightmares and panic waking… There are a ton of interventions to work at meeting the very general need of getting more sleep. Brainstorming these, actually writing them down and coming up with more than just one version of how it looks to meet a need can be really helpful in making our starting point feel more accessible. Once I have a solid list of ideas, I get to pick and choose one or a couple to start with, and like we’ve already discussed, I can check in and review and then add or make adjustments where needed.
2. Start somewhere and build from there. Let’s use an example like recognizing that I need to drink more water in a day. How much water? How can I know where my sweet spot is? Well, let’s start by making some specific rituals like drinking a full glass of water when I wake up in the morning, taking a large water bottle with me and finishing it by the end of my work day, and drinking one full glass of water with each meal. This would be a pretty solid starting point and likely some of these are times I’m already having a glass of water. From here, I’m going to agree to doing this for a couple of weeks or a month and then checking in with myself to see how I’m feeling and if I need to adapt this further. This is really anchored to the idea that something is better than nothing and taking small steps in a direction matters as it accrues over time.
3. Incremental steps. Research has shown repeatedly that incremental steps are more effective at sustaining behavioural change than big sweeping ones. Do NOT try to change your sleep, your diet, your exercise, your friendships, and a whole bunch of other things all at once. It’s tempting, I know, to feel overwhelmed by the degree to which your needs have gone unmet when you start really looking at them. Seeing how far we feel we have to go from where we are if we haven’t paid close attention to our needs can feel stagg...
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By Lindsay Faas
5
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Show Notes:
Today we are talking about self-advocacy. We’re going to dig in to the difficulties people tend to have with self-advocating, the need for it in time off work, and how to go about refining these skills to implement them on behalf of ourselves well.
So let’s open with what it means to self-advocate. Self-advocacy means clearly identifying our needs and clearly expressing those needs to others in an effort to have them met.
Here are some of the major stumbling blocks to self-advocacy:
1. We are bad at knowing our needs.
2. We are bad at serving our needs.
3. We aren’t great at communicating and expressing our needs effectively to others.
Ok, so when it comes to self-advocacy, step one is to know what you need. To be able to clearly identify your needs does not just magically happen. Despite the fact that we spend all day with ourselves, we are not great at taking the time and space to slow our rolls and get to know ourselves.
The thing about knowing needs is that it takes time and investment. Think about how you’ve learned what any person in your life has ever needed ever. Likely you have taken the time to notice or ask or walk alongside their journey to observe and recognize their needs. You recognize feedback from when you’ve stumbled into doing something that serves their needs well, and the feedback that comes from when we fudged it up. We take that and track it so that we can offer the best we can to the people we care about and reduce the things that really don’t work for them.
It is the same for us. We need to carve out time and space to explore and examine our own needs. We need to enter this time and space with curiosity and openness. This is not a one and done – needs change and evolve as we do – so we need to check in with ourselves on a semi-regular basis to see what new needs have developed, what old needs are no longer feeling necessary, and adjusting our meeting of needs to adapt to how they flex. When it comes to examining and identifying needs I have a few tips:
1. Start with basics. If this process feels big and overwhelming, start with the most basic building blocks first and grow from there. Think about your basic needs like sleep, nutrition, movement, hydration, and connection.
2. Notice others. We tend to be better at noticing the needs of others than our own, so take some time to observe others in your life. What needs to they indicate having? Ones that they serve for themselves or that they ask others to serve with them? What needs bring out a sense of “oh man that sounds SO good!” when you hear about them or cause a reflection of “goodness, I really should be doing that.”?
3. Observe yourself. Notice where you feel disappointed by others for not mind-reading your needs. Observe when you feel let down by yourself or those around you. Take notice of times where your mood shifts and be curious about what need this might be indicating. A quick tip is that many emotions serve the function of highlighting unmet needs, so recognizing moments where emotions feel disproportionate to a situation or more intense than they would normally are some solid prompts to alert you to some needs that require more attention.
4. Remain curious. Needing is a fact of living as a human in this world. Being needless isn’t a thing, it’s not possible. Allow yourself to enter this process with ongoing curiosity and try to manage any self-judgement that comes up along the way. I know that in my life I can get critical of the amount of down-time I need, and yet when I don’t meet this need it negatively impacts everyone in my life. I get curious about variations of down-time that work for me and I experiment with this as this evolves over time, but I know that I need it and try to find acceptance that this is my need given all that I am asking myself to do the rest of the time.
Once we identify our needs, the next step is to DO something with them. That’s right, it is not enough to name it, we have to serve it – otherwise it remains a need crying out for attention, which will tend to show up in less and less convenient ways in various parts of our lives. I mean, that’s the real thing about needs, they aren’t wants, they are NEEDS. Our bodies and minds are demanding them and will take action against us to emphasize their demands if we fail to pay attention or actively ignore for too long. This can look like increased irritability, volatile emotions and mood swings, extreme overwhelm or extreme numbing or disconnection, and a whole lot more.
When it comes to prioritizing and engaging with our needs, here are my suggestions:
1. Brainstorm. Let’s say that I need to get more sleep, that’s the need I’ve identified. The reality is there are lots of ways to meet that need, and I may need to do one or some or all of them to satiate the need I have. I might need to go to bed earlier which might mean changing some of my evening routine to work toward settling down to bedtime at a different time. I may need to work on the quality of my sleep rather than the quantity and this might mean exploring melatonin or medical sleep aids. I may need to shift my morning routine to sleep a little longer if that’s when my best sleep happens is in the morning. I may need to track my sleep to get a better sense of where the struggle is. I may need to ask for help and seek out a sleep expert to get a handle on my sleep. I may need to do some trauma therapy work to reduce nightmares and panic waking… There are a ton of interventions to work at meeting the very general need of getting more sleep. Brainstorming these, actually writing them down and coming up with more than just one version of how it looks to meet a need can be really helpful in making our starting point feel more accessible. Once I have a solid list of ideas, I get to pick and choose one or a couple to start with, and like we’ve already discussed, I can check in and review and then add or make adjustments where needed.
2. Start somewhere and build from there. Let’s use an example like recognizing that I need to drink more water in a day. How much water? How can I know where my sweet spot is? Well, let’s start by making some specific rituals like drinking a full glass of water when I wake up in the morning, taking a large water bottle with me and finishing it by the end of my work day, and drinking one full glass of water with each meal. This would be a pretty solid starting point and likely some of these are times I’m already having a glass of water. From here, I’m going to agree to doing this for a couple of weeks or a month and then checking in with myself to see how I’m feeling and if I need to adapt this further. This is really anchored to the idea that something is better than nothing and taking small steps in a direction matters as it accrues over time.
3. Incremental steps. Research has shown repeatedly that incremental steps are more effective at sustaining behavioural change than big sweeping ones. Do NOT try to change your sleep, your diet, your exercise, your friendships, and a whole bunch of other things all at once. It’s tempting, I know, to feel overwhelmed by the degree to which your needs have gone unmet when you start really looking at them. Seeing how far we feel we have to go from where we are if we haven’t paid close attention to our needs can feel stagg...