On this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Periods, I focus on the importance of self-advocacy and its influence over the previous 12 months. I discover what it actually means to advocate for ourselves – not in a defensive approach, however as a approach of being. Drawing from my experiences in 2024, together with advocating for my daughter’s healthcare and navigating my very own medical journey, I dig into why we frequently wrestle to talk up for ourselves and the way our socialisation as individuals pleasers impacts this. I share how advocating for ourselves generally means being “tough,” inflicting inconvenience, or having these awkward however obligatory conversations – and why that’s not simply okay, however important for our wellbeing and relationships.
Whether or not it’s about well being, neurodivergence, bandwidth, or just expressing our wants and limits, I clarify why self-advocacy, although generally exhausting, is a vital ability we have to develop.
IN THIS EPISODE…
- Self-advocacy actually means representing your self by means of expressing wants, needs, expectations, emotions, and opinions – notably when silence would hurt your wellbeing or relationships or trigger individuals to achieve the mistaken impression about what’s and isn’t okay with you. Self-advocacy is about voicing what isn’t apparent, even after we assume it ought to be.
- Whereas many people conflate advocating for ourselves with being impolite, tough or confrontational, generally being “inconvenient” or inflicting discomfort is critical and wholesome. The concept all the pieces should occur easily or that the slightest whiff of inconvenience means we’re doing one thing mistaken is a part of what holds us again from important self-advocacy.
- Our struggles with self-advocacy usually stem from rising up in what I name the “Age of Obedience” – the place we have been taught to be excessively compliant and have become disconnected from our genuine wants, emotions and limits. This conditioning created the proper setting for individuals pleasing and makes advocating for ourselves really feel unnatural or mistaken.
- Even after we assume our wants or boundaries ought to be apparent to others, or that individuals ought to intuitively know the way to behave, or after they’ve harm us, we nonetheless must advocate for ourselves. Hoping others will routinely perceive or ready for them to “do the best factor” often results in our wants being ignored or boundaries being crossed.
- Advocating for ourselves usually begins at dwelling with ourselves. Typically we’re those we have to persuade that we deserve our personal love, care, belief and respect. We’d must be our personal “supervisor” and acknowledge that it’s okay to specific tiredness, set boundaries, or say one thing isn’t working for us.
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