The Power and Terror of asking for what you need (Wednesday Wonderings)

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about what might get in the way of us asking another person for what we need and there are a multitude of reasons, some of which include;

• Feeling too embarrassed

• Feeling afraid

• Feeling ashamed

• Thinking they won’t care

• Thinking that they are too busy

• Thinking that they won’t understand

• Feeling judged

• Feeling we are “too much”

• Thinking that people won’t believe us

• Thinking that even if we do ask, no one will help anyway

• Not even knowing what we really need

• Not having the language to verbalise our needs

And when we start to unpick this, we usually realise that these difficulties have been going on for a long time. We may not be able to remember when they started, but I would bet by last £1 that these are things we learned to do, or maybe couldn't learn to do in early childhood.