6 reasons it’s hard to ask for what you want…

Let me ask you about these symptoms, which of them is the obstacle to asking for

what

you need? Do you find it difficult to believe that your emotions are valid? Another person feels that today we are diving into a topic that many of us can relate to the challenge of asking for

what

we need. Have you ever found yourself hesitating or struggling to express your desires, whether in your personal relationships at work or even in simple situations? Everyday situations Well, you are not alone, asking for what we need can be a complex process influenced by a variety of factors.

In this video we will explore six of the most common

reasons

why many of us find it difficult to communicate our needs for help. Openly and honestly as we go through them, notice what comes up for you, are there memories that come to mind, automatic thoughts, stories, pay attention to that as we move through the number one invalidation of emotions, yes. We grew up in a home where our feelings were dismissed or ignored on a basic level, we learn that our feelings are not valid, we think we are overreacting or making things up, we may even assume that the emotion is coming from an internal place that doesn't make sense, So when we have a need instead of asking for what we

want

, we assume that what we

want

is somehow needy or strange or wrong.

Emotional invalidation doesn't have to be super intense, but it can be as extreme as a parent yelling at their child that their emotions are stupid or exaggerated, but they can also develop in ways we tend to normalize, like imagining yourself when You were a child and now imagine that you are having a really great feeling. Let's start with the feeling of excitement, maybe you are excited about what you want to be when you grow up now let's imagine you run into the room to tell your parents that you are so excited that you are going to be an astronaut or maybe you want to be a singer or president, how do you do it?

Do you think your parents would have responded at that time? Would they lean in and listen to your emotion? Would they find you in that moment validating the joy and excitement that comes with dreaming big dreams? Would they ignore you like it's cool honey and then move on or would they feel it's important to let you know that dream probably won't happen? Can you imagine them rolling their eyes like you're stupid or acting weird or telling someone close about it like you're being so cute and naive? Now let's imagine In a different scenario, can you imagine yourself as a child being sad about something, feeling disappointed, maybe we didn't get that role in the play we wanted or we didn't take the varsity photo?

Talking to your parents about it, how do they react? stop what you're doing and sit with yourself in that feeling, listen and lean into taking your feelings seriously or downplaying what's bothering you, oh you're just being so silly or even getting frustrated with your tears, to stop. crying, maybe they even use toxic positivity to try to get you out of it, like you're thinking, look on the bright side, you have so many good things going for you. I know it can be

hard

to see how that kind of moment connects to asking for what we need, but what happens in both situations is that we learn that our feelings are not valid.

Children don't have the ability to interpret that, you know. Mom had a rough day, so she's a little more impatient or dad. We had a

hard

time being sad because of her own problems, instead we internalized it because my feelings must be an overreaction or even an incorrect response to whatever happened. Fast forward and we are in a friendship where our friend has a pattern of teasing. Many of us in public hate that, but instead of speaking up, we assume that the problem is with us, maybe we are being too sensitive, maybe we are overreacting, instead of speaking up, we continue to feel hurt in that dynamic and sometimes , it spills over into passive aggressive comments because we don't know how to approach it emotional manipulation image number two you are 14 years old you have been struggling with anxiety and stress due to school pressure and some drama in your friend group that you come home from and you vent about how stressed you are instead of offering empathy and understanding, your mom responds by becoming emotionally reactive and playing the victim like I can't believe you're dumping all this on me, don't you know how stressed I am?

How do you think it feels? To me, hearing all this emotional manipulation creates a dynamic where children feel responsible for managing their parents' emotions and prioritizing their needs over their own, which creates feelings of guilt, obligation, and emotional confusion. These types of interactions create a space where the child begins to internalize. The idea that expressing your needs or feelings is painful and that you are entirely responsible for how someone responds to your expression of emotion and a simple quick check is your fear of asking for what you need, fueled by your worries about how you might do it. making another person feel like you might be hurting their feelings increases their stress those worries can prevent us from asking for what we need and as a result our attempts to get our needs met may go a little off, we might find ourselves trying to get our needs met without having to communicate our needs. feelings, something like the silent screams I talked about in my other video number three.

Lack of emotional availability. Anyone has caregivers who were emotionally unavailable or concerned about their own needs. Maybe you had a parent who had a chronic illness and that meant that for some reason they couldn't provide you with constant attention or affection, maybe you had a parent who had their own trauma or childhood attachment wounds that allowed them to provide you with physical or emotional care. logistically, but not emotionally or possible. that your parents simply avoided any kind of personal or sensitive topic because it was too much for them, which could also have meant that you had to provide emotional support to your parents and the hard thing about being a child is whether our parents were unwilling or unable , for some legitimate reason, to provide us with emotional availability, our brain still internalizes the experience in the same way that we assume that our emotions or our needs are too many or that it is not okay to express them; in fact, we may not even know how to express them.

Our brain may not even think about sharing emotional needs as an option because it has never been an option in that process. We may have learned to prioritize meeting our own needs, as if we were doing it ourselves, and suppressing emotions to avoid relying on someone else's support. We have developed a pattern of self-sufficiency and independence or what I like to call toxic independence where we don't believe we can count on anyone else so we have to do everything on our own if your caregivers were emotionally unavailable in some way if you are not unsure how this could have been.

Imagine Sarah that she lost her father at a young age. Her mother had a difficult time coping with the loss of her. She loved Sarah but did not have the capacity to provide constant emotional support to her or her siblings. During a period of her childhood, as a result of this upbringing, Sarah took on additional responsibilities at home and, in caring for her younger siblings, she assumed the role of caregiver for her mother and her siblings. It was parentalized or, as I recently spoke of it. She had eldest daughter syndrome and she ended up taking care of her mother more than her mother ended up taking care of her.

Sarah is now in her twenties and in a romantic relationship with John, a loving and supportive partner, yet Sarah's upbringing in emotional unavailability has left her with deep-rooted patterns of self-sufficiency and difficulty expressing vulnerability. Sarah feels overwhelmed by work and her personal stressors, but she doesn't even think to communicate her struggles to John. Instead, she becomes increasingly frustrated and bitter because he expects her to do everything, almost resentful of the role she plays. her getting into this could be frustrating and painful, not to mention it's hard for those we're in a relationship with to even understand honestly because we didn't give them a chance to tune out number four.

Childhood distunement refers to a lack of emotional attunement or responsiveness on the part of caregivers during a child's formative years. It occurs when caregivers do not accurately recognize, understand, and respond appropriately to the child's emotional needs and cues. Attunement is not just about emotional validation or availability, it is also a big key in emotional identification. We learn to identify our emotions through this Attunement process, it is like thinking about a newborn baby, it feels panic or pain, but does not know if it is hungry, thirsty, sick or tired, a parent realizes this by tuning into its cries and then helps you learn to identify that feeling correctly. they come in, they jump in, they help and they fix it when we grow up in a house with emotional lack of attunement, our parents do not notice our internal states or our lack of attunement, as they misidentify our internal states, as adults we can struggle to identify and articulate them . our own needs, we may have become disconnected from our inner experiences and unsure of what we really want, want, or need.

Consider this during difficult times. You may feel like a relationship is not working as it should. Taking a proactive approach, ask yourself as you reflect on your situation. relationships Do you have a clear understanding of your needs? Can you identify what you want within that dynamic? Let's go even deeper. Do you know what you want in life? Do you know how you want to be or are our emotions the way we enter? contact with our preferences and desires when we did not have a healthy harmony with our parents, it is possible that we have not learned to identify them and if we do not know what we need, it is very difficult to ask for it, right?

Let's think about you for a moment. second, now imagine yourself as a child, you may not remember much about your childhood, so imagine this, imagine you go to your parents and you feel anxious or afraid of something they asked you to do, is it possible that misunderstand it? behavior thinking that perhaps you are being defiant or disobedient is there a time when you can imagine that you could have gone to them for comfort and received punishment instead? This type of misattunement can be so scary that we often disconnect from our emotional experiences by thinking together that they are dangerous or bad we feel sad and get in trouble so sad it must be bad we feel confused or scared we get yelled at so confused or scared It must be embarrassing if you identify with any of that, you might find that as an adult You struggle to identify and articulate your own needs.

You may have disconnected from your needs to protect yourself from being mean, or you may simply feel a sense of shame at the thought of transmitting emotions like that to another person. Does it ring true to you? Do you identify with that number five? Poor communication patterns. Witnessing unhealthy communication patterns, such as conflict avoidance, passive aggressiveness, or a sense of obligation within our family, can shape our communication style and make it difficult to directly express our needs. By that, I mean, think about a home where your parents are always polite to each other or their friends, but then they also take it out on other people around them.

You may have learned that expressing your needs to the other person in a relationship is rude or a bad idea. It's unkind and you may feel frustrated, but you can't express it directly or you're being rude. Let me give you an example. Let's say your neighbor comes to ask your parents to take care of her dog while she goes on vacation. Your mom. She says she does and smiles and even offers your neighbor some coffee and a sandwich when the neighbor leaves your mom's house like G. Why did she stay so long? I can never get rid of her and it's a little rude of her to ask me to take care of her dog.

Don't you think that when you were a child you see how all this develops thanks to our parents? We learn how the world works so your little child brain doesn't think about Weir, that my mom invited them in and then she didn't want them to stay, and how weird. to say yes, if they wanted to say no, we don't think like that, instead our brain learns that that's how the world works, it must be rude to ask someone to do that because my mom said it's rude politeness and it should also be rude Ask someone to leave whenever you want because otherwise my mom would have done it.

Through this example, you have learned that number one it is rude to ask for help and number two it is rude to express your own preferences, in fact, inreality is your job. Anticipate the other person's preferences and attend to them. Do you identify with that? Do you get irritated when people ask you to do something because you feel like the request itself is a request you can't say no to? Frustrated when people don't anticipate your needs, like when they don't pick up on your direct cues, for example, you go out with friends and you keep pining but no one asks you what's wrong or you complain about not having transportation. to the airport and no one comes up and offers to take you, that could be because if the situation were reversed you would absolutely offer or lean in because in your mind that's how the world works, no one asks for what they need because that's bad manners and everyone anticipates what the other person needs because that's how you get your needs number six conditional love last but not least let's talk about Dynamics in a family where there is conditional love family environments where love and approval depend on the fulfillment of For example, Emily grows up in a family where her parents have strict expectations for behavior and behavior. achievements.

They only show affection and approval when Emily meets these expectations, such as getting good grades or following her rules; However, when Emily expresses her own needs or desires, that does not happen. They do not align with her expectations her parents react by withdrawing their affection as an adult Emily struggles to assert her needs or desires openly fearing rejection or abandonment if they do not align with another person's expectations she may even hesitate to ask for what she needs to prefer directly. to suppress your desires to avoid conflict or possible disapproval, so ask those of you who struggle to ask for what you need.

Which of these dynamics do you most identify with? You may not even know it, but let me ask you about these symptoms. Which one of these? What is the obstacle to asking for what you need? Is it difficult for you to believe that your emotions are valid? Do you think they may be silly or silly or an overreaction that may indicate that you grew up in a home without healthy emotional validation? time asking for what you need because you're worried about how it might make the other person feel you may have grown up around emotional manipulation where you took too much responsibility for other people's emotions you may struggle because you feel like you should be able to handle things on your own, This could indicate that you grew up in an emotionally unavailable home.

Do you feel unable to even identify or articulate what you need? That could mean you grew up out of tune or it's just what's in the way, just this sense of it being inappropriate or rude, that may be an indicator that you grew up in a family culture that had poor patterns of direct communication. Lastly, it's what gets in the way, the fear of rejection or abandonment, maybe you experienced conditional love or approval as a child, so what do you do? Addressing these underlying factors often requires introspection, you know being a detective about it is also therapy and a conscious effort to develop healthier communication patterns and coping strategies by recognizing and understanding the impact of family of origin experiences on the ones we can work on to free ourselves from patterns like this and foster more authentic and satisfying relationships.

If you want to know more about this, you can check out my workshops at Katie Morton. Thank you so much for watching, have a wonderful rest of the week and I'll see you next time.