Communicating Your Needs.
Communicating Your Needs.
Asking for what we need is a work in progress for so many of us. The trick is ‘slowly unsubscribing’ from people pleasing to make space for what we need.
Did you know the majority of people lie to their therapists?
In a 2016 study, it was found that over 70% of people lied to their therapist. Often we feel the need to appease the other person and we aren’t sure how to communicate it.
Asking for what we need is a work in progress for so many of us.
Why are we talking about our ‘needs’?
Many psychologists believe that if we have our core needs covered, we are more likely to have a steady foundation to make good choices in life.
For example, when we prioritise our needs, we have greater capacity to deliver for others. We can more readily take positive action. We have more time to do what we say we will.
And when we honour our own needs, and ask for what we need, we have healthier boundaries. This makes us stronger communicators. What’s not to love?
Where to start?
If you’re new to thinking about what your needs might look like, here’s a handy starter:
Imagine everyone's needs are ‘containers’. You have a container, and those you love and support do too.
Ask yourself what a non-negotiable in your day looks like for you, personally. For this section, focus solely on your needs (not anyone else's!). Examples might include having breakfast, a coffee, alone time or exercise. Pop that into your container.
Now, ponder what needs to go into your other containers. You might have one for work, one for your partner, one for your children and one for your family, friends, community or faith.
When you look at that list, ask yourself: whose needs come first (most days)?
There’s no ‘wrong’ way to answer this question. Knowing the answer is clarifying in itself.
Many of my clients often say their kids, their partners and their boss' needs come before their own. Which they don’t mind in theory, but they do find as a result, that they are scrambling to ‘get it all done’.
The 5 truths.
Here are 5 truths of communicating your needs:
Saying ‘yes’ to others feels inherently good. After all, saying yes to others uses our adrenaline and it gives us a rush! However, when we say yes to too many things that aren’t our immediate priorities, it can mean we’re not always doing things that are actually in our long term best interests.
We must accept the only thing we can control is ourselves. We can’t control how others respond to our priorities or boundaries. We can let go of what other people do, and focus only on how we communicate and adapt. When we focus on what we can control, we lower overwhelm, and can focus on just ‘one thing at a time’. We are clear on ‘my needs’ vs ‘other’s needs’. And finally, we take responsibility and ownership for having a good day.
We must accept that it is our job to clarify our priorities. It’s not our boss’ job, our client's job or our partner's job. If we want to feel in control, it’s our job to clarify what others expect from us first.
We must also accept there is no ‘perfect’ way to communicate our needs. Some people won’t like it. It can be helpful to remember that if everyone communicated what they needed, there would be way less drama and poor planning in the workplace and indeed life! Because we can’t control other people, how other people respond is theirs to own, not ours.
We must accept we are not weak if we find it hard. You are simply learning a skill, just like any other.
Unsubscribing from busyness.
Something that can stop us from prioritising our own needs is that we might like being busy, or we’re simply used to it. So how to ‘unsubscribe’ from being busy, meeting other people's needs, without worrying about letting others down?
The trick is to start pausing before saying yes, in small ways, to make space for us to actually tune into our own priority list. This helps us practice making space for ourselves and experiencing the results!
Here are a few techniques that help us do that:
You don’t need to respond to a request straight away. You can stop to pause before immediately replying to an email. It feels good to jump in straight away, but sometimes we can do things on autopilot without stopping to check in with our own priorities. If this is you, it can be helpful to give yourself a ‘gift’ of sorts. The gift of time! The next time someone asks you a question, invites you to a meeting or sends you an email - just pause. For a few seconds until you find yourself being able to tune into your priorities before responding. Give yourself a chance to ‘tune into’ what you need to do before adding more onto your plate (nice to do!).
Create a list of non-negotiables vs nice to have before saying ‘yes’. If you aren’t clear on your non-negotiables for the day, this is a great place to start. Creating a column with the two headings, and simply checking the things you do each day or think about saying ‘yes’ to, is a helpful start!
Start small with your ‘no’s’. For example, start saying no to low impact things that have little risk to practice flexing your ‘no muscle’. This’ll free up more time for you. Another way of starting small is to slowly request your preferences. For example, if a friend asks you for coffee, instead of defaulting to yes on the location, ask for a cafe you like, just to practice asking for things you like.
Write a list. On one side, write ‘I am my kindest’. On another write, ‘I am my cruellest’. Ponder how you can remove yourself from situations you are your cruellest, or, minimise exposure. Over time, you might ponder whether you could approach it differently or simply insert a boundary.
Boundaries, baby.
Psychologist Nedra Glover Tawwab’s work demonstrates that there are two parts to enforcing boundaries. The first is communicating our needs. The second is continuing to communicate them!
Here are a few examples:
Planning your day and honouring your schedule. If you rely on other people to dictate your day, you’ll never be in control of your schedule. Often other’s needs creep in when we’re not clear on our priorities and we don’t actually follow our intentions. The trick is to put boundaries in your diary by blocking out what your intention for the day’s activities are. This can include both planned work and reactive tasks, too. Keep space to allow for those things that crop up and you’ll feel much less stressed. This helps you check your diary first, when someone asks you for some help, to see if you need to finish your priorities first.
Someone else's lack of planning doesn’t make it your emergency. Accept that others are poor planners. It is not your job to ‘save’ them, but it is your job to be clear about what you can and can’t help with. To help with that, you can use your ‘here are my priorities today’ list to show them what you’re working on. If they’re more senior than you, you can ask them which they would deem lesser a priority so they can see how their request fits in with your schedule.
Ask yourself whether you need to be the person who solves this problem. If you are tempted to solve a problem, simply ask yourself before responding, ‘Is this my problem to solve?’ A game changer!
Create a quick reflection at the end of your day. ‘Did I get my most important thing done? If not, why not? What did I re-prioritise? Why? What would I do differently, if anything?’ This will help you see what is working well and to keep it up!
As you can see, protecting yourself from yourself is a small, helpful step towards getting increasingly confident communicating your needs and what you want more of!
Rehearse the conversation.
Communicating our needs needs to start with us. When we think of communicating our needs as clarifying what we need to succeed or help someone, it becomes easier, over time.
When we ask for clarity early, it saves us time (and stress!). Having a few pre-prepared statements up your sleeve helps you communicate your needs.
Here are a few examples:
If I have X notice, I’m typically able to fit it in.
I have the following I need to get done today.
I can swap one of these out, would that be okay?
I need to balance this with X, which is important. Is there someone else who could fulfil the request for you?
What I’m hoping for from this meeting is X, will we cover that?
Is it possible to see an agenda prior?
Is it possible to get a recording or summary following?
Instead of thinking of it as saying ‘no’, you can think of it like this: what would it take to be a ‘yes’? Saying ‘no’ doesn’t mean you’re rejecting someone. You’re saying ‘no’ so you can say ‘yes’ to what is truly important.