Huge theme in my inbox lately.
You want support. You need support. And it’s just not showing up. We touched on this yesterday with the whole “how come my friends don’t comment on my blog” phenomenon.
And a number of Procrastination Dissolve-o-matic users have written saying that the techniques themselves are doing wonders … but what do you do when you start encountering criticism from the people in your life who are supposed to be supporting you in this process?
Plus it seems like my coaching clients are also all dealing with this right now in one form or another, though often the support they need (and aren’t getting) is actually from themselves.
Which reminds me: there’s a missing concept to deal with if we want to get any clarity around this stuff.
Useful concept of the day: internal vs external.
There are two ways we get support. Or anything, for that matter.
We have internal resources (thoughts, emotions, strengths, energy, ideas, epiphanies, concepts, reassurances, trust) …
… and we also have external resources (people we know, experts, authorities, information, even a higher power — if you believe in one — could be considered an external resource).
There’s probably a whole book just on this, but for now the point is that while there are many different forms the support we crave could take, they basically fall into two different categories — two main types of support that we can access.
The fastest way to get support when you’re needing it.
Don’t hit me. This concept is deceptively simple. As in, not simple at all. It just sounds like it is.
You gotta ask.
When you need support — and you’re not getting it — the most important thing you can do is ask for it.
And there are two places to ask. You either go inside and start asking your internal resources for support. Or you turn outside to ask your external resources for support.
Actually, ideally you do both. But they work a bit differently.
Argh. Stop. Let’s have an example
Because otherwise I’ll start geeking out on theory, with no obvious connections to actually applying this stuff in real life.
One of my readers wrote to me recently about this enormous fight she and her husband had.
Background: She recently bought the Procrastination Dissolve-o-Matic and has been applying stuff like crazy.
In fact, she had three days in a row of big, impressive accomplishments and — even more impressive — had actually been allowing herself to be impressed by them, rather than falling into her old pattern of automatically dismissing anything she did as worthless and not good enough. Huge, right? I know!
She wrote:
The fight was about his idea that I’m “not getting enough done”. He’s a very Results Oriented Guy, and currently sees the things I’m celebrating getting done as things I “should be doing anyway.”
Yeah, that does kind of suck. Sigh. Everyone send this woman a mental hug-offer right this second.
But back to the example. Here we have someone who is feeling frustrated and hurt because she needs some more support and encouragement in her life and she’s not getting it.
She’s noticed how she’s feeling. She’s recognized hurt and sadness and anger.
She’s identified what she’s needing (support, encouragement and positive motivation).
Now it’s time to ask.
The two parts to going ahead and asking for what you need.
Obviously the art of the ask is not something that’s easy for most of us. That’s why you need to start with internal asking before you go ahead to the external side of things.
This asking bit is a two-part process:
1. You start with asking yourself.
That’s the internal. Asking yourself for the ability to receive support. Asking yourself if it’s possible to become more open to receiving different kinds of support — and in different places.
Asking yourself if there are any internal limiting beliefs that are keeping you from getting support. Like, maybe you think you’re not deserving of it. Or maybe you think it wouldn’t help anyway because you’ll just mess everything up anyway. Stuff like that.
Ask yourself what it would feel like to be someone who has as much support as she (or he) needs. What would it feel like to be someone who can feel okay with asking for help?
2. And then you can practice the external kind of asking.
This means finding the people who are most likely to be supportive. And preparing yourself to have better communication with the people who aren’t generally supportive of you.
The best way to ask for support is to use Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication method — simple, but very powerful. You state your feeling and your need, and then ask for that need to be met.
For example, the woman who wrote to me might try saying something like this:
When I have a lot to do I feel really tense because I put a lot of pressure on myself to get things done right. And when I feel tense, I go into a state of internal resistance where I’m totally paralyzed and actually get less done.
When you say that I’m not getting enough done, I feel sad and I also go into this tense, paralysis thing.
So even though I know you’re trying to help me and I appreciate that, what’s happening for me is that it’s triggering some unhealthy patterns.
Right now I’m trying to get more things done, and to do this I’m trying to actively bring more support and encouragement into my life.
What I really need from you is more support and encouragement. It would be helpful for me if you would give me a few weeks to work on being able to get more done. I would really like to feel safe and supported, knowing that I’m going to be getting positive reinforcement from you with this.
Is that something you can do? It would help me feel a lot safer working on these patterns that I’m trying to change.
A few things to remember with asking
For heaven’s sake, be SPECIFIC.
No one can possibly know how to give you support if you don’t tell them. That’s true for your internal resources as well.
You don’t just want to ask for support and encouragement in general. Tell people what they can do to help you. Ask yourself what that kind of help would look like, sound like, and feel like.
It’s not about demanding anything. You’re just asking.
You either get it or you don’t. This is no time to pitch a fit because you think you deserve x, y and z. Sometimes people cannot give you what you need.
They have their own stuff. They’re blocked in their own ways. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people or they don’t love you. Just that right now they can’t give you what you need.
If you can’t get it from the person you want to get it from, you get it from yourself. If you can’t get it from yourself, you ask yourself if you can get better at receiving it.
And then you go out and find the people who can give it to you right now.
Surround yourself with people who adore you madly.
You need support and encouragement and motivation in your life. Find people who are going to give it to you. And give it to them. And give it to yourself.
You don’t always get what you ask for.
That’s why you have the inside stuff. That’s what the internal resources are for.
Sometimes you’ll ask for support and you won’t get it in the form you want it in. Or at all. But you can always turn inward and ask for it there. You can always ask for it in your heart.
You can always practice getting better at being that loving, supportive friend to yourself. Sometimes this will be a pain. Sometimes you won’t feel like it. Sometimes you just won’t be able to. But hey, we’re working on it, right?
One last thing about support
Yes, this whole process of getting ready to receive support is hard and frustrating. For me and for everyone I know. And oof oof oof, it’s even harder when the people around you don’t get how hard it is!
This is big stuff. Big, crazy topic. We’re working with really old, very hurt patterns here, so it makes sense that you’d feel uncomfortable asking. Asking for support is huge. Huge.
Even thinking about it is a pretty big deal. So no need to pressure yourself. It’s true that the support you need may sometimes be hard to access, but it’s also true that it will be there when you ask for it.
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Uh yeah. This is PERFECT for me.
😉
Thanks!
All the best!
deb
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I remember saying to one (now) ex: “I would like your support, but don’t require it. However, I neither need nor will accept your judgment.” It was near the end of the relationship, so communication wasn’t the best, but it did make me feel good to articulate clearly what I needed.
Alex Fayle | Someday Syndromes last blog post..Destuckifying Your Life: Havi Brooks Interview
This post hits such a touchy spot for me right now. I just found your blog through IttyBiz, and so much of what you’ve had to say speaks right to me. This last year has been an unreal journey toward self-compassion and extreme self-care and other such feel goodies, and away from all the self-destructive, judgmental stuff that’s kept me from writing my entire life. I’m just now beginning to forge a relationship with my writing (and I’m so freaking thrilled to have found your Destuckification stuff, yay Havi!), and I’m almost astonished to find that writing is actually fun. (Where did I lose that along the way?)
Anyway, my point of all this is that I’ve realized how many of my relationships are co-dependent, awful, life-sucking, whatever, and I’m slowly and gently trying to let them go, or at least respect my own boundaries with them, which means that I’m hurting and confusing people who thought they had my co-dependent stuff to lean on themselves, and that makes me sad.
On the up side though, it’s forced me to rely on me more, which was HARD, but liberating. It was difficult to lose what I had thought for so long was support, but it was nice to see that much of what I needed was internal. So, thanks for the post, Havi. It’s nice to feel like I’m not alone. And I send huge, big hugs to your client and her husband.
Ah. My husband and I have had this argument. Except he’s the one dealing with stuckification and I’m the one failing to celebrate the small things. As the evil spouse (in this scenario), I can really, truly say that when someone I love this much looks at me and says “Honey, this is a big deal for me, even if it’s not for you..can you please recognize that this is big FOR ME?”…well, who can resist that?
It seems most of my marriage is spent reminding ourselves and each other that we have different levels of, well, everything. Different patience levels with the pup, different levels of comfort with cleaning, TV, sleeping, etc. We don’t have to be on the SAME level all of the time (although that helps!)…we only need to embrace and appreciate (non-judgmentally) that we are on different levels and that’s ok! *big sigh of relief*
It’s like you say, Havi, it’s all about recognizing and releasing resistance!
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I heart this Havi 🙂
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You said this:
“You gotta ask.”
And I felt like throwing up. I’m terrified of asking. I’ve almost never been around people who really think that my ideas are worth pursuing. Ideas I know are sound, like making part of my income from my one person show, writing a book, developing a community-wide arts program for the disenfranchised…
Lots of things that will be great and influential in individual lives.
And usually the people I’ve been around, until this last year or so, want me to forget it or just do something smaller, part time, for no money, while I do like they do and spend most of my time doing a job I don’t like making barely enough to survive and watching the child of my creativity pine for my attention in the corner…
Arrgh. Sorry. This is a wonderful post. It provoked a vent. I’ve got people around now who want to see ME succeed, rather than some dude who looks like me but acts like them. I’m very glad.
Mucho love from OK, Havi. 🙂
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Asking is pretty much the scariest thing there is. I talked about how to take some of the scary out of it here but yeah, still totally challenging.
That’s great that you’ve got new people who are on your side. That’s such a big deal.
Sometimes I still notice that when I’m sharing an idea with my gentleman friend who is my biggest fan, there’s a part of me that’s really tense and waiting for him to tear it down.
Of course he’s always 100% enthused about all my ideas … it’s just my own past experience whispering “hey, it’s not safe to share with people because they’ll just criticize you!”
Just goes to show how deep that stuff runs. And why surrounding yourself with people who get how cool you are is so important.
@Tara – That’s so so true. That’s an important insight to have in any relationship. The idea that two people would ever see eye-to-eye on anything is so absurd, and yet we all want to have this instant-harmony …
I also think that relationships are all about remembering that there are so many ways to perceive and interact with the world!
Hey Havi,
This is just so freakin’ important! I run a few women’s groups and one of the main things that happens in those groups ( besides women getting permission to be wildly creative) is that sense of support. Getting high quality, delicious support from other’s who adore you madly and without reservation allows you to get a wonderful clue about how to give that support to yourself. And of course the wild creativity is a direct result of that support. It’s a simple, yet powerful loop .
And yes, being specific and asking. So effective. When you are specific people can actually understand what you want and maybe even be able to give it to you!!! Who da thunk it??? I just love Marshall Rosenbergs work although I must say that I never noticed the cheesy poetry until you mentioned it in one of your other blog posts. Is cheesy poetry like a baby boomer thing?
Hugs,
Chris
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Thanks for this great post. I’m working with dissolve-o-matic and the internal/external thing is really helpful.
As for asking, this message from a transactional analysis training I did is helpful to me, “My responsibility is to ask, not to obtain.” I find that often when I’m afraid to ask it’s really that I’m thinking about the obtaining, or not obtaining. I re-read the message and it makes it easier to ask without worrying about the outcome.
Thanks @Gary. “My responsibility is to ask, not to obtain.”
I’m going to use that. Very powerful!
@Chris – I never thought about that but maybe … I’m sure there’s some learned journal where the connection between baby boomers and cheesy poetry has been proven — or the opposite. 🙂
Maybe not everyone is as easily annoyed as I am. That could also be the case!
@Havi – Glad you like it. For reference and to give due credit it’s from the book (in French) l’Analyse Transactionnelle au Quotidien, Bernard Raquin, Editions de Jouvence. The editor’s web site indicates it might be available in English under the title “How to Outwit Psychological Games”.
Dear Havi,
This was the most perfect blog post for me this morning. I broke up with a long time friend this week. Many tears. Communication (& hearts) broke down bad. Ugh.
When I read “Surround yourself with people who adore you madly” my breathe snuck out and a few more tears did too. Wow. Your words helped me clarify some major stuff and I appreciate that.
I am committed to working on my communication skills. The Nonviolent Communication thing-y is like up BIGTIME. Sort of feel like I’m outta time with this old pattern and realizing I have the choice to participate or not participate in it.
I am willing to ask for what I want. A big one. Like you say, sounds easy enough to do but then not so much. I find asking for help when things suck is the hardest, but overall asking for ANY kind of help is challenging for me and is a huge pattern I’d love to punt through the field goal of life.
Lastly, I am willing to be to myself, what I think I need from others. The whole internal/external thing is also big. Big Big Big. This shift, and when I work with my clients, is one that helps me come back to thriving, instead of surviving on handouts (not that handouts don’t feel nice and good and I’ll take them). I can always move inward and see how I could love myself better in this moment. Such a sweet gift.
Thank you. Your blog is like a sweet drink of self-love.
Mynde
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