When Asking Feels Impossible
Learning how to ask, and why it's hard
Let’s start with this premise. You’re a human, and humans have needs. Do we agree on that? Hope so.
But I want you to consider what happens when you notice you have a need. Let’s say you need… something. Maybe it’s a small something - a bit of help, some time to yourself, an acknowledgement of how hard things have been or a celebration of something you’ve achieved, or a hug. Maybe it’s bigger than that. Either way, you have noticed you need it.
And then I’d like you to notice what might happen to that need. Maybe you don’t ask for it to be met. Maybe you do, and you’re disappointed. What happens? Maybe a kind of closing off. Maybe you don’t ask because the asking would feel costly. So you manage without. You tell yourself it’s fine, or that it doesn’t matter, or that it would be more trouble than it’s worth. And somewhere underneath that, very quietly, you add it to a list that nobody will ever see. Maybe one you don’t see yourself.
If you read Part 1 of this series, you’ll have a word for some of this now: fawning. The stress response that looks like being a really lovely person. What I want to explore this time is what fawning does specifically to our ability to ask - to name what we need and believe we’re allowed to have it. Because for a lot of people, asking isn’t just uncomfortable. It can feel genuinely impossible.
