Finding Your Voice

For both teenage girls and adult women, asserting yourself and finding an acceptable way to ask for what you really want can be a challenge. There are social and cultural messages girls get growing up that contribute to women being more hesitant to speak up, and more likely to defer to the needs of others.

Sometimes women grow up thinking that if they find the right partner, he will intuit your needs. You won't have to speak up. This, however, is not a healthy expectation. Even if you find a caring, genuine partner, all adults need to learn to sort out their own internal experiences, give direct feedback in a constructive way, and ask for what they need emotionally in relationships. No one ever reads your mind. There is no perfect relationship that doesn't need any of your input or requests for adjustments.

One safe way to ask for what you want is to put it in this assertion formula: "When you_______________________(other person's behavior),I feel_____________________(your feeling), and next time, I'd like you to____________________________(their behavior. This little assertion recipe, if delivered in a calm and respectful way, will guarantee that you that you are asserting yourself appropriately, not too aggressively.

It can also be helpful to consider the transactional analysis concept of ego states: we each have an inner child, critical parent, nurturing parent, and an adult ego state within us. If we stay in our inner child state, we are afraid to tell others what we need, and we wait passively hoping that those closest to us will read our mind, as if by magic. If we are stuck in critical parent mode, we attack others if we don't get what we want or need. If we come from the adult ego state, we express our needs appropriately and clearly, and listen to the needs of others. In our adult state, we make compromises and solve problems together, communicating from our inner adult and trying to "hook" the other person's adult state.

Finding your voice is a lifelong task. You can get better and better at it. Communicating effectively in an appropriate way feels good, and increases your self-confidence as an individual. Effective communication in relationships takes both people operating at a healthy level. How is your partner ever going to hit the mark without your input? While you can't build healthier relationships all by yourself, you can know that you are doing your personal best to be honest, open and expressive in your most important relationships. Sometimes amazing things happen when you communicate more openly and maturely and see what happens. You can change the dance steps in most relationships by changing your own.

Try Never to Triangulate

Triangles are great for geometry, but they are not healthy for relationships. When I work with couples and families, I often map out the communication patterns. Going direct to the person you have a concern about is generally much more constructive than telling a third person. It requires integrity, emotional bravery, and honesty to do so.

Let's pretend you are married, and you have a complaint about your partner, and how they are treating you. You could choose to discuss that gripe with a friend, your coworker, the children, your former partner, your sibling, or your mother. These are not the best choices from a therapist's perspective. It would TRIANGULATE a third person into a relationship that should be a two-person relationship dyad. A marriage relationship is a sacred trust, and you violate that when one of you "invites" someone else into that trust. Also, rarely do people present a balanced view of what they themselves are contributing to the conflict when talking to an outsider. It is tempting and easy to make yourself the good guy and your spouse the bad guy. The truth is probably in between, with both you and your partner contributing when there is dissatisfaction.

In all relationships, we do communication dances. If we change our dancesteps, it can create pressure for the other person to change their dancesteps also. When you
are not at ease with someone who matters to you, I encourage you to schedule some quiet, uninterrupted time to talk with them and get their perspective. An attitude of curiosity about yourself and the other person is very helpful here. Don't approach the other person from a superior or know-it-all position. Instead, try to express your concern and ask for their perspective. Surprises are not good in this part of a relationship, so meet to discuss changes that are needed only by appointment with each other. No surprise attacks as your partner heads off to work in the morning!

Direct communication feels better. It feels terrible to hear someone close to you is badmouthing you behind your back, and this is a wimpy and ineffective approach. Only the other person you are in a relationship with shares the power with you to make things better between you.

If you need coaching on how to become a more courageous and positively assertive person, see a therapist. A good therapist can help you understand your communication style, how your family communicated when you were growing up, and better ways to do it now. A competent therapist can help balance your view, and take responsibility for your part of the communication dance. In healthy relationships, we recognize everyone contributes to what is being experienced. There often isn't a bad guy.

Direct communication works well in parenting, too. When there are changes in the family, we need to be able to say the truth to children and teens,at age-appropriate levels, about what is happening, and how it might impact them. This could be true about talking about a vacation, a move, a parents' job loss,expectations with school starting,illness,or family changes like a separation or divorce. Children and teens feel worse when they sense impending changes but noone is talking about the elephant in the room.

It is also important to be direct with positive communication, like appreciating the good things another person brings to a relationship. Buckets of tears have been shed in my counseling office over the past 20 years by children, teens, and adults who are in close relationships with people who are so broken that they can't say 'I love you' or share what they appreciate about the other person. Like we are supposed to mindread? Expressing directly what you LIKE about the other person and APPRECIATE about their behavior is powerful. Why would you deny yourself this connection?

When in doubt in your relationships this week, find a way to go direct. Your relationships will get stronger, and you will like yourself better. Your relationships can only be as healthy as you are. Your relationship skills dictate the quality of what you experience. Truly, as scientist and writer Jon Kabot Zinn,Ph.D, titled his book on mindfulness, "Wherever you go, there you are". Let's leave triangles to geometry class. To build great relationships, let's be grown-up, courageous, and direct.

Why Everybody Needs Boundaries

Everybody needs to learn to set boundaries. I often work with my counseling clients on this front. It is especially difficult for women to set limits and boundaries, and most challenging to set them with the people you are closest to. Today I want to share some of my observations about setting boundaries at home and at work, and how this abilty is key to really living an authentic life and being yourself.

There is an image in a classic old psychology book called "Feeling Safe" that I love. Picture a young person growing up and moving in to a house. The house represents a sense of self. There are many rooms in the house, symbolizing different aspects of the self that one develops over time. The doors to each room need to be opened or closed by the young person whose house it is. The doors are the limits or boundaries which help our developing teenaged self learn to feel safe.

It may be interesting to you to reflect back on your growing up years and recall how safe you may have felt (or not) to explore the different aspects of your self and be supported by family. Were you allowed to let Mom or Dad in closer or push them out a bit when you needed to withdraw a while? If you were allowed to set boundaries as a young person, it helps later in life. Many teenaged girls and adult women struggle with being able to set limits and not feel guilty. There are gender specific experiences in being raised a girl that contribute to this being difficult as well.

Being able to develop your toolkit for setting limits and boundaries is important for personal happiness and to live an authentic life. It means you can make straight-forward, reasonable requests of others. It means you have some standards for how you want to be treated, and that you provide others who are important to you the same fair consideration. It means you and the other person are both allowed to say 'no' sometimes.It means you don't put people-pleasing as your only value. It teaches you to respect yourself and commands respect from others. All relationships have a power dynamic, and setting boundaries helps you hold on to your power over yourself at not be voiceless or enable a tyrant.

Setting boundaries does not mean being defensive. Defensiveness is stonewalling, being hostile, withholding love, and other immature communication stategies.If you saw your parents using defensiveness as their style, it is probably your easiest strategy to emulate. Unless you stop the legacy of defensiveness and choose to develop healthier emotional habits. Defensiveness hides destructive,hurtful,and sneaky behaviors, while boundaries protect your best and higher self.

Where do we need boundaries to protect our best self? Here are some of the areas where we definitely do:

1.Work
2.With Our Partner(Love, Honor and Negotiate!)
3.How Conflicts Get Resolved (AKA Fair Fighting)
4.Friends
5.Gossip/Negativity/Whining
6.Inappropriate Questions
7.Inappropriate Requests
8.Parenting(Variable boundaries dependent on age and maturity)
9.Extended Family
10.Holidays/Celebrations/Gifts
11.Post-Divorce
12.Volunteer Work
13.Protecting the Emotional and Physical Intimacy with Your Loved One
14.In our Sexual Life
15.How we Cope with Disappointment, Frustration,and Hurt
16.For Privacy With Clergy, Doctors,and Therapists
17.With our Time
18.With our Self
19.With what we Say
20.With the use of Alcohol and Drugs
21.Spending
22.Technology
23.Children's Activities
24.Food
25.Privacy(allowing access appropriate to how close the person is to us)

Lots of areas of our lives come to mind. Being able to set boundaries effectively gives your life meaning. When you set limits you protect what is within them, and makes those things have greater value.If you have no boundaries,or loose boundaries, you are not making anyone truly special in your life and protecting them, or taking good care of yourself. Watch for footprints on your back as you become a doormat to others. For more on this topic, I suggest reading "Where to Draw the Line:How to Set Healthy Everyday Boundaries" or the classic "When I Say No, I Feel Guilty".

You can set boundaries, and like training your muscles at the gym,it will get easier with practice.You can show your children a healthier pattern. Mature people not only set limits, but go direct rather than indirect, set differing boundaries depending on what is appropriate to the relationship, and really mean yes when they say it.