Being Yourself and Asking for What You Want
In any relationship, perhaps most especially in your personal relationships, you pay close attention to how the other person responds to what you share. You notice what they celebrate, affirm, accept with compassion, try to understand as well as what they minimize, criticize, turn away from, ignore, or negate.
For a relationship to evolve and become intimate, you need to be fully authentic and able to share a diversity of experiences and be received with acceptance, respect and curiosity.
In such a relationship, you face important choice points each time you take the risk to share something a little more vulnerable and observe how the other person receives you. In that moment of sharing, if you are received in a way that works for you, you have a choice to celebrate that aloud with the other person. This is an effective way to let them know what’s important to you and what meets your needs. Celebrations for being received in a way that meets your needs might sound like any of the following:
Thanks for your curiosity. I enjoy talking about this with you.
I’m appreciating the way you really get what I'm saying.
When you reflect back it really helps me understand myself better, thank you.
Thanks for making those guesses. You're helping me to see new things about my experience.
I feel closer to you when you take this time to understand exactly what I went through, thank you.
Thanks for offering that. I feel held by you.
It's such a relief to be understood, thank you.
Your listening really helps, thank you.
Thanks for not giving advice. Just being heard is really what I need
Bring the same level of awareness and feedback when you are not received in a way that meets your needs. Staying grounded and giving feedback when your needs are not met is usually more difficult because reactivity can take over quickly. The other person's response might collude with your own sense of insecurity about whether you are worth being heard or whether or not your experience is valid. Reactivity might push you in the direction of shutting down, abandoning your own experience, or defending your position. None of these reactions help this person to understand the response you are looking for in a given moment.
Knowing and asking for what you want back from someone when you share something vulnerable is an essential skill for maintaining authenticity and cultivating a thriving relationship. Developing this ability requires layers of resource, awareness and skill. Let's look at each of these three individually.
Resource
An essential resource that helps you be able to ask for what you want back after you have shared vulnerably is the sense that you are worthy of such attention and care, that your experience is valid and worth being heard. If you know this is tenuous for you, then healing work may be necessary to strengthen a sense of emotional security.
When this emotional security is missing, reactivity takes over and you begin to repress or deny parts of yourself. Over time you begin to disappear in the relationship. Perhaps this shows up as focusing on the positive and trying to keep things harmonious. Or, maybe there is a slow distancing and simmering resentment. Or perhaps you lose yourself completely and focus on the other person's needs trying to take care of them and make them happy at all costs.
Awareness
It's obvious then that awareness regarding any reactivity is essential. And this awareness must be subtle. You might easily be able to notice when you defend, become angry, or sullen because you are not heard. But it is the smaller forms of reactivity that build up over time. These include what seem like, at the time, simple moments of accommodating the other person, not saying what's true for you, not asking for what you want, or giving up your sense of what's true in a given experience.
A second important type of awareness is awareness of your intention and what you would like back from the other person. When you are focused on your intention to connect and develop the relationship, your perspective stays broad and you can remember the skills or a sense of responsiveness that you take for granted in yourself, maybe brand new for someone else. You can interrupt reactive thinking that the other person should already know what to say or do or if they cared about you they would do the thing you want them to do.
Skill
From this type of awareness, you can learn to make requests in a way that is clear, specific and doable and creates a heart connection with the other person. Here are some examples of how to ask for various kinds of responsiveness in a given moment:
Asking for Emotional Attunement
I have some fear coming up I want to share. Are you in a place to offer reassurance and comfort?
I want to share something that happened today and I am just looking for empathy. Are you up for listening?
Can you tell me what you're understanding from what I said?
This is vulnerable for me and I'm looking for warmth and attentiveness. Is this a good time?
What are you hearing me say?
For my own clarity, could you say back what you are getting?
I'm wondering if you could ask some questions about my experience before telling the story about yours?
I am having trouble identifying my feelings and needs. Could you make some guesses?
Thanks I can hear you want to support me by giving me advice. For right now I'm just looking for empathy. Could you say back what you heard me say?
I'm hearing that when I bring up my worry, your worry comes up too. I wonder if we could take turns and give each other empathy?
This is an emotional thing for me and when you give me a mental explanation of my experience, I feel disconnected. What I'm really looking for right now is just little sounds of understanding and caring.
Could you hold me quietly for ten minutes while I cry?
Just sitting here with me and holding my hand through this is all I need.
I’m just wanting to hear something like…(give them the exact words)
Asking for Celebration
I have a celebration. Want to hear it?
Are you up for hearing some good news!
I want to share something I am happy about.
High five?
Asking for Relatedness / Shared Humanity
Have you experienced something like this before?
Is this a common experience?
Can you understand how this would happen for me?
What feelings and needs come up for you hearing that?
Can you tell me how this makes sense to you?
Asking for Perspective or Mental Engagement
How do you see this fitting in the context of other things in my life?
What else do you think might be influencing me or the situation?
Do you have any sense of where this other person was coming from when they did that?
What do you see about the situation?
How do you see all this fitting together?
What’s your view on this topic?
What do you understand about the complexity of this situation?
Asking for a Reality check
Does my thinking make sense?
Am I missing something?
Do you understand the reasons this bothers me?
Do you see how that person's behavior could be unsafe?
Asking for Information / Advice
Can you share three ideas you have about what to do?
Is there information I am missing?
What do you think would be most skillful?
What would you do in my shoes?
As you develop the resources, awareness, and skills to ask for the responsiveness you need, you might find yourself reflecting on previous relationships. Upon reflecting on past relationships, you will become aware of times you abandoned yourself and didn't share important parts of your experience. You'll be able to see how the other person didn't receive or support certain kinds of sharing. Without compassion for yourself and the other person, you might be tempted to shame yourself and blame them. Take a breath and remind yourself that each of you were doing the absolute best you could at the time with the resources you had then. Even if you could go back in time with the resources, awareness, and skill you have now, you don't know if the other person would have been able to respond and grow with you at that time. There’s no failure. Just each person doing the best they can with the resources and support they have at the time.
Practice
Take a moment now to reflect on three interactions in which your vulnerable sharing was received in a way that met your needs. What exactly did the other person do or say in each instance?
