David W. Zierk, PsyD

Stand up for yourself without putting others down.

There it is! What you just read is the most essential life skill you’ll ever master. When practiced, this form of self-advocacy helps you reclaim power, find your voice, and set the stage for your needs to get met. Amazing, right?

When something doesn’t go your way, and you tremble inside with a subjective detachment, who knows better than you what you need? Almost certainly, the answer is “just you and only you.” If you wait for someone to read your mind, cross the empathic bridge, and give you what you need, want, desire, or deserve, chances are you’ll be waiting quite some time.

So, stop waiting.

If this situation sounds familiar to you, then the time has come for you to think about how to take advocacy to the next level. Advocacy is the fast track to improving your quality of life and thriving amidst ongoing challenges.

In your everyday walk of life, what does an audit reveal about the feedback you regularly receive? Do you find it more harmful than positive? Are you exhausted and battle-torn because of your time explaining or defending yourself? Do you wonder why the world hasn’t yet discovered your talents, skills, and unique perspective? If others could hear what you cannot say, does it sound like, “I’m not asking for a lot, just for someone to get me and remind me, now and again, that I matter; is that too much?”

Let’s begin unfolding the self-advocacy process.

Puddle, Lake, or Ocean?

Whether your personality is quiet, reserved, and more bashful than boastful or loud, proud, and a bit sassy, self-advocacy begins in the same spot–here and now. Namely, it starts by knowing that something doesn’t feel right. Typically, you feel a deficit or excess; something is missing or coming at you too much. Put another way, it comes down to either not getting what you need or getting what you don’t deserve. Either way, what’s happening is an opportunity for you to stretch your advocacy muscles.

Sizing up the situation quickly by asking yourself, “Is my inner experience a puddle, lake, or ocean?” Knowing how big your feelings are, how corkscrewed your thoughts have become, and how large the stakes appear allows you to respond proportionally.

Quick Tip. Sizing up the situation lets you respond proportionally, which is key to optimizing your self-advocacy style. When you minimize your response, you’re downplaying your value. Conversely, when you magnify your response, chances increase that others will perceive you as dramatizing your concern and assessing your worth too highly.

Once you’ve anchored yourself in knowing the size of the problem, which determines how much amplification you need to defend yourself, the next step is learning how to do so with style.

Identifying Your Needs

The next step in the process is knowing your needs so that you are in a position of authority when they're not met. We get five essential attachment needs from others that we can’t easily give ourselves. These include Attention, Affection, Acknowledgement, Approval, and Applause. When satisfied, you will feel a deeper connection with yourself and a stronger attachment to others.

When your needs go unmet, you’ll feel deprived. Being in psychic debt shows up when you feel repeatedly misunderstood and alone while questioning your self-worth. Moreover, this unpleasant state can make you feel stuck and deskilled. Not knowing what to do, we often retreat to our early learning and shut down or get even. Both options fail to remedy the situation, and you’ll continue to feel insecure.

Attachment injuries are the opposite of attachment needs. Misunderstood and mistreated are the two overarching categories of injuries. When examined more closely, attachment injuries include being Ignored, Hurt, Dismissed, Rejected, and treated with Indifference.

The following side-by-side charts show what you need (look left) compared to what you don’t deserve from others (look right).

Quick Tip: Don’t confuse “normal” with “healthy.” The diagram above aims to help you remember the difference between healthy and unhealthy attachment experiences.

Knowing what you need deserves the highest ranking. Understanding when you're being injured is imperative. Feeling at the mercy of what’s happening to you when being misunderstood or mistreated is easy. This is why foresight is key to maintaining a sense of control.

Anticipation is not suppression. It’s when instincts join with intelligence. It’s tapping into your ability to feel the future. Anticipating being injured lets your thinking brain stay a beat ahead of overwhelming and highly familiar emotions. You can successfully navigate feelings of helplessness and intolerable vulnerability by shifting your attention and action to what’s most important: you.

Put Up or Shut Up

Which of the two choices sounds more like your style?

Let’s bring this to life. Think of the situation in which a young man, let’s call him Roberto, wants to ask Rachelle out on a date in the worst way. He’s been thinking about it for weeks; no, it’s more like months. His friends, who have grown tired of hearing about what he wants to do, finally say, “Roberto, put up or shut up!”

Roberto’s friends are asking him to advocate for himself. In short, they’re saying, “Make up your mind and do something (put up), and if your choice is to do nothing, then shut up.” While the advice Roberto is given by his friends is well-meaning, it’s approximately correct and absolutely wrong. The upside to what his friends are saying is encouraging him to take a risk by stepping into his desires to see if his dream comes true. The part that feels off-target is sending the message that it’s a do-or-die situation. It never is. It’s okay to do nothing if nothing is your preferred outcome. The bottom line is that Roberto deserves more options other than put up or shut up.

The dilemma confronting Roberto, and perhaps you too, is whether you control your future or allow your future to control you.

Quick Tip: Know that options give you power. Stay alert to those moments when you feel you're being backed into a corner. This is when you become susceptible to returning to your default mode. Stay present. Don’t let others push you around or force you to do something that feels unnatural. Give yourself time. Don’t rush self-advocacy. In time, it will flow naturally.

Fortunately, there are more than just these two options when developing an effective style of standing up for yourself.

Creating Options

The critical message in this section is that you have choices, and options are power. The process begins with realizing your previous efforts to stand up for yourself are insufficient. It’s not that you’ve failed; it’s that your previous habit of defending yourself doesn’t lead you to success. Do you understand the difference? Thinking you're inadequate makes the hole you're standing in deeper. Knowing it’s time to learn new habits is equivalent to putting down the shovel and walking away from the hole.

Now that you’ve learned to resist the urge to do what you always have done, it’s time to activate your growth mindset. Instead of avoiding or attacking when you’re feeling put down, use the heightened neural activity in your brain to think creatively. One idea is to try doing the opposite of what you typically do. Another idea is to share with the person what’s happening inside of you instead of focusing on what they did to alter you. Still, another idea is to share what you need with the person, not what you don’t deserve.

Any choice you make is an expression of personal freedom. Once you’ve tried something new, stand back and see how it works. Then, make micro-adjustments to polish your emerging self-advocacy style further.

Quick Tip: One last thought, and it’s important. Regardless of what you might do, step back and ask yourself, “Is this person interested in learning about how I tick and what I need?” If not, save your breath and look for someone worthy of your time and energy.

Summing Up and Moving On

Self-advocacy is summed up in the diagram below. To recap, the process asks you to size up your concern. Then identify your needs by examining what you no longer deserve. Third, while it doesn’t always feel like it, remember you have options. Creating options supplies freedom. Next, assess the level of support you might receive from the other person. Finally, let it fly. Share your new approach to conflict with the other person if you dare. And don’t let their judgment bring you down. Likewise, tell your negative self-talk to “shut up!”.

Final Tip: Surprise your future. Connect with the unconditional love you have for yourself and try something new again. Remember the good old days when you jumped at the chance to make a snow angel or when you asked your neighbor to play sidewalk chalk? It’s true; self-advocacy exists in you and might need a reboot.

Remember, your mind expands by learning. So, this is where your challenge begins and ends. Ask yourself, “Who’s in control – you or your mind?”

Press the button below to learn more about how your mind works as described in Dr. Zierk’s book, Mind Rules: Who’s in Control, You or Your Mind?