vulnerability

overcoming the discomfort of expressing our desires

Shozo Shimamoto, Untitled, 1965

Elaine @laine_writes

i'm getting better at asking for what i want. it's funny how something so simple, something we did instinctively as a child, gets unlearned through the process of growing up and acquiring an armor.

Expressing a desire is a very vulnerable act. It gives another person the power to see into your heart and potentially disappoint you. If people don’t know what you want, they can’t hurt you.

Sometimes the thing you want might reveal a side of you that you don’t want the world to see. For example, you might be very ambitious about your career, but you’ve learned to hide that part of you, so instead of asking for a promotion at work, you expect your boss to recognize your hard work and nominate you for a promotion without you having to explicitly ask for it. In a perfectly meritocratic world, that might be a fair expectation, but we don’t live in that kind of world.

Or you expect the guy you’re dating to ask you to be exclusive after four dates. You think that’s totally reasonable, but maybe he has a different timeline in mind or maybe he wants to ask but is afraid of rejection or maybe he expects you to bring it up first because you’re more proactive. So you wait and wait and become more and more disappointed the longer it takes for him to ask.

So much unnecessary agony is created by internalizing our desires while expecting others to fulfill them. We withhold expressing what we want from other people because: 

1. We don’t want to get hurt

2. We’re afraid of how we’ll be perceived

3. We think people understand our needs more than they do

I used to wonder whether it was even appropriate to rely on another person to fulfill an emotional need or whether it was better to rely on myself. It seemed safer to be my own sole provider, but some needs are inherently social. For example: the desire to feel loved and cared for. You can give yourself love and care, but it can’t replace the love and care you receive from others.

Not being forthright about what you want is mentally and emotionally taxing. When someone doesn’t meet your need, it’s easy to mull over their actions or non-actions and create a narrative to explain what’s happening. Often, it’s not a good narrative. In the past, whenever this happened, I found myself taking the emotion I was feeling in the moment (anxious, sad, hurt, angry) and coming up with a story that justified the feeling, instead of examining where the feeling was coming from. Essentially, I let my emotions drive my perception of reality.

This is a great explanation for why we ruminate:

Our ruminations provide our suffering with empathy, which so often it doesn’t receive from those we most want it from, those we think have created our pain or should care. To stop revisiting our hurt can feel like we’re moving on before the hurt has been properly heard, validated, or soothed. In this way, our attention (in the form of thinking) can feel like a salve to our wounds.

Nancy Colier, Can't Stop Thinking: How to Let Go of Anxiety and Free Yourself from Obsessive Rumination

Being able to spot yourself doing this is a useful skill. Whenever I experience a negative emotion, I try to observe myself from a bird’s eye view. When you do this enough times, you begin to notice a pattern. There are certain conditions that are particularly triggering for you, and when they occur, you tend to feel X, and think Y, and act in Z way. Once you notice the pattern, it’s amazing how predictable it is. You realize there’s a script you’re following, almost on autopilot, but you don’t need to follow it. You can break out of the script by tuning into the negative feeling and offering it curiosity and compassion before it hijacks your brain.

A useful question to ask yourself is: what must be true in order for me to feel O.K.? It begins to shift the negative narrative into something more positive. For example, if you’re disappointed that the guy you’re dating didn’t make plans with you for the long weekend, you could say to yourself: I need to know that he cares about me and is taking this relationship seriously. You may find that you already know this to be true, and that the doubt was coming from a part of you that was hurt in the past and is now trying to protect you from getting hurt again. But if you feel like you don’t have the assurance you need, you now have the clarity to ask for it: I want to know that you care about me and that you’re taking this seriously, and so I would like for you to make plans with me during the holidays. Is that something you can do? 

In an ideal world, the people we love would read our minds and be perfectly attuned to our needs, but in place of that, we need to communicate our needs more openly and directly. Of course, you have to be prepared for the other person to say that they can’t provide what you’re asking for. After all, they have the right to set their own boundaries. But wouldn’t you rather know than internalize your desires and set yourself up for disappointment? Asking for what you want might feel terrifying—it might even seem unromantic—but it’s also liberating, and it’s an act of kindness to yourself. Ask, and you may be surprised by what you’ll receive.