Taking up space

How often are your boundaries encroached? Perhaps you are contacted by work colleagues late at night or during the weekend. Perhaps your friends pressure you to do something that you don’t feel comfortable doing. Maybe your partner makes decisions for you, and they don’t even ask for your input.
 
At what point do you speak up about your feelings and needs? At what point do you say no? When you are already experiencing burnout? If so, that might be too late. Studies show that burnout thins the gray matter of your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain that is responsible for important functions such as reasoning and decision-making), and it can enlarge the amygdala (the brain’s alarm system). By the time you are experiencing burnout, already your ability to advocate for yourself has been eroded.
 
Now is the time to use those basic skills of assertiveness. Now, before you are in burnout.
 
In therapy, we explore the “why” behind our patterns. So it might help you to understand why it is so hard to assert your feelings and needs. This might be a simple case of conditioning. If so, the good news is that you can unlearn whatever you were taught. You can replace “I’m invisible” or “I’m worthless” with “I have a voice that deserves to be heard.
 
Once we understand the “why,” you can then learn how to show up differently in the same situations. You can preserve a work dynamic or personal relationship without constantly capitulating. You have feelings and needs that are as important as anyone else’s. So let’s start living in a way that honors this.
 
Get in contact if you would like to explore this in more detail.
 
Chris Warren-Dickins
Therapist in New Jersey
​