Can I Have That?

I was taught to ask for nothing. My sweet mother did not know she was teaching me this. I expect she, too, was taught to ask for nothing.

When this behavior is absorbed it affects more in my life than you would realize. In customer service, I wouldn’t dream of getting a clerks attention. I would wait until they see me. There are times that it is appropriate, like when they are busy with someone else, and there are times it is not, like when they are doing a mundane task and don’t look up or when they are shooting the breeze with another employee and don’t bother to notice. Either way, I would stand and wait. Or, worse, after a time, I would get very angry and somewhat nasty when I was “forced” to speak up. If someone has forgotten something we've agreed to, I have a hard time reminding them we've done so. Or if I am owed money for whatever reason, I would have a difficulty bringing it up.

There are areas in my life this applies and areas it doesn’t and I can’t tell you exactly where there line is drawn but it’s knowledge lives inside me. I’ve never asked for a raise in my life (if I deserved it I would receive it) and rarely asked for a needed hug, a specific gift, sex, a vacation, or emotional support. 

I used to, on occasion, punish my significant other, or loved ones, for not meeting my unexpressed needs. I know that sound awful but it was a learned behavior that I have seen evidence of it in some of my siblings too. More recently, I am expressing my needs, asking for what I want and reaching out for support.

One of the basic tenets of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunction is that we cannot recover alone and in isolation. “WE USE THE STEPS, WE USE THE MEETINGS, WE USE THE TELEPHONE”. In other words we learn to know ourselves and start to heal, we go where there are other people that will know how we feel, and we learn to discern who is trustworthy and we reach out to them to form connection. 

We learn to ask for what we need.