Things That REALLY Matter with Becca Lory Hector & Carole Jean Whittington
What if asking for help wasn’t a weakness—but one of the most radical acts of self-trust an autistic woman can make?
In this powerful episode of our monthly Things That REALLY Matter series, Becca Lory Hector and Carole Jean Whittington go deep into a topic many autistic women carry quietly: why asking for help feels so hard—and how we begin to heal that wound.
Together, we unpack:
The cultural myth of independence—and the trauma of self-reliance
How masking and rejection train us to equate strength with silence
Why past help-seeking may have felt dangerous or shameful
Rewriting the inner dialogue: shifting from “I should do it all myself” to “I deserve support”
Creating your “Safe to Ask” list and learning to receive without guilt
How helping professionals can hold space for interdependence without overstepping autonomy
Whether you're navigating burnout or supporting someone who is, this episode offers insight, validation, and gentle next steps toward reclaiming your voice—and your right to ask.
💌 Companion Article: Why Asking for Help Feels So Hard as Autistic Women—And How to Start Healing That Wound
📩 Special Subscriber Bonus in The Recharge includes healing prompts + tools for clinicians
🔗 Join us at WhittingtonWellBeing.com or in the show notes to access your bonuses
📢 This week’s listener reflection: “This week, I asked for…” Tag us or message to share your micro-acts of radical self-care.
@BeccaLoryHector @CaroleJeanWhittington
🔔 Subscribe + turn on notifications so you never miss an episode of Beyond Chronic Burnout—where we explore what it really means to thrive as autistic women.
🔗 Connect with Carole Jean Whittington:
How to get out of burnout - STEP 1: Take the Spicy Pepper Burnout Quiz and discover if you are in burnout or not, and if so, what’s your burnout level from a Poblano Pepper Level 1, where there’s just a bit of heat up to the Ghost Pepper Level 5 when “you’re so hot, you’re not.” You’ll get the opportunity to join our free Step 2 Class after you take the quiz.
Take the Spicy Pepper Quiz: https://energize.whittingtonwellbeing.com/products/courses/view/1155744
Subscribe to The Recharge Newsletter and receive weekly burnout recovery insights, tools for yourself or to use with your autistic clients, and learn about upcoming workshops at Whittington Well-Being.
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Connect with Becca Lory Hector:
#AutisticWomen #RadicalSelfCare #ThingsThatReallyMatter #NeurodivergentSupport #UnmaskingHealing #AutisticBurnout #BeyondChronicBurnout
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to our special social Saturday series with my
Co host Becca Laurie Hector. Things that really matter.
We are going to be unpacking thetruths that deeply impact our
everyday lives as autistic women.
And today we have a very important topic, especially with
so much conflict and things thatare really draining us right
(00:25):
now. We're talking a lot about asking
for help because that's one of the things so many of us don't
do. Who desires?
Will light the way, turn every shadow to vibrant days.
(00:52):
Artistic voices fearless and free.
No chase can hold what's meant to be.
We've got stories the world musthear, Breaking the silence loud
and clear. Becca, Carol Jean We're here to
say the things that I don't riseacross together and hear in
life. We're standing strong, unshamed
and crying. Every
(01:19):
woman. Here's.
My SO don't I ask you real quickbefore we hop into this
conversation, can I just take a nice breath, sort of relax into
(01:42):
yourself, notice how your body responds when you hear these
words. Can you help me?
What did you notice? I'm about you?
But like, I immediately get a little bit like on alert even
now. What about you, Becca?
(02:04):
Immediately, right I immediately.
I don't know. My reaction is, what can I do to
help this person, right? Which is not the way that I
think about help for me, but theway that I think about help for
other people, right? So when I hear somebody ask for
help, I don't have judgement about it.
I just think, oh, sure, what canI do?
(02:24):
How can I help you, right? I don't think oh, you need help
with something That's that's right.
Right. So let's flip the script on
that, though, as our friend Scott Brassard says.
So if we think about when other people say can you help me,
we're like, Oh yeah, sure. What do you need?
Like no judgement, no question, just immediately, how can I help
you? But if it's us saying can you
(02:46):
help me? Right.
What happens, right? Immediately, it's a sense of
feeling weak, right? We have somehow been brainwashed
to believe that needing other people to accomplish a task is
shameful, right? It's a sign of weakness or a
sign of sign of vulnerability, right?
(03:09):
I venture to gas to come somewhere from capitalism, but
maybe in that state right now where I think everything it
comes from there. But I really, I don't know how
we're taught this and I I've thought about it a lot and I I
think often about how when we'reteaching kids how to do things,
we don't just like we teach things them to do things, they
(03:31):
do it and we don't just go, all right, you did it.
We go, you did it all by yourself.
But is that it's awesome. Nobody.
Does it themselves. Right.
Why do? They.
Teach children that the right way to do it is to do it alone
immediately, right? And I feel like that's where it
all kind of begins for me. And I think for those of us who
(03:55):
are autistic women, there's thispressure to be perfect, right?
And asking. For help because perfect is safe
that. Picture, right.
So yeah, I mean, it's a trap it really.
Is, I mean, it's not just like asocial norm trap, but then it
becomes the trap that we've agreed to that we keep ourselves
(04:17):
in. Right.
And that's where I think that I talk a lot about, and I've seen
you talk about it. And when our friends talk about
it, which is why are we sold this myth of independence?
Why are we told, right, that we should be able to do everything
by ourselves? I don't understand this
(04:37):
misnomer, right? But it has not been my reality
as a person. That is not how I have
experienced the world at all. And The thing is, when we really
think about it, none of us is solely and wholly independent,
ever. If you have power in your house,
you have power because probably 100 plus people have made it
(05:01):
possible for you to flip a lightswitch.
If you go to the grocery store and buy your favorite snack,
there have been multiple people who have had a hand in making
sure that that product was available for you to buy and
take home. You might have earned the money,
but you didn't do it by yourself.
There were people that worked with you in some way.
You know, you didn't drive your car or ride your bike or take
(05:25):
transport to get to the grocery store.
You know everything. The store wasn't even possibly
open without other people. So the fact that, you know, it's
like, oh, I worked and earned this money and I went to the
store and I bought it and I did this all by myself.
It's big fat lie. It's a huge lie, right?
And the older we get and the more adulting we have to do, the
(05:46):
bigger that lie becomes, right? Because I don't know about you,
but I know plenty of people thatuse an accountant at tax time.
I know plenty of people that go to a mechanic to get their oil
changed. I'm right.
And all of those are acts of interdependence, right?
We're all relying on each other for those relationships, right?
(06:09):
And what we're not telling people is that life is about
collaboration, that there is enough for everyone.
That is the other lie, right? There is plenty for everyone,
right? And that collaboration is the
way to get there, right? And it's not the way to get
there. It's not.
(06:31):
And let's talk about why we end up in like the Shamestorm,
feeling like we are weak if we ask for help.
Because as autistic folks, you tell us the rule, we're going to
follow it. And if somewhere along the way
somebody said you did that all by yourself, good for you.
Then we're like, oh, that means I got to do everything by
(06:52):
myself. That's the goal.
Message received. Message received OK, I put that
into my operating system. Right.
And so when? We believe that everybody else,
right, everybody else is killingthemselves to do it, so we got
to do it too. Right.
And yet immediately our autisticbrain sees that that how
illogical it is, right? What a lie it is in truth, when
(07:14):
we're out there, right? It's a hypocrisy, right?
All the time. And so you know you're sick.
Go to the doctor. Interdependence.
Wait, that's interdependence, right?
And the doctor needs you to go 'cause that's their job, right?
So it's two way interdependence.So it really doesn't exist.
This concept of independence does not exist.
And the term that we are using as autistics and as advocates
(07:37):
that we are seeing is interdependence.
And that is a far more accurate descriptor of what we need as
human beings to get there. That doesn't mean you need a lot
of human interaction, or that you need other people for
everything, but it does mean that you need other people for
some things. And that immediately changes
your perspective on asking for help, right?
(08:01):
So if we've talked about this big fat lie, big big giant fat
lie that we have put like the Q beam light on right, you, you
are not not seeing this now you are getting this on some level.
Let's talk about how that lie ofindependence has caused us to
(08:27):
suffer in silence and think that's what we're supposed to
do. This goes along with that little
lovely package of ignoring our needs, right?
The lovely autistic habit of ignoring our needs to the point
of our own detriment, right, In order to fit in when we call
that masking, right, But all of it right is part of this myth
(08:49):
that we shouldn't let people know that we are not perfect,
right? And that we cannot do it alone,
right? And so I don't, I really don't.
I, there's a part of me that that is still angry about this
lie that has been told to me my whole life.
And I think a lot about all the different ways that I might have
gone about even employment if I was thinking about it from an
(09:11):
interdependent perspective rather than as an individual
trying to succeed, right? And I think the silence comes
from the shame. It's that shame silence spiral.
This terrible thing is happeningfor me.
I'm just not going to talk aboutit.
And imagine, though, for a moment, if we hadn't agreed to
(09:33):
the to the silence spiral, right?
If we didn't agree to the silence and little Carol and
little Becca, we were hanging out back when we were like 6-7,
eight years old, right? And we didn't learn to stay
quiet about it. We learned to talk about our
needs, and we learned to ask forthe things that we needed.
And then we learned to turn to each other and say, hey, I need
(09:54):
to do this thing. Can you help me?
Or do you want to do this thing with me, right?
Maybe you need it too, right? We didn't learn that skill set.
We learned there's shame in thatskill set.
And I don't understand where that comes from.
A lot of it I think for me was and and I'm an anagram 5.
So I have this very independent streak naturally.
(10:18):
And so it, I think it was like gas on that fire that fueled
that stoic strength was suffering in silence.
Like I was strong if I was suffering silently.
Yes, but that's part of it, right?
There are people who are motivated by their anger, who
are motivated by great. We find the strength in those
(10:41):
pieces, but that's really resilience, isn't it?
It's about repackaging what you're given, right?
Because I don't think it was necessarily a choice to be
silent. I think it became like, oh, when
I ask for help, and this is whatI would love to know from people
who are listening, right? Was there a moment in your life
where you asked for help and theresponse to your request for
(11:02):
help was either to shame you or to make fun of you or to not
understand why you needed that help?
And if those are your initial experiences, that's where it
begins, right? Is what was it that that first
thing that I asked for help for?And they think so many of us
that are autistic, we need help with things that are unusual and
(11:24):
out of the norm. And so it's it's very early on.
I feel we get this experience. Oh, 1000% And this is one of the
things that I talk about in the unveiling method in particular,
because we start to receive thismessaging very early on when we
are openly expressing, hey, thishurts me, this bothers me, or I
(11:45):
need this and the world respondsto us because they may not be
experiencing it the same way. They're like, that is a little
dramatic, like you can't possibly be hurt by that.
You can't possibly need that. And it doesn't bother me in the
least bit. Just suck it up, buttercup.
Let's keep going. And that early messaging is
(12:06):
where we start to on board. Number one, I asked for help.
People didn't believe that I needed it in the way that I said
I needed it because maybe they didn't need it the same way.
And so then we're not getting number one, our, our needs
aren't getting acknowledged as they are authentically.
(12:26):
And then we're like, oh, well, let me tone it down.
Maybe I can just ask for this little thing.
And so then we start minimizing the need that we have.
And then when that isn't fulfilled, because somebody's
like, why don't you know, I don't need that?
What do you need that for? Just figure it out on your own.
On your own. Figure out how to support
yourself on your own. And then we're in this place of
(12:46):
like, Oh, well, it was too big. People didn't acknowledge it.
Like apparently my experience iswrong.
Then it's OK, I'm going to make it smaller.
And then you don't get what you need.
Or worse yet, somebody gives youa half assed version of what you
need and it ends up hurting you because they're not, they don't
(13:07):
really care because they don't understand.
They just throw something your way and say, here you go, here's
your help, where they say sure, I'll help you.
And then you never hear from them again.
And by the time we've asked for it, because we've minimized so
much, we're crisis like we. Need it right?
We're in crisis. We let ourselves get there.
And what scares me about all this is this boxing away of
(13:29):
things that we do right, that wemake it smaller, we adjust
ourselves. And this is a habit.
It's like an autistic habit. And part of our masking is to
make ourselves small enough, right to either get by without
anyone noticing us right And right, that kind of idea.
And so I really, I wonder if ourinitial experiences and asking
(13:55):
for help is the beginning of this setup, because if that's
your beginning and you learn to suck it all in, you're being
told your needs, right? And so eventually it does, it
becomes that core strength. It becomes like a core of
concrete that's like, oh, I needa thing.
I know what's going to happen. Every time I ask for something I
need, people are going to make fun of me.
(14:15):
I'm not going to get the thing or I'm just going to get end up
getting hurt every time I reach out.
I'm just going to get hurt, right?
And and. It's not just like getting
physically hurt if you need something, it's like that
emotional rejection. It's huge.
It's huge and it makes you feel broken.
All the things we know that autistic feel broken and like
(14:36):
you don't belong and like there's no one else like you and
all of those things, right. And so I think we need to, to
like, if I could like take the word independence and remove it
from our dictionaries, I would remove it from our dictionaries,
right? Because we aren't, we human
beings are social creatures. We were like, I don't know,
(14:57):
bred, That's not the right term.We were bred, right, to work in
a society, to work as a group, to work with each other, right?
Even when you go back to huntersand gatherers, right?
Everybody did their strength is really what we were looking at.
People did their strengths in the way that they did.
And then, right, It was like a barter system and you shared
back, right? And so each group did what they
(15:19):
did and then everybody's fed, right?
So where did that learning go? Like where did that concept go?
Cuz we are genetically still that same species, right?
And we're not giving that to ourselves.
We're not saying we live in a community because we need other
people, right? I think you and I have a really
(15:42):
good reflective journal questionfor all of our listeners today
to kind of start unpacking this because I, I feel like this is
one of those things where we gotto do this in some community,
some interdependence. So here's the reflection
question for everybody. What's 1 experience that taught
me asking for help? Was it safe?
(16:04):
So think, think back to your experience in life.
What was the one experience thatyou can remember that taught you
that asking for help wasn't safe?
Here's the follow up. And what would I need to feel
safe again right now, today? What would you need to feel safe
(16:28):
again to start asking for help? Becca, you and I have kind of
covered some big stuff already, but I think we've got a few more
things to because we really wanted to unpack this because
there's so much. And I think one of the biggest
(16:49):
elements is reframing that internal dialogue because we are
so hard on ourselves. Like once we've agreed, like
once we've shrunk ourselves, we've said, OK, I don't have any
needs. Because if I have needs, then
it's just like everybody around me just says it's too much, I'm
an inconvenience, it's too hard,they don't understand it.
All the things, right? But what ultimately stops us
(17:13):
from asking now is what happens inside.
So what are some of the things that you know through your life
that you caught yourself thinking when it came to asking
for help? What?
Stopped you. Here's a couple of things that
I've noticed for myself. Some of it is habitual and it's
(17:38):
that rejection piece where I've asked for help and I've been
rejected or not received the help right.
But for me, a lot of times I hadthis mix between either I was
unable to communicate exactly what I needed.
Like I didn't really know. I was pre diagnosis, I didn't
have information. How could I even help myself,
(18:01):
right? Like half the step of asking for
accommodations is knowing what accommodations you need, right?
So. Sometimes we've minimized our
needs. We have no clue.
We have. No idea anymore, right?
So the first half of the journey, right, was learning
those things that I do actually have needs and those needs are
actually important and like whatare they so that I can begin to
(18:24):
ask for them. The other thing I noticed is
something that people talk aboutall the time and I did terribly
around this question, which is people pre apologize or they
apologize for themselves. They they apologize too much in
scenarios because you're essentially apologizing for
taking up space or apologizing for taking up people's air time,
right? So if I was like, now, I'm
(18:45):
sorry, Carol Jean, that I've joined you today for, for our
conversation. Am I talking too much?
Right? That's right.
That's that sense of right, which is absurd, right?
And I think we all have those little dialogues going on inside
of our heads about that. Oh, stop it.
Please, now I I don't even know if this is the right, if I can
(19:07):
ask for this. How do I even ask for this kind
of help right Or whatever it is.So I noticed I used to ask my
help for help by apologizing. First.
I'm sorry to bother you but I need this thing right?
Or I'm sorry to interrupt you orI'm sorry this was a good one
for me. I'm sorry to ask for this really
(19:27):
weird thing right because I was convinced that the thing that
right because there was always judgement with asking for help.
So if I set myself up like I know I'm probably asking for a
weird thing and I apologize for it.
At least I've let people know. I also know I'm weird.
I get that, but could you still help me?
Right. And so I think about that so
(19:48):
much, like why? Why there are there so much of
that? I had a lot of baggage around
it. And what I had to really learn
for myself and I guess for me, my trigger, please, was that
lesson between independence and interdependence and all of these
things. And once my logical brain was
like, oh, well, that does not make any sense.
The rest of me jumped on board. Right.
(20:09):
The rest of me was done apologizing.
The rest of me was like, no, youshould all be asking for help.
Like why are you delegating? Why aren't?
Right? And if you look at leaders who
are successful leaders, they askfor help all the time.
It's called delegation, but it'sstill asking for help.
It's still spreading out the stress, right?
And those are the things that I think about.
What about you? Oh.
(20:31):
My gosh, so after your beautifule-mail that went out for our are
autistic advocates for our self-care, it, it really
prompted me because I started thinking about this like a
little deeper. And so I put together an article
and there were 10 things, 10 main things that came up.
And the number one thing, the thing that usually stops me even
(20:53):
today and I have to like catch myself sometimes they're too
busy. I don't want to burden them.
Yeah. You know, my needs might not be
as important as maybe the need somebody else is having.
Yeah. And and The thing is, which is
like the crazy pants part, it's like everyone has needs.
There are 30 basic human needs. We talk about these to break
(21:15):
them down so you can start to reidentify your needs.
There's thirty of those suckers and everybody that the breathing
human has them. And we're not a burden.
We're just a human being. And this is part of our
experience. The second one that usually
would get me is like, I should be able to handle this, right?
(21:35):
Because I bought into that. You're such a good girl.
You're doing it all by yourself,that's all.
I want to hear is just that. Right.
Oh my God, it, it's the, it's that underlying belief that like
asking for help. And this was so big for me
because I really got some, some really messed up messaging
around help and independence andstrength growing up.
(21:58):
So asking for help for me meant I was admitting I wasn't strong,
that I was weak, that I was vulnerable and that everything
felt vulnerable in my life. So that made it so much bigger.
But when I started to really learn the like the truth, the
authenticity, the reframe, it's like asking for help is a form
(22:21):
of strength and self respect. And I was like, Oh my God, I've
been disrespecting myself for decades.
Yeah. You know.
It is evil awareness, right? Because you can't get that time
back, but when it comes, it comes.
Right. And like to your point about,
(22:44):
you know, not like apologizing before you ever asked and not
wanting to be too needy, right. Mine was like the rejection
sensitive part of what if they say no?
What if they say no? And when I, you know, when we're
like at crisis mode, by the timewe say it and you go to ask and
you're like, OK, so we're apologizing the whole time,
(23:07):
right? And it's like, and what's really
bad is that when somebody does say no, it's not about them
saying no to you. It's like they don't have the
capacity themselves. Maybe they might want to help
you, but they just maybe can't or don't have the resources to
help you. But that rejection, like in my
mind back then, it was like, oh,that just proves that I'm not
(23:28):
worth helping. Like you don't really care about
me. I'm not, I'm not lovable, I'm
not worthy. And it was like, wow.
Like a no isn't a reflection of my worth or value.
It's about the other person's capacity.
But until I had a reframe on that number one, it was like
(23:50):
already hard to ask. But the fear of the no when I
did was huge. And if you're a fear of no
person, I have to tell you this.Like I had one person say this
to me. And again, I don't know why this
works. Maybe I'm the only person that
this works for but my brain is so logical.
But if I hear some piece of advice that just makes so much
(24:14):
sense to me, I can no longer ignore it.
I have to onboard it because I don't even know.
I can't, I know it now that's it.
I can't unknown it, right? And it's this idea of that.
And it was so simple. If you don't ask, the answer is
already no, just that, just thatconcept.
And I was like, oh man, So I'm missing out on so many things in
(24:37):
fear of this. No.
But if the no comes, guess what?You can ask somebody else.
You can ask in a different way. You can ask over and right,
There's so much more to it than beyond that no, right?
Like the no isn't the end. It's just that one person.
It's just the end of that one, right?
It doesn't change your need or that they're important or that
(24:57):
they're still there. It's just that you might have
asked the wrong person, and we're not taught how to know who
the right person is to ask for help, gosh darn it.
My article talks about that because that's a big part of it.
So many of us have minimized andpeople pleased and like
integrator level masked, camouflaging ourself our whole
(25:20):
life. So we may have a lot of
relationships in our life, quoteUN quote relationships that
really are not the trusting people.
They're not the people we shouldbe asking for help, but they're
in our circle of folks that we would ask for help when we're
desperate. So sometimes we get that no from
(25:40):
a person that we don't trust. But you know, I love that you
brought up the fact that, you know, you just keep asking.
But what I, I started to approach no in a totally
different way because like I wasterrified of no, no meant I
wasn't good enough or somebody didn't think I was worthy.
But now I'm like, no, it's the most beautiful thing somebody
can say to me now because you'vejust self pruned for me.
(26:03):
You just removed yourself that you can't provide what I need.
Out of the bubble, Goodbye. That's it.
Right. You just said, Hey, I'm not the
person. I don't have what you need.
And and it might be like one of my good people that are in my
world that are my trusted folks,but they're like, I'm not your
person for this, but Carol Jane,this is the person who is.
(26:23):
And I'm like, Oh yes, Because that's the difference between
somebody who's your trusted person who just tells you no,
and the trusted person who says no.
And this is the person to talk to.
They're still going to help you solve a problem in that
interdependent way. Those are your people, but the
people just say no. By the way, right, like here,
(26:45):
it's as we're talking, it's all over the place.
How did we all buy into this lie?
How did we all just go? Yeah, sure.
I can do everything alone. I'm a strong, independent woman.
I can just March up there. I mean, it's the craziness.
It's a crazy idea even. It is.
It's a Southern Bless your heart.
(27:05):
Moment it is, which if you don'tknow it, please Google that.
If you don't know what that is, there are times that when I, as
a northerner, want to use that so desperately.
So desperately. And as a Southerner, I'm just
telling you, there's so many nuances to that.
Just so you know, it is not justyour condescending thing.
It's so. But it's like that this whole
(27:28):
idea of like not wanting to hearno is something we should
probably explore in a whole other episode because of that
idea, right? That how loaded, right?
We talked about the word help today.
Here's this little 4 letter wordtalk about a loaded word.
No, another one loaded, loaded with all kinds of trauma for us.
And when we start to unpack it in this way, right, and we start
(27:50):
to really see it for what it is,it doesn't get that power
anymore. The word help doesn't have that
power in my life as much anymore, right?
Absolutely not. You know Becca, you shared
something and I think this mightbe the perfect place to to layer
it in. You shared had something happen
2 days ago when you asked for help.
(28:12):
I did. Did you?
Share with us what happened. I did.
I had a really great lesson and that's what I really want to
share with you guys is that it was a soup.
It was like a growing moment forme, but it was such, it's such a
good lesson that I want to sharewith everyone.
So I am not, I am as autistic asthe next guy, right?
Didn't know about my diagnosis till I was 36.
Blind, running their life that whole time, guessing it
(28:34):
everything, right? So no surprise my employment
history is a mess, right? And I was always hopping places
because I was always confused ormisunderstood the assignment or
was misunderstood or something, right?
And I didn't again, have words where I didn't have my
understanding about it. And recently at work, I was
(28:55):
placed in a situation or found myself in a situation which felt
really familiar and really triggery to me.
I was given an assignment, but Iwasn't given clear expectations
of what was kind of right, what,what people will need.
I wasn't really given a deadline.
I wasn't given instructions. I was given like offhanded
instructions, right? And what that means for me as an
(29:19):
autistic person is I have two options.
I can take my best guess, right and try to like, I don't know,
suck in the neurotypical parts and try to translate it into my
autistic brain and understand, right, what it is that I have to
do. And then send my best guess,
which we do often, right? Or I'm in this position where I
(29:42):
can ask for help or clarification, right?
And often at this crux of things, I find people at work,
right? They don't, you don't want to
ask that clarifying question andfor right reasons, right?
We've certainly all gotten rejected for asking clarifying
questions or looking for context, right?
And in a work setting, those clarifying questions tend to get
(30:03):
perceived as questioning authority, right?
And this was a big topic at work.
Like this was an important, likemoney is involved.
So it was a big topic, right? And so I opted in that moment
not to ask for help and take that risk and decided to go with
the guest route, went with the guest route, received all of the
(30:25):
instructions after the guest route, all of the instructions I
should have had from the get go,right?
So I'm in this moment, right? And what I realized is what I
need in this moment is help. This did not go down in a way
that works for me. I don't want to replicate this
(30:47):
again. I don't want to do it this way
again. I need something to be fixed in
the way that it went down, right?
And what I needed to do, my initial response was that the
anger core, the concrete core, that's like, fine, I will do it
alone. I don't need your stinking
instructions. I don't have to care about your
(31:08):
expectations. You don't want to give it to me.
I'm going to do right the autistic version of what you've
asked for. Right.
Oh, you're killing me. It's unrelatable, right?
And this is a like really guys pattern for me, maybe a familiar
pattern for you, right? But I just become a war machine
right when that stuff gets triggered.
(31:30):
And that was my initial response.
But this is something that I have only learned to do
recently, which is that I said to myself, pause for a second,
Becca, because what's really happening here is I'm having
miscommunication. The instructions weren't given
to me in my way of communicating, right?
(31:53):
I would have sent an e-mail withbullet list of like, this is
what you need to accomplish. This is what I'm hoping to see.
This is right. That's how I give instructions.
That's not how everybody else gives instructions.
So what I need to do is to ask for instructions in my way.
That's the help that I really need.
I don't need help with my task. I don't need help understanding
(32:15):
my role. I don't need help with executive
function and breaking down the task into steps when I need it
is clear and direct communication.
And I need it in writing becausethat keeps everyone accountable,
right? So the next day I woke up and I
wrote myself a lovely professional e-mail and I
requested accommodations becauseto me accommodations are just
(32:39):
help, their help, their help to either success.
Enablers. And so while for years I would
have just war machined it out atthis job, I would have just
said, fine, you people don't know how to give instructions.
I don't understand right? And just I will do my best to
work around you is what I would have done right?
(33:01):
See, I, I don't even, I didn't even think that there was an
option that I could ask, right? I just like powered through
figuring it all out white knuckling.
Right. Don't see my weaknesses.
Don't know I need help. Don't know I'm vulnerable.
Don't know I have, you know, strengths and weaknesses, right?
Don't know any of that about me.Just give me my paycheck, right?
(33:21):
I'm doing my job. But that's a trap for us, right?
And the whole purpose of accommodations before we needed
a legal issue, right, was that we needed help with some of the
basic things so we can perform our jobs at the level we need to
perform our jobs at. And so that's what I asked for
accommodations. I asked, can I please have
(33:44):
before a meeting, an agenda and writing so I can prepare?
Can I please have a summary e-mail after my meetings with my
follow up actions and the expectations of those actions in
it, right? Because that not only keeps me
right on target and gets me the information that I need, but if
(34:04):
they send me instructions that are not clear to me, I get to
just be like, sorry, could you clarify this step?
Could you give me more information on this?
Right? And it's not in the sense of
help. It's in the sense of I don't
understand your instructions, right?
It takes away that it's my faultthing and it's just AI don't
understand here. And that was a really painful
(34:25):
lesson for me to learn. You guys, I've been exhausted.
We've already with what's going on in our community, right?
I'm already kind of low on spoons, but I needed that pause
to really reframe the situation through an interdependent lens,
right? Because the person who I'm
working with also wants to get this crap done, right?
(34:47):
It's not me versus them. We both need to work together
because we both need to accomplish this task, right?
And so it was, oh, reframe, holdon.
Yes, there's I'm part of this issue, but I'm not the only part
of this issue. It's two people at work, right?
And that has felt amazing. I just want to share that with
(35:08):
you guys because it's just a powerful lesson wrapped up in
right. But it's all part of this miss
message I received about help from a very young age.
I love how you reclaimed your personal power in this and you
really started to pull in the agency that you have as the
creator in your own life becauseI think so often in that place
(35:34):
like you just so beautifully shared with us.
And thank you for sharing that, that, that, that experience, I
think is so relatable. But I, I want to ask a question
for everybody just to think about for a minute.
What if asking for help is less about trust in others and more
about rebuilding trust in ourselves?
(35:54):
And I think you just shared withus how you have how you've
started to do that, you know, because in, in my article I was
writing about, it's about trusting yourself to know who
those people are trusted people.It's an invitation to really tap
back into what I think autistic people have like as a an
(36:16):
incredible gift as part of our neurodistinct brains and bodies,
we have finely attuned discernment.
And I think as we start to really allow space for that,
like you paused and you're like,wait a minute before we like
fall back into this old pattern of the war machine, What's
(36:37):
really going on? Let me discern what's happening
with me and then how we can start to create.
I say, hey, let's start create. Like, let's do an audit.
Everybody does an audit of some kind.
Let's do an audit of our currentsupport system.
Yeah, let's identify who feels truly safe and aligned for us
(36:58):
right now. Like, and that's, I mean right
now, especially right now is thetime people are showing their
true colors out there like nobody's business.
And this is the deal. Like we get to choose who we
surround ourselves with. And the people you choose to
surround yourselves with are whohelp you build your reality.
(37:18):
That's your reality, right? That's where it comes from.
And so if there are people that you go to for help that don't
give you the kind of response that you want, that doesn't make
them wrong or bad. It just makes them wrong or bad
for you, right? Like it doesn't work in your
bubble. And so you have to be like, OK,
well, with that, I taken my energy away from that
relationship a little bit. And I'm going to find elsewhere
(37:41):
to put it because we only have so much, right?
We can only give away so much ofourselves to certain things.
Well, and sometimes when you don't have a whole lot left and
you, you just have the a couple of little crumbs there, it's
it's real hard to give them away.
You get real protective. So Beck and I would like to
encourage you just to kind of pause this week or maybe after
(38:03):
the show to create a safe to asklist of two to three people or
resources that you can reach outto without shame to start
flexing that muscle, to start really tapping into that
discernment area to figure out who are your trusted people.
(38:24):
So create two to three people ona list of your safe to ask.
Yeah. And I'm going to say I love that
you picked two to three people because the idea that you need
to have more than that is obscene.
You really don't. One person's plenty.
Right, yes, thank you. Right.
We all need you and you need people under at different levels
(38:46):
of connection, right? I need one really close person
and then everybody else is kind of like for me.
And you have to figure out what that means to you, you know,
where do you seek it? But I love this one piece of
advice and I hope that I do it justice.
I can't quite remember how it goes, but I love let me think if
I can remember how, who said it and how it was said.
(39:08):
Probably not. It's probably gone.
It's gone. It'll come back another time.
Sorry. I was like, OK, it'll circle
back, it'll show up when we knewagain, we'll talk.
About that in another episode when we do perimenopause or
something, and I can tell you how my totally disappear now,
which is fantastic. Oh, that's so fun.
(39:28):
So I have my second hormone harmony class coming up on May
29th. And in this class I'm talking
all around the intersections of our Co occurring health
conditions as autistic women andour hormonal fluctuations in all
seasons of life because I'm a perimenopause and I'm a trifecta
patient. So we're going to be talking
about Pecos PMDD, we're going totalk about Ehler Stanlow's, all
(39:52):
the hypermobility syndromes. We're going to be talking about
how our hormone shifts, whether you're actively menstruating,
whether you're pregnant or postpartum, whether you're
perimenopausal like Becca and I,or if you're postmenopausal, All
of these things really make a huge difference.
Physical body in our mental likeour executive function really
(40:13):
does take a hit during this it, you know, like, Oh my God, where
did the thought go? There it went.
I don't know where it is, it'll come back, the brain fog and all
of the things, but there's. A lot of different elements in
our hormonal shifts when you have Co occurring health
conditions that just are not talked about.
And so I'm going to be sharing everything that I've learned in
this beautiful class and I'm taking with everybody on the
(40:34):
29th so. There is not enough information
about that out there. If you can get on your own
journey about that stuff right now.
There are things I know now I wish I had known before, and
many things they still don't know.
And that's not our fault, by theway.
Medical community has not cared very much about us in this way.
And so they have a lot of work to do too.
(40:55):
But it's definitely impactful. And it, it's a crazy thing to me
that, yeah, I'm going to be 50 next year and I'm still learning
things about my female body, like about the female
productivity, you know what I mean?
Things that I've beaten myself up for for my like very long
time, right? I mean, who sold us the thing
that like we're all supposed to say the same pant size?
Did you know that your uterus goes from the size of a lemon to
(41:18):
the size of a mango during your menstruation?
Of course I can't fit in my pants.
My organs grew like come on, right?
It's not my fault for what I ate, just cause my organs.
Grew. That's craziness and we're not
shared that. So go get on this with Carol
Jane. She knows what she's talking
about. Go get some information.
I mean, I simply did this because I just turned 51 and
(41:39):
this was such a necessity for mywell-being.
And I'm like, my gosh, this is incredible.
Why didn't somebody tell like you, why didn't somebody tell me
this before? This would have like changed
everything. And just the shifts that I've
made in the last six or eight months since I've started
learning and really diving into this, and it's just incredible.
And so I'm like, OK, y'all, I'm only like maybe a half a step or
(42:01):
a skip ahead of y'all. But I want to teach you
everything I'm learning because.This is, oh, you got to do it.
We take care of each other. Right.
Yup. And in that guise of taking care
of each other, you have this beautiful, this beautiful way of
yes, interdependence of of setting up like a gentle loving
self-care challenges. And it's like, OK, so if the
(42:23):
word challenge, if you're some of my pervasive demand for
autonomy people, this is just aninvitation.
This is an invitation because I'm one of those people.
Don't challenge me. I'm not doing anything you tell
we're. Inviting you, But I will
challenge you. Carol Jean invites you.
I challenge you. I love it.
(42:43):
I love it because one of the things that you asked in the
e-mail was ask for one small thing this week.
A 10 minute check in, a voice note, a ride or listening ear.
And you know, my friend Bridget wrote something really beautiful
the other day and she said I really just want sometimes
(43:05):
somebody in real life just to gofor a walk with me and we don't
have to talk. That's such a reasonable
request. I mean, I was like, oh, that's
so beautiful. There's and you know, what was
it gave me the grace and the awareness that last night when I
kind of hit my Max point, I had a huge like emotional day
(43:29):
yesterday, holding space for some big emotions with other
people. And you know, as as a helping
professional, we are impacted holding space by with that.
And so we do have to self-care. And so I was laying in bed, my
husband was there and he wanted to talk.
And he was asking me questions. And I remembered what Bridget
(43:51):
said. Sometimes I just want to be able
to say I want to walk alone. And I looked at him and I say I
love you so much and what I really need right now is to not
talk, but I would love to talk to you later.
And he was like, oh, OK, no problem.
Right, but that's reality. Why is that?
I'm not even that as a slight ask for help, right?
(44:13):
Like behind that was, I'm feeling overwhelmed from my day
and I need help relaxing right now, right?
So these are the moments of growth when we remember to do
that instead of forcing ourselves to have the
conversation, right? That's when we win.
That's when we start to win. And you know, I'm really, I'm
(44:35):
like thinking about yesterday because yesterday was a really
kind of a big day for me. It was a really tough day
because I woke up like wanting to scream in my pillow because
I'm in my luteal phase. So I'm like, right, that's my
alignment. So I'm getting ready to start my
period. It's so like all the hormones
were showing up yesterday. So I woke up like wanting to
scream in my pillow just out of frustration.
(44:56):
And then of course cry right after that because that's how
those emotions cycle, right? But yesterday evening, like
before I even got in bed and told my husband I just needed
some quiet, I realized I'm like,oh, I think I need to Co
regulate. And in that moment, I'm like
(45:16):
that my husband is not who I want to Co regulate with right
now. He's busy doing something and I
need something different. I need sort of just like the, my
girlfriend Co regulating. So I, it was like after 9 and I
know that my girlfriend's in andshe's in bed and they're
watching their show, right? And I texted her and I'm like,
hey, are you guys already in bedwatching your show?
And she said, yeah, what's up? And I was like, I just need to
(45:39):
Co regulate. And she's like, OK, I was like,
just tell me about your day. And so she started to tell me
about her day. We were just texting and I was
like, OK, 5-10 minutes of that. And I was like, that's just what
I need. I just needed that connection
with another person just to ground in for a SEC.
And so that is this beautiful challenge of slash invitation
(46:01):
for you guys this week. Just ask for one small thing,
whatever that is that you are identifying.
And maybe if you're not sure what that is, go regulate with
somebody to talk it out or to text it out, right?
And Becca and I had a really great thing here.
We wanted to invite all of you, including our helping
(46:24):
professionals who might be listening today.
We would love for you to messageus, tag the show, tag Becca and
I with this week I asked for andshare what's going on.
Yeah, because sometimes, right, that little bit of
accountability creates this momentum, right?
And that's this first ask this week, right, To pull away the
(46:47):
mask. Remind yourself that
independence is a lie, right? And that you are not going to
live an independent life anymore.
You are an interdependent creature, right?
And when you do that, right, it can be so small.
Sometimes for me, it's honey. Can you get me a drink?
Whereas I would normally push mybody that may be hurting and
(47:09):
tired, right? Instead of asking my husband to
do something for me, someone to go get the mail, could you pick
me something up at the grocery store?
Any little things, right? Can you take time out of your
day to give me some of your energy and spoons?
And they don't have to be a lot.And I just want to challenge you
to do that because we are as creatures so quick to give up
our own energy to help someone else.
(47:30):
It is so important to make sure that you get it back.
So if you do this and you do it once and it's not so hard, maybe
you'll do it twice or three times, right?
And it'll become a new brain habit as we try to switch off
the idea that help is this vulnerable, weak thing that
we're looking for, right? Asking for help is the power
(47:51):
move. Yes, it is.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday to talk about things that
really matter. We'll see you next month in this
amazing series as we continue totalk about the things that
really matter in community, the things that impact us every day
(48:12):
and no one else is talking about.
Becca and I are doing it. We are talking all about it and
we want to invite you to share topics, share things and ideas.
You're like, y'all, this really matters and we need to talk
about this. Send us a message, let us know.
There's an open comment section over on Spotify.
You can add it on YouTube. You can DM us on Instagram or
(48:34):
over on LinkedIn. We would love to know the things
that really matter to you too. Take care and we'll see you for
the next one. Thanks for being here.
It's been quite all right. Energy mastery, let's turn the
tide. Top shelf guests dropping wisdom
bombs. Join us next week Where the
(48:56):
energy's strong. Beyond crying burnout, we're
breaking free. Podcast Pumping follows energy
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You'll feel alive. Energy mastery.
Come along for the ride behind Beyond the We're on the rise.
(49:21):
Join us as we form our top shelfguests.
Happy to energy, we're out of us.
Welcome back to our special social Saturday series with my
Co host Becca Laurie Hector. Things that really matter.
We are going to be unpacking thetruths that deeply impact our
everyday lives as autistic women.
And today we have a very important topic, especially with
so much conflict and things thatare really draining us right
(00:25):
now. We're talking a lot about asking
for help because that's one of the things so many of us don't
do. Who desires?
Will light the way, turn every shadow to vibrant days.
(00:52):
Artistic voices fearless and free.
No chase can hold what's meant to be.
We've got stories the world musthear, Breaking the silence loud
and clear. Becca, Carol Jean We're here to
say the things that I don't riseacross together and hear in
life. We're standing strong, unshamed
and crying. Every
(01:19):
woman. Here's.
My SO don't I ask you real quickbefore we hop into this
conversation, can I just take a nice breath, sort of relax into
(01:42):
yourself, notice how your body responds when you hear these
words. Can you help me?
What did you notice? I'm about you?
But like, I immediately get a little bit like on alert even
now. What about you, Becca?
(02:04):
Immediately, right I immediately.
I don't know. My reaction is, what can I do to
help this person, right? Which is not the way that I
think about help for me, but theway that I think about help for
other people, right? So when I hear somebody ask for
help, I don't have judgement about it.
I just think, oh, sure, what canI do?
(02:24):
How can I help you, right? I don't think oh, you need help
with something That's that's right.
Right. So let's flip the script on
that, though, as our friend Scott Brassard says.
So if we think about when other people say can you help me,
we're like, Oh yeah, sure. What do you need?
Like no judgement, no question, just immediately, how can I help
you? But if it's us saying can you
(02:46):
help me? Right.
What happens, right? Immediately, it's a sense of
feeling weak, right? We have somehow been brainwashed
to believe that needing other people to accomplish a task is
shameful, right? It's a sign of weakness or a
sign of sign of vulnerability, right?
(03:09):
I venture to gas to come somewhere from capitalism, but
maybe in that state right now where I think everything it
comes from there. But I really, I don't know how
we're taught this and I I've thought about it a lot and I I
think often about how when we'reteaching kids how to do things,
we don't just like we teach things them to do things, they
(03:31):
do it and we don't just go, all right, you did it.
We go, you did it all by yourself.
But is that it's awesome. Nobody.
Does it themselves. Right.
Why do? They.
Teach children that the right way to do it is to do it alone
immediately, right? And I feel like that's where it
all kind of begins for me. And I think for those of us who
(03:55):
are autistic women, there's thispressure to be perfect, right?
And asking. For help because perfect is safe
that. Picture, right.
So yeah, I mean, it's a trap it really.
Is, I mean, it's not just like asocial norm trap, but then it
becomes the trap that we've agreed to that we keep ourselves
(04:17):
in. Right.
And that's where I think that I talk a lot about, and I've seen
you talk about it. And when our friends talk about
it, which is why are we sold this myth of independence?
Why are we told, right, that we should be able to do everything
by ourselves? I don't understand this
(04:37):
misnomer, right? But it has not been my reality
as a person. That is not how I have
experienced the world at all. And The thing is, when we really
think about it, none of us is solely and wholly independent,
ever. If you have power in your house,
you have power because probably 100 plus people have made it
(05:01):
possible for you to flip a lightswitch.
If you go to the grocery store and buy your favorite snack,
there have been multiple people who have had a hand in making
sure that that product was available for you to buy and
take home. You might have earned the money,
but you didn't do it by yourself.
There were people that worked with you in some way.
You know, you didn't drive your car or ride your bike or take
(05:25):
transport to get to the grocery store.
You know everything. The store wasn't even possibly
open without other people. So the fact that, you know, it's
like, oh, I worked and earned this money and I went to the
store and I bought it and I did this all by myself.
It's big fat lie. It's a huge lie, right?
And the older we get and the more adulting we have to do, the
(05:46):
bigger that lie becomes, right? Because I don't know about you,
but I know plenty of people thatuse an accountant at tax time.
I know plenty of people that go to a mechanic to get their oil
changed. I'm right.
And all of those are acts of interdependence, right?
We're all relying on each other for those relationships, right?
(06:09):
And what we're not telling people is that life is about
collaboration, that there is enough for everyone.
That is the other lie, right? There is plenty for everyone,
right? And that collaboration is the
way to get there, right? And it's not the way to get
there. It's not.
(06:31):
And let's talk about why we end up in like the Shamestorm,
feeling like we are weak if we ask for help.
Because as autistic folks, you tell us the rule, we're going to
follow it. And if somewhere along the way
somebody said you did that all by yourself, good for you.
Then we're like, oh, that means I got to do everything by
(06:52):
myself. That's the goal.
Message received. Message received OK, I put that
into my operating system. Right.
And so when? We believe that everybody else,
right, everybody else is killingthemselves to do it, so we got
to do it too. Right.
And yet immediately our autisticbrain sees that that how
illogical it is, right? What a lie it is in truth, when
(07:14):
we're out there, right? It's a hypocrisy, right?
All the time. And so you know you're sick.
Go to the doctor. Interdependence.
Wait, that's interdependence, right?
And the doctor needs you to go 'cause that's their job, right?
So it's two way interdependence.So it really doesn't exist.
This concept of independence does not exist.
And the term that we are using as autistics and as advocates
(07:37):
that we are seeing is interdependence.
And that is a far more accurate descriptor of what we need as
human beings to get there. That doesn't mean you need a lot
of human interaction, or that you need other people for
everything, but it does mean that you need other people for
some things. And that immediately changes
your perspective on asking for help, right?
(08:01):
So if we've talked about this big fat lie, big big giant fat
lie that we have put like the Q beam light on right, you, you
are not not seeing this now you are getting this on some level.
Let's talk about how that lie ofindependence has caused us to
(08:27):
suffer in silence and think that's what we're supposed to
do. This goes along with that little
lovely package of ignoring our needs, right?
The lovely autistic habit of ignoring our needs to the point
of our own detriment, right, In order to fit in when we call
that masking, right, But all of it right is part of this myth
(08:49):
that we shouldn't let people know that we are not perfect,
right? And that we cannot do it alone,
right? And so I don't, I really don't.
I, there's a part of me that that is still angry about this
lie that has been told to me my whole life.
And I think a lot about all the different ways that I might have
gone about even employment if I was thinking about it from an
(09:11):
interdependent perspective rather than as an individual
trying to succeed, right? And I think the silence comes
from the shame. It's that shame silence spiral.
This terrible thing is happeningfor me.
I'm just not going to talk aboutit.
And imagine, though, for a moment, if we hadn't agreed to
(09:33):
the to the silence spiral, right?
If we didn't agree to the silence and little Carol and
little Becca, we were hanging out back when we were like 6-7,
eight years old, right? And we didn't learn to stay
quiet about it. We learned to talk about our
needs, and we learned to ask forthe things that we needed.
And then we learned to turn to each other and say, hey, I need
(09:54):
to do this thing. Can you help me?
Or do you want to do this thing with me, right?
Maybe you need it too, right? We didn't learn that skill set.
We learned there's shame in thatskill set.
And I don't understand where that comes from.
A lot of it I think for me was and and I'm an anagram 5.
So I have this very independent streak naturally.
(10:18):
And so it, I think it was like gas on that fire that fueled
that stoic strength was suffering in silence.
Like I was strong if I was suffering silently.
Yes, but that's part of it, right?
There are people who are motivated by their anger, who
are motivated by great. We find the strength in those
(10:41):
pieces, but that's really resilience, isn't it?
It's about repackaging what you're given, right?
Because I don't think it was necessarily a choice to be
silent. I think it became like, oh, when
I ask for help, and this is whatI would love to know from people
who are listening, right? Was there a moment in your life
where you asked for help and theresponse to your request for
(11:02):
help was either to shame you or to make fun of you or to not
understand why you needed that help?
And if those are your initial experiences, that's where it
begins, right? Is what was it that that first
thing that I asked for help for?And they think so many of us
that are autistic, we need help with things that are unusual and
(11:24):
out of the norm. And so it's it's very early on.
I feel we get this experience. Oh, 1000% And this is one of the
things that I talk about in the unveiling method in particular,
because we start to receive thismessaging very early on when we
are openly expressing, hey, thishurts me, this bothers me, or I
(11:45):
need this and the world respondsto us because they may not be
experiencing it the same way. They're like, that is a little
dramatic, like you can't possibly be hurt by that.
You can't possibly need that. And it doesn't bother me in the
least bit. Just suck it up, buttercup.
Let's keep going. And that early messaging is
(12:06):
where we start to on board. Number one, I asked for help.
People didn't believe that I needed it in the way that I said
I needed it because maybe they didn't need it the same way.
And so then we're not getting number one, our, our needs
aren't getting acknowledged as they are authentically.
(12:26):
And then we're like, oh, well, let me tone it down.
Maybe I can just ask for this little thing.
And so then we start minimizing the need that we have.
And then when that isn't fulfilled, because somebody's
like, why don't you know, I don't need that?
What do you need that for? Just figure it out on your own.
On your own. Figure out how to support
yourself on your own. And then we're in this place of
(12:46):
like, Oh, well, it was too big. People didn't acknowledge it.
Like apparently my experience iswrong.
Then it's OK, I'm going to make it smaller.
And then you don't get what you need.
Or worse yet, somebody gives youa half assed version of what you
need and it ends up hurting you because they're not, they don't
(13:07):
really care because they don't understand.
They just throw something your way and say, here you go, here's
your help, where they say sure, I'll help you.
And then you never hear from them again.
And by the time we've asked for it, because we've minimized so
much, we're crisis like we. Need it right?
We're in crisis. We let ourselves get there.
And what scares me about all this is this boxing away of
(13:29):
things that we do right, that wemake it smaller, we adjust
ourselves. And this is a habit.
It's like an autistic habit. And part of our masking is to
make ourselves small enough, right to either get by without
anyone noticing us right And right, that kind of idea.
And so I really, I wonder if ourinitial experiences and asking
(13:55):
for help is the beginning of this setup, because if that's
your beginning and you learn to suck it all in, you're being
told your needs, right? And so eventually it does, it
becomes that core strength. It becomes like a core of
concrete that's like, oh, I needa thing.
I know what's going to happen. Every time I ask for something I
need, people are going to make fun of me.
(14:15):
I'm not going to get the thing or I'm just going to get end up
getting hurt every time I reach out.
I'm just going to get hurt, right?
And and. It's not just like getting
physically hurt if you need something, it's like that
emotional rejection. It's huge.
It's huge and it makes you feel broken.
All the things we know that autistic feel broken and like
(14:36):
you don't belong and like there's no one else like you and
all of those things, right. And so I think we need to, to
like, if I could like take the word independence and remove it
from our dictionaries, I would remove it from our dictionaries,
right? Because we aren't, we human
beings are social creatures. We were like, I don't know,
(14:57):
bred, That's not the right term.We were bred, right, to work in
a society, to work as a group, to work with each other, right?
Even when you go back to huntersand gatherers, right?
Everybody did their strength is really what we were looking at.
People did their strengths in the way that they did.
And then, right, It was like a barter system and you shared
back, right? And so each group did what they
(15:19):
did and then everybody's fed, right?
So where did that learning go? Like where did that concept go?
Cuz we are genetically still that same species, right?
And we're not giving that to ourselves.
We're not saying we live in a community because we need other
people, right? I think you and I have a really
(15:42):
good reflective journal questionfor all of our listeners today
to kind of start unpacking this because I, I feel like this is
one of those things where we gotto do this in some community,
some interdependence. So here's the reflection
question for everybody. What's 1 experience that taught
me asking for help? Was it safe?
(16:04):
So think, think back to your experience in life.
What was the one experience thatyou can remember that taught you
that asking for help wasn't safe?
Here's the follow up. And what would I need to feel
safe again right now, today? What would you need to feel safe
(16:28):
again to start asking for help? Becca, you and I have kind of
covered some big stuff already, but I think we've got a few more
things to because we really wanted to unpack this because
there's so much. And I think one of the biggest
(16:49):
elements is reframing that internal dialogue because we are
so hard on ourselves. Like once we've agreed, like
once we've shrunk ourselves, we've said, OK, I don't have any
needs. Because if I have needs, then
it's just like everybody around me just says it's too much, I'm
an inconvenience, it's too hard,they don't understand it.
All the things, right? But what ultimately stops us
(17:13):
from asking now is what happens inside.
So what are some of the things that you know through your life
that you caught yourself thinking when it came to asking
for help? What?
Stopped you. Here's a couple of things that
I've noticed for myself. Some of it is habitual and it's
(17:38):
that rejection piece where I've asked for help and I've been
rejected or not received the help right.
But for me, a lot of times I hadthis mix between either I was
unable to communicate exactly what I needed.
Like I didn't really know. I was pre diagnosis, I didn't
have information. How could I even help myself,
(18:01):
right? Like half the step of asking for
accommodations is knowing what accommodations you need, right?
So. Sometimes we've minimized our
needs. We have no clue.
We have. No idea anymore, right?
So the first half of the journey, right, was learning
those things that I do actually have needs and those needs are
actually important and like whatare they so that I can begin to
(18:24):
ask for them. The other thing I noticed is
something that people talk aboutall the time and I did terribly
around this question, which is people pre apologize or they
apologize for themselves. They they apologize too much in
scenarios because you're essentially apologizing for
taking up space or apologizing for taking up people's air time,
right? So if I was like, now, I'm
(18:45):
sorry, Carol Jean, that I've joined you today for, for our
conversation. Am I talking too much?
Right? That's right.
That's that sense of right, which is absurd, right?
And I think we all have those little dialogues going on inside
of our heads about that. Oh, stop it.
Please, now I I don't even know if this is the right, if I can
(19:07):
ask for this. How do I even ask for this kind
of help right Or whatever it is.So I noticed I used to ask my
help for help by apologizing. First.
I'm sorry to bother you but I need this thing right?
Or I'm sorry to interrupt you orI'm sorry this was a good one
for me. I'm sorry to ask for this really
(19:27):
weird thing right because I was convinced that the thing that
right because there was always judgement with asking for help.
So if I set myself up like I know I'm probably asking for a
weird thing and I apologize for it.
At least I've let people know. I also know I'm weird.
I get that, but could you still help me?
Right. And so I think about that so
(19:48):
much, like why? Why there are there so much of
that? I had a lot of baggage around
it. And what I had to really learn
for myself and I guess for me, my trigger, please, was that
lesson between independence and interdependence and all of these
things. And once my logical brain was
like, oh, well, that does not make any sense.
The rest of me jumped on board. Right.
(20:09):
The rest of me was done apologizing.
The rest of me was like, no, youshould all be asking for help.
Like why are you delegating? Why aren't?
Right? And if you look at leaders who
are successful leaders, they askfor help all the time.
It's called delegation, but it'sstill asking for help.
It's still spreading out the stress, right?
And those are the things that I think about.
What about you? Oh.
(20:31):
My gosh, so after your beautifule-mail that went out for our are
autistic advocates for our self-care, it, it really
prompted me because I started thinking about this like a
little deeper. And so I put together an article
and there were 10 things, 10 main things that came up.
And the number one thing, the thing that usually stops me even
(20:53):
today and I have to like catch myself sometimes they're too
busy. I don't want to burden them.
Yeah. You know, my needs might not be
as important as maybe the need somebody else is having.
Yeah. And and The thing is, which is
like the crazy pants part, it's like everyone has needs.
There are 30 basic human needs. We talk about these to break
(21:15):
them down so you can start to reidentify your needs.
There's thirty of those suckers and everybody that the breathing
human has them. And we're not a burden.
We're just a human being. And this is part of our
experience. The second one that usually
would get me is like, I should be able to handle this, right?
(21:35):
Because I bought into that. You're such a good girl.
You're doing it all by yourself,that's all.
I want to hear is just that. Right.
Oh my God, it, it's the, it's that underlying belief that like
asking for help. And this was so big for me
because I really got some, some really messed up messaging
around help and independence andstrength growing up.
(21:58):
So asking for help for me meant I was admitting I wasn't strong,
that I was weak, that I was vulnerable and that everything
felt vulnerable in my life. So that made it so much bigger.
But when I started to really learn the like the truth, the
authenticity, the reframe, it's like asking for help is a form
(22:21):
of strength and self respect. And I was like, Oh my God, I've
been disrespecting myself for decades.
Yeah. You know.
It is evil awareness, right? Because you can't get that time
back, but when it comes, it comes.
Right. And like to your point about,
(22:44):
you know, not like apologizing before you ever asked and not
wanting to be too needy, right. Mine was like the rejection
sensitive part of what if they say no?
What if they say no? And when I, you know, when we're
like at crisis mode, by the timewe say it and you go to ask and
you're like, OK, so we're apologizing the whole time,
(23:07):
right? And it's like, and what's really
bad is that when somebody does say no, it's not about them
saying no to you. It's like they don't have the
capacity themselves. Maybe they might want to help
you, but they just maybe can't or don't have the resources to
help you. But that rejection, like in my
mind back then, it was like, oh,that just proves that I'm not
(23:28):
worth helping. Like you don't really care about
me. I'm not, I'm not lovable, I'm
not worthy. And it was like, wow.
Like a no isn't a reflection of my worth or value.
It's about the other person's capacity.
But until I had a reframe on that number one, it was like
(23:50):
already hard to ask. But the fear of the no when I
did was huge. And if you're a fear of no
person, I have to tell you this.Like I had one person say this
to me. And again, I don't know why this
works. Maybe I'm the only person that
this works for but my brain is so logical.
But if I hear some piece of advice that just makes so much
(24:14):
sense to me, I can no longer ignore it.
I have to onboard it because I don't even know.
I can't, I know it now that's it.
I can't unknown it, right? And it's this idea of that.
And it was so simple. If you don't ask, the answer is
already no, just that, just thatconcept.
And I was like, oh man, So I'm missing out on so many things in
(24:37):
fear of this. No.
But if the no comes, guess what?You can ask somebody else.
You can ask in a different way. You can ask over and right,
There's so much more to it than beyond that no, right?
Like the no isn't the end. It's just that one person.
It's just the end of that one, right?
It doesn't change your need or that they're important or that
(24:57):
they're still there. It's just that you might have
asked the wrong person, and we're not taught how to know who
the right person is to ask for help, gosh darn it.
My article talks about that because that's a big part of it.
So many of us have minimized andpeople pleased and like
integrator level masked, camouflaging ourself our whole
(25:20):
life. So we may have a lot of
relationships in our life, quoteUN quote relationships that
really are not the trusting people.
They're not the people we shouldbe asking for help, but they're
in our circle of folks that we would ask for help when we're
desperate. So sometimes we get that no from
(25:40):
a person that we don't trust. But you know, I love that you
brought up the fact that, you know, you just keep asking.
But what I, I started to approach no in a totally
different way because like I wasterrified of no, no meant I
wasn't good enough or somebody didn't think I was worthy.
But now I'm like, no, it's the most beautiful thing somebody
can say to me now because you'vejust self pruned for me.
(26:03):
You just removed yourself that you can't provide what I need.
Out of the bubble, Goodbye. That's it.
Right. You just said, Hey, I'm not the
person. I don't have what you need.
And and it might be like one of my good people that are in my
world that are my trusted folks,but they're like, I'm not your
person for this, but Carol Jane,this is the person who is.
(26:23):
And I'm like, Oh yes, Because that's the difference between
somebody who's your trusted person who just tells you no,
and the trusted person who says no.
And this is the person to talk to.
They're still going to help you solve a problem in that
interdependent way. Those are your people, but the
people just say no. By the way, right, like here,
(26:45):
it's as we're talking, it's all over the place.
How did we all buy into this lie?
How did we all just go? Yeah, sure.
I can do everything alone. I'm a strong, independent woman.
I can just March up there. I mean, it's the craziness.
It's a crazy idea even. It is.
It's a Southern Bless your heart.
(27:05):
Moment it is, which if you don'tknow it, please Google that.
If you don't know what that is, there are times that when I, as
a northerner, want to use that so desperately.
So desperately. And as a Southerner, I'm just
telling you, there's so many nuances to that.
Just so you know, it is not justyour condescending thing.
It's so. But it's like that this whole
(27:28):
idea of like not wanting to hearno is something we should
probably explore in a whole other episode because of that
idea, right? That how loaded, right?
We talked about the word help today.
Here's this little 4 letter wordtalk about a loaded word.
No, another one loaded, loaded with all kinds of trauma for us.
And when we start to unpack it in this way, right, and we start
(27:50):
to really see it for what it is,it doesn't get that power
anymore. The word help doesn't have that
power in my life as much anymore, right?
Absolutely not. You know Becca, you shared
something and I think this mightbe the perfect place to to layer
it in. You shared had something happen
2 days ago when you asked for help.
(28:12):
I did. Did you?
Share with us what happened. I did.
I had a really great lesson and that's what I really want to
share with you guys is that it was a soup.
It was like a growing moment forme, but it was such, it's such a
good lesson that I want to sharewith everyone.
So I am not, I am as autistic asthe next guy, right?
Didn't know about my diagnosis till I was 36.
Blind, running their life that whole time, guessing it
(28:34):
everything, right? So no surprise my employment
history is a mess, right? And I was always hopping places
because I was always confused ormisunderstood the assignment or
was misunderstood or something, right?
And I didn't again, have words where I didn't have my
understanding about it. And recently at work, I was
(28:55):
placed in a situation or found myself in a situation which felt
really familiar and really triggery to me.
I was given an assignment, but Iwasn't given clear expectations
of what was kind of right, what,what people will need.
I wasn't really given a deadline.
I wasn't given instructions. I was given like offhanded
instructions, right? And what that means for me as an
(29:19):
autistic person is I have two options.
I can take my best guess, right and try to like, I don't know,
suck in the neurotypical parts and try to translate it into my
autistic brain and understand, right, what it is that I have to
do. And then send my best guess,
which we do often, right? Or I'm in this position where I
(29:42):
can ask for help or clarification, right?
And often at this crux of things, I find people at work,
right? They don't, you don't want to
ask that clarifying question andfor right reasons, right?
We've certainly all gotten rejected for asking clarifying
questions or looking for context, right?
And in a work setting, those clarifying questions tend to get
(30:03):
perceived as questioning authority, right?
And this was a big topic at work.
Like this was an important, likemoney is involved.
So it was a big topic, right? And so I opted in that moment
not to ask for help and take that risk and decided to go with
the guest route, went with the guest route, received all of the
(30:25):
instructions after the guest route, all of the instructions I
should have had from the get go,right?
So I'm in this moment, right? And what I realized is what I
need in this moment is help. This did not go down in a way
that works for me. I don't want to replicate this
(30:47):
again. I don't want to do it this way
again. I need something to be fixed in
the way that it went down, right?
And what I needed to do, my initial response was that the
anger core, the concrete core, that's like, fine, I will do it
alone. I don't need your stinking
instructions. I don't have to care about your
(31:08):
expectations. You don't want to give it to me.
I'm going to do right the autistic version of what you've
asked for. Right.
Oh, you're killing me. It's unrelatable, right?
And this is a like really guys pattern for me, maybe a familiar
pattern for you, right? But I just become a war machine
right when that stuff gets triggered.
(31:30):
And that was my initial response.
But this is something that I have only learned to do
recently, which is that I said to myself, pause for a second,
Becca, because what's really happening here is I'm having
miscommunication. The instructions weren't given
to me in my way of communicating, right?
(31:53):
I would have sent an e-mail withbullet list of like, this is
what you need to accomplish. This is what I'm hoping to see.
This is right. That's how I give instructions.
That's not how everybody else gives instructions.
So what I need to do is to ask for instructions in my way.
That's the help that I really need.
I don't need help with my task. I don't need help understanding
(32:15):
my role. I don't need help with executive
function and breaking down the task into steps when I need it
is clear and direct communication.
And I need it in writing becausethat keeps everyone accountable,
right? So the next day I woke up and I
wrote myself a lovely professional e-mail and I
requested accommodations becauseto me accommodations are just
(32:39):
help, their help, their help to either success.
Enablers. And so while for years I would
have just war machined it out atthis job, I would have just
said, fine, you people don't know how to give instructions.
I don't understand right? And just I will do my best to
work around you is what I would have done right?
(33:01):
See, I, I don't even, I didn't even think that there was an
option that I could ask, right? I just like powered through
figuring it all out white knuckling.
Right. Don't see my weaknesses.
Don't know I need help. Don't know I'm vulnerable.
Don't know I have, you know, strengths and weaknesses, right?
Don't know any of that about me.Just give me my paycheck, right?
(33:21):
I'm doing my job. But that's a trap for us, right?
And the whole purpose of accommodations before we needed
a legal issue, right, was that we needed help with some of the
basic things so we can perform our jobs at the level we need to
perform our jobs at. And so that's what I asked for
accommodations. I asked, can I please have
(33:44):
before a meeting, an agenda and writing so I can prepare?
Can I please have a summary e-mail after my meetings with my
follow up actions and the expectations of those actions in
it, right? Because that not only keeps me
right on target and gets me the information that I need, but if
(34:04):
they send me instructions that are not clear to me, I get to
just be like, sorry, could you clarify this step?
Could you give me more information on this?
Right? And it's not in the sense of
help. It's in the sense of I don't
understand your instructions, right?
It takes away that it's my faultthing and it's just AI don't
understand here. And that was a really painful
(34:25):
lesson for me to learn. You guys, I've been exhausted.
We've already with what's going on in our community, right?
I'm already kind of low on spoons, but I needed that pause
to really reframe the situation through an interdependent lens,
right? Because the person who I'm
working with also wants to get this crap done, right?
(34:47):
It's not me versus them. We both need to work together
because we both need to accomplish this task, right?
And so it was, oh, reframe, holdon.
Yes, there's I'm part of this issue, but I'm not the only part
of this issue. It's two people at work, right?
And that has felt amazing. I just want to share that with
(35:08):
you guys because it's just a powerful lesson wrapped up in
right. But it's all part of this miss
message I received about help from a very young age.
I love how you reclaimed your personal power in this and you
really started to pull in the agency that you have as the
creator in your own life becauseI think so often in that place
(35:34):
like you just so beautifully shared with us.
And thank you for sharing that, that, that, that experience, I
think is so relatable. But I, I want to ask a question
for everybody just to think about for a minute.
What if asking for help is less about trust in others and more
about rebuilding trust in ourselves?
(35:54):
And I think you just shared withus how you have how you've
started to do that, you know, because in, in my article I was
writing about, it's about trusting yourself to know who
those people are trusted people.It's an invitation to really tap
back into what I think autistic people have like as a an
(36:16):
incredible gift as part of our neurodistinct brains and bodies,
we have finely attuned discernment.
And I think as we start to really allow space for that,
like you paused and you're like,wait a minute before we like
fall back into this old pattern of the war machine, What's
(36:37):
really going on? Let me discern what's happening
with me and then how we can start to create.
I say, hey, let's start create. Like, let's do an audit.
Everybody does an audit of some kind.
Let's do an audit of our currentsupport system.
Yeah, let's identify who feels truly safe and aligned for us
(36:58):
right now. Like, and that's, I mean right
now, especially right now is thetime people are showing their
true colors out there like nobody's business.
And this is the deal. Like we get to choose who we
surround ourselves with. And the people you choose to
surround yourselves with are whohelp you build your reality.
(37:18):
That's your reality, right? That's where it comes from.
And so if there are people that you go to for help that don't
give you the kind of response that you want, that doesn't make
them wrong or bad. It just makes them wrong or bad
for you, right? Like it doesn't work in your
bubble. And so you have to be like, OK,
well, with that, I taken my energy away from that
relationship a little bit. And I'm going to find elsewhere
(37:41):
to put it because we only have so much, right?
We can only give away so much ofourselves to certain things.
Well, and sometimes when you don't have a whole lot left and
you, you just have the a couple of little crumbs there, it's
it's real hard to give them away.
You get real protective. So Beck and I would like to
encourage you just to kind of pause this week or maybe after
(38:03):
the show to create a safe to asklist of two to three people or
resources that you can reach outto without shame to start
flexing that muscle, to start really tapping into that
discernment area to figure out who are your trusted people.
(38:24):
So create two to three people ona list of your safe to ask.
Yeah. And I'm going to say I love that
you picked two to three people because the idea that you need
to have more than that is obscene.
You really don't. One person's plenty.
Right, yes, thank you. Right.
We all need you and you need people under at different levels
(38:46):
of connection, right? I need one really close person
and then everybody else is kind of like for me.
And you have to figure out what that means to you, you know,
where do you seek it? But I love this one piece of
advice and I hope that I do it justice.
I can't quite remember how it goes, but I love let me think if
I can remember how, who said it and how it was said.
(39:08):
Probably not. It's probably gone.
It's gone. It'll come back another time.
Sorry. I was like, OK, it'll circle
back, it'll show up when we knewagain, we'll talk.
About that in another episode when we do perimenopause or
something, and I can tell you how my totally disappear now,
which is fantastic. Oh, that's so fun.
(39:28):
So I have my second hormone harmony class coming up on May
29th. And in this class I'm talking
all around the intersections of our Co occurring health
conditions as autistic women andour hormonal fluctuations in all
seasons of life because I'm a perimenopause and I'm a trifecta
patient. So we're going to be talking
about Pecos PMDD, we're going totalk about Ehler Stanlow's, all
(39:52):
the hypermobility syndromes. We're going to be talking about
how our hormone shifts, whether you're actively menstruating,
whether you're pregnant or postpartum, whether you're
perimenopausal like Becca and I,or if you're postmenopausal, All
of these things really make a huge difference.
Physical body in our mental likeour executive function really
(40:13):
does take a hit during this it, you know, like, Oh my God, where
did the thought go? There it went.
I don't know where it is, it'll come back, the brain fog and all
of the things, but there's. A lot of different elements in
our hormonal shifts when you have Co occurring health
conditions that just are not talked about.
And so I'm going to be sharing everything that I've learned in
this beautiful class and I'm taking with everybody on the
(40:34):
29th so. There is not enough information
about that out there. If you can get on your own
journey about that stuff right now.
There are things I know now I wish I had known before, and
many things they still don't know.
And that's not our fault, by theway.
Medical community has not cared very much about us in this way.
And so they have a lot of work to do too.
(40:55):
But it's definitely impactful. And it, it's a crazy thing to me
that, yeah, I'm going to be 50 next year and I'm still learning
things about my female body, like about the female
productivity, you know what I mean?
Things that I've beaten myself up for for my like very long
time, right? I mean, who sold us the thing
that like we're all supposed to say the same pant size?
Did you know that your uterus goes from the size of a lemon to
(41:18):
the size of a mango during your menstruation?
Of course I can't fit in my pants.
My organs grew like come on, right?
It's not my fault for what I ate, just cause my organs.
Grew. That's craziness and we're not
shared that. So go get on this with Carol
Jane. She knows what she's talking
about. Go get some information.
I mean, I simply did this because I just turned 51 and
(41:39):
this was such a necessity for mywell-being.
And I'm like, my gosh, this is incredible.
Why didn't somebody tell like you, why didn't somebody tell me
this before? This would have like changed
everything. And just the shifts that I've
made in the last six or eight months since I've started
learning and really diving into this, and it's just incredible.
And so I'm like, OK, y'all, I'm only like maybe a half a step or
(42:01):
a skip ahead of y'all. But I want to teach you
everything I'm learning because.This is, oh, you got to do it.
We take care of each other. Right.
Yup. And in that guise of taking care
of each other, you have this beautiful, this beautiful way of
yes, interdependence of of setting up like a gentle loving
self-care challenges. And it's like, OK, so if the
(42:23):
word challenge, if you're some of my pervasive demand for
autonomy people, this is just aninvitation.
This is an invitation because I'm one of those people.
Don't challenge me. I'm not doing anything you tell
we're. Inviting you, But I will
challenge you. Carol Jean invites you.
I challenge you. I love it.
(42:43):
I love it because one of the things that you asked in the
e-mail was ask for one small thing this week.
A 10 minute check in, a voice note, a ride or listening ear.
And you know, my friend Bridget wrote something really beautiful
the other day and she said I really just want sometimes
(43:05):
somebody in real life just to gofor a walk with me and we don't
have to talk. That's such a reasonable
request. I mean, I was like, oh, that's
so beautiful. There's and you know, what was
it gave me the grace and the awareness that last night when I
kind of hit my Max point, I had a huge like emotional day
(43:29):
yesterday, holding space for some big emotions with other
people. And you know, as as a helping
professional, we are impacted holding space by with that.
And so we do have to self-care. And so I was laying in bed, my
husband was there and he wanted to talk.
And he was asking me questions. And I remembered what Bridget
(43:51):
said. Sometimes I just want to be able
to say I want to walk alone. And I looked at him and I say I
love you so much and what I really need right now is to not
talk, but I would love to talk to you later.
And he was like, oh, OK, no problem.
Right, but that's reality. Why is that?
I'm not even that as a slight ask for help, right?
(44:13):
Like behind that was, I'm feeling overwhelmed from my day
and I need help relaxing right now, right?
So these are the moments of growth when we remember to do
that instead of forcing ourselves to have the
conversation, right? That's when we win.
That's when we start to win. And you know, I'm really, I'm
(44:35):
like thinking about yesterday because yesterday was a really
kind of a big day for me. It was a really tough day
because I woke up like wanting to scream in my pillow because
I'm in my luteal phase. So I'm like, right, that's my
alignment. So I'm getting ready to start my
period. It's so like all the hormones
were showing up yesterday. So I woke up like wanting to
scream in my pillow just out of frustration.
(44:56):
And then of course cry right after that because that's how
those emotions cycle, right? But yesterday evening, like
before I even got in bed and told my husband I just needed
some quiet, I realized I'm like,oh, I think I need to Co
regulate. And in that moment, I'm like
(45:16):
that my husband is not who I want to Co regulate with right
now. He's busy doing something and I
need something different. I need sort of just like the, my
girlfriend Co regulating. So I, it was like after 9 and I
know that my girlfriend's in andshe's in bed and they're
watching their show, right? And I texted her and I'm like,
hey, are you guys already in bedwatching your show?
And she said, yeah, what's up? And I was like, I just need to
(45:39):
Co regulate. And she's like, OK, I was like,
just tell me about your day. And so she started to tell me
about her day. We were just texting and I was
like, OK, 5-10 minutes of that. And I was like, that's just what
I need. I just needed that connection
with another person just to ground in for a SEC.
And so that is this beautiful challenge of slash invitation
(46:01):
for you guys this week. Just ask for one small thing,
whatever that is that you are identifying.
And maybe if you're not sure what that is, go regulate with
somebody to talk it out or to text it out, right?
And Becca and I had a really great thing here.
We wanted to invite all of you, including our helping
(46:24):
professionals who might be listening today.
We would love for you to messageus, tag the show, tag Becca and
I with this week I asked for andshare what's going on.
Yeah, because sometimes, right, that little bit of
accountability creates this momentum, right?
And that's this first ask this week, right, To pull away the
(46:47):
mask. Remind yourself that
independence is a lie, right? And that you are not going to
live an independent life anymore.
You are an interdependent creature, right?
And when you do that, right, it can be so small.
Sometimes for me, it's honey. Can you get me a drink?
Whereas I would normally push mybody that may be hurting and
(47:09):
tired, right? Instead of asking my husband to
do something for me, someone to go get the mail, could you pick
me something up at the grocery store?
Any little things, right? Can you take time out of your
day to give me some of your energy and spoons?
And they don't have to be a lot.And I just want to challenge you
to do that because we are as creatures so quick to give up
our own energy to help someone else.
(47:30):
It is so important to make sure that you get it back.
So if you do this and you do it once and it's not so hard, maybe
you'll do it twice or three times, right?
And it'll become a new brain habit as we try to switch off
the idea that help is this vulnerable, weak thing that
we're looking for, right? Asking for help is the power
(47:51):
move. Yes, it is.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday to talk about things that
really matter. We'll see you next month in this
amazing series as we continue totalk about the things that
really matter in community, the things that impact us every day
(48:12):
and no one else is talking about.
Becca and I are doing it. We are talking all about it and
we want to invite you to share topics, share things and ideas.
You're like, y'all, this really matters and we need to talk
about this. Send us a message, let us know.
There's an open comment section over on Spotify.
You can add it on YouTube. You can DM us on Instagram or
(48:34):
over on LinkedIn. We would love to know the things
that really matter to you too. Take care and we'll see you for
the next one. Thanks for being here.
It's been quite all right. Energy mastery, let's turn the
tide. Top shelf guests dropping wisdom
bombs. Join us next week Where the
(48:56):
energy's strong. Beyond crying burnout, we're
breaking free. Podcast Pumping follows energy
tips and tricks to put strong, fight fast, space and fun.
You'll feel alive. Energy mastery.
Come along for the ride behind Beyond the We're on the rise.
(49:21):
Join us as we form our top shelfguests.
Happy to energy, we're out of us.
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