Your Needs Are Your Superpower With Mara Glatzel

In this Talk, Mara Glatzel shares how to build a practice of connecting with self to check in with your needs on a regular basis, how to reclaim your sense of self if you’ve lost it, and how to start validating and taking care of your needs…the true definition of self-care.

Listen to discover: Why having needs isn't a weakness; The two most common reasons people struggle with their needs; Some of the most common human needs; The difference between having needs and being "needy"; What real self-care looks like; When and how to check in with self to learn what you need; What "self-partnership" is and how you can take responsibility for your needs

Transcript

Hello to all of my Insight Timer friends.

My name is Michelle Schelfant and I'm delighted that you're here with me today.

Welcome to my latest talk.

And as always,

After the show,

I love to hear your comments.

So make sure you leave a comment so I know how you liked it.

We'll talk soon.

And here we go with the latest episode.

Okay,

Let me tell you a little bit more about Mara.

So Mara Glatzel is an author,

Intuitive coach and podcast host who helps humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy rhythms.

Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it.

And she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you.

It is a great pleasure that I welcomed to the adult chair podcast,

Mara Glatzel.

So welcome to the adult chair podcast,

Mara Glatzel.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

Yeah,

I am too.

We're going to be talking about some really important topics today based on what we were just talking about before I hit record.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah.

So I like to say that I am a needy human who helps other needy humans figure out what they need and how to ask for it.

And that work is really about how we grow from self abandonment to self partnership through having a greater sense of awareness of what we require in order to exist,

In order to thrive in our relationships,

And then begin to bridge the gap of what stories we're telling ourselves,

What obstacles we need to get past and through and around in order to bring those needs into our real life relationships,

Which as everyone here knows,

Can be really confronting.

So I do that in a multitude of ways.

I just wrote a book called Needy,

How to Advocate for Your Needs and Reclaim Your Sovereignty,

As well as teaching classes and running retreats and things like that.

I love that.

What human doesn't have needs,

Right?

Right.

But and yet.

Yeah.

But and yet.

And yet,

You know,

It's interesting because as strong as a strong woman,

As strong women,

Let me say that in the world,

It's hard for us to stand up and ask for what we need,

Because then I think it's perceived by some as weak.

So I think we need to change that.

Let's have a little dialogue around this today.

That's I really want to talk about that with you because it's not weak.

It's actually very strong.

And it's been hard for me so much of my life to reach out when I have something I'm going through.

It's like,

But I don't even have that inner dialogue that says,

Oh,

But I'm being needy.

But I think that's part of it.

It's like,

No,

No,

No.

I'll just take care of it on my own.

But what I've learned to do just from doing my own work with the adult chair is like,

Wait,

I am having needs and it takes work.

So tell us about that.

Tell us about what that means.

Like tell us about the book Needy.

What does it mean?

And because it's not it's not it's not weak to have a need.

It's actually strong.

So talk with us about this a little bit.

Yeah,

It's strong.

And also it's neutral,

Too.

I think that there's so we have so much that we attach to this idea of having needs.

And the reality is that our needs are a fact and not a flaw.

We're in human bodies.

We're an interdependent species.

We need things.

And yet we may carry all of this conditioning from our early childhood,

Certainly from society at large,

About what it means to be a person with needs.

And so those stories may vary from person to person.

But you know,

What I find are the most dominant are it shows up in two ways.

The first is that my needs are a burden because when I was a child,

My I was my needs,

My feelings were overwhelming for my caregivers.

There just didn't seem to be enough space or time or bandwidth or I had too many siblings or we had not enough resources or there was trauma that there just wasn't space to be who and how I was.

And so I learned that both in order to belong,

Certainly in order to feel safe,

But also as an act of service,

I learned to begin to suppress my needs and put them away and not bother the people around me.

And so there's different flavors to that.

But that feeling of my needs are a burden and I do others a service by meeting my needs by myself on the side,

You know,

In the cracks between things or not at all.

And the second piece,

I think,

Has to do specifically with how you are socialized as a woman or people of all genders who are socialized as girls during their youth.

There is a specific connotation to the idea of neediness that is not feminine.

It is not desirable.

It is not the thing that you want to be if you want to be whatever,

Picked up,

Plucked up,

Married,

Dated.

And so there is this really interesting thing that happens in there where needs become very inaccessible if you want to belong and you want to fit in and you want to have successful relationships and you want to be loved and you want to do a good job at work.

You want to be admired.

And we all have needs.

So we're always in this push pull inside of ourselves where we are.

Our conditioning is squashing this important part of us.

And of course,

You know,

We see this.

I always think about it kind of like a restrict and binge diet cycle.

It's like if we don't allow ourselves to have needs or express our needs,

Of course,

We become this pot boiling over at some point.

And then our needs is worse.

It's like this treacherous thing that's betrayed us at this least convenient time.

And so needs also can become this villainous thing where I can't control it.

Is ruining my relationships because I'm not asking for what I need.

And then,

Of course,

I overreact to something small.

That's not at all what I'm upset about.

And it seems as though I'm having this huge overreaction when that's happening,

Because there have been so many moments before where I didn't say I need something here.

Or could you do this for me?

Or can you listen to me or,

You know,

Whatever it is that we are needing?

I have so many questions going through my head.

I'm like,

Hmm,

Interesting,

Because number one.

Would you say that we're even in touch with what we need?

No.

So that's why I wrote this book to borrow a phrase from Laverne Cox,

Which I love very much.

Needy is a possibility model.

Too often we do not even know what is possible to need.

And so this question,

What do I need,

Is so confronting.

You know,

I can remember back for myself,

Like,

Well,

What's even on the table?

What am I allowed to ask for?

What's within the scope of reason?

What are other people asking for?

You know,

What's what's all right,

What's not?

And,

You know,

Especially when you carry these wounds and pain around belonging and your feelings and your needs from your youth,

You may have such strong judgments about what you need because it seems like something a baby would need quite literally.

And it might very well be what a baby needs.

And because those needs weren't met at that time,

You carry them with you still.

And so we all have a spectrum of needs as they relate to different parts of our lives.

But I always kind of just say that a need is whatever it is that you require in order to exist and survive.

So in the book,

I take you through from safety to celebration,

Nine needs that to play with,

To explore.

And there are others.

But with that idea that until we start having more of a conversation about needs,

So many of us don't even know what's possible to need.

And that's a huge part of the problem.

Well,

I think we need training to tap into ourselves so we can identify what our needs are.

And I don't you know,

As humans,

We tend to look outside of self.

To get not our needs met,

But just to feel better,

And oftentimes we feel that we will feel better just by knowing what our needs are and asking for that,

Right.

But we don't even know what they are.

What can you give us?

Like just maybe the most common to human needs.

Are there the top two?

You have a top to a top 10 list or something.

I have a I have a top two list.

I think that our most common needs are belonging and safety.

And I think that belonging is a quick cover for safety because,

Of course,

When we're children,

We have to belong to our families of origin,

To our caregivers,

For our actual safety.

And when we don't grow through that,

We continue to live in that pattern of believing that we're not safe if we don't belong.

And of course,

Belonging has.

Is tricky,

Right,

Is tricky.

And so many of us are working so hard to belong to the world around us and at the cost of belonging to ourselves.

Oh,

That's good.

At the cost of belonging to ourselves.

And the other thing that I think about when we talk about need is that we wouldn't want to get labeled needy.

So there's that fine line between needy and just having legit human emotional needs.

What's the difference,

In your opinion?

Yeah,

So for me,

Taking responsibility for your own needs is an essential part of self leadership and that the more that we're able to identify,

Honor and advocate for our needs and our relationships,

The better equipped we are to be more direct and forward facing with those needs,

The more likely we are to get them met,

Certainly.

And I see neediness,

That empty kind of,

You know,

Hungry ghost.

We can all conjure an image of that,

I'm sure.

I see that happening when we try to restrict and suppress our needs.

And then,

Of course,

They come out sideways at this least ideal moment.

And,

You know,

I can see this in my own life.

Like there are so many times where I'm getting upset about something that is so small and so meaningless and I'm making such a big deal about it.

And it seems as though it's completely out of context.

But of course,

I haven't been showing up and asking for what I need up until that point.

And my needs haven't been met and they will come out at some point.

So I find that the more in touch with and the more responsible for our needs,

We are the less needy,

Kind of the neediness you think of we become.

And I think that piece is really important because we associate the presence of any needs as being needy,

Which is problematic in and of itself.

And so the more that we're able to have these conversations just like this about needs,

I think the more that we're able to see,

Oh,

Wow,

We all we all have needs.

And we may have this assumption about other people.

Well,

That person doesn't have needs or,

You know,

Michelle doesn't have needs.

But I don't know what you're doing.

You know,

I don't we don't ever have the full picture of anyone else or how they're getting their needs met.

And so we have all these stories and assumptions about how we you know,

How what our needs look like in relation to other people's needs.

But until we're really talking about them out loud and in the presence of others,

You know,

We have no idea.

I think,

You know,

What pops up,

I'm just thinking about clients in the past that I've had that it's so hard for them to speak up.

And that whole sense of like,

I don't feel worthy,

I'm not good enough,

I don't know that I should,

Am I allowed to?

I'm like,

Yes,

Let's come up with some of these needs and let's let's let's start speaking them.

But there's that ongoing tape in the mind,

You know,

That's saying you really shouldn't speak up.

Don't bother.

OK,

So something that you also talk about is self-care.

And rebuilding,

I like this,

Rebuilding the chasm in your relationship with yourself so that you can feel seen,

Heard and adored by yourself no matter what.

I love that.

Seen,

Heard and adored by yourself.

Mm.

How do you rebuild that chasm?

So the self-care that we are that we often see and that we're often sold is prescriptive in nature,

Generally speaking,

Says,

You know,

Do these five things and you'll feel better.

Right.

Which is great.

Sometimes we need a place to start.

But I have a lot of clients who come to me burnt out on self-care and will say something as though,

You know,

I'm doing all of the things,

But nothing helps.

Frankly,

So I'm thinking about just bagging the whole self-care thing completely,

Which is a real shame.

And the work that I do and share in Needy is about self-care that's responsive and not prescriptive,

Which means you need to know how you feel.

You need to know what you need.

And doing that,

Giving yourself what you need or a fraction of what you need is that self-care.

And that creates this feedback loop where you are giving yourself what you are aching for.

And that care is going to look different depending on how you're doing on the circumstance on the day.

But that's the care that starts to satisfy the ache,

That starts to feel good because it comes from and originates from you.

And that requires,

You know,

I think a core component of this is being willing to be in conversation with yourself every day and to explore,

You know,

To get curious about what you how you're feeling and what you need.

And I love that you talk about in your work about how this is really a conversation between the adult and the child,

Right,

Where you're playing both parts and you are taking the time because there's patience that's involved in this.

You know,

I can think my own inner child,

What my own inner child does not like is to be rushed or to be sidesteps,

Like to,

You know,

To be like,

Oh,

I'm going to be in the hospital for a week.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

I'm going to be sick.

What you think you should need what you want to need what you think you're allowed to need and in there.

I think so much of the care that we're aching for is tucked into that.

It's like what what are the needs that I have that feel uncomfortable to have right that I don't maybe even want to have I have so many clients who will come and say no,

I'm okay with needing the kinds of things.

I see on Instagram that look lovely and photograph.

Well,

And I'm not okay.

I'm not okay with needing,

You know,

These other things.

Of course,

Of course,

But you know,

There is a piece of this work the piece of the healing that is in being with those things that you are well-conditioned to push away and the more that you're able to acknowledge those needs.

Honestly,

Some of them don't even need to be met.

They just want to be heard and that piece is so important in and of itself.

What give us some needs tell us tell us some more needs.

Yeah,

So I need for sustenance.

I think that's both feeding yourself physically right actual food,

But also feeding yourself emotionally coming into contact with things that are inspiring for you.

Rest is of course huge and interestingly enough about rest rest is the language many of us have for I need something will say I'm tired or I need more sleep.

I need a nap and probably you are physically tired,

But you also might be spiritually tired.

You know,

You might be tired in such a way that you're longing for community or connection.

You know,

This is what's so interesting.

I'm giving you kind of the the overarching umbrella needs but underneath them.

We may experience that need in our own unique way.

So,

You know,

If I'm feeling tired and what I'm really needing is some downtime to connect with my best friends in real time.

And that's what's giving me that energy,

Right?

That might meet a rest need even though it's not,

You know,

Horizontal sleep other needs are trust sovereignty integrity.

I said belonging before love,

Which is huge and celebration,

Which I think is also much bigger than many of us are willing to admit.

I find people have a really hard time with celebration and I work with a lot of women a lot of mothers in particular who are just aching for appreciation and acknowledgement.

I think appreciation and acknowledgement can be a form of celebration and yeah,

So there's some some good needs for you.

You know,

I just have to I want to get your opinion on this,

But I know when I when I worked with clients in the past,

They're surprised when they sit with themselves and they come up with these needs and when I'm doing the work when I used to see clients,

I would have actually three chairs in my office and have the child adolescent adult and I would have people sit in their child chair and I'd say just close your eyes and anyone can do this.

That's listening to this right now.

You can sit in a chair wherever you are and you just close your eyes and you go deep within yourself and connect into that to that younger part of self and then ask like what do you need and they're surprised they come out of the you know,

They're open their eyes and say I'm hearing I just need a hug or that little part of me just wants a hug or wants to call a friend to what you were saying belonging connection.

Oh and there I can't tell you how many times people have said I'm so shocked.

I just never thought that that's what I needed and it's like when we get what I call it living chin up when we go above the chin and we're trying to figure it out.

We'll come up with all these ideas,

But they don't really plug into the soul.

So what's underneath it all but when you take a moment and slow down and really tune in and ask yourself,

What do I need?

And then you start building that relationship with that inner part.

Wow.

I mean it changes things doesn't it for people like it's a beautiful form of self-care to just check in with self.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

And so I think about I think one of the primary tools that we all need is that check-in having the I am quite literally talking about talking to yourself and saying hey,

How's it going because this is the piece you already know how to build relationships.

You're already talking to people all day long building a relationship with yourself isn't any different.

You have to take the time and the energy and the attention and turn towards yourself and legitimately care.

Even if you think it's hokey and wait for for a response be patient.

You know,

I always like to say that when you first start rebuilding your relationship with yourself your relationship at this point might be that kind of frenemy where you only call them when you need something and it's an exploitive or an extractive relationship and they know it.

So,

You know when they see your name pop up on their phone,

They're going to maybe not pick up the call And there may be some rebuilding that needs to happen in your relationship with yourself to get to a point where it feels like there's an open line of communication.

But that piece I like to think about checking in at the two most tender moments of my day.

So at the beginning of the day before I go to work and that check-in defines and directs how I approach whatever it is that's on my calendar for the day.

So I work for myself,

But this however you work whatever is on your plate that day.

I think it it stands that you take that data into account when you approach your day.

Am I more tired?

Am I more am I feeling tender today?

Am I anxious?

Am I dehydrated?

That's important information about how you can create your day to be even just subtly more supportive for you.

And the second time I like to check in is at the end of the day when I turn from work back towards myself or at this point in my life.

I have two kids and it's usually when they go to bed and then after they're asleep.

I turn back towards myself and check in at that point and say how am I doing at this point?

And what do I need between now and when I go to sleep?

What do I want that to look like?

Because if we don't check in then we may be living our lives on autopilot in so many ways.

And there might be these micro opportunities that we could reclaim that don't take that much more time or energy to create just a subtly supportive experience.

And the more we ask the more data we have like I want to I need a different kind of breakfast or I don't want to watch TV tonight.

I want to write or journal or take a shower or something instead and that data comes from having that conversation and I do that in two three minutes.

It's not a heavy lift kind of thing.

Yeah,

I think slowing down and checking in but people were so go go go in our society.

Aren't we like go go go go go slow down and check in you got to take the time to do this.

So I'm going to shift gears a little bit.

How did you reclaim the energy you once spent trying to keep others comfortable after years of feeling overlooked and unimportant?

How did you do that?

How'd you reclaim your energy?

Well,

It first required me to realize how much energy I was putting into that which was a lot.

I was spending a lot of my time and energy in a mode of self-protection where I was constantly micromanaging other people's perceptions of me and becoming,

You know,

Not in huge ways,

But again in small ways that still is an energy draw becoming what I thought was needed in that situation.

Again,

There's a lot of mind reading here right where my childhood was such that I learned how to read a room from a really early age and I was praised for that.

And so I grew up believing that that was what was best about me was what I was able to do for other people and how I was able to be exactly what they wanted or needed without them having to lift a finger or say a word.

Right?

And at a certain point I had a real breakdown break down break through where I realized that my life looked exactly the way that I thought that it should look exactly the way that I was taught that a good life looked but that it didn't reflect me and that it didn't feel it,

You know inside.

I was just running around trying to hold things together.

I suddenly got a flash of you know that movie and Kanto where Bruno it's a Disney movie about this is so good for exactly this kind of conversation.

But anyway,

There's a character who's behind the scenes like patching up the inside of the house constantly and that was me on the inside.

It felt terrible and I was exhausted and I was burnt out and I was really afraid that if I let anybody know me.

That I would be rejected or abandoned.

I mean it feels it feels silly to even say it like that because it was such a deep and profound fear.

I ran my entire life.

And so it was heartbreaking to really acknowledge that and to grieve how much of my life I had spent in that way.

And also how I had been conditioned,

You know as a person in a bigger body a lot of this had to do with my relationship with the diet industry from such an early age that who I was was not great was not acceptable and that I needed to be other than I was I needed to constantly be working on who I was.

And so it had deep roots and there was a lot of healing that needed to happen internally for me to feel safe enough to even have enough resource of a nervous system to begin these experiments and for a long time.

I did this work in my relationship with myself only where I would have these sort of small experiments and I knew that a big piece of this was how responsible I had felt as a child.

And so I never had that real experience of being a child.

And so,

You know,

There's a lot of inner child work a lot of like,

What do I want?

What do I need?

What do I want to eat?

You know playing in these different corners of my life before I even built up enough confidence to begin kind of soft launching my true self and my relationships.

And so,

You know the process it took a while and I think allowing it to take a while was such a gift and so healing in and of itself that,

You know,

I presumed while I've lived many years of my life in this way.

And so I don't anticipate that it'll change overnight and I don't anticipate I can do it by myself.

But for right now,

What feels the safest is doing it in these small ways or talking about it in therapy,

But not talking about it with my partner or with my friends quite yet my family of origin that kind of came with time.

The more confident and comfortable I felt the more I was able to bring that fully expressed version of myself to my relationships.

And you know when it comes to talking about what we need so often we rush past the conversations that we're having with ourselves to hyper focus on well,

How am I advocating for these needs?

Well,

I find that's a lot of pressure if you don't even know what you need and also you're kind of working it out in conversation,

Which doesn't it works in therapy.

It works with a professional.

It doesn't work with your friend or your partner or your parent.

And so not bypassing that piece of really getting more clarity around what I needed just in my relationship with myself before I started to advocate for it in bigger ways externally.

Hmm.

Okay,

I'm letting that land,

But you just said so this is leading to the next question.

And I think you're already kind of answering it.

But how you grew your relationship with yourself from self-abandonment to self-partnership,

But that was the journey that you're talking about that.

Yeah,

You know,

I think that anything other than a full-throated acceptance of your needs is self-abandonment.

And many of us don't identify with the concept of self-abandonment.

It seems very dramatic,

But you know,

I think about things like I'm not going to I know I have to pee but I'm not going to get up and pee.

I'm going to make myself write these like use it as like motivation and write these three emails and then I'll get up or I'm hungry.

But you know these ways that we exploit ourselves use ourselves use the things that we need holding them out as a motivator.

There are small ways that we self-abandon or you know,

Even believing that who and how we are isn't good enough and that we should be different than we are as an act of self-abandonment.

Yeah.

So this work really walks you through that path of learning how to stay by your own side no matter what and you know,

Going back to what we were talking about before about the belonging.

I think you know for so many of us belonging is rife with self-abandonment and that's why it feels so hollow that feeling of I'm at the party.

I'm here,

But I feel so alone and nobody knows me and I'm carrying this horrible shame story that if they knew me I wouldn't be here.

They wouldn't like me.

They would reject me.

And so through this work and really building that self-belonging you take you everywhere that you are.

There's so much power in working on your relationship with yourself.

How would someone know if they are self-abandoning?

Like what does that look like?

If someone's listening that they might be asking like,

Well,

How am I how do I know if I'm doing that?

So I think that it happens in the moment of another way of thinking about it might be self-censorship where you know,

You know something I have a feeling I have a thought I have a need I have a I want something and this sort of like hammer that comes down on top of that that says no you can't need that.

You can't want that you can't and that hammer of course is everything that you've learned up until this point.

I mean we come by it honestly and this is why it's so insidious because we want to belong.

So those lessons are huge for us.

We're carrying them with us like this roadmap and it is also the half-baked idea of a kid where you think okay.

I figured it out.

All I have to do is this this this this and this and then it's going to be good.

It's going to be great even and if we don't.

Come into our adulthood come into that self-partnership and and bring all of that under question to say,

Hey,

Does this actually work for me?

Is this how I want to live?

Is this is this how I Define success?

Is this what I want my relationships to look like then?

We're just following that roadmap that we made when we were such a little kid just learning how the world worked.

Mm-hmm.

That's good.

That's good right there.

So when you talk about self-partnership,

I have a question about that too and I like that term self-partnership.

It's like being your own best friend,

Right?

So there's checking in is that it's it is it as simple as that just to check in with yourself every day and identify anything what you need what you want.

What do you want to you know,

What do you want to do today?

Is it that simple the self?

Yeah,

I think that the self the the willingness to be with yourself in process is a huge part of it.

But I think that there's this other piece to you know,

It can show up as that Witness Observer being able to put things into context,

You know,

I find in in self-partnership.

I'm often saying things like well that makes perfect sense that you feel that way,

Right?

So a lot of that is that work if we think about again between the adult self and the child self.

It's like oh I am my own historian.

I'm able to say so much comfort comes from that understanding of like,

Wow,

Of course you feel that way that tracks that makes perfect sense for you and starting to build out this library of care where you know,

I can see well under these kinds of circumstances.

I already know that,

You know,

I'm launching a book.

I'm this is like the biggest visibility experience of my life.

I know exactly what I'm going to encounter for myself under such circumstances and I also know what I need and not in such a white-knuckled way where there's no room for meeting myself in the moment,

But in this way of tracking myself and saying,

Oh,

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Those are the conditions for you to feel self-doubt or fear or all of these things that might show up for you.

And when you feel fear,

This is what historically comforts you when you feel self-doubt.

This is what historically grounds you and so I'm doing both that work of being with myself in process and also holding that information that data collection and putting it to good use.

I find that enormously comforting that is not this huge.

I mean,

I suppose that comes directly from my child self.

I like to make sense to people.

I like to be understood.

And so when I can offer that to myself,

It provides such a profound comfort and healing.

It's like,

Yeah,

Totally that makes sense.

And part validating,

Part tending,

But that self-partnership piece is really about being along for the ride.

It's that idea of like,

There's nothing that you can do that will make me turn on you.

And for me,

I was turning on myself on a dime for so much of my life because all of those parts of me that had been bullied or had been othered or had been hurt wanted to protect me from any kind of anything that would veer into the realm of being unsafe.

And so,

You know,

The minute that I would disappoint myself,

The minute that I would fail at something,

The minute that something wouldn't go my way,

I would be on the other team saying,

Of course,

Well,

You know,

You're a failure.

So this tracks,

You know,

That is just a very different way of making meaning.

And so now I work to stay at my own side.

That visual really helps me.

And to make sense of it in a way that is compassionate and kind instead of that bullying self-talk that I had just absorbed from the world around me.

I was just going to comment on that.

So when you were talking about the negative thoughts that you had and the bully inside,

You know,

How did you work with that part of you?

How did you change that inner voice?

It was hard.

But,

You know,

That there's a part of needy where I talk about walking along the length of my life,

Picking up all of the splintered parts of myself.

And that is a visual that is really useful to me to think about it as these are hurt.

The bullies that exist inside of me are hurt and wounded parts of me that are doing their best.

It is quite literally their job to protect me from ever experiencing that again.

And so they're doing their best.

They're doing their job.

They're doing it really well.

And that I as an adult don't need to let them run my life.

And again,

From that self-partnership piece that I was talking about before,

It is really useful for me to anticipate their arrival.

To notice,

Oh,

Yeah,

Book coming out.

Are you kidding me?

This is an opportunity.

Or having a hard conversation with a friend where,

I don't know,

Rejection and really on the table.

These are prime opportunities asking for what you need,

Setting a boundary that you don't feel comfortable setting.

All of these are prime opportunities for those parts of you to come forward.

And I find that when I expect them,

It takes a little bit of the shock and awe away from their arrival.

Because I'm like,

Oh,

Yeah,

Here you are right on time.

Welcome.

And that kind of comedy and humor has helped to diffuse that self-talk.

Yeah,

That's powerful.

Thank you for that.

I love this whole idea of needs,

Like a whole book on needs.

That's a good book right there.

Yeah,

I needed it.

No pun intended.

Who doesn't?

Because again,

I think we're so disconnected from them or we feel guilt having them or we shouldn't have them or it's for other people,

Not me.

I'll take care of you.

You don't need to take care of me.

It's like,

Yeah,

To learn how to be our best advocate and ask for what we need is powerful.

It's living as healthy adults.

That's what we all need to learn how to do.

So thank you for the book.

You're most welcome.

Yeah,

I think that even now in the couple years it took me to write the book until it came out,

We're talking about needs more and more,

Which is really wonderful.

Because with something that can elicit so much shame and discomfort,

Hearing it from multiple angles is really powerful.

It starts to reinforce something that maybe seemed like a wacky idea that one person had and now it's a conversation that we're having.

So I think that that moment is here,

Which is great because the more that this is a huge obstacle to getting what you need is that we don't have role models for what it looks like to ask for what we need.

And I look at my kids and I think about this all the time that they are seeing me ask for what I need every single day.

I'm encouraging them to ask for what they need every single day.

And what a different way of connecting that is than,

You know,

Even I can't even say that needs wouldn't have been welcome in my home when I was a kid.

I'm sure they would have been,

But nobody had the vocabulary,

You know,

Nobody was having those conversations.

And so I think it's not even that we grow up and it's painful or our needs aren't welcome.

It's that they're quite literally not a part of the conversation at all.

So we don't have the words.

So I wrote a book of words and I hope it's useful.

Well,

Thank you for your book of words.

We need it.

We need like a guidebook on this.

So this is great stuff.

Thank you.

Where would people find you in this wonderful book?

Well,

You can find Needy wherever books are sold or over at maraglatzel.

Com forward slash book and you can find me there as well,

Of course,

But also come hang out with me on Instagram at maraglatzel.

That's where I'm hanging out the most.

Awesome.

We'll put that all in our show notes and thank you.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I wish you a beautiful week and I'll see you next week for the next show.