Do You Ever Have Problems Speaking Up?
Cathy: Do you ever have problems speaking up?
Reid: Nope!
Cathy: This is Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com/
Reid: Nope. Cathy Vartuli from http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com/. I just want to keep yelling the whole video. I’m so sorry. You’re so patient for listening and watching.
Cathy: Yeah, they really are. Oh, so we’re just.. we’re talking about saying No to flirting.
Reid: Yup.
Cathy: And I realized that I have a pattern when I want to speak up that if it’s not important to me, if I don’t really know the person very much or I probably won’t interact with them a lot, I tend not to speak up because it’s not important. And then, when it’s really important and that I should speak up, like for sure, I don’t have the skills.
Reid: Exercise those muscles.
Cathy: Right. And then, it’s too important and I decide to keep quiet. So, I just was noticing that what we’re talking about that I’m sure I’m not the only person that has this tendency like, ‘Oh, it’s not important enough to go through the effort and the discomfort of speaking up so I wait till later’.
Reid: Yeah. If you’d like that, leave a comment right now. Like, tell us that, I’m like that, too.
Cathy: Call yourself out.
Reid: Because it helps when we see, ‘Oh, my goodness there’s more people than just me doing this’ and then you don’t feel alone and that can be a good like, ‘Oh, okay’. A way to start anchoring that you can change this.
Cathy: Yeah. So, what I would encourage you to do and I’d love the thoughts that you have but, is practice the times like whenever you catch yourself thinking, ‘Oh, this is important enough to speak up’, think of it as a practice time. Like, you are not going to show up at the big race having never practiced racing so to speak. So, you can like, ‘Hey, I’m kind of awkward at this. We don’t know each other very well and I’m going to practice something to start building that muscle up with people that I don’t have a big investment with. So that when I can keep the relationships up really matter clean and I might, during the process of cleaning things up, build a deeper relationship with the people that are there.
Reid: Yeah. When you talk about, and again this is and my own weirdness of experience like when you tell people about social cues and social weirdness that you’re going through, most people are like, ‘Oh, yeah. Like, I totally get that’. So, when you say to somebody, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m noticing something that I want to speak up about because I set my goals for this year to get better at speaking up about stuff, may I practice with you?’. Most people are like so curious about what is it. A lot of people will say yes and then because you named it, one, for me, the anxiety becomes a little less because I got the ball rolling because I checked in with somebody and they’re like, ‘Well, this is curious. No one’s ever done this at a cocktail party but yes, please tell me. Then, I feel like I got, you know, a Yes from them and I got a green light so that makes it even easier and then I can practice the thing.
Cathy: So, one of the things I encourage people to do and I try to remember myself, too, is that I can be present with feelings that are comfortable. You know, we tend to want to avoid them. We tend to distract ourselves from them or do something else. Grounding exercises on http://www.ThrivingNow.com/grounding, different ways to be present with the feelings in your body at the moment, it can be really powerful ways to get through that. Just breathing through it and realizing it’s not going to last forever, it’s like this momentary discomfort that lets you build up the muscles. Like, lifting a weight if you haven’t lifted weights can be kind of uncomfortable. It reminds you you’re out of shape, it feels like it’s heavy, you don’t feel strong but the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Reid: Yeah. And it’s usually not that muscular soreness after speaking up maybe there are some emotional soreness the next day but this, too, shall pass.
Cathy: Yeah. I hope this helped. I’d love to know if you have this experience, too. Please leave your comments below.
Reid: Leave your comments and thoughts. Now. Please. Hit subscribe or do all of it. Just go. Go all well.
Cathy: Make it rain.
Reid: Make it rain.