When You Ask, You Teach Yourself You Matter
A friend of mine continued to press on me years ago during one of our conversations about something I was struggling with in a relationship at the time. She would say, "but what do you need." She just kept repeating the same question. I'll never forget that. Her words still echo with me today when I find myself struggling with asking for what I need.
Maybe, if your experience was like mine, asking for what you needed as a child was met with silence, irritation, or shame. Others were told to toughen up, stop crying, or be grateful for what they have. Eventually, we stopped asking—not because we didn’t have needs, but because it started to feel safer not to.
But silence comes with a cost. When you stop asking, you stop hearing yourself and you reinforce to yourself that you don't matter.
I explored this recently in a publication of mine in Elephant Journal a few months ago.
The Lie of Self-Sufficiency
In trauma, independence often becomes armor. We convince ourselves we’re fine, that we don’t need anyone, that we can do it all alone. It looks like strength on the outside, but underneath it’s often fear—fear of disappointment, rejection, or shame.
However, there are more people who may want to actually help than you realize. In fact, Xuan Zhao’s research reveals that help‐seekers consistently underestimate others’ prosocial willingness, and overestimate how much their request will inconvenience the helper in.
Asking for what you need isn’t weakness. It’s regulation. It’s how we signal to the body that we’re no longer alone. Every time you ask for help, comfort, or clarity, you’re giving the nervous system a new experience and over time those new experiences build over time creating a new neural pathway in the brain with an infinite number of possibilities.
For survivors of childhood trauma and emotional neglect, that's huge. When you speak your need aloud, you’re not just communicating—you’re rewiring your relationship with safety.
When You Don’t Get What You Need
Sometimes people say no. Sometimes they don’t show up. That still hurts—but when you’ve learned to stay connected to yourself, their response doesn’t define your worth and it's not a sign that you should stop asking for what you need either.
The healing isn’t in them saying yes. It’s in what you give yourself every time you dare to ask. When you ask, you tell the parts of you that went quiet long ago:
“You matter enough to speak.” “Your needs belong here.”
Asking as a Form of Reparenting
Healing means becoming the person you needed when you were a child. Each time you name a need without apology, you're showing your body that it no longer has to choose between safety and truth.
This is how trust returns—not just in others, but in our own capacity to reach, to risk, to stay open. Each time we ask without clinging to how it’s received, we remind the nervous system that being seen and witnessed is our birthright—and that asking for what we need is how we reclaim it.