Self-Advocacy

Audio: 2 min. 19 sec.

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No one will spontaneously advocate for you.  You must advocate for yourself.  By establishing and setting boundaries and expectations, you advocate for yourself.  

Writing a history of events accounting occasions when someone(s) breaks the mutually established boundaries and expectations is a first action to take in asserting and advocating for oneself.  Sharing those events with the someone(s) who broke the boundaries and expectations would be the second action.  How they receive and respond to the revelation of their honest or malicious mistake will determine how to proceed with advocating for yourself in the relationship.

Hopefully the offending party is a positive, healthy, expansive person(s) who will receive and respond to their mistake in a positive, healthy, expansive way.  We all make mistakes from time to time.

Fortunately, in a positive, healthy, expansive relationship both parties benefit when they share and receive with each other a perceived mistake.  By sharing and receiving crossed, as well as met and acknowledged, boundaries and expectations a mutual respect may continue to be cultivated.

Unfortunately, the offending party may not be a positive, healthy, expansive person(s).  Even worse, if the negative, unhealthy, contractive party is also in a position of authority.  How would one respond?

Fortunately, we live in a society with some checks and balances.  There are parallel and higher levels of authority to respond to parties in authority who break boundaries and expectations.

Jealous of a Cat

Audio: 44 sec.

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Yes, I am jealous of a cat.

The cat can snuggle with you all night long, I can’t.

So, yeah, I’m jealous of a cat.

Though I am thankful for the relationship we have, I wish we would snuggle all night.

I am just as cute and cuddly.

Why not me?

I am just as fluffy and furry.

I can purr too.

MMMmmmm.

Impeccable Instruction

Audio: 1 min. 33 sec.

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A friend failed her math course in nursing school.  The nursing school has a policy for if a student fails nursing math.  The policy is the student must retake the course again and will not have another opportunity to repeat the course a third time.

She came to me for private instruction desperate and determined to pass her math class.  She had a history of belief that she was not a math person.  She knew if she did not pass this math course she would not have the opportunity of living her life-long dream of working as a nurse.

My instruction consisted of requesting her to provide the assignments and any course notes and books.  We worked in half-hour instruction intervals, up to three times per week for the duration of her course.

Not only did she pass her class with a mark of an ‘A,’ she knew her math so well she was helping her co-students attain higher grades!