Expressing your needs

Expressing yourself while maintaining your personal boundaries in relationships Its important to express your needs in a relationship. In fact, in life expressing yourself helps others to understand you. What is important is to discern. Learn to choose your battles and recognise when you need to detach, to express something, or to let something or someone go. Recognise when enough is enough. Look into the following when you need to express yourself. 1. Work on self-love and learn to trust and believe in yourself. Start with small steps to learn self-care and to act in your best interest. 2. Practice gratitude and appreciation, because if you show appreciation, it can be easy for a partner to listen to both appreciation and negative feedback. 3. Learn decision making skills, so that you do not need to look for support every time you struggle. Additionally, decision making helps you to avoid dependence on a partner and therefore prevent abuse. 4. Learn to regulate yourself first, make decision and where necessary, to express your needs from a parented place. Managing your emotions helps you to avoid bleeding on a partner or others. You decide what is yours and what is the other person's. 5. When you express your needs, start with compliments. This opens up dialogue and allows the other person to listen. Honour yourself and express how you feel about something you need to address. 6. Consider letting the other person choose to meet your needs. When you parent yourself and create solutions, one of your solutions is to trust and allow the other person to do what is best. Park expectations. 7. Avoid pressure or your own timelines. If the other person has heard you, give them time to either make changes or to do what they need to do 8. You are dealing with an adult if you are in a relationship, so avoid trying to make things happen. Create your own timeline where they are not involved and make decisions about what you are going to do if they cannot step up. 9. Avoid repeating yourself more than twice or three times. This is now their choice. If this is something that is not

a deal breaker, you might need to let it go. 10. If this matters in a relationship, your boundaries mean that you need to align with your values. Choose what is best for you and that might mean that you need to exit the relationship, if you do not feel that your needs are going to be met.