Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon and I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question and answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us and connect with others. You can learn more at Join.SoundsTrue.com.
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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Mara Glatzel. Mara is an intuitive coach, a writer, and a podcast host. She helps us reclaim and redeem what it means to be needy. She allows us to think about being needy in a positive sense, describing herself as “a needy human who helps other needy humans stop abandoning themselves, and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy cycles.” Mara Glatzel is the author of a new book which sounds true, it’s called, Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty.
Take a listen as she helps you tune into your inner landscape to identify, “What do you need right now, and how can you ask for it and then receive?” Take a listen to intuitive coach, Mara Glatzel.
Mara, welcome.
Mara Glatzel: Hi. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
TS: By way of introduction, share a bit with our listeners how focusing on being needy came to be such a theme for you, both in a blog you began to write and then a podcast you began to host, and now your first book.
MG: I think that of all of the things that I was told not to be, that I was warned against becoming, needy stood front and center. It was the thing that you learn stands between you and the belonging that you ache for. Between you and the relationships that you want to have, between you and the success that you hope for. And this idea of being needy or having needs, because what does it really mean to be needy? Right? We all have needs. Being in a human body your needs are a fact and not a flaw. And yet the cultural conversation that we have around needs and around neediness is so diminishing. We all have this idea in our minds of what that looks like, that hungry ghost never satisfied, a burden on others.
When I started to work to take up space in my own life and to bring more of myself into my relationships and into my work, neediness was always this thing that I had to contend with. The more that I explored it, the more that I came to understand that what is neediness other than a desire to matter, and a desire to receive care from yourself and from others, to exist and have requirements for your relationships. And the more that I turned those things over, the less I could see a problem with any of it. And so this book seeks to talk about that, tongue in cheek.
Lately I’ve been saying that it’s convenient because if the title does something to you, you can know that it’s a book that’s for you. It does something for me. That neediness is that thing that you really don’t want to be and why?
TS: Let’s talk about that. Why is it so hard? I think it is hard for many of us to, first of all, begin by identifying what our needs are, and then to say them out loud and advocate for them and ask for them. This is tough. I know as I was reading the book and I was starting to go through the different categories that you describe: needs for safety, needs for rest, needs for sustenance, I started adding my own categories.
Need for creativity, need for meaning. And I was like, “I think I’m just going to lie down right now, me and all my needs.” That the actual life I have and my needs, they’re not necessarily 100% together. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling to start recognizing how many needs I have that aren’t actually being met in my day-to-day life.
But I’m curious of your view why for so many of us even just starting to say, “You want to know what my needs are,” it makes us a little off of our center.
MG: I think that there’s two reasons for that. The first is that we don’t have a working vocabulary for what is even possible to need. And this is one of the reasons that ultimately, I wanted to write Needy, because I found that Laverne Cox talks about possibility models. I didn’t have a possibility model for what I was even allowed to ask for, what I was even allowed to name within my own yearning.
And so by beginning to explore it and having conversations on my podcast and then in the book, these words started to emerge. That’s really important for us to have answers that come to mind because for me when somebody would say, “Well, what do you need?” I didn’t even know what was on the table. I didn’t even know what I was allowed to ask for. I didn’t grow up with people who were talking about their needs. I didn’t find them in any workplace environment that I had occupied. I didn’t talk about them in my relationships. And so not knowing what is reasonable to ask for is one facet of why we don’t ask for what we need.
The other, of course is, all of the stories that we carry about what it means to have needs. These stories begin so early in our lives. I started doing this work pivoting from self-care to thinking about needs in particular, after the birth of my first child. Because there I was, not knowing how to parent, barely having a second to think about anything or have any needs met. I was supposed to give her what she needed. And it struck me how many misunderstandings there are, and how many misinterpretations there are that start, at the very beginning of our lives when it comes to asking for what we need. Where we might ask and somebody might be rightfully overwhelmed. That will be about them and it’s not about us.
But we take it personally. And we collect these different moments in our lived experience and begin to weave it together into this story that says, “My needs are a burden. My needs are too much. My needs overwhelm the people around me. I shouldn’t ask for what I need.” And that not asking for what you need is almost an act of service to your relationships. And of course there are other stories, too, that grow out of our families of origin that have to do with neediness. But I think that no matter what your experience of having needs out loud is, we all share a significant amount of personal experience when it comes to asking for what we need.
And so we may move into two categories where either we’re classically needy. We just can’t help ourselves. We have too many feelings, too many thoughts, too many needs, it’s too much. Or we batten down the hatches and we say, “Well, I’m not going to have needs. That doesn’t work for me.” And so we work as hard as we can to suppress them. But no matter how hard we try, we’re never going to not have needs.
And so what I did in Needy was make the argument for what happens when we take radical responsibility for our needs. What happens when we have this vocabulary, when we begin to identify our needs in our relationship with ourselves, and start to advocate for them in our other external relationships? Because what I’ve found is that neediness that we think of, only happens when we suppress what we’re aching for, what we’re yearning for, for such a long time that, of course then, we lose it over something small, or we make too much out of something that really has nothing to do with what we’re actually upset about. And so the more that we’re able to be in conversation with ourselves, the more that we’re able to advocate for what we really need in our relationships, the better it feels to have needs.
TS: You talk about identifying our needs as something we can do as a daily practice. I wonder if you can share that with listeners who are joining us and are thinking, “I don’t even know exactly where to start here. We’re talking about a bigger vocabulary. I don’t have much of a vocabulary right now.”
MG: Well, I think this starts with the fact that we don’t have a big vocabulary, oftentimes, for our feelings. And so when we’re thinking about where to start, the best place that I know is to start by talking to yourself. And I do mean just talking to yourself as if you’re talking to somebody else. Because if you think you already know how to build a relationship. You say “Hi.” You say, “How are you?” You wait. You care to hear the answer. You’re patient, you’re engaged.
And yet we often don’t offer that same kindness to ourselves. We’re kind of like, “Hey, how are you?” It’s that “Hi” that you say in the grocery store or something ,where you don’t really want the other person to answer. You’re like, “Just keep on moving. OK? All right.”
And so when you’re checking in with yourself, and I like to do this first thing in the morning because it changes the way that I approach my day, the answer to these questions. And so I might say, “Hey, how’s it going? How are you feeling today?” “How are you feeling” takes multiple forms and I grab for whatever comes easiest, whatever is at the top for me. And that might be, how am I physically feeling? How is my body feeling? Or it might be that I notice immediately that I’m waking up feeling anxious, or worried, or overwhelmed. And then I move into asking myself, “What do I need?” Which is really based on that feeling. It’s like, “OK, you’re feeling anxious. What do you need?” Which is another way of saying, “How can I support you today?” This is me talking to me.
And it is true. You may at any given time have more needs than you’re able to contend with, and that’s a fact. I have two children under the age of six. I have a dog. My life is really busy and I’m not always able to meet all of my needs. But, too often we make that mean, “Well then, I can’t meet any of my needs, then I need to go without.” Then I’m stuck in this pattern of putting my care on the other side of whatever it is that’s in front of me at the time. We do that naturally every once in a while.
But what is harmful is when we get stuck in that pattern of always putting our needs on the other side of something because we’ll continue to find something to put our needs on the other side of. And so by having that conversation, noticing, “Hey, I’m a little overwhelmed by how many needs I have.” I like to ask, “What is doable for me today?” Or “What am I ready, able and willing to do to meet my needs today?” And that doable aspect gives me permission to not have to do it all, to be able to meet myself in small ways and to remind myself that matters.
So whether that’s getting more rest, or making sure that I’m hydrating. Or today I knew that I was going to have to stay up all day and stay up late into the night and talk to you. When I was checking in with myself this morning, that was the most important part of my day. So all of the other parts of my day lead into how I wanted to feel in this moment. And it’s just a way of being in conversation with yourself.
I can’t stress enough that this is a transferrable skill. We all already know how to talk to people, and it’s learning how to talk to yourself and learning that talking to yourself on a daily basis matters.
TS: I imagine all of the ways we discount what comes forward like, “Well, I don’t have time for that today.” And then maybe even more, if I assert that need, it involves another person and I don’t want to bother them. Or they could say “No,” and I don’t want to feel rejected. And we just go…
I’m curious how you help as a coach, how you help people deal with the objections when they actually do see their needs come forward, but they have all these reasons why it’s not going to work.
MG: I work to think about creating a soft landing space for those needs and beginning to automatically practice, not discrediting them out of hand. And the idea, I’ll have people do this in a journal, or writing is useful because you have this idea of like, “OK, this journal will hold this for me. I could just pour myself onto the page.” But knowing that we don’t often ask for what we need. We often ask for a tiny fraction of either what we think we can get, or what somebody else wants to give us, or what we can stomach allowing ourselves to ask for.
If you think about, “Here’s this whole pie. This is the whole thing of what I need, and I’m only allowing myself to ask for this tiny sliver,” especially if I’m asking for somebody else. So it’s my job to ask. It’s their job to determine whether or not they have the capacity to meet my capacity and interest, and they may have needs of their own. Often they do. Then we’re going to negotiate and I’m going to end up with an even smaller slice of what I originally asked for. And mind you, maybe this is 10% of what I wanted to begin with.
And so the more that we can practice, especially in our relationship with ourselves, before we start talking to other people about what we need, asking for the fullness of what we want. This is a practice because it is uncomfortable, especially if you’ve been conditioned to believe that asking for what you need is too much, which so many of us have. But I think this piece of, “What do I do when I feel uncomfortable? Do I assume that means that I’m doing the wrong thing, and back up and take another course, or read another book, or podcast?”
Or do I validate that discomfort and say, “Yeah, I’m doing something that I have never done before. Of course I’m uncomfortable. What do I need when I’m uncomfortable?” And make space for that alongside the process instead of having that discomfort be the reason that you stop and turn back.
TS: In Needy, you write about how the voice you use with yourself, the tone of voice and the type of language you use with yourself has evolved over time as you’ve done this work. And I’m curious about that. How has it changed?
MG: I used to be really mean to myself, as I imagine many of us are. I had so fully bought into the idea that I would only get to where I wanted to go, that I would only get to the point of living up to my potential if I beat myself up and used that cruelty and threat of punishment as a motivation tactic. And the tricky thing is that it works. We respond to that kind of criticism, we respond to that kind of cruelty. And we might get this idea that, “Well, that’s just what everybody does, or that’s just what it means to be a grownup.” I remember that feeling of, “All of the grownups that I know are mean to themselves. All of the grownups that I know hate their bodies, all of the grownups that I know hate their jobs and do it anyway.”
Also, the way that we talk to ourselves and the way that we talk about ourselves to other people has everything to do with what we see is possible for us and becomes quickly braided into our self-image. And so I’ve worked hard to reclaim this territory, and it’s not always perfect. Sometimes I make mistakes. But I try to remember that when the voices in my head are particularly cruel or unkind, that those are parts of me that have splintered off and are trying now to keep me safe, keep me from experiencing things that were harmful or hurtful before, certain failure. All of these things I don’t want to experience.
And immediate in one of the blessings I talk about, I think in the belonging blessing, I talk about walking back along my life and collecting the splintered versions of myself. I see
self-partnership like that. I see that I have to… Maybe I’m not sitting next to every part of myself at the dinner table, but everybody’s welcome to sit here and share space with me. And that I assume that when those voices show up, they’re trying to protect me with the tools that they have on hand. They might be painful, and mean, and rudimentary. But that the more that I’m able to be compassionate towards myself even in those moments of negative self-talk, that I can repair that relationship with myself to a deeper and deeper level.
And the more that I’ve done that, the more that I’m actually motivated, the more that I’m able to do things like write a book. That was something I wanted to do for a really long time, and I tried to bully myself into it more times than I could count. It wasn’t until I was really able to work with myself and to accept myself and to do things my own way that this project was able to come to fruition. I’ve seen that time and time again. And so that fear that we have, that if we start being nice to ourselves, or if we accept ourselves that we might just stagnate is a faulty one. We can grow through that acceptance, and that self-love, and that kindness in a way that has much deeper roots than that initial, “I’ll just respond because I’m afraid and I don’t know what to do. So I’ll just keep moving at all costs,” kind of feeling.
TS: I think a lot of Sounds True listeners aspire to do something like write a book. I’m curious to know more about how your deepening self-partnership allowed you to do that. What you would suggest to those people out there who say, “God, I want to know the truth about the aches and hungers I have inside.” There are aches and hungers about self-expression and writing and talk about taking up space, really putting myself out there.
MG: Yes. Well, one thing that was essential for me in bringing this project to fruition was learning how to prioritize and care for my own opinion of myself and my work. And when this was out of balance for me, I spent a lot of my time and energy micromanaging other people’s perceptions of me, which is another way of saying people pleasing. It is really hard to do two things.
The first is to find time to write a book when you are doing everything for everybody else. The second is, it is really hard to write a book when you’re trying to write the perfect book for absolutely every single person on the planet.
And so being able to create this book required that I set boundaries around my own creativity. I wrote this book with a nine-month-old baby, at the beginning of the pandemic, and it was hard to find the time. It was hard to ask my partner who was definitely not trying to give me lots of time to write this book, but it was important to me. And so I had to ask for it to be safeguarded. It was not a little bit of time, it was hours of time.
And then when I started the process of trying to sell the book, there are so many moments when you could just fall to your knees in an abyss of self-doubt. I would have done that before. There are many times in my life where I could just see myself falling apart in that process. Because you’re trying to find an agent, you’re trying to find a publisher, you’re putting yourself out there more times than you can count, and you’re receiving feedback about your work. That may be really uncomfortable. I had this mantra for myself during the time, which was to keep myself low to the ground, and open and receptive because I believed in this work and I believed in this project, and was willing to do whatever it took to bring it to fruition.
I had to check my ego many times during that process because you get feedback about things. It makes you feel all kinds of ways, and it’s vulnerable to put yourself out there. And so I think that the more that you are able to have a robust relationship with yourself, the more that you’re able to partner with yourself during moments where you might feel inclined to reject yourself along with everyone else.
My first book proposal got rejected plenty of times, and I wanted it enough to stay with it. I also wanted it enough to stay with myself to make sure that my care was such that my nervous system was as shored up as possible so that I could stay low and open and receptive. So that I could stay with the process, so that I could write the book and then receive more. There’s so much feedback in writing a book. And if you aren’t able to stay by your own side, it is so easy to get swept up in that process and to make any constructive criticism mean everything about you.
And so I think that the work that I talk about in this book, I have used myself so many times over the last couple of years in this creative process, and it was worth it, but it was work.
TS: Well, what do you mean by staying low to the ground? I have a sense, but I want to hear you.
MG: Energetically instead of spiking out and bailing. Because sometimes being seen, being visible, writing a book is a visible act. I’m not sure that I had the nervous-system tolerance for it at any point in my life before now. And so just trying not to take things personally, trying to stay committed to my vision for the project, my reason for doing all of this work and doing that gut response thing where you just want to close up shop and run away screaming. Because it feels so vulnerable to be seen as you are, especially if you’ve spent a lifetime covering yourself up and hiding, which I certainly have. I have been the last couple of weeks talking about how in many ways this book is a coming-out party for me, and it is.
TS: All right, let’s do it. We’re here cheering with you.
MG: Thank you. Yes. It’s like there is a version of myself that I am bringing forward with this book that it feels really true to who I am, but it also feels really vulnerable. I think that’s important to do, and I think it’s important to show up for those parts of ourselves that are ready to be born and want to be seen, but to do that in a way that is kind and sustainable to yourself. And for me, that includes a lot of self-care on a daily basis to make sure that I have what I need to be able to do it, not comfortably but sustainably, to stay in the game. I think Brené Brown talks about staying in the arena. I do it to stay in the arena.
TS: And part of my congratulations when you use the phrase “coming out” is, in my own experience, I think I’ve had to come out again and again and again in so many different ways. I always see it as an aspect of growth, and maturation, and development, and the courage it takes to do it. So I just want to congratulate you for having the courage to come forward with more of who you are.
Now, you mentioned that as part of the writing process, you had to get really clear about the boundaries, so you would have the time to honor your needs. I wonder if you can share more about that, what’s required for us to assert our boundaries with other people?
MG: I opened this book with a story of sitting on the couch. My oldest daughter was just a few weeks maybe, postpartum, and feeling like my partner was just taking up everything, taking up all of the space, and they are really good at asking for what they need. It’s learned for me, and just feeling so frustrated. What about me? How come nobody cares about me? How come nobody’s looking out for me?
And my partner very gently saying, “Well, that’s your job, that looking out for you and safeguarding your time and making sure that you are doing the things that you said that you were going to do for yourself and for your own care. That is your job.” I was so mad because I had been taught that when somebody loves you, they read your mind. That’s what love is, right? That if somebody else isn’t pointing out my needs, then I probably shouldn’t need it. It’s much too much.
And so I had all of this conditioning around asking for what I needed. And on top of that, I had this belief about myself, that being of service to the people around me was the thing that was best about me, and so I should do that as much as possible. And so all of these beliefs really created this perfect storm for beginning to set boundaries and ask for what I needed. And for me, that looks like thinking about what I want and need to do, thinking about my own energetic capacity, and making decisions that are in alignment with what’s important to me.
When I wanted to write this book I was aware that I was not going to be able to write it in fits and starts in a house full of, I had at that time a nine-month-old and a three-year-old. Instead, what I thought might work for me is to create several times during the week. It was Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for three hours and I would go somewhere else and I would write during that time. I would really treat it like the commitment that it was.
I think that’s the piece that shifts, is that a boundary with yourself is a way to honor a commitment that you’re making to yourself. I don’t make those commitments lightly because it’s hard to keep them. It’s hard when you get pushback. Or somebody’s annoyed, or you have the feeling that you’re putting them out to get what you need, and that is real and that happens.
And so making sure that you’re making commitments that matter so that when it’s challenging you can say to yourself, “Well, writing this book is really important to me.” Or being well cared for so that I can have the energetic capacity to parent, run my business, do the many, many, many volunteer things that I do. And if all of those things matter to me, I’m the vessel for all of that work. If I’m not in good working order, every single one of those things is in jeopardy. And so figuring out how to be in good working order and safeguarding that care is my job, and I don’t always want that job. But the fact remains.
TS: All right. I want to ask you a curveball question here, Mara. Here’s a curveball. I really appreciate the language of needs, and I appreciate it when my partner, or someone I work with, or an author says to me, “I’d like to share with you a need that I have.” I appreciate that.
So here’s the curveball part. I also know someone in my life who’s got so many needs all the time that I think of it as tyrannical, like, “Oh my God, your needs are now running this entire situation.” Just because you start the sentence and say, “I have this need.” It’s like, “No, this is too much.” I’m just curious what you think about that.
MG: Yes, we all know those people. I think I might be that person.
TS: You were certainly not the person I was thinking of.
MG: Well, I am that person for some people. The thing is that having a lot of needs is not a problem in and of itself. I’m a high-maintenance person. That is true. I require a lot of care because I have a lot of ambition, and those come part and parcel for me.
But when you believe that everyone else is responsible for meeting your needs, that’s when it becomes a problem relationally. It takes two to tango, right? Because here I am maybe foisting my needs onto everyone around me, and here they are letting me do that while silently resenting me for it. And so in these kinds of need, I think it’s really important to think about what our jobs are. So it’s my job to advocate for what I need. It’s your job to determine whether or not you have the capacity or interest to meet me in those needs, and to say yes or no accordingly. It’s my job to tolerate that response and then get curious and creative about how else to meet my needs.
But what happens when we’re not really willing to take responsibility for our needs is that we’re outsourcing them to everybody around us. And I say this with a lot of love and compassion because I have been this person myself. But when you want somebody else to do something that you are unable or unwilling to do for yourself, then you get into a place of imbalance in that relationship. And a lot of times this is because I don’t feel comfortable validating my need unless you’re in it with me, unless you’re meeting it with me. I’m trying to hook you in because I don’t feel comfortable or confident needing what I need unless you’re giving it to me. This can be challenging especially relationally when you think about in terms of attachment style. I have a pretty anxious attachment style.
It is always really important to me to have other people buying into my needs. This was a growth process for me to know, “Hey, ultimately my needs are my responsibility, and I can’t bank on the fact that the people in my life are going to have the capacity to help me meet my needs.” And also them not having the capacity to meet my needs isn’t a referendum on my worth or on the need itself. It’s simply fact. “I need something. You don’t have the capacity.” That means in that moment we’re a mismatch, but still my needs are my responsibility. And then I get and ask myself, “Well, what now? Is there somebody else that is available to meet that need with me? Is there another way for me to approach it?”
I find that this gets particularly sticky in the way that we’re conditioned to see relationships where we’re taught that the person we’re in relationship with should be that person to meet all of our needs. Because we have vast and myriad needs, and that one person is hardly equipped, or has the capacity to meet all of those needs. And so the more that we’re able to understand that there are different people in our lives who might need or maybe we have needs and we don’t have a community for that collection of needs yet, and that might be something that we need to work on.
But yes, there’s a big element to this which has to do with diversifying how you’re meeting your needs and knowing that it’s not reasonable to expect that one person in your life to be able to meet every single need, whether that’s a romantic partner, or a best friend, or a sibling. They have their own needs to contend with. That’s their responsibility.
TS: Now one of the things I wanted to ask you about is how you relate to your body as an intelligent part of the self-partnership, in terms of identifying what it is that you need at any given time. We talked about this daily check-in. What’s the role of your body’s intelligence and how do you access it?
MG: This has been a real learning process for me. I, being a kid who was growing up in a bigger body was heavily involved in the diet industry from, I don’t know, age four, and was very disconnected from my body for the majority of my adolescence into adulthood. And so during that time I was well-conditioned to see my body as this thing that couldn’t be trusted because I wanted too much. I was too hungry. And I mean that both literally and metaphorically.
And that being a problem to be fixed meant controlling my body, and ignoring my body in many ways, too. I don’t think I’m alone in that kind of upbringing. It can be particularly challenging when you have been conditioned to disconnect with your body. And so I operated from the neck up, and I was smart, and I was ambitious, and I would do all kinds of things and everything else just couldn’t really get with the program. And so it needed to just be ignored until at some point it would be fixed.
Well, moving into self-partnership as a whole meant that that wasn’t going to work. I needed to accept and befriend all of me. It has been a phenomenal healing process to reconnect with my body from a needs perspective. Because there’s in a certain way, it’s neutral.
All of our bodies have needs to keep moving. We have needs for sustenance, and hydration, and rest, and movement, and sex, and all of these different things. It’s not personal. And so the more that we can reconnect with the sensations of our body, the more data that we have about what we require in order to thrive in every facet of our lives.
I think part of this process for me has been naming and grieving the reasons why I lost connection with myself to begin with. And really speaking to the fact that it’s intentional. I was intentionally disconnected from my body because that made me a better consumer, that made me a person who was in endless pursuit of fixes that were being sold to me. And I was a kid. The world is primed for you to be disconnected from the felt experience of being in your body.
Over the last couple of years, this has meant really expanding my awareness of how my body works. I think that this has been the greatest source of joy. And also interest for me is learning more about my organs, and my hormones, and my digestion, and how my body functions, which is so much deeper than how it looks.
There’s so much more nervous system regulation and joy that can be experienced when you’re working with your body in that deeper way. It’s also been interesting for me. I think that it’s amazing how little information we have about our physical bodies. And of course we’re burned out and experiencing adrenal fatigue and exhausted and all of these different things because we do not know how we physically function. And so the more awareness that we can have and the more that we can partner with ourselves in that way, God, it’s made my self-care so much richer to have all of those data points.
TS: I want to get even more specific, if that’s OK. Are you doing a kind of inner-body scan of some type? You write in Needy about becoming in touch with what you call the inner landscape? And I thought to myself, “How does Mara take stock of her inner landscape at a sensate level, at a body-based level?”
MG: Yes. I think that it’s a combination of the physical and the emotional, the inner landscape. And so again, I start with whatever feels the most present. But I’ll usually scan my way physically through my body and check in with, “Am I feeling any tenderness or tension? How is my digestion? Am I breathing in my chest? Am I breathing in my stomach? How do I feel cognitively? Do I feel clear? Do I feel dehydrated?”
But going through all of the different systems in my body, and again, I do this pretty quickly. I’m not taking 20 minutes to do this, although sometimes I suppose, if I have the time. But also thinking about yourself emotionally. And when I think about the inner landscape, it is this metaphor that lives inside of me. That is how I have come to understand working with myself that there is this place where the work takes place. If I am feeling anxious or unrooted, there may be a weather system that is coming through that physical space. If I’m not having the sustenance that I need or if my digestion is off, then that may have ramifications in that physical space.
And the reason I like the inner landscape is because it can be hard to figure out what it is that we’re talking about when we’re doing this self-work. And so if I think about it as a physical space where there is a physical boundary around it, there is a gate which is where I’m deciding what things that I’m allowing into really my understanding of myself to my self-image or not.
It also really helps me to understand this concept of accepting the plot of earth that you have been given and making peace with the part of yourself that has been conditioned to want something else. Because on such a base level, so many of us don’t want to befriend ourselves because we don’t want it to be us. I have this feeling of being picked last for soccer or something in gym class. I would befriend myself if I had been stuck with somebody better than me.
But look, it’s just not the case. And so having this image of the inner landscape allows me to bring in that same amount of comedy to it where I think about how it might not be ideal. There may be parts of it that I was hoping to put a patio in over here, but the terrain is just not such for the vision that I have for it.
And it’s a way of understanding that we get one life, one body, one opportunity. Depending on what you believe happens after you die, of course. But during this lifetime, you get this one chance and this is what you’ve got. So you can either decide at some point to make peace with the reality of your life, or you could continue spending the rest of your life wishing you where somebody else or believing that you should be somebody else.
And so working in the inner landscape gives me this understanding of, what am I actually doing? So here I am, this is my inner landscape. And I might be uprooting, I might be picking up trash that is just left here.
If you’ve ever gardened, there’s sometimes things in soil that you don’t expect and you’re taking it out, you’re recycling it, you’re returning it to sender. You’re thinking like, “That’s not mine. I don’t want this to stay here.”
And so I find that it is a really useful metaphor to hook into when you think about how you are caring for your own ecosystem, of your body, of your life, and that you are the tender steward of your life. And part of that work is making peace with yourself. That’s really beautiful work. It can be hard work, but ultimately, it’s necessary to really grow into that self-partnership.
TS: I love your use of the word self-partnership. And it brings up something I wanted to ask you about, which is the subtitle of the book. The subtitle being, How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty. I love that word sovereignty also. I feel like we’ve done a good job talking about advocating for our needs. But I want to make sure I understand what you mean by claiming our sovereignty.
MG: I think that for the people that I work with, really knowing that you are your own person, that there are boundaries that separate your life from other people’s lives, that you are allowed to have an agenda, and interests, and joys and delights unto yourself that have nothing to do with what other people need or what other people want you to do. Really understanding that delineation, going back to the linear landscape. “This is mine. This is my life, this is my realm to tend. And you, whomever you are, have your own life.” If we think about that in our landscape, maybe you have a plot next to mine. I like to think about my kids as having a plot right outside of my gate. But I have to walk through what is mine to own before I get to you.
And that piece is really important because so many of us grow up in such a way that we are enmeshed with the world around us, that we don’t understand if we’re good or bad, unless we’re told that we’re good or bad. And unless we’re doing things for other people, being of service, sacrificing our needs, it’s messy. And so this piece about reclaiming your sovereignty is not about doing everything by yourself, not at all. We’re an interdependent species, and I’m very interested in all of us being able to be in relationship and contribute to our communities and be a part of things in a way that works for us.
But how do you know what works for you unless you know yourself, unless you know your needs, unless you know the outer edges of your capacity. And so instead of keeping us separate from other people, I think that the more self-awareness and self-understanding that we have, the more emotional honesty and intimacy that we can have in our relationships.
And that piece was so necessary for me to learn, to understand, “OK, the purpose of my life isn’t to do everything perfectly or do everything for everyone else, or be everything to everyone all of the time. I’m allowed to do things because I want to, because they feel right and good to me, because my life is for me to live.” And that’s both a simple and a radical idea.
I think that especially for people who gravitate towards this book, it’s necessary education to know that I am separate from others and I’m allowed to be, and it is safe for me to fully occupy myself in my life. That doesn’t keep me apart from other people, actually it allows me to be closer to them because I have the capacity to be known, to be witnessed, to be seen, to be met. We’re all looking for that feeling of belonging. But without self-belonging, without self-partnership, I don’t know how we really know how to belong anywhere.
TS: OK, there’s one last thing I want to talk to you about, Mara. And in order to ask you this question, I’m going to be a bit personal, but not too personal, but just a bit. Which is, I’ve gone through a process recently of identifying a set of needs that I had in relationship to my work. I work with a coach to help me, and she really helped me name what it is that I need. I’m in the process now of declaring it and asking for it.
But I recognize there’s this final step, which is I have to be capable of receiving this great glory that is about to come my way if I can increase my capacity to receive it. I wanted to hear what you had to say about that, because I realized that’s the last part of this process. And in some ways, I’m finding the hardest part.
MG: It is the hardest part. Not for everybody, but for some of us. It’s the hardest part for me. It’s been the hardest part in this book process too, of here it is the thing that I’ve been wanting, that I’ve been working towards. And it’s the moment, and it can be so uncomfortable to receive everything that we’re asking for. And especially when what we’re asking for is way out on a personal edge. I think a part of this is I always think about sitting on my hands and letting it happen. And by that, I mean that we don’t just know how to receive. We have to practice this too. And that means that we have to be willing to be uncomfortable for what it is that we say that we want. It is really uncomfortable.
And so I think that by anticipating that, first of all, validates it, anticipating that, “Hey, I’m asking for more than I’ve ever asked for before.” That means that I am going to be uncomfortable when it comes to receiving it in a way that is at least commiserate with the amount that I’m asking for. So instead of shutting down, or turning away, or saying it’s too much, what do I need in order to be in this space, in order to be in this discomfort, in order to sit here sitting on my hands? I think about it just like actually, “Don’t take it back. Don’t turn away. Don’t stop. Allow it to happen.”
But what I personally need in order to be here might be all different kinds of support. And you might be surprised by our needs are a moving target. So asking yourself daily, what you need in this time specifically. And someday it might be, I don’t know, a reassuring hug from somebody who believes in you. Some days it might be a pep talk from somebody. It might be a conversation with a professional who can remind you of everything that you want. But getting curious about what you require in the discomfort instead of backing away from what it is that you really want, that you have finally gotten up the courage to ask for, which is an amazingly brave act.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Mara Glatzel. She’s the author of the new book, Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty.
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