This year, there were a few times when I was struggling at my dojo because of health reasons. I started to explain to one of my senpai (big brother in this instance) my struggles, feeling the pain get bigger as I tried to explain. He cut me short and said, “What do you need?”

And it stopped the wave of overwhelm, made me pause and just concretely thing of what my needs were and that that was enough. I didn’t need to explain, in fact, explaining made it worse. So that started me just trying to say what I needed, which also meant I had to know what I needed, which is an empowering practice of its own.

It reminds me of advice I’ve found very useful when it comes to having disabilities at work. You give folks a label, like ADHD, and they’ll just plaster in what their preconceptions are. You say, I’m a human being who has these needs to be most effective. Much more powerful for both parties, takes out the guess work, puts you in the drivers seat around what is actually helpful to you.

And most recently, I’ve loved this video from Autism on the Inside https://youtu.be/uQUOLT2JWb0?si=9b34TbwCYc00C51z

I love how he talks about explaining being something you don’t give to everyone. It’s kind of a special thing that you don’t give to everyone. Thinking about explaining as something special really helps take away the sting of rejection when explaining doesn’t work. From “Why am I so bad at communicating?” to getting to know the workings of something is special that is only for some people.

How are you when it comes to explaining/over explaining? Is this a struggle you have? Do you have strategies you find helpful to stop over explaining? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Thanks to all my patrons and a special big extra thanks to Kate Webb, Erik Owomoyela, Stuart Barrow, Jesse the K, Brian Fies and Jay Hedtke.

Good things,

Liz

Ask, cartoon transcript

Thing 1 and 2 are armless legless creatures of enormous kindness and integrity.

Thing 1: Talks an enormous wall of words represented as lots of squiggly lines.

Thing 1: Do you understand?

Thing 2: That’s a lot of information to process

Thing 2: How about you tell me what you want instead?

Thing 1 looks aghast.

Thing 2: You got this

Thing 1: Can I borrow your bicycle?

Thing 2: Sure!