Self-advocacy is self-care
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor Frankl.
As solicitors we get paid to talk, we are advocates for our clients when we speak for them in court, or when we write a letter on their behalf to voice their issues and concerns. We listen carefully to their story, take detailed instructions and we then express their feelings and needs on their behalf. However, when we are dealing with our clients and staff it is often the case that we are inconsiderate, if not dismissive of our own feelings and needs. In fact, we may not even be aware of what our feelings and needs are. What would it be like if we were to listen to and advocate for ourselves? Just as it is with our clients, before we can do so, we need to know our own story.
As a sole practitioner solicitor and mother of two daughters, I suffered greatly with stress and anxiety. The juggle of putting my clients first in the office and my children first at home left me exhausted and depleted. At the height of the Celtic Tiger, in search of some self-help, I found a mindfulness course where I learned the power of taking a pause rather than launching into my usual pattern of reactions. When I started to practice mindfulness and subsequently took a course in interpersonal communication I came to realise where I was in all this, why I communicated like I did and how I needed to be an advocate for me. I can honestly say that it changed my life completely.
When I examined my story I got to know my inner critic and how harshly she speaks to me. I also came to understand my triggers. I saw that a lot of the stress and anxiety I suffered came from my own story. The fact is that stress is not only brought about by the situation in which we find ourselves, it is caused by our response to that situation. And the good news is that by becoming aware of our own patterns of behaviour and communication and how they impact on us and others, we can begin to change how we respond.
For me, I liked to be liked by my clients and employees. I felt I needed to mind them and I found it difficult to say no. I was passive in my communication and I did not like conflict. Imagine, here I was working successfully in an adversarial profession and I did not do conflict when it came to having my own needs met. This all made perfect sense to me in the context of my story in my family of origin. I was the only girl, my father worked all the hours, my mother was an anxious perfectionist and my older brother and her constantly clashed. I quickly learned that my mother had enough on her plate with my older brother. So, in order to get my share of her attention and love, I found ways of minding her, being the good girl and pleasing her by doing everything perfectly. I would fix things after the mess of their altercations and uttering the word no was simply not an option for me. I learned quiet wisely to be passive and to avoid conflict at all costs and I brought this modus operandi right through my life and into my professional life. We all do our own version of this.
As individuals we all have very different stories to examine. We have all adapted our true selves in our own particular ways in order to fit in and be seen. By becoming aware of how it was we did this, by getting to know our inner critic and how we are triggered, we can learn how to relate differently with ourselves, our clients and staff. This is what self-care and self-advocacy looks like.