Your Session Story
Recognizing the Pattern: When Self-Advocacy Meets Self-Blame
You came into this session carrying shame about being late, and through our conversation, you discovered something profound about how you relate to yourself and others. When you shared about your experiences with Brian and James—how they dismissed your self-assessment as a non-engineer even as you tried to advocate for your limits—you began to see a pattern. You recognized that when your advocacy doesn't produce the results you need, you turn the blame inward rather than questioning the system or the other person's response. Even when you became dissociated and lost your thread, you showed remarkable self-awareness by naming it and asking for help—actually demonstrating the very self-advocacy skill you're developing.
You arrived carrying shame about being late, moved through tears and vulnerability as you explored deeper patterns of self-blame, and left with a clearer understanding of how you respond when your needs aren't met.
Something to Celebrate
You showed tremendous courage in naming your dissociation in the moment and asking for what you needed—that's the self-advocacy you're learning to trust.
Something to Reflect On
What might it be like to notice the next time you start to blame yourself when someone doesn't respond to your advocacy, and get curious about what else might be true?
Session Companion
0:00 episode • Generated October 22, 2025
Session Companion
2025-10-22 • 8:00 episode
Chapters
Session Timeline
Moments
Building trust through shared imperfection
6:59Connection deepens when we can laugh together about things not going perfectly—this applies to technology and to being human.
“When you see that you were probably like, oh God, / I'm like, is it me? Is it, is it / no, no, no, no, it was me”
Being seen and valued
12:58You are creating something meaningful from your healing journey, and that deserves to be celebrated and witnessed by others.
“I'm excited to talk to you. Um, I'm always excited to talk to you. I'm very excited to talk to you today”
Honoring your accomplishments
17:46You have the capacity to transform pain into purpose, and that transformation deserves to be felt and celebrated, not just acknowledged.
“You know, the, as I'm sort of sitting here feeling I'm about to cry, it's like, it's almost like so overwhelming like how good it feels.”
Building authentic connection
24:45Relationships can be unique and different from others without that difference being a burden—it can simply be true and acknowledged.
“I do feel like I have a different level of collaboration with you than most of my other clients because we have this tool.”
Self-discovery in action
27:52You're developing the ability to catch and name your emotions in real-time, which is the first step to choosing how you respond to them rather than being controlled by them.
“I realized I had a lot of shame about the being late. Um, look at me. I, I, I recognize shame in the wild out of session.”
Recognizing your emotions
28:30Naming your emotions accurately is a skill you're developing—and catching shame 'in the wild' shows you're becoming more aware of your inner experience.
“I'm also curious as to it being a feeling of shame as opposed to like disappointment or frustration”
Noticing when you disconnect
32:47You're learning to notice when you dissociate and to ask for help returning—that's a powerful form of self-care and self-advocacy in itself.
“Can you help me? I've lost my, I've lost, I, I blanked. / OK, yeah, yeah. I guess it's when I said that”
Finding your way back
33:04You can disconnect and come back—and when you do, you often discover important insights about yourself that were waiting on the other side of that difficult moment.
“OK, so what I said was like there's this piece here of you advocated for yourself. And nothing happened.”
Understanding your voice
33:31Your polite way of communicating isn't a weakness—it's a cultural strength that sometimes needs translation in different contexts.
“There's a pattern of, of, of stuff here, so. There's self-blame Because I don't advocate strongly enough for myself... I use polite language for the most part and in my life here, I found Americans tend to not realize how strongly I'm articulating my feelings”
Learning to trust yourself
38:06The fact that this topic makes you disconnect tells you it matters deeply—and you're building the awareness and safety to explore it at your own pace.
“Oh, mildly dissociated there. Can we, can we go again? Why is this so dissociating?”
Recognizing your protective patterns
38:15Noticing when you're disconnecting and asking for help is a powerful form of self-advocacy—you're already doing the work.
“I feel, I feel like I'm even kind of dancing delicately with this... this is a topic that's and like things have happened recently”
Finding your voice
40:41Your ability to observe your own process while experiencing it shows tremendous growth—you're developing the capacity to hold complexity.
“You're validating, I think, I think when you're validating. Me advocating for myself, when you're advocating For me, by reminding me that I am. Saying I do have I do have autonomy.”
Honoring your feelings
42:01The hopelessness you feel isn't a character flaw—it's a reasonable response to a pattern where your voice hasn't been honored. You deserve relationships where your advocacy matters.
“I was thinking like, yeah, that's really painful, you know... it does make it worse... Like it makes maybe the feeling more complicated because you're like, I'm doing the hard thing, I'm trying. And when I don't get what I need, that Feels really complicated and really hard.”