Take your needs seriously

I watched the movie Temple Grandin, and I learned about this icon of a person who improved cattle-handling practices across the entire industry. Many cattle-handling facilities use her designs.

Anyway, she’s an autistic person who found a special interest one summer on her aunt’s farm. She noticed the cows getting squeezed in some kind of apparatus that held them still.

She was having a panic attack, and out of instinct, she got into that cow thing and let it squeeze her. She realized that it calmed her down.

She realized something about herself: even though she didn’t like being held by people, she still liked and needed the feeling of being held. The pressure calmed her down and made her more able to handle her life.

Her need for this became so necessary that she made a squeeze machine in her college dorm.

She called it her squeeze machine.

You’ll have to watch the movie to see how that goes. I highly recommend it. Also, the acting is incredible.

What I learned about Temple Grandin confirmed something I already believe: I need to take my needs seriously.

If there’s some kind of accommodation I need, I need to figure out how to give it to myself. I need to take it seriously if there’s something I feel.

I think it all comes down to self-acceptance.

We tend to respect ourselves only within the capacity we believe we ought to have. We feel like we should be able to function like any normal person, whatever that means.

So then we’re not solving our actual problems.

We’re solving a problem for a person who doesn’t exist. We’re trying to help an idealized version of ourselves instead of the person who actually needs help.

I really appreciated the story of Temple Grandin because it wasn’t a problem for her to acknowledge that this was something that helped her. It helped her be more sociable and more able to handle the stresses of life.

And she just did it, no matter how weird it looked.

I’ve found it helpful in my own life when I’ve treated how I feel seriously. It keeps me from saying yes to things I don’t actually want to say yes to. It also keeps me from denying myself an accommodation just because somebody else might find it embarrassing.

Sometimes the embarrassing accommodation is the thing that actually helps me.

For example, whenever I get back from traveling, my life is kind of a mess for a while. I have trouble getting back on schedule, and it feels like everything is falling apart.

I can’t keep things clean because of all the stuff I traveled with. There are extra things everywhere that I don’t know what to do with, and it’s very frustrating for me.

Then I start beating myself up. I forget that maybe this is why I feel overwhelmed and unable to get stuff handled.

This has happened several times. It would take weeks for me to get it together and so long for life to feel normal again, only for everything to get messed up because I had another trip to take.

Every time, I was just kind of like, “Oh, it’s just how it is. I’ve got to lock in. I’ve got to push through, or I’ve got to wait until I eventually fix it.”

After a while, I realized that maybe this is an actual pattern I go through. Maybe this is something I can make better for myself.

How do I make it better for myself?

I started taking it seriously that, for a couple of weeks after I get back from a trip, I might just kind of be a mess. Everything might be everywhere. I won’t force myself to clean it all immediately.

I can try to put things away right away, but if that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. And that’s okay.

To my surprise, once I accepted that I actually needed this accommodation, I spent less time beating myself up over what I thought I should be able to do.

I was able to move past the post-travel blues several weeks faster than I would have if I had kept treating myself the same way.

It’s hard when people have problems and don’t take them seriously because it puts you in a holding pattern. It’s almost like a shame spiral.

So much energy is eking out of you just from feeling like you should be able to do something, rather than accepting where you are.

It’s not about tricking yourself into getting better faster or being able to control yourself faster. That just happened to be one of the side effects for me.

When I accept whatever I need, I can do whatever I need to do.

I also see this through the lens of harm reduction.

I’ve seen videos where people make a tray of snacks and keep the tray, the food, and anything they can eat in the fridge. They know they don’t want to cook, or they’re not able to cook because they don’t have the capacity.

When they’re hungry, they take the tray out, eat, and put the tray back in the fridge, even with all the scraps and stuff.

I think that is so self-loving. They’re creating a solution for their current selves rather than for a fake, idealized version of themselves.

If you’re depressed, and you’re so depressed that you don’t want to leave your room to go pee, I honestly believe you should take that seriously. Create a safe system that allows you to meet that need where you are.

It might seem like you’re enabling it. But honestly, I believe that accepting an accommodation can help you get through it faster because the shame is only adding to the problem.

The shame of feeling like you should be able to get up and go to the bathroom is adding to the problem.

I feel like being able to accept that this is where you are right now matters, no matter what it is. No matter how disgusting, sick, or twisted it might seem to other people.

Taking your needs seriously, and then actually attempting to give yourself what you need, is problem-solving.

You’re solving a problem for the person who actually exists.

Your relationship with yourself is the lens through which you experience the world. If you don’t take yourself seriously, it’s going to be a tough road because the world isn’t always going to accommodate you.

That’s what I appreciated about Temple Grandin’s story. She recognized something that helped her, took the need seriously, and built it for herself, no matter how weird it looked.

Sometimes acceptance means admitting that a need isn’t negotiable. Sometimes love looks like accommodation.

And sometimes you have to build your own squeeze machine.

Do you find it hard to give yourself the accommodations you need?

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