Speak Your Truth, with Dr. Jenna Glover

(ambient music) Headspace Studio. (soft gentle music) Hey everyone, it's Dr. Jenna Glover here. Your guest host for Pride Week. Welcome to "Radio Headspace" and to Thursday. If you've been listening, you know that this week is all about how dialectical thinking can make us more adaptable to life's ups and downs, and a big part of that is speaking your truth. So today, I'm going to talk about how to communicate your needs, cultivate self-respect, and build healthier interpersonal relationships unapologetically. I would define speaking your truth as being able to express your values and the things that are important to you. It's being able to say, "This is exactly who I am," regardless of how others may respond. When we speak our truth, we're able to join another person in a different way. We're able to say, "This is part of who I am," and it connects us to them. We're able to authentically communicate with each other and understand: Is this a relationship that works for me? When we hide parts of ourself, it puts this extra stress on us that we have to be constantly monitoring how people are perceiving us and what we do and don't share. And with those kind of constraints, it's hard to have an authentic and meaningful connection. We need other people, and when we neglect that part of our life, we suffer because of it. Being able to have community and family, and tribes to support us is an essential way that we get through the difficulty and the adversity of life. Often what keeps us from speaking our truth is a fear of how others will respond. Will others judge me if I share this thing? Will others reject me, or will others potentially harm me? It's one of the difficult parts of the LGBT community in terms of speaking our truth. There's so much power in being able to do so, and there are legitimate times where it's important for us and for our safety to be selective about when, where, and how we share our truth. (gentle music) I remember when I was first applying for jobs after finishing my degree, during the job interview process, wondering at any point if I should share that I had a partner and that I would be wanting that partner to move with me. I was so concerned that I didn't know how people would respond, and because I wasn't ready to share, I didn't know what I was getting into. As time went on, and I became more comfortable and slowly came out more and more often and took different jobs in the future, I was able to speak my truth. I was able to say, "This is who I am, and this is who my family is," and I was able to determine if those were places that I wanted to work based on how people responded. It was a privilege that I was able to do that,...