Summary
Many individuals grapple with the question of whether they are asking too much from their relationships, often leading them to lower their expectations. This mindset can stem from a history of emotional deprivation, where people become accustomed to receiving little support or affection, ultimately convincing themselves that their needs are unreasonable. Psychotherapist Emery Terrell emphasizes that the real issue may not be the demands themselves, but rather the normalization of inadequate care in relationships.
Terrell shares a case study of a client named Hannah, who felt perpetually disappointed by loved ones due to her upbringing in a family that prioritized self-sufficiency over emotional expression. This background led her to suppress her needs, resulting in a cycle where she believed asking for support made her "too needy." Terrell argues that therapy should focus on fostering honesty about one's needs rather than encouraging individuals to be less demanding. Healthy relationships require mutual recognition and care, and acknowledging one's needs is a vital aspect of emotional well-being.
The conversation highlights the importance of recognizing and articulating personal needs without guilt or shame. Terrell invites listeners to reflect on how often they minimize their own desires and encourages them to practice vulnerability by expressing their true feelings. The episode concludes with a reminder that acknowledging one's needs is not a sign of weakness but an essential part of building fulfilling relationships.
Show Notes
Hi! It's me. For the next four weeks, we're trying something a little different on Dial Emma - this is Voicenote Therapy, combining my love of long voicenotes with therapeutic insights to create something new and, hopefully, helpful. Today, in episode two, we're exploring a question I hear a lot, in life and in the therapy room: "am I asking for too much?" I delve deeper into why we tell ourselves that we're expecting too much from other people, the tendency to shrink our needs and preempt our own disappointment rather than asking for what we need without apology, and how we can begin to rewrite the script by telling our truth. Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Dial Emma @dialemmapodcast Email: [email protected]
More from Dial Emma
Have you ever had that horrible little moment when someone you care about tells you something wonderful, and your first feeling isn’t happiness but disappointment, irritation, or a sinking feeling in your stomach? Today I’m talking about envy: that embarrassing, occasionally ugly, but completely ordinary human emotion. We’re increasingly comfortable admitting to anxiety, overwhelm, and exhaustion, but envy still feels shameful. I don’t think it’s evidence that you’re a horrible person, and it isn’t always an instruction to go and get what someone else has. Sometimes it’s telling you something important about your own life. Today’s dilemma comes from a woman who’s worried her jealousy is damaging one of her closest friendships. She and her best friend have known each other since university, and their lives always ran on parallel tracks - but lately her friend’s life has taken off, with a big promotion, a beautiful new house, and a third holiday of the year, while our listener is struggling with her mortgage and feeling exhausted. Her friend is genuinely lovely, which somehow makes it worse, and she’s started noticing herself reacting negatively to her friend's successes. So, perhaps the real question isn’t why can’t I be happy for other people, but why have I started treating their happiness as evidence that there’s something wrong with mine? Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]
Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! This week, I want to explore why we give some people the power to change our entire mood, without actually doing anything at all. I want you to think of someone who has the extraordinary ability to ruin your day, just by existing. You’ve slept well, you’ve got things done, and then you see their name on your phone or their car outside, and suddenly your entire mood changes. They might not have said a word, and you’re already irritated. Why does one person have the power to change how we feel so dramatically, and how do we share a world with someone without having our experience of it dominated by them? Today’s dilemma comes from a listener I’m calling Sarah. She’s been married for around 20 years, but the difficulty comes with her husband’s sister, Laura. Sarah has never particularly liked her, and over the years Laura has said things Sarah experienced as belittling or unkind. For a long time they didn’t see each other much. Then Laura and her husband moved to the same town, and their lives began to overlap in schools, clubs, and community events. Sarah has stopped going to things she enjoyed because Laura turned up, and now she’s wondering whether she needs to move away from a town she loves. Sarah's question is this: is there a way to feel better, or is the only solution to leave? Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]
Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! This week, I want to talk about something I suspect many of us experience but aren’t especially proud of: finding other people really, really annoying. I don’t mean the obviously rude or provocative ones. I mean the perfectly pleasant friend who sends a seven-minute voice note when you asked a yes-or-no question, the colleague who begins with “can I just ask you a really quick question?” that you know will be anything but 'quick', or the person who tells you a story you’ve heard several times, and you still have to laugh in the right places. I do like people. I’ve spent my working life listening to them. But I can still find them annoying, and admit that it feels oddly mean, especially when it’s someone we love. Irritation isn’t very precise. It tells us something is bothering us, but not always what. So in this episode, I want to get curious about what it’s pointing to. Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]
This episode has been on my mind for a while, so I want to talk about something I think about a lot: concern. Specifically, the kind of concern that gives us a sense of permission to involve ourselves in somebody else's life. Being attentive to the people around us is a good thing. But I've been thinking about what happens when concern starts to carry an expectation - when the person expressing it begins to feel entitled to an explanation, a response, or a change in somebody else's behaviour, and the person receiving it experiences it not as kindness but as intrusion. There isn't a single listener dilemma at the centre of this one. Instead I want to pull apart a psychological distinction I think we confuse constantly: the difference between caring about somebody and feeling entitled to influence them. Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]
Today's question is one I hear all the time, from clients and in ordinary conversation. Why am I so tired all the time? I don't mean the tired where you went to bed at 1am and the alarm went off at 6. I mean the tired where you wake up already calculating how long until you can get back into bed - where the weekend arrives and somehow doesn't restore you, and by Sunday evening you realise you're starting another week without ever really feeling the last one ended. A quick note before you listen to this episode: persistent or unexplained tiredness can have physical causes. If this is new, severe, or getting worse for you, please speak to your GP. What I'm interested in today is the tiredness that comes from how we're living psychologically, because we tend to count the visible workload (work, exercise, the school run, the shopping) and rarely count the work of simply being ourselves. Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Claire. She's 42 and a mum to two children, works four days a week and sleeps reasonably well. But by the end of every day, she's drained. She doesn't want to see anyone, doesn't want another question, and even deciding what's for dinner can feel like too much. She looks at people who seem to do twice as much as her and wonders: what's wrong with me? Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook. --- Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app Social media: Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell Email: [email protected]