12 Self-Advocacy and Asking for Help

This last point is very important in the college setting, where you, and you alone, will be responsible for getting the supports you need to thrive academically, socially, and personally. If you don’t speak up and seek out supports you need, you will continue to struggle on your own.

Being a Self-Advocate

Being a self-advocate is a complicated skill, and there are many reasons students struggle to advocate for themselves and access the support they need. In order to advocate for yourself, you need:

1. Self Knowledge: Self knowledge of your strengths, barriers, interests, and goals, to determine when you will need to speak up and seek support in order to find success.
2. Knowledge of Your Rights: So you can stand up for yourself to ensure that they are being met. You are guaranteed freedom from discrimination, which means that you are entitled to fight against and/or seek support for inequitable treatment. In Module 6 you’ll be introduced to the types of supports you can access on campus to help resolve issues of injustice.
3. Knowledge of your Responsibilities: So you can ensure that you are fulfilling all of them.
4. Confidence and Belief in Yourself:  In order to seek support when needed avoids potential disruption to your relationships, personal health, and academics.

Self-advocacy means, at its most basic, standing up for your rights and against personal discrimination. Whether you are trying to create a more just world or change your own life, advocacy means finding your voice. If you are asking for something, you need to be clear about what it is and why you want it. If you are speaking out against broader injustices, stigmas, and prejudices, you need to articulate why such dynamics are harmful and what needs to be changed in your environment to promote equity and empowerment for all. When you understand the methods people use to get what they want, you can adapt them to your own life to achieve your own goals. For some, standing up for yourself can be difficult. Self-advocacy doesn’t mean that you must work toward your goal on your own. It is important to remember that you can become a successful self-advocate by planning ahead and finding people to help you.

Attitudes for Self-Advocacy

As a preliminary step to achieving your goals, you might need to work on developing the attitudes necessary for self-advocacy. For some people, this means being more assertive, while for some this may mean being less forceful. In self-advocacy, attitudes and beliefs are just as important as skills. Self-advocacy begins with the belief that you are worthy and that your needs matter—a feeling that may not come naturally to everyone. People who learn advocacy skills develop a belief in their value as an individual and their ability to achieve things they may have once thought difficult or even impossible.

Believing in Yourself

Above all, self-advocacy requires believing in yourself. An internal belief that you are someone worth advocating for is essential in order to learn and use self-advocacy skills successfully. This may feel like an impossible task at difficult times in your life. However, by practicing advocacy skills and with support from friends, neighbours, co-workers, or teachers, you will be surprised at your strengths. With each success you have, no matter how small at first, your confidence in yourself will grow.

Being Assertive

A passive response, failing to assert personal wants and needs, is ineffective because people are rarely able to get what they want without asserting their opinions. However, there are many reasons why we might have a passive response to a challenge, including:

• Lack of preparation, leading to lower confidence/effectiveness
• Lack of knowledge of legal rights
• Fear of disapproval, scolding, or punishment
• Lack of confidence in our own opinions as opposed to those of professionals
• General feelings of despair of powerlessness

While self-esteem is internal, assertiveness shapes the way we deal with others. Once we begin to believe in ourselves and gain confidence, we usually become more assertive. Part of this process is recognizing the reasons we have not been assertive in the past. We may have felt afraid of losing benefits and supports or we may have simply felt too anxious to step forward. For some of us, the effort needed to meet everyday commitments means that there is little energy left for asserting our needs or rights. Learning about the individual steps involved in self-advocacy and knowing our rights can make each task less intimidating.

Managing Anger

Remember that assertiveness is not the same thing as aggression. You should be a persistent and tireless advocate for yourself, but you should not shout at or insult others in the process. The key to self-advocacy is to express your needs successfully. This is most effectively accomplished by a respectful approach. When we perceive something as an injustice, our anger can be an asset if we use it to motivate ourselves to engage in self-advocacy. However, by ensuring that you don’t let your anger transform into shouting or character attacks, other people involved won’t be able to use your behaviour as an excuse for denying what you want. Being able to talk with supportive people might help you diffuse some of your anger before you make any decisions that you’ll later regret.

Asking for Help

Cambrian College has many supports available for its students and lots of faculty and staff who want to help, but we can’t always tell when you need help. Now that you are in college it is up to you to identify areas that you are struggling in and take the step to ask for support. Figuring out when you need help and where to ask for it is not always a straightforward process. It can be difficult to determine where, how, and why you are struggling with something. Allow yourself time for introspection and take healthy breaks from the areas that are upsetting or frustrating you.  Remember, the college community wants you to succeed and can provide support and guidance.

It is important to understand what supports and resources are available to you so that you know who to seek out to help you overcome your struggles and to achieve your goals. Whether it is help with learning strategies, academic courses, your mental health, financial aid, or anything else, asking for help is a sign of strength! Take a look at Chapter 6, which includes many resources here at Cambrian that you can access in order to be a successful self-advocate and work to the best of your ability.