A short YouTube video by Dr. Aziz about speaking up for yourself to protect your well‑being and relationships. The clip emphasizes that staying silent builds resentment and gives practical advice: first ask yourself what you want in the situation, then state it clearly (what you want, need, or what works best for you) using direct, concrete phrasing and examples.
Speaking up for yourself doesn't make you selfish. In fact, if you're staying silent to keep the peace, you're actually sacrificing your own well being, your own self worth. And you're going to be building up a pool of resentment which has its own problems for your health and for your relationships. So let's shift that. And here's the key for speaking up for yourself. Number one is ask yourself, what do I want in this situation? What do I want? We're very aware usually of like, I don't like this and I don't want that. Okay, great. If that wasn't happening, what would I want instead? Because you approach somebody and you say, stop this and stop that, that, and you do that. That's not good. It's less effective than if you say, okay, here's what I want. So you're asking me to do this, or you keep doing that. You know what I want. And so you can say that here's what I want, here's what I need, or you can even say here's what works best for me, then share it. You show up late, you do this, you do that. You know what works best for me is if you show up on time. You know what I need or what I want is for you to follow through on these things and you say it clearly and directly.
