Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying Free Now.com, and you're listening to the

Flying Free Podcast, a support resource for Women of faith, looking for hope and healing from hidden

emotional and spiritual abuse.

Hi, welcome to episode 46 of the Flying Free Podcast. I am actually recording this

podcast and also doing a video at the same time for people on YouTube who like to watch and listen at the same time.

And what we're going to be talking about today is one of the most important lessons that I learned in my journey up and out of my abusive relationship

and that is this how to advocate for myself. This was a very hard lesson for me to learn because I had

spent my entire life believing that self-advocacy was evil.

Now I really believe that advocacy is a necessary adulting skill that we all need to get better at,

not only for our own sake, but also for the sake of our children after us.

We can't pass on skills that we are not strong in ourselves.

So we want our children to grow up, taking responsibility for themselves,

making decisions without being afraid, and moving forward with hope and purpose

in spite of the obstacles and challenges that they face, but they can't do that and neither can we if we aren't able to advocate for ourselves.

So what do we need to do to be able to start advocating for ourselves?

I think the first thing we need to do is to deprogram from our false core belief

that we are a helpless child in need of rescue from someone in authority over us.

This is a tough one, isn't it?

Women in conservative Christian circles are actually taught that it is godly to be passive.

We're not encouraged to learn emotional intelligence skills.

So let's talk about five emotional intelligence skills. So let's talk about five emotional

intelligence skills that we really need to learn, but that we're actually

...