Name the support you actually need
Separate emotional, practical, informational, professional, accountability, belonging, and emergency needs.
How to Ask for Help — and Get a Yes
From TED. Watch here or open it on YouTube .
During the course primer, listen for ideas that change how you approach “Name the support you actually need.” Pause once to capture a useful point, then apply it while producing a private support-needs map with type, urgency, privacy, ideal source, smallest useful ask, and professional boundary.What this lesson is really solving.
Separate emotional, practical, informational, professional, accountability, belonging, and emergency needs. This is lesson 1 because later decisions depend on a private support-needs map with type, urgency, privacy, ideal source, smallest useful ask, and professional boundary. You cannot make a clear ask until the need has a name, size, and time frame. Use your own numbers, files, environment, and constraints so the result survives outside the course.
Understand the idea before touching the steps.
You cannot make a clear ask until the need has a name, size, and time frame.
Follow these steps in order.
Take the action in each step; then use the deliverable below to prove the lesson is finished.
- 1
List current pressures and goals, then classify each need as listening, advice, skill, introduction, accountability, practical help, professional care, community, or emergency support.
- 2
Write the smallest useful form of each need, when it matters, how private it is, and what kind of person or service fits.
- 3
Move medical, mental-health, legal, financial, abuse, crisis, or emergency needs to qualified resources rather than assigning them only to friends.
See the standard in context.
Drew separates wanting someone to listen tonight from needing tax advice and a weekly job-search accountability check. The learner saves a private support-needs map with type, urgency, privacy, ideal source, smallest useful ask, and professional boundary and notes the evidence or assumption behind the choice so it can be reviewed and improved later.
Inspect before you move on.
- The finished work visibly includes a private support-needs map with type, urgency, privacy, ideal source, smallest useful ask, and professional boundary.
- You tested the work against this common failure: Calling every difficult feeling or task the same kind of help and expecting one close person to meet all needs.
- Another person could verify this mastery standard: Each priority need has a specific support type and an appropriate human, group, professional, or service category.
Your deliverable
A private support-needs map with type, urgency, privacy, ideal source, smallest useful ask, and professional boundary.
Watch for this
Calling every difficult feeling or task the same kind of help and expecting one close person to meet all needs.
Prove it—don’t just recognize it.
Each priority need has a specific support type and an appropriate human, group, professional, or service category.
Quick knowledge check
Answer from the lesson—not from confidence alone. Score at least 2 of 3 to unlock completion.
This curriculum-aligned check is scored automatically and stored with your account when signed in. It is an objective learning signal, but it has not yet been independently validated as a standardized assessment.
Tools, templates, and references
Pass the knowledge check above first.
Completion unlocks after a score of 2 out of 3. Then confirm that you produced the lesson deliverable.
Go to the knowledge check