The Micro-Courage Guide to Speaking Up (Even When Your Voice Shakes)
The Self-Advocacy Files
Speaking up is often framed as bold, confident, clear, unapologetic.
But for many ADHD Brains speaking doesn’t feel bold.
It feels scary, risky, and like your heart is racing before you have figured out what to say.
If you’ve ever stayed silent even when something mattered, or replayed a conversation and later thought, “I wish I had said something”….you aren’t weak, you are human….and you are not alone.
While I speak up a lot now, there was a time when I didn’t – and sometimes there still is!
Let’s chat about micro-courage – because most self-advocacy doesn’t start with a speech, it starts with a moment.
It Makes Sense That Speaking Up Feels So Hard
While some of us find speaking up easy, for many folks it feels harder than climbing a mountain. But before you feel shame about not speaking up, understand that there is a reason – and most importantly – it’s not a personal failure.
For us ADHDers, our nervous systems are way more sentitive to interruption, to conflict, to being misunderstood. We also tend to process slowly or differently in the moment and carry a history of being corrected, dismissed, and told we are “too much.”
It makes sense that when you consider speaking up, your body remembers past moments when it didn’t go so well.
It makes us hesitate.
That hesitation isn’t weakness, it’s your nervous system trying to keep you safe.
What Micro-Courage Really Looks Like
Micro-courage isn’t about being fearless or knowing exactly what to say and the right way to say it. It’s not about never feeling awkward or uncomfortable ever again.
It’s more about staying connected to yourself while you communicate. That may mean saying less, saying it later, or choosing when to say what. That is all okay.
Micro-courage is about choosing the smallest possible version of self-advocacy that still honors you.
It could like like:
- I need a little more clarity before I can answer.
- Can we slow this down a second?
- I don’t have the capacity for that right now.
- That doesn’t quite work for me.
- Correcting someone gently instead of letting it go
- Naming discomfort without explaining it perfectly
Micro-courage is being aware of your capacity. It meets you where you are, not where confidence culture says you should be.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect To Count
Self-advocacy isn’t about perfection.
On low-capacity days, self advocacy might look like writing it down instead of saying it, asking someone to help you draft a message, choosing rest over resolution, or reminding yourself that silence can be strategic, not weak.
You’re allowed to pause.
You’re allowed to come back to it later.
You’re allowed to speak without wrapping everything in an apology.
Sometimes courage sounds quiet.
Sometimes it sounds unfinished.
Sometimes it sounds like, “I don’t have all the words yet.”
That still counts.
Advocacy includes protecting your energy — not just your voice.
Courage isn’t speaking up loudly.
It’s speaking up honestly, in the smallest way you can manage.
Even if your voice shakes.
Even if your hands sweat.
Even if you think of a better way to say it later.\
You don’t need to become a different person to advocate for yourself.
You just need permission to start where you are.
What would micro-courage look like for you right now — not the brave version, but the possible one?
Don’t Delay Joy
Kat Sweeney, MCLC