How to stand up for yourself
...without second-guessing your right to do so
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When I was a young corporate lawyer, I used to stay up late the night before a big negotiation, diligently preparing counter-arguments and justifications for our client's positions.
The senior partner I worked with (Peter D., if you’re reading this - that was you:)) observed me doing this and remarked, "You know, you can just say 'NO.'"
This had never occurred to me. I could feel a spring-like whiff of mental liberation, before my normal thought patterns intervened.
“No I can’t,” I said. “I need to EXPLAIN why I’m saying no.”
“Why?” said Peter.
And I realized I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know why. I was just sure that I had to justify my own (in this case, my client’s) boundaries. I had to justify myself.
Of course, often it really is much better for a relationship - whether business or personal - to explain your reasoning, rather than to just say a flat-out no. I care a LOT about politeness and consideration, and I’m sticking to that value.
But still. The reason I remember this exchange, all these years later, is that I knew that Peter was on to something.
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I thought about this recently, when Quiet Life community member Suzannah Chalick commented that her “fully mature self” would be “able to stand up for myself in the moment without second-guessing my justification” and would be “not afraid of expression”. (This was in response to my Kindred Letter on “Do you wonder whether you’ve achieved enough in life?”)
This wasn’t all that Suzannah said. She described herself as a child who’d been artistic, quietly curious, playful, and shy. She said she wished that she’d been accepted as her shy self.
I mention this because these two points - Suzannah’s shy temperament, and its non-acceptance by the adults in her life— are common pathways to a difficulty with standing up for oneself. As I wrote about in my Kindred Letter on feeling unsafe in groups, people with shy/sensitive temperaments often feel anxious about holding the line in a confrontation. But plenty of shy people do learn to stand up for themselves — and plenty of non-shy people develop this difficulty, too. I believe the real key to difficulties like Suzannah’s is not so much shyness but its non-acceptance - which for many children leads to a feeling of shame about their deepest nature.
And shame - whether of shyness, or red hair, or poverty, or belief systems, or any other attribute of one’s physical or emotional self - is often the main cause of doubting one’s own judgment, and feeling unsure about having a right to speak up. If shame has played a role in your life, it helps to be aware of how it can affect your ability to draw proper and cheerful boundaries.
Of course, there are other pathways to this difficulty. Maybe you experienced harsh consequences for standing up for yourself (or someone else) and now you’re operating under an unconscious once-bitten-twice-shy principle.
Or somewhere along the way you learned that other people’s wellbeing matters more than yours does.
Or maybe you just never learned the assertiveness skills you need, and have no idea how to deploy them.
If any of this rings true for you, here are six important things you can do.