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Assertiveness
Many people find it difficult to stand up for themselves because they have learned not to consider themselves that important, others because they fear conflict. Usually there’s some learning from the past to be undone.
Centaury, the Bach Flower Remedy, is an assertiveness course in a bottle. But you may also need Mimulus if you feel shy, timid or fearful; Pine if you feel guilty when you are assertive; and Walnut if you find you succumb to the pressure from others to carry on being their doormat – they’ll make out you are being unreasonable when they are.
If you store up a lot of anger at the way you are treated and then have an outburst, it’s true you are likely to seem aggressive or emotional. So let off steam by yourself first, calm down, and then decide how you are going to put what you want to say in a firm but controlled way.
Going through what you want to say in your own mind first can be very helpful, along with some cord-cutting.
There are ‘you’ messages and ‘I’ messages. When you say ‘You did this and you made me feel …’ you are giving a ‘you‘ message, blaming the other person and making yourself the victim. When you say ‘I felt like … when that happened. It would help me a lot if …. and I am going to …,‘ you are giving an ‘I’ message, taking responsibility for your own feelings and taking charge of the situation.
It has been said that it takes a day to learn how to assert yourself and thirty years to learn when to assert yourself. You don’t have to see every event as an attack on you. The more yourself you feel, the less vulnerable you are. Then you can choose how you respond.
There are two steps in personal development. First you learn to stand up for yourself. Then you learn not to need to stand up for yourself.
It’s always useful to consider what is making the other person behave the way they are. What are they afraid of?
In partnerships, it’s very easy to drift into a battle of wills. Each one thinks they are right and the other one is wrong. Trying to force your opinion will only meet resistance. Better to put aside judgements and look at it together from the point of view: are you both happy? If not, what can you both do to help yourselves be happy? Conflict dissolves when you work together for the benefit of all.
