The Art of Standing Up For Yourself

I never define myself as an outspoken person. Being not outspoken, when I have thoughts or feelings, I let them sit for a while before taking any action upon it.

In a situation when my opinion or disagreement needed, I choose to keep quiet before thinking through. When I was ready, it was just too late.

The challenge becomes real when work demanded me to deal with an outspoken, dominance person. People in this type have some urge to say whatever thought popped up in their heads. Dominance trait only makes it worse, they have needs to delegate whatever they think small and unimportant.

Face to face with the reverse version of myself gave me emotional turbulence. When she “delegates” things outside my job description, I could not say “no” and I did it anyway.

My head knew I should have said “no”, but I cannot say it right away after she asked me. I battled with a lot of “maybe” in my head. “Maybe she is busy”, “maybe she has a reason”, or as sound stupid as it is, “maybe this is my job”.

During my session with a psychologist (yes, I have a therapy session because of this), my psychologist said one thing about dealing with a dominance, outspoken person. That is my counterpart was not aware that she demanded too much from me. She thought that I did not mind with all her requests, mostly because I did it anyway.

Her sense works this way: in her world, if she minds about something she will say it, and I did not say a word, she assumes that my mind works the same way as hers. No words from me means I have no problem.

I and my psychologist agreed that I lacked the skill of assertiveness. This is the skill for a person to state their opinion directly, express their feelings, ideas, and stand up for themselves. All are done without being rude to others.

As Tessa Pfafman said about assertiveness:

Lazarus also talks about what is assertive personality trait :

Researches of assertiveness began when psychologists thought that the root of mental illness is related to the lack of skill to express thoughts and feelings. Although today, mental illness is not always caused by a lack of assertiveness, it is still related.

I second for that. When you are not asserting yourself to others, you let people walk over you. Being walked over, It will consume you from the inside. Trust me, I learned it hard way.

Once or twice, you would still be fine, but the more it happened, your self-confidence and your self-esteem would degrade over time. Then, there it comes, the vicious cycle. Your degraded self-esteem and self-confidence make it hard for you to be assertive since assertiveness is generated from high self-esteem and self-confidence.

To speak from experience. My tendency to accommodate all my counterpart’s request gave me a burnout. Burnout from work is not the worst part, my self-esteem collapse is. Eventually led me into a pit of depression.

Walking the rope of assertiveness is tricky. You need to keep the balance, otherwise, you will fall into passiveness on one side or aggressiveness on the other side.

You need the right level of assertiveness to stay on your well-being while having a good interpersonal relationship. Hence, it is an art.

The mental image most people have about being assertive is a person who states their opinion bluntly, and sometimes their words hurt. If you think that way about assertive, you are mistaken assertive with aggressive.

Aggressive people push too far. They force their opinions and disregard the counterpart’s rights, interests, or feelings. Their behaviour is to serve one goal, to drive the situation into their way.

In negotiation, aggressive use argumentation to attack people’s self-concept. Aggressive is damaging, assertive is empowering.

On the other end of aggressive, there is the “yes man”, the accommodating type, the passive. They are always ready to say yes to every request while reluctant to make the request themselves. In a glance, this type is so harmless, they are like an adorable sheep to the aggressive wolves. But, is it though?

Let me share my experience with this type. There is this co-worker, whom his input would have been appreciated in a pointless, heated meeting. Yet, he seems so hesitant and reluctant to share his opinions. He did not say a word, while I know he had the same interest as me to be stood up for in that meeting. I, with my — higher level of assertiveness than him — must dodge all the bullets by myself.

I know him in person, so I am sure his silence is not out of bad intention. However, for me, his silence is harmful in a harmless way.

Fortunately, you can learn how to keep the balance to walk the rope. Assertiveness is a skill you can learn over the years of your life. These are some ways you can try to start asserting your way to the aggressive world:

1. Know Your Boundaries

Before confidently say “no” or share our opinion, we need to acknowledge our boundaries. Our boundaries could be our value system, job description, schedule, or interest.

Those things are the limit for our counterpart to negotiate their way. When they trespass, it is our cue to say no.

My mistake in the above case is I am not confident what my boundaries are. Without acknowledging them I can’t stand up for them.

2. Practice in Your Head

I often notice that I can be more assertive in a predictive scenario. By creating a scenario before the real situation happened, I have made some drafts in my mind, and when it is needed I just click send by saying it.

Before a meeting or when you plan to discuss an important matter, invest the night before to run a few different scenarios. Create the scenario around your boundaries to know when to say “no” and negotiate.

3. Do Not Give In to “Yes”

When the “freeze moment” happened out of hesitant, I know you want to say yes. It is an easy resort. But don’t.

Tell your counterpart that you need time to think about it and will get back at them soon. This way you have bought yourself some times to plan how you would respond to the request without violating the boundaries of yours or others.

4. Renegotiate

There are times when we knew we could have been more direct about our opinion and we feel some of our boundaries have been violated by the decision made. Try to renegotiate, talk to your counterpart if a renegotiation is possible. Even if the renegotiation did not work, at least you tried and you have become more assertive than before.

Both lack and over assertiveness could be damaging. They can break either your relationship or your well-being. Assertive is the balance.

By being assertive, you have made the effort to take care of yourself, and your relationship with others. It is not a skill that you can build overnight, though. It is ok if you still not assertive most of the times today, but once you did it, enjoy the good feeling from standing up for yourself.

Related posts:

How many of you have recently joined a new company, new org, or new team? Feeling overwhelmed can be an understatement as you try to navigate the org, get up to speed on the work, and carve out your…

First on the go. Beginning to guess: could be a fruitful friendship with Medium. This is my first trial from the mobile version. It seems to be smart and….

As stated many times, everyone in the United States of American except for the Native Americans can consider that they got here because of immigration somewhere in their line. Some people forget that…