The brave own the world. – German Proverb
I made a conscious decision that I wasn’t going to be dependent on being liked. – Bjork
I reflect on REBT’s application to various problems in these weekly emails. This week it occurred to me that interpersonal fear and shame are a problem for nearly all people in one way or another. Think about instances where you held yourself back at that awkward moment from saying what you wanted to say to another person. Although you were facing another member of your species, a person in many ways like yourself, did you respond to them as if they were a saber tooth tiger, an alien, or some other life form wholly different from your own? Did you elect not to take advantage of the opportunity to introduce yourself to someone of interest to you this week due to shame if you were rejected? Did you fail to advocate for yourself at some point recently because you were fearful of asserting yourself with authority? Did you comply with someone in charge instead of maturely asserting yourself with the other party? Were you too ashamed to reveal something about yourself, which in the context would have been appropriate and possibly advantageous to you but would have revealed a flaw? Were you afraid to politely say you disagreed with a point a person was making but wished you had?
We All Occasionally Conform in Self-Defeating Ways
There is a good chance everyone reading this email held themselves back over the recent past due to fear or embarrassment. This tendency is so frequent for some people that it is worthy of professional attention. Whether broadly problematic or not, this self-imposed inhibition is self-defeating for nearly everyone in some circumstances.
Now consider this question. Did you feel good about stopping yourself because you were too afraid to say politely or do what you wanted? We cannot control how people respond to our assertions and requests, but we can control what we say and do. My experience has shown that most people would have felt better about speaking up for themselves even when doing so produces no change in the practical outcome of the interpersonal exchange. No one likes to feel powerless, and when we hold ourselves back from saying or doing what we want (assuming the statement or act is not dangerous, illegal, or intentionally obnoxious), there is a feeling of regret for the self-imposed powerlessness we experience. Some people go beyond healthy regret and then devalue themselves for not standing up for themselves and not having the courage to act in ways they genuinely want to.
My Personal Story
As a child, adolescent, and young adult, I was shy and held myself back in different social situations. I know firsthand the frustration people often feel when they hold themselves back and fail to assert themselves. I also know the joy of self-mastery and self-liberation, which follows overcoming that self-defeating behavioral tendency. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, REBT, is a valuable system of ideas and strategies for helping you to overcome this self-defeating response. I know because I have used it successfully in this regard. REBT can enable you to change how you respond during uncomfortable moments in an interpersonal exchange. You have to decide whether you do the awkward thing, say what you want, or back down. If you want to empower yourself along these lines and control what is under your control and what you say and do, read on.
Acknowledge You Choose to Back Away from Self-Advocacy
The first step in addressing your problem is acknowledging that you are choosing to back away from the awkward moment. Don’t deny your deficit nor devalue yourself for having it. Alternatively, recognize that you could improve this crucial skill in certain situations. Consider that one way of looking at your skill deficit is to see that you are well-practiced at avoiding asserting yourself. It is unwise to think that you do not have it in you to do it. It is better for you to assume that, to a greater or lesser extent, no one taught you the skills of self-assertion, and you then have become well-practiced at submission and conformity generally or in specific types of social situations. We generally do not teach our children how to assert themselves politely. We want children to avoid trouble, so we often encourage them to respect, conform to authority, and play nice with others. We might tell them to assert themselves but then assume children will cultivate the confidence to do this independently and know when to execute this response. We generally do not provide children with formal, rational, cognitive-emotive-behavioral education in self-assertion, communication, and interpersonal problem-solving skills. We unthinkingly assume children will come to learn to control their emotions and behaviors and function effectively interpersonally. People often fail to master good assertiveness skills; some go past assertiveness to aggressiveness and anger when coping with interpersonal conflict, which causes different problems.
Sometimes unassertive people experience resentment or self-loathing for their inability to stand up for themselves, speak their minds, and set limits with others. We could give children and adolescents formal training in the essential interpersonal skills required to deal effectively with other humans. Suppose we were to do this type of rational, emotional education early in life. In that case, they then, as adults, might have a lower incidence of depression, anxiety, anger, or substance use disorders. This also could help adults not be socially isolated with few friends. This early intervention might prevent the need to treat emotional conditions rooted in not being taught good interpersonal and social problem-solving skills. It would be better to start early and provide these skills in the formal education of children, adolescents, and young adults.
Take Responsibility for What is Within Your Domain of Influence
In REBT, we encourage you to take responsibility for what is within your domain of influence. How you react, what you say or do not say, is your choice whether you see that or not and whether anyone has taught you to leverage the power of choice. Don’t blame the circumstances of your life. You did not seize the moment, and you need not devalue yourself for it but avoid defending your ego by externalizing responsibility for your choice to avoid when you could have asserted. Also, you can acknowledge that no one taught you assertive skills rooted in unconditional self-acceptance and high discomfort tolerance and then choose to go and learn these essential life skills from a capable REBT or CBT psychotherapist who will actively guide you. Hold yourself responsible for learning what you need to know to handle people and conflict more effectively. Hold yourself accountable for finding someone who can teach these skills to you in therapy. Don’t seek out just anyone calling themselves a therapist. Find someone formally trained in the idea that implicit attitudes lead to self-defeating emotions that result in passivity and self-defeating conformity.
The next step is to appreciate how you likely have two reasons why you hold yourself back. In REBT terms, you have what we call both ego disturbance and discomfort disturbance.
Ego Disturbance
Ego disturbance means that you experience anxiety and shame because you rate and devalue yourself based on how well you perform and what others think of your actions and if they approve of them. When we assert ourselves, we risk disapproval even if we appropriately speak our minds. Often that disapproval results because asserting ourselves with others may activate a degree of discomfort in them. If you do not go along with their plans and speak up, they may have to expend energy doing something you ask them to do.
It is healthy to want approval from people important to you in the workplace or your personal life. However, we hold ourselves back when we hold the attitude that we need their approval. This demand to be thought well of by others often gets linked to how we think about ourselves. When others like and approve of us, we may have come to consider ourselves worthy, good, etc. Seeking the approval of others is rewarded. However, we can overdo something good and become too compliant with others. We get caught in the trap of fearing disapproval and then suffering from unhealthy feelings of self-devaluation for having lost the approval of significant others. In essence, we have become somewhat addicted or at least emotionally dependent upon social approval in some situations.
Discomfort Disturbance
Discomfort disturbance is when you avoid facing the challenging situations of life and the uncomfortable and awkward feelings that come over you in those situations. REBT teaches that people often hold the attitude that they must be comfortable and cannot bear discomfort even when doing so in some social settings would be to their great advantage. You may believe you must be comfortable in particular problematic social situations. However, when you avoid certain awkward situations which are advantageous to address, you hold an attitude that you cannot bear the discomfort of those challenging situations and the feelings that come over you as you face the other person and deal with them. You opt for short-term comfort rather than longer-term comfort and resolution of the problem, and therefore you are responsible for your self-defeating avoidance, passivity, and conformity.
As pointed out earlier, acknowledge your choice in your attitudes towards rejection and disapproval in social situations. Also, recognize your choice towards bearing or avoiding the uncomfortable feelings of these types of social encounters. You can only effectively remedy your problematic response once you take responsibility for your contribution to creating that response. Your implicit attitudes matter. Your attitudes drive your self-defeating feelings of anxiety and shame and the avoidance behaviors accompanying these unhealthy feelings. The good news is that with the help of REBT and the willingness to follow its prescriptions, you can grow and empower yourself to tolerate an awkward moment and speak your mind. REBT, in combination with your efforts and practice, can liberate you. Shameless, anxiety free-living that does not trample on the rights of others is possible for you to learn using REBT’s ideas and strategies.
Cultivate Unconditional Self-Acceptance to Live Without a Need for External Validation
To reverse this unhealthy tendency, you must learn to unconditionally accept yourself even when authority or significant others disapprove of you. Keep your healthy desire for approval. Your parents and teachers likely encouraged you to want other people’s approval. Wanting approval motivates you to live harmoniously with others and participate in society. However, heed REBT’s warning that you do not transform or escalate this healthy desire for approval into an unhealthy demand. By holding a rigid attitude that you (absolutely) need the approval of others, you will likely jump to devaluing yourself when you risk and then experience disapproval. Thinking in this way sets you up to not assert yourself, stand your ground, ask for what you want, and display the courage of your convictions when the matter is important to you. Cultivate unconditional self-acceptance with or without the approval of others. You can accept yourself shamelessly and unanxiously, even when others disapprove of you. Self-acceptance is a choice you have a right to make, and it need not be contingent on what others think of you or of doing the better thing. The universe has given you and all humans the freedom to make mistakes. Remember that unconditional self-acceptance does not give you a license to break laws or tread on the rights of others. You remain responsible for your behavioral choices. However, unconditional self-acceptance emotionally frees you to do and say what you want even when the other party disprefers it. Avoid taking responsibility for their feelings. Be polite in your assertion, and don’t tread on their rights. If honest communication “hurts” their feelings, that is their responsibility to remedy, not yours. Assert yourself in an enlightened self-interested way based on knowing you have a right to put yourself first and others a close second. You can act assertively with healthy sensitivity for the rights and feelings of the other person.
Cultivate the Tolerance to Bear Uncomfortable Social Situations and the Feelings that You May Experience
Next, you must cultivate tolerance for uncomfortable social situations and the awkward feelings that may come over you in these situations. People naturally want to be comfortable all the time and when interacting with others. However, self-inhibiting people-pleasing often includes transforming and escalating this healthy desire to be comfortable in social interactions to an uncomfortable need. From there, you naturally jump to the attitude that you cannot bear the awkward moment and the painful feelings you experience when asserting yourself and risking disapproval, denying another person’s request, or displaying the courage of your convictions. Tell yourself, “I can bear the awkward moment when I assert myself. I want this person’s approval but do not need it. I will choose to unconditionally accept myself whether or not they respond favorably to my ethical assertion. I have a right to ask for what I want and politely say what is on my mind when it is to my advantage to do so.”
You Must Risk Disapproval to Change
As a result of reading this piece, you will have what we call intellectual insight into your people-pleasing submissive tendency. However, you must take one final step to liberate yourself from this self-defeating pattern of relating to others. You must find social opportunities to risk social disapproval and put into practice the assertive posture you wish to cultivate. Talking, reading, and thinking about REBT ideas without behavioral action and implementation will keep you submissive. You must force yourself to do what is uncomfortable and risk shame, and live through an anxious, awkward social exchange. You must experience the fear of rejection and keep doing this until you master your fear and shame. I was shy as a younger person (believe it or not), and to this day, I continue to risk disapproval to keep my introverted, people-pleasing tendencies at bay. We cannot entirely excise a self-defeating characteristic within us, but we can significantly shrink its influence in our lives. Humans quickly develop bad habits and must leave their comfort zone to create new behaviors. Then once we have developed our assertive interpersonal skills, we need to keep them sharp! We must guard against backsliding into people-pleasing, self-defeating conformity and capitulation to fear and shame. The next time you hear that little voice inside your head that makes you aware of what you want to do or say and which would be to your advantage, followed by that second little voice telling you to comply and conform, I hope you then will hear my voice. I hope you hear my voice say, “Go for it, do or say it politely and thoughtfully, but don’t back down, get out of your comfort zone…you can bear it. You can bear the awkward moment; you and I know it is worth it!”