Standing Up For Yourself

Standing up for yourself can be terrifying for survivors of emotional abuse.
This episode will walk you through the process so you can begin advocating for yourself.

Book a session with me: https://calendly.com/gerdungmelinda/coaching-session

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Find out more about my work: www.melindagerdungcoaching.com

Book a session with me: https://calendly.com/gerdungmelinda/coaching-session


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Beat Provided By https://freebeats.io
Produced By White Hot
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Transcript

0:21

Hey my friends welcome back. Have you ever noticed that thing that some people will do when something happens but they don't want you to be upset about it or they don't want to do anything themselves to fix it? Like, for example, I stayed in this small boutique hotel once and the TV remote was broken. Like I couldn't change the channel or volume or anything. And I wanted to watch Survivor. I'm a huge Survivor fan, like I never miss a week. So I got the hotel owner to come and try to fix the TV and he couldn't fix it. He didn't know how. And he just started saying over and over again "it's okay you don't need it anyway." Like he was doing some kind of Jedi mind trick to get me to buckle under and agree that yes, it's fine that the TV's broken I don't need him to fix it. Another example is when a nail technician at a salon cut this big hole in my foot. All the other technicians came over and they they were all saying to me like it's fine, you're fine. It's totally fine. It's fine. You're fine. Even though my foot had a big gaping bloody hole in it. In both cases, there was a pressure from those people to not be upset, to not need them to fix anything, and to just agree with them that it was fine. To just kind of like ignore my own needs or my own experience and just not rock the boat. And this was one of those things that was really hard for me coming out of my abusive marriage. Like, if I got that sort of pressures from someone, I would just buckle under immediately. I was trained to be scared to make waves. I was trained to ignore my own needs to put other people's comfort above my own. So when that hotel owner told me I didn't need to watch TV, I just agreed with him. Just so as not to be difficult. I didn't want to be difficult. I didn't want to make waves. I didn't want to make a scene. I couldn't stand to face down someone else's annoyance or anger. And it really just boiled down to fear. Being afraid of what other people would think of me or would do if I didn't agree with them or if I asserted myself more strongly. And trauma will do that to you. It did that to me. I was unable to assert myself at all or advocate for myself in any way. I ordered a steak once at a restaurant and I ordered it rare because I like my steak to be only missing the moo like that thing needs to be bloody when it comes back. And instead of coming back bloody it came back well done. And the guy I was with said that I should send it back that it clearly wasn't what I ordered. And I was just like oh no, it's not what I ordered but I don't want to send it back. I don't want to be troublesome. I don't want to be trouble. So I just ate boot leather steak. And it can be easy to think so what? To think that it's harmless to just eat the boot leather steak. To justify to ourselves not troubling or inconveniencing others. Right? No one wants to be a Karen. And sure, fine, eating some boot leather steak isn't the end of the world. But what about when the stakes are higher? What about when you're getting frisky with a dude but he says he doesn't like the way condoms feel so he's just not going to use one? What then? When your health and safety is on the line, what then? Can you refuse him? Can you insist he wear one anyway? This guy that you like and you want to like you? If you cannot advocate for the small things, how are you going to be able to advocate for the bigger things-- the things that are going to have more pressure attached to them? Because I promise you there'll be more resistance to putting on a condom than taking an order of steak back. Can you withstand that pressure without buckling? If you're anything like me when I was coming out of my abusive marriage, you probably won't. If you don't have the ability to withstand the pressure from others, you will be buckling under it even when the stakes are high. Even when it could hurt you a lot. This is the truth. This is my truth. This is my experience. I had to learn how to withstand the pressure from other people. I had to learn to be okay with being contrarian sometimes. I had to learn how to advocate for myself. And this is something that is usually terrifying to abuse survivors. But it is so so so critical. So let's talk about how to go about learning to advocate for yourself and not buckle under. The answer to how you do this is practice. And I know you hate that answer. No one likes this answer. But this is a skill. And as with all skills, they get better with practice. If you think about how do you get good at lifting 50 pound weights: you first get good at lifting 10 pound weights and then 20 and 30 and so on. You keep practicing and you keep pushing. And this is really no different. You start small. Start by sending that food back at the restaurant. Start by voicing a disagreeing opinion with someone that you would normally just keep to yourself. Start by saying no to something you feel obligated to do. No explaining yourself. No justifying yourself. Just asserting yourself. And then practice allowing yourself to feel the discomfort that is gonna come up for you when you do that. Don't try to fix it or stop it. Just talk yourself through it. The discomfort won't last forever and no one will die. And you'll get through it and survive it and then you'll feel really fucking proud of yourself. And you'll just keep doing that until the day that it gets easy. Until you know that no one can make you do anything. That you always have a choice and you're always in charge of you. I can remember the first time I ever advocated for myself. I had braces as an adult. I never had them as a kid growing up so I ended up getting them later in life as an adult. So I was at the orthodontist and the girl was adjusting my braces and I didn't think she was very good at it. I'd had them adjusted many times before and she just kept pinching me. And it was starting to really bother me. And so I told her that I wanted someone else to do it. And my heart was beating out of my chest. And she got annoyed or upset or something. I actually couldn't recognize the exact emotion, but something negative. She had a reaction, a negative reaction. But she had someone else come over and finish me and it went much better in the sense that I wasn't getting pinched anymore. But I was like trembling with the adrenaline from saying I wanted someone else. And afterwards, when it was all over, I was so fucking proud of myself. Because I stood up for myself and I had never done that before. It was hard like I was scared. I was shaking. But I didn't die. No one died. Like the worst that happened was someone was a little bit upset. And I compare that to now. So a little while ago, I think it was actually a year ago now. Wow. I had a UTI and I went to the ER so I could get some antibiotics. And I must have been too hydrated because the bacteria wasn't showing up in my pee test. So the doctor was like you don't have a UTI. And I'm like yes I do. I know what they feel like and I was pissing blood like I'm not gonna piss blood for no reason. And he was like, maybe you're menstruating. As if I, who have menstruated for 20 years, might not be able to tell the difference between pissing blood and menstruating. And so I just continued to insist that I had a UTI and I insisted he write me a prescription for the antibiotics. And he did not want to. He kept pushing back. And I kept insisting. And I did walk away with my prescription and good thing too because a few hours later I was in a horrendous amount of pain and was pissing blood clots the size of my fingernail. Nothing that big should ever come out of your piss hole ever, just saying. But because I had stood up to that arrogant ass of a doctor, my script was already being filled. And my fear level when pushing back against that doctor was zero. My heart rate did not even go up. I didn't even have anxiety and I'm like made of anxiety. Zero nerves. Just absolute certainty of what I need and an unwillingness to back down until I get it. And I share that with you as an example that one, it is possible with practice to be able to advocate fearlessly. And two, that it does matter. It would have colossally sucked if I didn't have that prescription already be filled when that pain hit. This skill matters. It will impact your life in huge ways. And you can do it. If my scaredy ass can do it, yours can too. Remember when you're working on building a new skill it's not a smooth ride. So give yourself the grace and compassion while you're working to build that skill. When I think about the first time I ever advocated for myself, it wasn't like oh, I advocated for myself once and then I did it every single time perfectly from then on out. No, I buckled under a few times after that. But you know the next opportunity always arises. There's always another opportunity to advocate for yourself. And you can take each opportunity to build that skill and to get a little bit better and a little bit more fearless. And if you keep with it, I promise you you can get to the place where it doesn't feel scary anymore. I'm here to support you if you'd like it. You can book a session with me using my calendar link which I'll put in the show notes. Alright my friends so practice advocating for yourself. Practice standing up for yourself. Practice asserting yourself. Until next time, be well