How Do We Learn How to Assert and Stand Up for Ourselves?
A lot of people have problems asserting or standing up for themselves, present company included. If you can identify with this and failed over and over again to get over this, it’s possible that you have been going about it the wrong way. For some people, becoming assertive is more than about simply working on being more assertive and involves a more holistic approach where you work on YOU as a whole.
What I mean is that through my own journey, I’ve learned that if we were shamed or punished as kids by namely our parents for expressing anger towards them for crossing a boundary, we become disconnected from our anger. Anger is a natural response to someone crossing a boundary and can be used in a healthy way for us to assert these boundaries. When we’re disconnected from our anger due to shame and fear, we lose our ability to healthily assert and stand up for ourselves, hence the challenges you’re having now. We can learn to reconnect to our anger by going back into our past and allowing ourselves to feel the resentment and rage we had towards our parents for the wrong they did to us and giving these pent up feelings a healthy outlet. As we reconnect to our anger, we now have at our disposal the resources which notify us when someone crosses one of our boundaries, and from here, we can learn how to healthily assert and stand up for ourselves in these situation, using the anger as the fuel in a HEALTHY way.
This is The Viable Alternative.
Hope this helps.
Ike Love
