The Nice Girl Syndrome (21 page)

E
XERCISE
: Y
OUR
F
EELINGS ABOUT

Y
OUR
C
HILDHOOD

1. Make a list of all the ways you were neglected or abused as a child.
   

2. For each item you have listed, write about the following:
   

   • How you felt at the time
     

   • The effect the neglect or abuse had on you at the time
     

   • How you feel now as you remember the experience
     

   • What effect you believe the experience has had on you long term—especially as it relates to your being a Nice Girl
     

3. As you write about each incident of neglect or abuse, allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come up for you. It is appropriate for you to feel angry, enraged, afraid, terrified, sad, grief-stricken, guilty, ashamed, or any other emotions you may feel. On the other hand, do not become alarmed if you do not feel anything. Survivors of childhood and neglect often numb themselves to their feelings as a self- protective mechanism.
   

4. If at all possible, share your writings with at least one other person. Most victims of childhood neglect or abuse did not have what is called a compassionate witness to their pain and anguish. Telling a loved one about what happened to you and receiving your loved one’s support and kindness can be a major step in the healing process.
   

Now that you know the truth, it is yours to use for recovery. There is healing in discovering the truth, facing it, and finally in accepting it. Your realization of the facts about your childhood clears the way for dealing with your anger and resolving your rela- tionships with your family. You have lived with lies, secrecy, and deception for a long time, and it has been painful. Learning to live

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with the truth will help free you from the pain and lead you toward a fuller, richer life.

Women who play gullible and naive generally do so because it pays off so well. One of the remedies is for women to begin to under- stand that the payoffs actually aren’t as big as the price they pay in terms of their self-esteem, self-respect, and safety. They may get taken care of but they aren’t respected. They may get special atten- tion but from the wrong kind of people.

E
XERCISE
: P
UTTING
I
T
D
OWN IN

B
LACK AND
W
HITE

1. Write down all the positives about acting innocent and naive—all the perks you receive from those behaviors.
   

2. Now write the negatives to acting innocent and naive.
   

3. Now compare your lists. If you are being honest, you should notice that there are many more negatives to playing innocent and naive than there are positives, or that the positives aren’t as significant as the negatives you experience.
   

Women who play gullible and naive are usually trying to avoid grow- ing up and taking responsibility for themselves. But there are many benefits to behaving in a more grown-up fashion. Recognizing these more substantial payoffs—such as gaining self-respect, the respect of others, and attracting emotionally healthier partners who do not need to dominate and control you—will help you to give up the pay- offs you are now receiving.

E
XERCISE
: T
HE
P
AYOFFS TO
G
ROWING
U
P

Make a list of the payoffs you can and will experience when you choose to grow up and take care of yourself.

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IRL
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YNDROME

Your naive and innocent act may be the result of your refusal to grow up or your desire to remain in denial. Whichever the case, create a positive and powerful statement to counter these negative desires.

9

Start Standing Up for Your Rights

Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

—E
LEANOR
R
OOSEVELT

False belief:
I don’t have the right to act on my own behalf.

Empowering belief:
I have the right to act on my own behalf when necessary, including saying no when I don’t want to do something.

This chapter is especially beneficial for Victims, Doormats

T

here are many reasons women have difficulty standing up for themselves. They often find it hard to say no because they feel selfish if they refuse to help someone—even when their own needs are more important at the moment. In addition, they are often afraid people will dislike them if they aren’t cooperative, as was the situa- tion with my client Jayda: “No matter how obnoxious someone is, I try to get along with them. It’s part of the whole thing about being ‘nice.’ I make sure I never alienate anyone, but in the process I get

taken advantage of.”

Women often have a fear that if they stand up for themselves, they will be seen as overbearing, domineering, or bitchy. Maria was raised to be obedient and polite. However, other people take advan- tage of her because of her niceness. She wants to start standing up for

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IRL
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YNDROME

herself but doesn’t know how to do it without feeling like she’s being rude. “I hate it when women are aggressive. It is so unattractive. I want to stand up for myself but not at the expense of my femininity,” she explained during a group therapy session for Nice Girls.

It takes a lot of courage and self-respect to act on your own behalf. It takes a strong belief that you deserve something better. Unfortunately, many women don’t have this kind of self-respect and don’t believe they deserve to be treated better. Many are afraid to hope for better treatment because they have yet to receive it. To be able to stand up for yourself, you need to give up waiting for some- one else to come to rescue you and your belief that you have no power to change your circumstances. You will need to reach out— ever so tenuously—toward accepting that you have more power to change your circumstances than you think you do. Fortunately, when women focus their considerable strength and will to change something, they are often surprised at how much power they actu- ally have.

You have the right to live your life the way you choose, as long as you are not stepping on someone else’s rights. But rights don’t mean much if you don’t have the courage to claim them. Unfor- tunately, many women have had their courage stripped away by societal expectations and messages and overly domineering parents, or from having been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused in childhood or adulthood.

In this chapter, you will receive the information and encourage- ment you need to take the risk of standing up for yourself. You will be given the tools that will help you to find your courage and to begin to believe in yourself.

For some of you, claiming your rights will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life.

Societal Reasons for Women’s Difficulty in Standing Up for Themselves

Many women have learned to remain silent out of a sense of protec- tion. As mentioned earlier, there is a long history of oppression against women, and we all carry this legacy inside us. Women are also silenced because of the misperception that we talk too much and how men treat us when we do try to stand up for ourselves.

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Studies have documented that women actually speak less than men do and get interrupted more often. Also, women often find that when they do try to speak up, they are not taken seriously; they are ignored, undermined, or misunderstood. Research shows that men tend to not listen to women, even when the women are their bosses. Because of this, many women have learned to remain silent.

Unfortunately, as women, we need to learn that silence doesn’t really protect us and that there is a price to pay for remaining silent. In fact, our silences not only do not afford us protection but render us more vulnerable. They label us as weak and wimpy. By remain- ing silent when someone offends us, crosses a boundary, or becomes abusive, we in essence give that person permission to continue his or her inappropriate behavior.

Childhood Experiences and the Fear of Standing Up

Women who experienced abuse in their childhood homes (either directly or vicariously—by witnessing their mother or another child being abused) are far more likely to have difficulty standing up for themselves than are women who did not experience abuse. For example, many battered women share the common characteristics of low self-esteem, a poor self-image, and a childhood marred by abuse or neglect. Women who were abused (either emotionally, physically, or sexually) or neglected by family members have little or no concept of normal family intimacy that they can bring to adult relationships. Being hurt by those who were supposed to love and protect them is nothing new.

According to the
Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry
, the com- mon denominator of psychological trauma is a feeling of “intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation.” Survivors of childhood abuse consistently report an overwhelming sense of helplessness. In abusive families, rules are usually erratic, inconsistent, or patently unfair, and survivors frequently report that what frightened them the most was the unpredictable nature of the violence. Unable to find any way to avert the abuse, they learn to adopt a position of complete surrender that they often carry into their adult lives and relationships.

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The constant fear of death is reported by many survivors. Sometimes the child is silenced by violence or by a direct threat of murder. The man who molested me when I was nine threatened to kill me if I told anyone, and I believed him, since I knew he had already been in a mental hospital, supposedly for beating his ex-wife. More often, survivors report threats that resistance or disclosure will result in the death of someone else in the family. Threats of violence may also be directed against pets; many survivors report being forced to witness the sadistic abuse of animals.

Children in an abusive environment develop extraordinary abilities to scan for warning signs of attack. They become what is commonly referred to by professionals in the field as hyper- vigilant, meaning that they develop extraordinary abilities to notice any warning signs of an impending attack. They learn to recognize subtle changes in the facial expression, voice, and body language as signals of anger, sexual arousal, intoxication, or disso- ciation.

When abused children note signs of danger, they attempt to pro- tect themselves by either avoiding or placating the abuser. Some become quiet and immobile. The result is the peculiar, seething state of “frozen watchfulness” noted in abused children.

When avoidance fails, children attempt to appease their abusers through obedience. The arbitrary enforcement of rules, combined with the constant fear of serious harm or death, produces a paradox- ical result. On the one hand, it convinces children of their utter help- lessness and the futility of resistance. Many develop the belief that their abusers have absolute or even supernatural powers, can read their thoughts, can control their lives entirely. On the other hand, it motivates children to prove their loyalty and compliance. They dou- ble and redouble their efforts to gain control of the situation in the only way that seems possible—by trying to be good. It is easy to see how this learned helplessness and need to please can translate into a victim pattern in adulthood. We see the very same behaviors in battered women.

When I first met Teresa, I knew she had been terrorized in some way. She had the look of a deer caught in the headlights. She stared straight ahead and didn’t blink her eyes, and her eyes also had the familiar glazed-over look that I have seen so often in abuse victims. She had come into therapy because she was depressed, was experi-

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encing a lack of energy, was frequently late for important appoint- ments, and was afraid she would lose her job because of it.

While I was taking Teresa’s history, it came out that her mother had been an extremely abusive woman who would fly off the handle at little or no provocation. “You never knew when she was going to go off,” Teresa explained. When her mother “went off,” she tore into her with horrendous accusations and insults. She’d scream and yell obscenities and attack Teresa where she was most vulnerable. After such an attack, Teresa said she felt like “a Mack truck had run over me—I just felt like crawling off somewhere to die.”

As a result of these constant surprise attacks, Teresa was always on the alert for any sign that her mother was getting ready to attack. This caused her body to be in a constant state of tension and stress. As a result, even when Teresa grew up and moved away from her mother, she maintained her hypervigilant frame of mind. She was always leery of other people, even her husband, constantly expect- ing them to attack her as her mother did. She was unable to relax her body and suffered from severe neck, shoulder, and back pain most of her life.

Because of her abusive childhood, it was impossible for Teresa to stand up for herself. As she became more and more comfortable talk- ing with me, she shared with me that she felt her husband was overly controlling. She wanted desperately to stand up to him, but she couldn’t because she was so afraid of what he would do to her.