The Nice Girl Syndrome (22 page)

How Fear Contributes to the Inability to Stand Up

As you can see, fear plays a significant role in women’s inability to stand up for themselves. Fear can motivate women to remain help- less victims, often staying in abusive situations. Those who put up with unacceptable or abusive behavior do so out of fear of more extreme violence, fear of abandonment, fear of being alone, or some- times, fear of their own anger.

Here are some specific ways that fear contributes to the inabil- ity to stand up for oneself:

• Those who were neglected or abandoned as children are often consumed with a fear of being alone or of being rejected or
  

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abandoned. This can cause them to put up with unacceptable or abusive behavior from others.

• Many neglected and abused children grow up to be adults who are afraid to take risks, including the risk of striking out on their own. Many people who were terrorized as children will remain dependent on their abusive parents and be unable to separate from them. Others leave their abusive parents only to attach themselves to a partner who is controlling.
  

• Those who are afraid they will become like an abusive parent often submerge their anger and take on a passive stance, allowing others to treat them unfairly or even to abuse them.
  

• Children who grow up in a climate of domination and abuse develop pathological attachments to those who abuse and neg- lect them, attachments they will strive to maintain even at the sacrifice of their own welfare, their own reality, or their very lives. A childhood history of placating an abusive parent or other caretaker naturally leads to placating a partner, espe- cially an abusive one. The idea of being able to say no to the emotional demands of a partner, parent, or authority figure may be inconceivable to them. Although an adult woman does not consciously seek an abusive relationship, when abuse does occur it is often viewed by her as the inevitable price of hav- ing any relationship.
  

• A woman who was “trained” to believe she does not have any choices is more likely to cope than to escape.
  

• Children who grow up constantly afraid become immobilized by their fear. Their fear becomes so all-encompassing that it often crowds out other reactions, such as anger, that would be natural under the circumstances.
  

• Those raised by domineering and authoritarian parents grow up fearing their parents and were taught to equate respect with fear.
  

• Children who were raised in an environment of unpredictabil- ity, emotional chaos, and terror tend to grow up with the inability to trust. This may be because they did not have a secure attachment to a parent, because their parent betrayed them by crossing important personal boundaries (as in sexual
  

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  abuse), or because their parents could not be relied on due to their inconsistency or neglect. In adult relationships, this lack of trust is expressed by extreme insecurity, possessiveness, and jealousy, which can translate into dependence and being unable to stand up for oneself.
  

  Remedies
  

  Remedy #1: Determine Why It Is So Difficult for You to Stand Up
  

  It is important to determine whether your problem concerning standing up for yourself was caused primarily by the messages you received from society when growing up, messages (spoken and unspoken) from your parents, negative experiences when you tried to stand up for yourself in the past, or abusive experiences as a child or an adult. The following exercise will help you with this dis- covery.
  

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  The following questions are meant to help you to spend some time evaluating your past and making connections between the messages and the experiences you had as a child and your behavior today.
  

• What messages do you remember receiving from your par- ents, other authority figures, and society in general about girls being assertive?
  

• If you were overly controlled, dominated, or abused as a child, how has the fear you felt affected you as an adult? For example, do you tend to placate those you are afraid of?
  

• In your determination to never become like your domineer- ing or abusive parents, have you gone to the other extreme and submerged all assertiveness and aggression to the point that you allow others to dominate you?
  

• What has been your experience when you have stood up for yourself in the past?
  

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Remedy #2: Recognize the Price You Pay for Not Standing Up

Women pay a heavy price for not standing up for themselves. They are often seen as weak by other people because they have lost their voice. In my book
Loving Him without Losing You: How to Stop Disappearing and Start Being Yourself
, I wrote about how many women complain about not being listened to, heard, or “seen” by their partner. These women often feel that their partner ignores their feelings and needs and that they are taken for granted. When they do muster enough strength to voice an opinion or to disagree with their partners, they usually have the experience of being ignored or discounted.

This is what Denise, a “disappearing” woman, told me: “I learned early in my marriage that it just wasn’t worth it for me to get angry with my husband or even to disagree with him. He’d end up getting even more angry with me than I was with him. He’d rant and rave for hours, and I’d end up feeling really small. So now I just go along with whatever he says or does.” Unfortunately, Denise was becoming more invisible every day. While it may have seemed hope- less to communicate her feelings to her husband, by giving up try- ing, she had sacrificed a part of herself in the process. And by keeping quiet, she was sending the message that it was okay for her husband to treat her inappropriately.

Some women don’t give up stating their grievances altogether; they simply choose to do so in a passive way. The most common way women make their complaints known is to whine. But whining makes others perceive them as a victim, a martyr, or a loser, and causes others to lose respect for them.

By not standing up for themselves when it is appropriate, many women damage their self-esteem. They become angry with and ashamed of themselves for putting up with inappropriate behavior. The more they put up with, the worse they feel. Soon, they begin to believe they don’t have the right to complain. They convince them- selves they are making a big thing out of nothing, or they become so dependent that they are terrified of making their partner angry and risking being abandoned.

Women who don’t stand up for themselves often develop physi- cal and emotional illnesses. Many become depressed because they feel

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so hopeless and helpless about being able to change their lives and because they turn their anger inward. Many are prone to certain types of headaches, muscle tension, nervous conditions, and insomnia.

And there is another, very important price women pay for not standing up for themselves: if they continue to pretend there is no problem or to run away from an adverse situation or the abusive per- son, there is no way they can fix what’s wrong. Not only do they neglect to find solutions to their problems but their inability to stand up for themselves often prevents them from getting what they want. Whether it is telling a partner that they are tired of sitting home every weekend or telling their boss that they need a raise, taking the risk to stand up for themselves can actually help them to have their needs met.

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1. Make a list of all the ways you pay a price for not standing up for yourself.
   

2. Review this list periodically to remind yourself of how important it is to begin standing up for yourself.
   

Remedy #3: Begin to Overcome Your Learned Helplessness

It is especially difficult for those who were abused in childhood to act on their own behalf. Those who were victimized as a child often suffer from learned helplessness—the belief that they cannot control the outcome of any situation through their own actions. Those with this mind-set believe that nothing can be gained by standing up for one’s rights or protecting oneself from harm. Therefore, even though you may feel angry about the way someone is treating you, if you have this mind-set you might think to your- self, “What good will it do to tell this person how I feel? It won’t change anything.”

It is very important for you to understand that the main purpose of your standing up for yourself and confronting inappropriate behavior is
not
to change the other person. The purpose is for you to stand up so that
you
will begin to feel better about yourself. Standing up to someone who is treating you poorly will help your

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self-esteem. It will help you to feel less powerless and less hopeless. It will help you to gain self-respect.

Fortunately, there will be times when your standing up will have a positive effect on the other person. Sometimes the other person will suddenly realize that his or her behavior was inappropriate and will therefore change it. And we know that some abusers will respect and cease to attempt to dominate women who stand up for them- selves. But again, changing the other person is not the primary rea- son to confront him or her. Standing up is for you. It is for your self-respect and self-esteem.

Remedy #4: Learn How to Cope with Your Fear

As we discussed earlier in this chapter, there is a strong likelihood that the reason you have difficulty standing up for yourself is that you are afraid. The message of fear is that something requires your attention. It means that you need to be prepared for something. Most often, fear signals danger. Unfortunately, those who were abused as children often live their life in a state of fear, even when there is no imminent danger. If you are aware that you are feeling afraid or anxious, ask yourself if there is something currently going on in your life that you need to be afraid of or concerned about. If you cannot find anything in the present, assume it is your anxiety and fear from the past.

There are positive ways of dealing with this kind of fear based on the past:

• Feel the fear but don’t become overwhelmed by it.
  You may have heard the phrase, “What you resist, persists.” This can some- times be true of fear. By simply acknowledging your fear, allowing yourself to feel it, and then breathing into it, you may be amazed at how your fear diminishes. The same is true of anxiety. Simply trying to accept it, letting yourself feel it, may be the best way to handle it. Battling with it is likely to create a greater internal struggle.
  

• Ask yourself if it is appropriate to be feeling fear.
  Your fear or anx- iety today may be the same as you experienced in childhood abuse situations, albeit in a different form. By connecting your current fear to past experiences, you will put distance and
  

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perspective on the situation. Doing so will enable you to reduce the fear and help you work through it.

Remedy #5: Begin to Set and Enforce Better Boundaries and Limits

As clichéd as it may sound, Nice Girls need to learn to set better boundaries for themselves. They need to learn to say no more often. They need to be willing to say what they want and need, even when it inconveniences someone else.

Many of you are probably familiar with the concept of bound- aries; for those of you who are not, here is a brief overview of exactly what boundaries are and how to set them. A boundary is a limit, a demarcation. Personal boundaries define the territory of your per- sonal space. There are physical and emotional boundaries that separate us from other people. Your skin is an example of a physical boundary, since your skin creates a physical barrier that separates you from all other living and nonliving organisms. We also have an invisible boundary around our bodies that is often referred to as our “comfort zone.” Our comfort zone varies, depending on the situation. For example, you are no doubt much more comfortable allowing a friend to stand close to you than you would be with a stranger.

An emotional boundary usually takes the form of a limit. We all have limits as to what feels appropriate and safe when it comes to how others treat us emotionally. What may feel fine to you may feel uncomfortable to your partner. But unless you tell your partner you are uncomfortable, he or she will never know and will continue treating you in a manner that is uncomfortable to you. This doesn’t help either one of you. If you allow someone to emotionally abuse you, for example, you are not honoring and protecting your bound- aries and you are participating in the erosion of your relationship.

A boundary violation occurs when someone crosses the physical or emotional limits set by another person. All relationships, even our most intimate ones, have limits as to what is appropriate. When someone crosses the line between what is appropriate and inappro- priate, whether they do it knowingly or unknowingly, that person has violated our boundary.

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