When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (10 page)

When you try to get adequate repairs on defective merchandise, or a refund, you will often observe salesclerks and managers saying things like: “Your problem is not with us. You have a problem with the manufacturer (or the body shop, or the factory, or the main office, or the importer, or the shipping fine, or the insurance company, etc.). The manufacturer won’t give us a refund for defective merchandise, so we can’t give you one.” This type of statement is a manipulative evasion of responsibility. If you allow the clerk or manager to make the decision for you that you must provide a solution to the store’s problem of staying in business and not losing money on defective merchandise, you are forced into the ludicrous position of: (1) ceasing to press your claim of value for money paid; (2) accepting the childish notion that you should not cause problems for the employees or the company; and (3) having the frustration of not knowing how to get what you want without causing problems for others. If, on the other hand, you make your own decision on whether or not you need to be responsible for finding a solution to the store’s problems with the manufacturer you can assertively reply: “I am not interested in your problems with the manufacturer (or the radiator shop, etc.). I am only
interested in getting acceptable repairs (or a refund for defective merchandise)

My favorite summary of the concept of defining your own responsibility for the problems of others was given in a joke, current several years ago. After being surrounded by 10,000 hostile Indians, the Lone Ranger turned to Tonto and remarked, “I guess this is it, Kimo Sabe. It looks like we have had it,” whereupon Tonto, surveying the impending disaster, turned and replied, “What do you mean
we, white man?”

ASSERTIVE RIGHT IV
You have the right
to change your
mind
.

As human beings, none of us is constant and rigid. We change our minds; we decide on better ways to do things; we even change the things we want to do; our interests change with conditions and the passage of time. Each of us has to recognize that our choices may work for us in one situation and against us in another. To be in touch with reality, to promote our own well-being and happiness, we have to accept the possibility that changing our minds is healthy and normal. But if you do change your mind, other people may resist your new choice by manipulation based on any of the childish beliefs we have seen, the most common of which goes something like this:
You should not change your mind after you have committed yourself. If you change your mind, something is wrong. You should justify your new choice or admit that you were in error. If you are in error, you have shown that you are irresponsible, likely to be wrong again, cause problems. Therefore you are not capable of making decisions by yourself
.

When returning merchandise you will frequently see examples of behavior produced by this manipulative belief. Recently I returned nine gallons of house paint to one of the largest retail department stores in the country. In filling out the credit slip, the clerk came to
the space marked “Reason for returning merchandise” and asked why the paint was being returned. I replied, “When I bought it, I was told that I could return any cans of unopened paint. I tried a gallon of it, didn’t like it, and changed my mind about using it” In spite of the official policy of the store, the clerk could not bring himself to write “changed mind” or “didn’t like it” in the blank space and persisted in asking for a reason why the paint was being returned, such as a defect poor color, wrong consistency,
etc.
In effect the clerk was asking me to invent a reason to satisfy him or possibly his superiors, to be dishonest to find something I could blame as an excuse for the irresponsible behavior of changing my mind. I was tempted at that point to say it upset my dog Wimpy’s sex life and let him figure that one out! Instead I persevered and told the clerk that there was nothing wrong with the paint. I simply changed my mind and decided not to use this particular paint on my home. Since the management had said that I could return any unopened cans, I was returning them and wanted my account credited. Apparently unable to conceive how any person, particularly a man, could simply change his mind and still feel comfortable with himself, the clerk had to confer with his supervisor before he would issue a refund. I could have let the clerk make a judgment for me that changing my mind was wrong. In that case if I could not find something to blame as a justification for my new decision, I would either have to be dishonest or keep the paint. As it turned out, I made my own judgment on the appropriateness of changing my mind, told the clerk that I just wanted a refund, and got it.

ASSERTIVE RIGHT V
You have the right to make
mistakes—and be
responsible for
them
.

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I cite this particular piece of wisdom attributed to Jesus not
so much for the compassion and tolerance he urges us to have for other people’s fallibility, but for the more practical observation he forces upon us; none of us is perfect. To err is part of the human condition. Our assertive right to make errors
and be responsible for them
simply describes part of the reality of being human. However, we are susceptible to manipulation by other people for their own ends if we do not recognize that errors are simply that; just errors. We allow manipulation of our behavior and emotions if we believe that errors are somehow “wrong” and “should” not be made. Many of us feel that since errors are “wrongdoing,” they must be atoned for and somehow a “right” behavior must be engaged in to make up for the error. This demand for atonement of errors which other people tack onto the tail end of our mistakes is the basis on which they manipulate our future behavior through our past mistakes. The childish belief underlying this manipulation is approximately as follows:
You must not make errors. Errors are wrong and cause problems to other people. If you make errors, you should feel guilty. You are likely to make more errors and problems and therefore you cannot cope properly or make proper decisions. Other people should control your behavior and decisions so you will not cause problems; in this way you can make up for the wrong you have done to them
. Again, as with our other childish beliefs, you can see this one expressed in our everyday behavior. As a result of this belief, husbands and wives, for instance, commonly try to control behavior in each other that is totally unrelated to their errors. This is done by implying that the mistakes of the spouse are “wrong” and therefore must somehow be atoned for (usually by doing something else the “offended” party wants done). For example, while balancing the family checkbook, a nonassertive husband may tell his wife with some emotion that she again forgot to write down the information on a check she wrote last month. Instead of coming right out assertively and saying, “I
don’t like it and want you to be more careful,” the husband implies with his emotional tone that his wife did something “wrong” and she owes him something because of it—perhaps at that moment only some visceral squirming as a token of guilty feelings to be made up for later on!

If the wife is nonassertive enough to let her husband make judgments about her behavior for her, she is likely to (1) deny the error; (2) give reasons why she could not make the entry; (3) pooh-pooh the importance of the error, forcing her husband either to suppress his feelings about her error, thereby resenting her, or to escalate the conflict into a fight to express his nonassertive angry feelings; or (4) apologize for making an error that inconvenienced him and feel resentfully obligated to make it up to him. If, on the other hand, his wife is assertive enough to make her own judgment about her errors, she would likely reply to his raising of the issue by saying: “You’re right. That was a dumb thing for me to do again and cause you all that extra work.” It’s a brief comment raises no future problems, and says a lot: I did make a mistake, the mistake made trouble for you, I’m not afraid to admit it. Like everyone else, I make mistakes too.

In trying to help modify the automatic feeling of guilt, anxiety, or ignorance that we experience in making an error, I instruct students learning to be assertive never to say they are sorry (at least in class;
later
, out in the world, they can decide whether and when to add “manners” to their behavior
once they have learned to be assertive
). Instead, I prompt them to simply state the facts of the situation. For example: “You’re right, I am late,” without apologizing for that behavior. My only problem with this teaching method is that most of my students, including those over sixty, report the facts of their errors to me in class
gleefully
with broad grins on their faces. This teaching method does help however, since, outside the class, most of them do take their errors unemotionally as well as assertively, without much gut squirming.

ASSERTIVE RIGHT VI
You have the right
to say, “I don’t
know.”

Another of your assertive rights is the ability to make judgments about what you want without needing to know everything before you do something. You have the right to say, “I don’t know” without having an immediate answer for questions people may ask you. Indeed, if you asked yourself what every possible outcome of your actions would be, before they occur, you are unlikely to accomplish much of anything, a condition probably much desired by the person manipulating you. If someone else behaves toward you as if you “should” know specific results of what would happen when you do what you want, he is assuming you have the following childish belief:
You should have answers to any question about the possible consequences of your actions, because if you don’t have answers, you are unaware of the problems you will cause other people and therefore you are irresponsible and must be controlled
. You can see common instances of manipulation based upon this belief in any of your different relationships with other people. Students learning to be assertive relate numerous incidents where other people accuse them of being irresponsible because of the consequences of being generally assertive. One manipulative husband tried to make his assertive wife return to her former submissive, readily controlled state by asking her: “What do you think would happen to this country if everybody decided to be his own judge?” In asking this question, her husband was trying to make his assertive wife feel ignorant and therefore incapable of making decisions for herself. His wife made her own decision on the importance of having an answer to this question and replied: “I don’t know. What would happen?”

In another case, a couple in their late fifties came to me for a mental health consultation on an involuntary hospitalization. As their story developed, it was apparent
that the husband wanted his wife committed to a mental hospital because she was refusing to live with him anymore and wanted her own little apartment where she could take care of her own needs and not have to put up with his constant harassment. In so many marital counseling cases, one of the spouses is dragged into therapy by the other in order to have the doctor tell the identified patient that he or she is guilty of misbehaving, doing the wrong thing,
etc.
When it became apparent to the husband that I was not going to help him in the control of his wife’s behavior and goals, or involuntarily hospitalize her because she wanted to be independent of him, he then tried to manipulate me. With contempt in his voice, he said; “Doctor! What would happen if every wife decided to have her own place and see who she wanted and run around with other men?” Resisting a sudden unprofessional urge to tell him my best guess on what might happen to his wife if she were to leave him, what chance she would have to become a real person again, I responded only to his question: “I really don’t know. What would happen?” Ignoring my lack of upset in answering him, he countered with, “Doctor, would you think it was right if your wife told you what she is telling me?” With complete candor, I replied: “Frankly, I would be less concerned about the right or wrong of what she’s wanting and more concerned about why she isn’t getting what she wants from me.” Perhaps unwilling to explore this approach to their difficulties as an alternative to locking up his wife, he took her in hand and left. Psychotherapy cannot be jammed down someone’s throat. It’s been tried many times and it won’t work if forced. This poor fellow was interested only in controlling his wife’s behavior and not improving their way of relating to each other. A sad circumstance, but unfortunately for many people, so often true.

Manipulation based upon the childish belief that you are required to know the answer to any question asked of you may be blatant as in the previous examples, or very subtle. In whatever form, it usually can be recognized
by phrases like “What would happen if …?”; “What do you think …?; “How would you feel if …?”; “What kind of friend, person, wife, son, daughter, parent, etc., would do …?” In dealing with such manipulation, you don’t have to know what would happen if … No one can know all and, perhaps at times,’
any
consequences of his own behavior. If the manipulator needs to speculate, let him!

ASSERTIVE RIGHT VII
You have the right to
be independent of
the goodwill of
others before
coping with
them
.

“No man is an island unto himself,” said John Donne, and this makes a lot of sense. Taking it one step further and saying that all men are my brothers and friends, however, exceeds the most gross literary license as well as common sense. No matter what you or I do, someone is not going to like it, someone may even get his feelings hurt as a result. If you assume that in order to adequately cope with anyone you first need his goodwill as a brother or a friend, you leave yourself open to as much manipulative leverage as your need for goodwill dictates. Contrary to this common assumption,
you do not need the goodwill of other people to deal with them effectively and assertively
. Paraphrasing John Donne, we humans don’t make very good isolated islands when we cut ourselves off from everybody, but we make damned fine peninsulas by being realistically sensitive only to the needs of those relatively few people in our lives to whom we are very close. People we deal with commercially or authoritatively may remove their goodwill toward us permanently, but we still have the ability to do business with them without their liking us. My students frequently object to this point of view, saying that they don’t like to make a waiter or a salesclerk uncomfortable by being assertive when something
goes wrong. I usually respond to their objections with statements like: “Gee, I don’t understand. It sounds like the waiter invited you over for a free meal from the way you are talking and he is offering you a poor gift but it’s all he has,” or “It sounds like the salesclerk was donating all his salary to charity when he sold you the ten-speed bike that only operated in four gears. Is that correct?” and “Correct me if I’m in error, but it seems that in these situations either you or the waiter is going to feel uncomfortable. Which one would you rather it be—you or him?”