When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (9 page)

The concepts of right and wrong may also be wrapped around a law and used in an attempt to punish “wrong” behavior in the streets by police officers. “Legal” manipulation of this sort was attempted on me recently by a traffic officer of a Los Angeles area police department. After being stopped and ticketed for going 63 mph in a 65 mph zone on the freeway by this middle-aged, mustachioed, pot-bellied centurion in baggy khakis, I was then supposed to feel guilty too: “If you want to be a
putz
(Yiddish for male genitals) in the slow lane, that’s okay. But if you are a
putz
in the fast lane, that’s wrong so don’t do it again!” Not only did he want me to pay a fine for going too slow, but he also expected me to feel like a
“putz”
(guilty) because of his judgment of me. He seemed a bit disappointed over my
lack of emotion, but was able to recover his poise once he mounted his Yamaha and drove off.

When systems of right and wrong are used, psychological guilt results. When laws are used to induce psychological guilt, these laws, or their enforcers, violate your human assertive right to be the ultimate judge of your own emotions. Such
emotionally used
laws are radically different in their effect from other laws. If you decide to assert yourself in the face of an ordinarily enforced law, you can break the law and face the legally prescribed consequences, i.e., a civil judgment against you, a fine, or a jail sentence. That is your own decision. It may or may not be wise in someone’s view, but it is your decision, just as the consequences, positive or negative, are yours. If you decide to break an “emotional law,” you not only face legal consequences but are also expected, irrespective of your own judgment, to feel psychological guilt for breaking such a law. A very clear though extreme example of an emotional law can be seen in the case of conscientious objectors to the draft. Men with sincere beliefs that war is a tragic waste of man’s efforts and who will have nothing to do with war have been routinely sentenced by courts to several years of menial work like cleaning out bedpans in hospitals in lieu of a jail sentence. While cleaning out things like bedpans may not sound attractive, that part of the court sentence is trivial. What is important is that the freedom of the conscientious objector to go home at night depends greatly upon the system of rights and wrongs held by the hospital staff, or even upon their whims. If the staff does not like the C.O., they fire him and he may go to jail. In plain language, when a judge sets up this sort of arrangement, he is really telling the C.O., “You are sentenced to several years of licking someone else’s boots to stay out of jail. You will not be your own judge, but I am making them the judge of all you do.” The C.O.’s choice is clear: go to jail or renounce your right to be your own judge of yourself. Such an arrangement, if not successful in making the C.O. feel guilty by seeing his “error,” at least punishes him for using his own judgment in not
“defending” his country. He is made to agree to give up his assertive right to judge himself in other areas for several years.

These examples of legal manipulative emotional control point out the ultimate misuse of the consent of the governed. No government can be democratic if it attempts to regulate or manipulate the emotional state of its people. In my reading of the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies from Great Britain, for example, I can find no section that would empower the American government to engage in the punishment of legal offenses by controlling the emotions of the offender. I do read, however, that we are entitled to certain inalienable rights, among them, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you do not exercise your assertive right to be the ultimate judge of yourself, then the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are just words printed on paper.

Now, let us look at your other assertive rights, all derived from your basic right to be your own ultimate judge. We’ll also take a look at the most common ways other people manipulatively violate these rights.

3
Our everyday assertive rights—
the common ways other
people manipulate us

Being your own judge has a great number of implications for your behavior and thoughts about yourself and other people. But how do you translate this one overall statement about yourself into common language that relates meaningfully to your everyday living. How can you tell when you are being manipulated, when your assertive human right is being violated? One way we all know, unfortunately, is after the fact; when you say to yourself: “I don’t know how it happened, but I’ve got that uncomfortable, queasy feeling that I’ve been had.” This after-the-fact feeling, again unfortunately, is not much help to you for future coping except that we tend to avoid people who are consistently associated with our “being had.” To help you recognize
that
you are being manipulated
when
you are being manipulated, this chapter lists the most common ways other people will use to manipulate you and your everyday assertive rights in those situations.

ASSERTIVE RIGHT II
You have the right to
offer no reasons
or excuses to
justify your
behavior
.

As with the remaining assertive rights listed in this chapter, the right not to give reasons for what you do is derived from your prime assertive right to be the ultimate judge of all you are and do. If you are your own
ultimate judge, you do not need to explain your behavior to someone else for them to decide if it is right, wrong, correct, incorrect, or whatever tag they want to use. Of course, other people always have the assertive option to tell you they do not like what you are doing. You then have the option to disregard their preferences, or work out a compromise, or respect their preferences and change your behavior completely. But if you are your own ultimate judge, other people do not have the right to manipulate your behavior and feelings by demanding reasons from you in order to convince you that you are wrong. The childish belief that underlies this type of manipulation goes something like this:
You should explain your reasons for your behavior to other people since you are responsible to them for your actions. You should justify your actions to them
. An everyday use of this manipulative belief is seen, for example, when a salesclerk asks a customer who is returning a pair of shoes: “Why don’t you like these shoes?” (Unspoken: it seems unusual for someone not to like these shoes.) With this question the salesclerk is making a judgment for the customer that she should have a reason for not liking the shoes that is satisfactory to him. If the customer lets the salesclerk decide that there must be some reason for not liking the shoes, she will feel ignorant. Feeling ignorant, the customer will likely feel compelled to explain why she doesn’t like the shoes. If she does give reasons, she allows the salesclerk to give her equally valid reasons why she should like them. Depending upon who can think up the most reasons, she or the salesclerk, she will probably finish by keeping a pair of shoes she doesn’t like, as the following manipulative dialogue points out:

SALESCLERK
: Why don’t you like these shoes?

CUSTOMER
: They’re the wrong shade of magenta.

SALESCLERK
: Nonsense, dear! This is just the color you need to match your toenail polish!

CUSTOMER
: But they are too loose and the heel straps keep falling down.

SALESCLERK
: We can fix that by putting in arch pads. They are only $3.95.

CUSTOMER
: But they are too tight in the instep.

SALESCLERK
: Simple to fix! I’ll take them in the back right now and stretch them a little.

If the customer makes her own decision on whether or not she requires an answer to the “why” question, she is more likely to respond simply by stating the facts of the situation: “No reason, I just don’t like the shoes.”

People whom I teach to be assertive, invariably ask, “How can I refuse to give reasons to a friend when he asks for them? He won’t like that.” My answer is a series of provocative questions in reply: “How come your friend is requiring you to give reasons to explain your behavior?” “Is that a condition of his friendship, that you allow him to make decisions about the appropriateness of your behavior?” “If you don’t give him a reason for not lending him your car, is that all that is required to end your friendship?” “How valuable is such a fragile friendship?” If some of your friends refuse to acknowledge your assertive right to halt manipulation by being your own judge, perhaps these friends are incapable of dealing with you on any other basis but manipulation. Your choice in friends, like anything else, is entirely up to you.

ASSERTIVE RIGHT III
You have the right to judge whether
you are responsible for
finding solutions to
other people’s
problems
.

Each of us is ultimately responsible for our own psychological well-being, happiness, and success in life. As much as we might wish good things for one another, we really do not have the ability to create mental stability, well-being, or happiness for someone else.

You have the ability to please someone temporarily by doing what he or she wants, but that person has to
go through all the work, sweat, pain, and fear of failure to arrange his own life in a way that makes him healthy and happy. In spite of your compassion for the troubles of others, the reality of the human condition is that each of us must come to terms with the problems of living by learning to cope on our own. This reality is expressed in one of the first principles of modern psychotherapy. Practitioners of this healing art have learned that the process of therapy does not solve problems for the patient, but helps the patient gain the ability to solve his own problems. Any of us can help temporarily by giving advice or counsel, but the person with the problem has the responsibility to solve it himself. Your own actions may even have been directly or indirectly the cause of their problems. Nevertheless, other people have the ultimate responsibility to solve their own problems, no matter who or what the cause may be. If you do not recognize your assertive right to choose to be responsible only for yourself, other people can and will manipulate you into doing what they want by presenting their own problems to you as if they were your problems. The childish belief underlying this type of manipulation goes something like this:
You have an obligation to things and institutions greater than yourself which groups of other people have set up to conduct the business of living. You should sacrifice your own values to keep these systems from falling apart. If these systems do not always work effectively, you should bend or change, not the system. If any problems occur in dealing with the system, they are your problems and not the responsibility of the system
. Examples of manipulative behavior produced by this childish belief abound in our common dealings with people. You may see wives or husbands manipulate each other by saying: “If you don’t stop irritating me, we are going to have to get a divorce.” Statements like this induce guilty feelings by implying that the marriage contract and relationship are more important than the individual desires and happiness of either partner. If their mates also have this childish belief, they have the option (1) to do what they want individually
and feel guilty for placing their own wants above the marriage relationship, or (2) to do what their spouses want and be frustrated, angry, aggressively cause more friction, or get depressed and withdraw. If the marriage partner threatened with divorce nonassertively responds with a defensive posture that divorce is not a possible alternative solution to their problems, he or she may be manipulated into doing what the spouse wants, as pointed out in the following dialogue:

MATE
ONE
: If you don’t stop irritating me with all your excuses for not doing anything around here, we might as well get a divorce!

MATE
TWO
: (in frustrated anger) Don’t be silly. You don’t really want a divorce!

MATE
ONE
: I do! Don’t you care about our marriage and what I’ll have to go through being single again?

MATE
TWO
: (feeling guilty) Of course I care! What kind of person do you think I am? I do a lot of things for us!

MATE
ONE
: You only do things that
you
care about. Why are you so stubborn? If you really cared about our marriage, you would try to make things a bit easier for me! I do all these things and what do you do?

If, on the other hand, the spouse threatened with the prospect of divorce assertively makes his or her own judgment on where the problem and responsibility for solving it lies (on the spouse threatened with divorce or on the marriage relationship), he or she is likely to reply: “If you truly feel that you can’t cope with the way I am, perhaps you’re right. If we can’t work it out, maybe we should consider a divorce.”

In commercial dealings you can see other everyday examples of people manipulatively trying to get you to place the well-being of ineffective systems of doing things above your own well-being. Salesclerks may often try to get a determined customer (you) to stop complaining about defective merchandise by saying: “You
are holding up the line. All these other people want to be served too.” In making this statement, the clerk is manipulatively inducing guilt in you by implying that you have some responsibility to see that the store is able to serve other people without making them wait. The judgment made by the salesclerk
for you
is that if the store’s system of processing complaints does not work well in processing your complaint the responsibility for solving the problem lies with you and not with the store. But if you were to make your own decision on where the responsibility lies, you would simply state the facts of the situation; for example: “That’s true, I am holding up the line. I suggest you satisfy my complaint quickly or they will have to wait even longer.”