Dear Maria:

It will be a while before I am able to read and reply tour recent post to me (and anything you may add to  it), could be in as long as 19 hours from now.

anita

Dear Maria:

I read your recent posts and re-read your previous posts.

Here is what you shared about your childhood: “I have always been bullied since I was a little child and all throughout high school, never understood why people did put so much energy in bringing me down.. ended up having fears about being abandoned and low self-esteem”. Later, you mentioned “childhood abuse”.

About your young adulthood: you left your parents’ home soon after high school, at 19, “changed continent, studied in a country where I knew no one, fell sick, almost died alone when hospitalized for a major chronic disease during months”.

About how you perceive yourself: “when I was dating him, was a period in my life in which I was super confident in myself and it was very obvious that I was… I was very independent… people perceive me as a strict, smart girl, arrogant comes back a lot”.

About your beliefs and behavior regarding conflict and aggression: “I have been a lot into stoicism.. I believed in the concept of ‘not giving time away to jerks’.. I used to only be aggressive with people when I thought they were worth it. Once, at work, a woman that seemingly felt so bad about her own person that she started confronting me.. so I just stared at her and I felt bad for her, she was pitiful to me… I have changed since and have become much more aggressive… I have always had a fear of confrontation (childhood abuse), that’s why I turned to Stoicism I guess, out of cowardice so I wouldn’t have to face my fears”.

About your ex’s beliefs and behavior regarding conflict and aggression: “there were times he thought he needed to ‘save’ me when people ‘were putting me down’.. he felt the need to defend me.. he made it clear to me that the way I was, was a weak to him.. He always said that you could never get through this life without people fearing you otherwise they wouldn’t respect you”.

My understanding at this point: like you suggested yourself, you suffered childhood abuse/ bullying for more than a decade, and as a result you adopted a stoic mentality (practicing patience and endurance in difficult situations, remaining cool under pressure and serene in the most chaotic situations, riding the current of life with little or no  objection and rarely rocking the boat, not making waves).

This stoic mentality is very useful in many situations,  but in social situations where assertiveness is required, the stoic must assert herself, otherwise she sends the message that she is weak and vulnerable to being mistreated/ used and abused. When you work  with people and it becomes your reputation in the workplace that you do not assert yourself when needed= that you are weak, then the common attitude in the workplace is disrespect or disregard for you, and some will mistreat you. Same is true in almost any other social setting, including one’s family, unfortunately.

When the co-worker you mentioned became aggressive with you and your reaction was to “just stare at her”- you “felt bad for her, she was pitiful” to you, but some, if not all of your co-workers who witnessed the situation, probably felt bad for you and thought that you were pitiful.

Your ex boyfriend understood that a stoic/ passive response to confrontation and aggression is indeed (in most cases) a disadvantage to the person at the receiving end of aggression. He was correct about that. But he took this correct understanding too far into wrong understanding when he told you that “you could never get through life without people fearing you, otherwise they wouldn’t respect you”. He believes in aggression, not in assertion. Aggression causes violence, wars and misery everywhere. Assertion is different: it corrects injustice. It communicates to others that you value yourself and that you can and will exert the power that is available to you, when needed, so to protect yourself and to do what is right and just.

“when I was dating him, was a period in my life in which I was super confident in myself and it was very obvious that I was”- and it is indeed obvious to me and to others that a girl at 19 moving to a different continent, living independently and surviving a difficult illness is confident, is indeed independent and strong.. except that when you passively, or stoically respond to aggressors, you throw away that perception by others.

You may feel strong (“super confident”) when you respond stoically to aggression, but when there is a way for you to be assertive in any one incident of aggression, and you choose not to, then it appears that you are weak even though your subjective feeling is that you are strong.

You are welcome to respond and elaborate, if you wish, on any part of this post.

anita

Dear Maria:

You are welcome. The situation between you and I is not that I am the helper and you are the one being helped. It’s been all along you and I helping each other. When I read from you, analyze and respond, I connect not just with you, but with myself- with my own feelings, my own issues. So, let’s continue to help each other. When I have questions for you, I will ask. Thank you for offering!

He told you that he wasn’t judgmental and yet, of course, he was/ is. Like so many people all over the world, he judges a darker skin to indicate human inferiority. This untrue judgment has brought so much pain to so many.

Notice, in the future, when a person expresses to you judgment of other people, he/ she judges you in the same way and for the sane things for which he judges others.

“Do you think there are any ways I could become more assertive? Could therapy work or anything else? Self-help books, YT videos and tips on the internet never worked”-

– yes, there are ways to become more assertive. And you already practiced being assertive; you have some experience behaving assertively. Even in your most recent post, you told me that you feel weird being helped and not giving help in return- that’s you asserting yourself with me, telling me how you honestly feel, a feeling that you would like to change,  and suggesting a way to change it.

The way to become more assertive is to notice all the ways you are already assertive, then identify circumstances that are most challenging, those situations that make you feel “fear of being physically attacked”, and/ or “emotional very quickly and cry very quickly”, and figure out a plan to deal with each such circumstance.

When you identify the next such circumstance, let me know what it is, and together we can come up with a plan to assert yourself in that circumstance,  and execute that plan step by step. Key is to come up with small, doable steps that will not overwhelm you.

anita

Dear Maria:

I am well, thank you. Your friend who is a therapist told your ex boyfriend that he was narcissistic, based on his behavior toward you. I wonder what diagnosis she would have offered for herself, based on her behavior: blocking you because you suffer from an immune disease that would have endangered your life if you attended her event.

Let’s look at what you brought up as situations where you were not assertive, situations where an assertive plan could help:

1. The co-worker you mentioned before harassed you because you didn’t focus on her presentation that was “too long and not well organized”. I will need detail here, what was the circumstance: who was in the office, who said what first, what was said next, the objective details, no interpretations of what happened; think of it as showing me a video + audio of what happened.

2. Being bullied during your childhood- again, I will need details of one such incidence: the circumstances, who said or did what first, what happened next, the objective details only.

3. A guy at the bakery served everyone using a tong, but served you with his bare hands, and then made fun of you as being bad at math following you calculating the final price of the baked good you purchased- make a formal and detailed complaint and submit it to the bakery manager.

4. You told A, a childhood friend and best friend in high school that B, another friend, was fake. A then betrayed your trust in her And told B what you said. The two of them confronted you about it. You are no longer friends with , but you are still friends with A. A avoids seeing you while she sees other friends, and you “truly feel as if she doesn’t like to spend time with” you.

“I was wondering if I should be assertive and tell her how I feel about the situation or if I should just give up on her because friendships can’t be forced.”- she doesn’t want to spend time with you, so don’t chase her to spend time with you. Don’t chase anyone. Like you wrote, friendships can’t be forced. You can’t force anyone to like you any more than I can force anyone to like me. This example is not fitting learning to be assertive because all you need to do is …stop chasing her.

One more thing: best not to gossip, meaning, if you think that B is fake, tell this to B, if you want to, but not to A, or to anyone who knows B, or who is likely to get to know B.  When you talk to friend A about friend B, don’t say anything to A that you wouldn’t say if B was present.

5. Regarding the Acquaintance to whom you shared about your breakup, the one who never contacted you since, if she was a close acquaintance, then your message to her was appropriately assertive, as I see it.

Interesting: did you notice I used the word “chase” above? That was before I read the last sentence of your post: “I feel like I always have to chase after my acquaintances.. what’s wrong with me?”

– I am thinking that you are chasing people because otherwise you will be alone, that the only way to get a person’s time and attention is to chase them. What do you think?

anita