People telling you to stand up for yourself

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Do people keep telling you to stand up for yourself, when you know that this is one of the biggest part of social interaction you struggle with? Well, it might not be true for some, but it is for me. I'm quite good with ''reading'' facial expression, body language, tone of voice, ect, but standing up for myself is something I find VERY hard. It's not that I don't know when to do it (because I do know when), it's that I'm scared to do it, because of the thought of saying something wrong - or the thought of others thinking I've got all huffy then not wanting to talk to me any more, or something like that. So I'm just scared of the consequences it might cause for me, especially by saying the wrong thing - because I don't think my voice will sound very confident, since I'm not used to protesting back at people, and I don't like doing it either.

I'm having a bit of trouble at my volunteer job at the moment, with a couple of the people there. I keep on getting blamed for things I didn't do, and then I keep getting told off - and I don't like it. It makes me feel like I'm back at school again. It makes me feel really stupid too - and it also makes me feel very small. What makes it worse is others don't get told off or blamed like I do, and when I confide about this with people I like, their advise is always, ''stand up for yourself. Tell them what you think of it!'' But it's not that simple. I just haven't got that in me, and if I suddenly started being all stern with people, it will sound false, and people will either laugh at me or think I've suddenly gone on drugs or something.

Anyone else have this dilemma?

Standing up for yourself is not easy I find it very hard to do and I'm not quick enough with a comeback I feel people take advantage of that.
I was working for a week at a shelted workshop and they accused me of taking too many breaks and there was this woman who was mean to me.
I wish I had thrown the work at her and told her to do it herself.

Gah, I get this, too. "You need to stand up to people," "Why don't you open your mouth?" "You need to stop letting people bully you/ push you around/ walk all over you." etc, etc, etc. I know that the people who tell me these things mean well, and I appreciate the good intentions behind these words. That doesn't change the fact that this advice is useless to me. The fact is, I don't know how to stand up for myself, and I don't know how to prevent people from treating me like I don't matter, like I'm a non person unworthy of so much an an ounce of respect. I hate being treated like this, but I honestly don't know how to stop it.

The ability to stand up for oneself and prevent this sort of marginalizing/ degrading treatment involves social skills I don't have. People like my parents and therapist, and the few friends I have are convinced that the only thing preventing me from standing up to people is lack of confidence in myself. When I try to explain how certain things are difficult for me, I'm "putting myself down," and I need to learn to "believe in myself."

Low self-esteem is so much easier for others to understand than an actual disability, thus some would deem the former the main source of my problems. My mom was present at multiple IEP meetings for me whenI was a child, and she's still convinced that my main problem is lack of confidence. It boggles my mind how so many can ignore legitimate evidence, mentally manipulating and altering the facts in their own minds in order to more comfortably fit their established understanding of the world.

I'll admit that my self confidence is low -- a lifetime of being bullied and marginalized tends to have that effect. However, that is far from being the main source of my difficulties. It's not the source of my problems at all; it's the result.. If low self confidence was my biggest problem, I could apply a "fake it till you make it," approach to life. I can't do that, because I don't know how because I don't have the friggen social skills. That's what so many people can't seem to wrap their heads around.

If I'm going to be able to stand up for myself, I need someone to coach me, break down the steps involved in standing up for oneself in a variety of contexts that might crop up in real life, write them down for me to study, and walk me through them step by step. I would then need to be engaged in role play that involves applying these steps in various contexts, with feedback, and I would need to practice them over and over and over again in each of these contexts with the help of a coach before I'd have any hope of mastering the myriad of social skills necessary for standing up for myself. Unfortunately, I don't even have the social skills and executive function to acquire this sort of help. The fact that the few people who actually care about me are convinced that I just need to have confidence in myself *really* doesn't help matters. I speak articulately most of the time (though things can get jumbled when I'm under especially significant strain) and I've completed years of education, thus my problem can't *possibly* be that I lack the skills - at least that's what others are determined to believe.

Whoops, didn't mean to write a novel length rant. This issue is one that has brought me years of frustration, thus the subject title alone brought a lot of issues bubbling up to the surface for me. I'm done for now.

I can relate to it. Many times I've felt some of my co-workers used double-standard for their account against me. When I stood up for myself (I had the courage in the past on several occasions, but usually I was the one who had been questioned), I felt they were the ones who had misinterpreted some past events, and it was their fault. I've put up with this feeling by now, I suspect I'm different, and because of it, they will never be correct with me the way I wish they would. They will be always more friendly toward others than with me. That's all. Thankfully, most of my colleagues accept me the way I am, so it's not that serious issue in my case.

There are several tenents in life that help keep positive forward motion. This one has worked the best for me:

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

You only gain confidence by accomplishing something. The more you accomplish, the more confident you become. Feel the fear, take a deep breath and give it your best shot. Imagine the worst possible outcome for any situation you fear. Will someone laugh at you? Will someone misunderstand and look at you funny? Will someone get angry and storm off? These are all things that can be overcome with a small change in perspective. In most cases - the worst possible outcome will not be death, dismemberment or exsanguination. Everything else - you CAN handle. Humor helps.

You may not have social skills but you can learn them. And once you start to - you gotta practice them. I'm sorry that the people who should have advocated for you in this regard seem to have failed you. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. I don't know where you are but most agencies have references to social skills training. Most agencies are also reachable through email if you don't think you can manage a phone call. You definitely have the writing skills to advocate for yourself. Put them to work. There are lots of self help books on the subject and amazon.com takes the face to face store trip out of the equation.

You can do this. You just need to feel that fear, take a deep breath and take the first step...

Your therapist is probably trained to assess & deal with things in a purely psychological way and tbf its probably worked well for them in the past. I had a senior psychiatrist conclude that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, he must have gone down his checklist of psychotic,neurotic,personality disorders and seeing that none of those fit and there was nothing left in his psychiatric lexicon to diagnose me with, deduced that i must be normal. The public psychologists here are a little more adept in this respect - once you mention aspergers to them they simply refuse to treat you! (which might actually be for the best)

whats happenning (as you know) is these people project their own neurology onto you. Maybe it isnt even possible to comprehend, much less relate to, having a neurological disorder? Because all these 'hard-wired' social skills that they take for granted, they dont even realise that they exist. If you have no concept of something existing, its impossible to imagine a state of mind where they dont.

my humble suggestion would be to keep phrasing things to people in a variety of different ways, like breaking it down into specifics about how they have areas of their brain that recognise facial expressions or how it takes a long time to process speech as you have have to consciously identify all the non literals. Basically that you have all these mental demands placed on you that would normally be occuring automatically and unnoticed. If they listen, then over time they might build up a picture of how all these factors are overwhelming and understand that it simply isnt possible to manage all that be able to 'compete' on a level playing field with lifelong unaffected persons.

Sometimes people are simply not prepared to take one new ideas, but theres no harm planting a seed, something that may help prompt them to a later realization. there must be some metaphors that would help? (not my forte though).

Last edited by psych on 29 May 2011, 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Every time I stood up for myself, I always got into trouble and was seen as the bad one. I am still seen as a bully when I do it. But I had just realized maybe they can't handle the fact that I can do it. They maybe think I am someone they can screw over so when I stand up for myself, they view me as a bully because they couldn't handle me that I could because they didn't think I would. I take "bully" as a compliment in this case and decided to embrace it.

It is a trap.

If I don't stand up for myself, I am "too insecure," "have low self-esteem," "allow people to walk all over me," etc.

If I do stand up for myself, I am "not willing to take criticism," "too defensive," "prickly," and "difficult to work with."

This is always true even if I can easily present hard facts that something was not my fault when I was blamed for it. NT coworkers are always allowed to do things which I am not allowed to do. I think this may have something to do with social status, because I have noticed that in manufacturing companies, the immigrant warehouse workers (the lowest status) are also not allowed to do things and blamed, whereas the white shippers/receivers (higher status) are allowed to get away with the same things; and front office workers are allowed to do nearly anything they want (except for me), and the managers pretty much have no limits on their behaviour.

By the way, I don't have low self-esteem and I know HOW to stand up for myself, and do it correctly -- it just doesn't produce results, which frustrates and confuses NT job coaches/counselors/psychologists.

yeah whenever i have tried to stand up for myself, apparently i do it wrong as well and in the end i get even more people upset with me. and then at other times when it is just people picking on me and telling me to do stuff that i shouldnt do, i end up ignoring it and just hoping it will past (because its stupid BS anyways) and then i dont gain the respect of others. i dont f*****g get it either.

It seems like I pick the wrong times to stand up for myself......because every time I have it somehow gets turned back around on me. I end up getting accused of 'freaking out' and then no one takes me seriously. So yeah I kind of tend to avoid confrontation because i don't know how to do it while acting mature.

I have had this dilemma in the past, and it is really, really frustrating. I would say especially the part where they don't actually give advice on how, and lacking the social tools to know how to do it, sometimes, can make things worse.

It's like this. I'll be standing in the line to get lunch, and then some jerkwad comes by and pushes me out of the way. Once I get my balance back, I immediately start thinking about putting my arm around his neck and throwing him down to the ground. Just before I decide to do it, I realize that it isn't worth it. I mean, is getting my lunch before him really worth starting a fight over?

Heck, the only time I did stand up for myself all year was when this other jerkwad was behind me, once again at lunch. He got in front of me, and started twisting my nipple for no apparent reason at all. I yelled "What the f***", and he stopped before I could finish the sentence. But only because he was laughing at me for actually saying something. It wasn't just him laughing either, it was just about everyone in the lunch line.

I really don't like being in a position where I have to stand up for myself. I don't like confrontation. The question for me is, how do I do it without hurting the other person? It's really difficult.

Through high school, I had "friends" who would provoke me, then wonder why I was such a pushover and wouldn't "stand up for myself" at the apparent (to them) opportunities. I honestly never knew when the appropriate moment was, and never felt threatened by them anyway... even though they apparently were threatening me in some way... and if they were being jerks, why were they doing so? So-called 'friends' would never inflict harm would they? (or at least that's the assumption I ran with)... So I never felt there was any basis to be feeling threatened, physically or psychologically... Even when they were holding swords to my neck, or coming at me facetiously with their newly-acquired martial arts skills (I had 12+ years already myself, so). I really just wasn't aware half the time, that I was supposed to feel threatened.

I think that too. I worry that people might think of me as huffy, petty, childish, or bitchy. Because I'm usually sweet, laid-back (on the outside), and nice, people will get a shock if I suddenly turned around and said a mouthful. The trouble is with me is I worry too much about what other people think of me. I don't like to lose their respect, and although they laugh at me anyway (because of my idiocy), I still think they might laugh at me more if I did defend myself, because I know I wouldn't do it right.
I have stuck up for myself before with a friend I used to have, and I got bullied it - all because it was the first time I ever stuck up for myself.

I know most adults aren't (or shouldn't) be like that, but that still puts you off.

Used to be my problem too, I receive a new box every day, quite interesting actually.