"You Need To Stand Up For Yourself More"

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Good for you.

I am so proud I didn't listen to her!

I am so proud I didn't listen to her!

I find it extremely hard to stand up for myself because of awkwardness in the environment. Once I stood up for myself at my voluntry job because the manager had randomly got someone else to do what I have been doing for the last 2 years (and it said on my rota that I was to do my usual task), and so I said, ''that is my job'', and I noticed I had created an atmosphere for the rest of the day. I think I made the person who was told to do my job feel awkward, and made the manager think I was huffy, and it was horrible. I don't want that to happen again.

Life is tough.

That may be because they expect you to be like them. People thought I was stupid when I provided my own thoughts and feelings, and they basically flipped out because I don't believe the same thing they do.

Some NTs seem to convince me that it's easy, but I don't find it very easy. I've stood up for myself before once at my volunteer job, and for the rest of the day the person who I stood up for myself to was all huffy with me and wouldn't speak to me for the rest of the day, and I think from then onwards she's always been a bit funny with me. So that has put me off.
And before I have got bullied by 2 different friends for standing up for myself. In my last year of school my best friend wanted me to stay on with her, but I said no because I had already planned to go to college, and she would not stop criticising me. She kept saying that I wasn't staying on at school because of her, and it wasn't that at all, it was because I wanted to move on. I did tell her that too, and I also said, ''look you're welcome to come to college with me, but you choose to stay on at school so you can't stop me from doing what I want to do'', but she wouldn't listen, and in the end she didn't speak to me any more and even got her mum to have a go at my mum in a shop. But my mum knew they were strange people anyway (and Aspies say NTs can't be strange....??)
Then I got bullied by another friend a couple of years later, all because I didn't want to go out with a boy who they wanted me to go out with (I actually already had a boyfriend). They were actually forcing me to break up with my boyfriend just to go out with this other boy who I didn't even fancy. I wasn't nasty about it, I just said, ''look, I'm very flattered but I already have a boyfriend and I wouldn't mind just being friends with you and we can still hang out.'' But no, they wouldn't have it, and in the end they started bullying me and tried getting my boyfriend into trouble by threatening to go to the police and telling them that I am a 13-year-old going out with a 24-year-old, when I was actually 19 and he was 21. It was horrible.

So now I get grief if I do stand up for myself and I get grief if I don't stand up for myself. If I stand up for myself, I'm being ''too nasty'', if I don't stand up for myself I'm being a mug and perceived as stupid. So I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.

I feel this too. There seems to be a way of standing up for oneself "tactfully" whereby people don't think you are being nasty, up yourself or petty. I haven't learnt this skill. I think it may also have something to do with the way the people you stand up to already perceive you. If you hardly ever do it, then when you do it comes across as very serious and, possibly, "nasty". Like with general banter - I had a friend's housemate tell my friend she thought I didn't like her, because when she said a smartarse comment (like she often does), I retorted with the same. Because she felt this was unusual behaviour for me, she thought I must have actually been trying to upset her. My friend, on the other hand, constantly speaks to her this way so she thinks nothing of it and they get along well. IMO this is similar to what happens when I try to stick up for myself. While most people could say "hey that was mine", "that's my job", "actually I'd rather not" etc. etc. without rubbing people up the wrong way, others, like me, can't seem to get away with it.

Interesting to see this pop up again, because this time it reminded me of something else about this "stand up for yourself" crapola:

Irony: So you do, and you are suddenly an a**hole.

I get the idea, that nothing is tactful enough, if you're perceived as submissive, but nothing is too rude, if you're perceived as dominant.

Yes, nicely put.

Thanks. (Maybe, I express myself better, through the monitor, but it takes me a long time.)

I feel like there's a dilemma in whether audacious behavior will make you seem acceptably dominant, or like a submissive person, who is out of line.

I stand up for other people more than I do for myself, and I'm quite bullheaded about it. I can't stand to see people gang up on someone. But when it comes to myself I would rather just walk away with no conflict.