May 29, 2003

• Self-Assertion
  

  I wasn’t taught how to assert myself, my needs and ideas, as a child.  What I learned about self-assertion, I picked up from my family and culture, by the natural processes of seeing someone else do something, mimicking it, and then adapting and refining the behavior on the basis of the feedback I got.  By this method, I learned not to assert myself directly.

  
  

  It became evident to me at an early age that coming right out and asking for something was NOT the way to get it.  My parents’ favorite response to such requests was, “We’ll see…”  I suppose that was easier for them than just telling me “no” and facing my arguments and tantrums.  Thus, they taught me by their examples to be indirect, to avoid saying precisely what I meant, but to say, instead, something that would arouse no resistance.  As a strategy for meeting my needs, that was less than ideal.  Although it often kept me from triggering angry responses and outright refusals, it also kept me from getting what I needed most of the time.

  
  

  I was almost thirty when I became aware, through my work in the counseling field and my experiences in group therapy, just what a sick puppy I was.  Having learned that self-assertion was wrong, selfish, bad, and ineffective for getting what I wanted, I had become an expert manipulator.  Having had strong (and contradictory) parental programming against dishonesty, and also having a personal distaste for it, I was continually having to choose between repressing my own needs or damaging my self-esteem by lying and manipulating in an effort to get the needs filled.

  
  

  There was nothing unique about my situation.  Nearly every woman in our culture faced the same bind I did.  Around that time, in the 1970s, feminism and women’s liberation had brought about the phenomena of the consciousness-raising group and assertiveness training.  I found myself in the position of teaching other women to assert their own needs and desires openly, directly and non-violently at the same time I was learning to do it.  Few people (notably some male chauvinists who thought we should just shut up and do as we were told) would disagree that it was better than coyly practicing feminine wiles and/or denying our needs and bottling things up until we exploded into aggressive self-assertion.

  
  

  Now, I can go either way.  On good days, when I’m feeling energetic, self-confident and brave, I speak right up and express my desires.  When they involve things I believe I have earned or to which I am entitled, I am capable of demanding my due.  I can issue ultimatums, usually something like, “treat me with respect or get out of my life.”  It doesn’t always get me what I want.  I still sometimes must deal with disrespectful assholes, but at least I keep my self respect.

  
  

  When I am fatigued, depressed, or otherwise not up to the effort of self-assertion, I can clam up, bag my feelings and let them fester for a while, until I just can’t stand it any more.  Those times are rare.  Even rarer are the times I resort to manipulation to get what I want.  That last tactic is just too hard on my self-esteem.  Repressing myself is not quite so hard on me, but hard anyway.  As I get older, I don’t think it is getting any easier to speak up for myself, but it seems to be getting harder not to.  Yesterday, I had to force myself.

  
  

  I have been enjoying the self-discovery and social warmth that has come from my new AA home group in town, and the one out here nearer home that meets less often (and I’ve learned that there is a new NA group in Talkeetna that I plan to join, too).  It has also been fun to get in on Greyfox’s euphoric “pink cloud” at the start of the current round of sobriety.   The first time he insulted me, I was able to let it pass with just a comment that indicated I took some mild exception.  He wasn’t so lucky, poor man, the second time.

  
  

  We were in the laundromat.  We had just, jointly, confronted a neighbor who had more than just inconvenienced us by failing to show up for a date she had made to buy us dinner in exchange for some services I had performed for her, making her travel reservations with my computer.  Her irresponsibility cost us $40 out of pocket and I lost half a day’s work.  It was a frustrating con-frontation.  She gave us $40, but acted affronted and went so far as to state outright that she would not accept the responsibility.  It is typical behavior for her, and I walked away, but was still a bit steamed when Greyfox repeated his earlier insult.

  
  

  We were conversing pleasantly as we folded laundry together, discussing our plans.  He was telling me that he’d decided to change clothes each time he closed his stand (2 or 3 times a day) to go to a meeting, and then get back into the “work clothes” each time he went back and set up the stand.  It means not only packing and unpacking merchandise, loading and unloading tables, etc., but now that extra step of disrobing and dressing each time.  I said, “It sounds to me as if you’re setting yourself up for just more frantic hustle-bustle.”

  
  

  He stopped, looked thoughtful, smiled, and responded, “You sound just like my sponsor.”  It was the same thing he had said to me earlier when I had warned him against taking on too much stress.  I’ve been saying similar things to him as long as we have known each other.  He has a tendency to over-extend himself and then seek relief in drugs when he fails to cope with the routine he has set himself.

  
  

  I knew he meant it as a compliment, as an acknowledgement of my wisdom, but after thirteen years of wise counsel, and of holding the privileged position of wife to this man, I resented it.  What I heard was that all those years of cautioning counsel meant nothing to him and that my words had never gotten through to him until some stranger, a drunk like himself, said the same thing.  I do not like it when that happens, and it happens too often.  I told him so.

  
  

  I unloaded on him.  To his credit, he did not withdraw into isolation as has been his habit.  But he didn’t respond, either.  I had to ask for feedback.  He expressed his bafflement.   He couldn’t fathom what my problem was.  So I tried restating my position.  I said I resented the disrespect.  I reminded him that I have been warning him for years against setting himself up for failure and relapse.  I said that just because I didn’t use the damned AA buzzwords, the “easy does it”, “first things first,” crap, he wouldn’t listen to me, but when some fellow-drunk said to him the same thing I’d been saying all along in different words, suddenly I was sounding like him.

  
  

  He still didn’t get it.  He wondered how he might have expressed himself without setting me off.  He said he had been trying for years to find a “map to the minefield,” so he could express himself without triggering my temper.  Breakthrough!   “So,” I thought, “that’s what he has been trying to do.”  Great metaphor, that.

  
  

  I told him that there was no map to this minefield, that no matter what words he had used to tell me that he respected his sponsor more than he respected me, I was not going to like it.  I expanded on it, told him that I thought we’d made a breakthrough there.  If he could get it through his head that the “minefield” is like one of those dungeons in an advanced video game where the map is different each time you enter it, we might have better communication.  It wasn’t his words that triggered me, I said.  It was the idea, the knowledge that my advice has less value to him than that of his sponsor.

  
  

  We talked all the way home, and more as he loaded his car for the trip back to town.  We covered ground I had tried to cover many times before, only suddenly this time I had his attention, his willing participation.  We established that I had indeed earned his respect and that I did indeed know my beans when it came to both psychology and addiction.  I hadn’t been angling for or anticipating it, but he decided that staying here and working on his marriage was more important than making two AA meetings yesterday.

  
  

  He came in, called his sponsor and left a message on his machine that he was going to stay here another night and work on our marriage, “First things first.”  We had a wonderful evening and night of communication and love.  This morning there was more of the same before he left for town.    I’m so glad I went to the trouble of asserting myself.  This time it really paid off.

  
  

  

  • 3:29 pm
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