by Anne Dickson
Rebecca: That’s not true. Not really.
Yvonne: I feel caught, Rebecca. I want to say ‘yes’ to you. And sometimes I want to be able to go off for the day with Jim. Or just read, I don’t know, go for a walk, do nothing! I know that’s selfish but that’s how I feel.
Rebecca: That’s not selfish, Mum. I can understand that. I’d love to do that as well sometimes.
Yvonne: I know you would but you have made your choices. You want to work and you wanted children. And I’m happy to help only not all the time.
Rebecca: (reflects) I know, Mum. It’s not easy but you’re right. I did make my choices. So are you saying that you’re not going to do the extra day?
Yvonne: I’d rather not. Obviously in an emergency I will but I’d like you to consider some other options.
Rebecca: OK. You know, Mum, I quite respect you for saying that.
Yvonne: Well, I’ve spent a long time not respecting my own needs so it’s about time that I did. I can’t expect anyone else to do so if I don’t do it myself. (She smiles at her daughter.) I can’t tell you how relieved I am that we’ve been able to talk. I thought you’d be really upset.
Rebecca: No, a bit surprised but I’m OK.
Yvonne: Well, if you’ve finished your coffee, shall we go and have a quick look at the shoe sale?
Standing up for yourself will continue to be a part of assertiveness throughout life. This chapter is not exclusively for those of middle age and older. Obviously when you’re still young, you don’t ever consider getting old but, if attitudes continue the way they are, everyone will inherit the legacy of hostility and fear towards old age that those of us in our middle years today can anticipate in our future. The writing is already on the wall. Our current elderly population is already suffering from being unconsciously affiliated to the psychological projection of all that contemporary consumer society wants to rid itself of: vulnerability, defencelessness, lack of productivity, slowness, frailty, dependency, illness, the inevitability of death, confusion and senility. If we don’t do something about this trend and challenge it effectively, it will be a lot worse in another twenty years.
All characteristics associated with old age listed above can be bracketed together under the general umbrella of powerlessness (in the perpendicular sense). It is important therefore to build and express our personal power to help us approach this stage of life. Old age is not for the faint-hearted. It requires courage and determination to accommodate the effects of natural wear and tear on the body; it takes courage to face up to the end of our lives, including all our disappointments and regrets and a slowly diminishing menu of options to choose from. This is a personal transition and ultimately of course a lone one. If there are indeed any compensations for this stage of life, it’s time to find them!
Staying in touch with who we are applies throughout life but is of particular significance when the negativity of ageism saps our strength and makes us doubt our worth. However old you are, you can always give yourself permission to:
• Use your mind
• Face the facts
• Speak directly
• Render a service
• Find a way of being engaged
• Give of yourself
• Savour the present
• Share what you have
• Rediscover joy
• Decide to make a difference
• Release feelings of guilt or sorrow
• Create your own style
• Forgive yourself and others
• Take a stand
• Make an honest appraisal
• Act on impulse
• Use your critical faculties
• Stand up for your values
• Take a chance and be crazy!
23
The Power at the Centre
The concept of personal power was introduced in Chapter 3 and I have referred to it on several occasions throughout the book. In this final chapter, it is time to draw the various threads together. Personal power is, without doubt, the key to assertive communication and behaviour in every context: its full meaning and implications need to be understood at both a rational and emotional level.
Remember that the most recognisable hallmarks of personal power are balance, honesty, emotional awareness, integrity and equality. These can now be reviewed in relation to all the information and illustrations in the previous pages.
Balance
This describes the ability to give equal weight and consideration to your own needs and those of others. It helps us reach out with care and also set limits when necessary. Once we are emotionally inclined towards finding a balance, we enter any situation prepared to negotiate from a position of equality rather than insisting on a struggle for dominance. The quality of balance also applies to the internal experience of the pushes and pulls of outside assessment, both realistic and imaginary. We can learn from others’ slights and criticism at times as well as enjoy praise and approval at others yet still, inside, keep in touch with an emotional core that helps us avoid becoming too attached to other people’s responses and thereby retain a measure of independence.
Honesty
In this context, honesty applies both to the basis of our communication but, more importantly, means being truthful to ourselves because denial is the very worst enemy of personal power: whenever we are in denial about what is happening to us, we have no access to personal power. This applies to turning a blind eye to persistent sexual harassment; a deaf ear to an offensive racist innuendo; pretending your partner hasn’t really got a gambling problem; or refusing to believe your friend is going to die. Only when we stop denying what we know, what we see, what we hear and what actually is the nature of our reality, can we take the first step to address it. Maybe we cannot change it but even the act of emerging from denial is to assume a stance of personal power. Then we can identify what we feel and what we can or cannot change: we are able to move from a position of honesty and real choice.
Emotional Awareness
In Chapter 19, I described how habitual self-consciousness has damaged the sense of deep connection with our bodies. Emotional awareness and familiarity offer one possibility of repair. This means taking your feelings seriously and not blaming others for causing them. It entails acknowledging what you feel and being truthful with yourself before possibly taking the next step of putting these feelings into words (self-disclosure).
Instead of allowing anxiety to prevent us speaking up, assertive skills show us how to look anxiety in the eye, learn from it, breathe with it, speak through it and emerge on the other side, allowing us to achieve something we didn’t ever think we would be capable of. Through repeated practice and survival, we become less afraid of being afraid: we can feel the shift of feeling from uncertainty, hesitation and doubt to conviction, determination and strength of purpose.
Recognition of personal power involves an inner shift of balance. When women first assess their habitual behaviour and consider new responses, there is an automatic assumption that the failure or success of the interaction will depend on who the other person is and how he or she might respond: whether they are old or young, male or female, hostile or friendly, ‘higher up’ or ‘lower down’ and so on. We imagine the outcome is predetermined, that the key to effective change lies within someone else’s hands. With practice, the centre of balance moves so we recognise that the key to change actually resides within each one of us.
Integrity
When your mind, heart and body work in unison, you experience being personally powerful: you are being true to yourself. Losing or winning become irrelevant. Integrity is developed by, for example, not pretending to be confident when you’re not; not denying hurt feelings when they arise; being proud to have found the courage to stand up for your convictions; being able to leave a conversation when you’re uncomfortable and knowing that sometimes a compromise is simply too much for you and you have to say ‘no’.
Equality
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br /> Personal power is rooted in a commitment to equality. For most people, this is like opening both eyes, instead of looking only through one of them. Imagine looking through the right eye alone, allowing monocular vision. What we see are familiar hierarchical structures of perpendicular power, forever measured in terms of higher and lower, over and under. Once you open both eyes, your vision becomes ‘binocular’: you can begin to see that alongside the differences between you and the other person on the various ladders, there is another point of reference. There is a common point of equality as human beings. The two visions of power merge so that you become able to see perpendicular power from an alternative perspective. Although ladders will continue to define us in societal terms, there is simultaneously a point of equality in any interaction or dialogue. This is when assertive communication becomes possible. Aggression is no longer necessary when you don’t have to stay on top: when there is nowhere to climb or to fall.
Seeing yourself as an equal is as relevant whether the person you want to address is ‘above’ or ‘below‘. One of the many disadvantages of looking through only one eye is that we hold back from making constructive suggestions because we don’t like to challenge someone we see as ‘higher up’. This of course includes creative suggestions as well as critical ones.
Priti was in her twenties and found it impossible to speak up and contradict her manager at work. She could not get the senior/junior aspect out of her head. It was only when she focused on the potential of her suggestion to be helpful and constructive (as an equal human being) that she was able to speak through her nervousness: she realised she could come across, not as someone speaking out of turn, but as an employee who could contribute an idea that might be of use.
These five principles are the keystones of assertiveness. How do we make them relevant in practice?
Taking the initiative
Our behaviour is often characterised by a pattern of waiting: waiting to grow up, to be asked on a date, to leave school or leave home; for a proposal of marriage, waiting for a child to be born then to grow up; waiting for someone else to notice us, to apologise first, to acknowledge we were right; waiting to achieve the right weight, find the perfect shoes, for someone to stop talking, waiting until we’re feel supremely confident, until he’s in the right mood or for the perfect opportunity to occur.
Instead of waiting for something to happen, you can take that first step. Maybe there are all sorts of things you have in mind to do: places you would like to visit, people you would like to get to know, a room you would like to paint, a subject you would like to know more about, something you would like to buy. If there is, ask yourself what you are waiting for. Have you ever found yourself waiting for any of the following to happen first?
• For someone to say they’re sorry
• For the children to leave home
• For someone to hold your hand
• For someone to show you the way
• For someone to say they’re wrong
• For the sun to shine
• For your lottery number to come up
• For someone to do it for you
• For someone else to make the first move
• For someone to give you a good kick
• For someone to make it safe for you to jump
• For someone to come back to you
• For someone to die
• For someone to forgive you
• For someone to mend the stepladder
• For someone to offer to help
• For someone to invite you to speak
• For someone to sweep you off your feet
• For someone to change her/his mind
• For someone to give you the go-ahead
• For someone to guess what you really want without having to ask them
Initiating a change can sometimes involve a major move. Having worked at a PR firm for five years since leaving university, Jodie had to come to terms with a growing realisation that she felt uncomfortable with the values of the company. She found the ethos superficial and demeaning and despite having tried to enter into the competitive spirit, she knew her heart wasn’t in it so, instead of continuing to waiting for things to improve, she decided to find something more meaningful. She did some research and eventually was accepted to re-train as a psychologist which meant a big financial adjustment and demanding times of study ahead: but she knew this step would help her feel more congruent in her life, doing a job which matched her personal values.
Taking the initiative applies also to changing the way we behave when we dread dealing with a difficult conversation or meeting. Making the first move helps to feel more in charge of life than sitting around and waiting for the inevitable. Instead of sitting and fretting, anticipating the phone call, the summons to be made, the axe to drop or the pain to go away of its own accord, decide to get up and put an end to the waiting!
Grace was worried about a situation at work. She had had a lot of trouble working with a particular colleague two years previously and had heard on the office grapevine that he was to be transferred back to her department. This meant that they would have to work together again and she knew she couldn’t face this. When she practised the conversation, she tried rehearsing her reaction to being called in by her boss to be given the news officially. She handled it reasonably well but not as well as she would have liked. She then decided to take the initiative: instead of waiting to be called in, she asked to see her boss in advance. In this way she could express her concern, state her feelings and suggest an alternative solution before the event. She felt much more powerful and was able to handle the interaction far more effectively, first in role-play and subsequently in real life.
Your three key questions
We looked at these questions specifically in relation to confrontation in Chapter 14 but I would go so far as to say that these three questions hold the key to being able to re-connect with your personal power whenever you find yourself in circumstances which trouble you. All too often we dither uncertainly, barely conscious of what is happening yet vaguely aware of feelings of embarrassment, discomfort, fear or irritation.
When you feel disturbed by what is happening around you and sense something is wrong, even if you are confused, try and take a minute at that precise point to ask yourself those three questions: your answers will reveal what your options are.
Clary was in the bar one evening with a group of her friends. Suddenly the topic of conversation turned to Amy who was absent from the group. Amy had been through a difficult time, put on a lot of weight and hadn’t been seen for a while. Various unpleasant ‘jokey’ comments ensued and Clary began to feel very uncomfortable. She felt trapped and didn’t know what to do. She considered her three questions and found her answers:
• They are slagging off Amy
• I don’t like it
• I’d like it to stop
She decided to speak up:
Clary: Hey, look, listen to me a minute. (The others stop and look at her.) I really don’t like you slagging off Amy. We don’t know what’s going on and it doesn’t feel right to be talking like this.
Someone says: We’re only having a laugh.
Clary: I know, but I feel uncomfortable. I want to talk about something else. Can we change the subject? Dan, how was Barcelona?
Standing up in the minority takes courage but it helps you stay true to yourself without provoking antagonism: nobody has to be right or wrong, nobody has to win or lose. You are simply stating your own limits.
Asserting your values or ideas, even if you’re in the minority, helps reaffirm your integrity in a perpendicular world. Christine, 59, had grown up with different social values and did not like a lot of what she saw going on around her. One instance of this discomfort would often emerge whenever she sat and watched TV together with her husband and youngest son who was living at home after his recent divorce. They were watching a popular programme which encouraged participan
ts to be ruthlessly aggressive with each other as they fought for a considerable financial prize and Christine found herself once again feeling uncomfortable. This time she thought about the three questions and her answers:
• I’m watching something I don’t want to watch.
• I really hate this kind of behaviour
• I could ask them to turn it off but I’ll remove myself instead.
(Christine gets up from the sofa.)
Husband: Where you going?
Christine: I don’t know . . . the kitchen.
Husband: Why?
Christine: I really hate watching this. People are just being nasty to each other and I don’t like it.
Husband: Come on, it’s all a bit of fun.
Christine: No, it’s not. It’s nasty.
Son: Don’t be so sensitive, Mum. They chose to take part in this.
Christine: I know. But I really don’t enjoy watching it. See you both later (leaves the room).
Even though neither her husband nor son were likely to understand her objections, this mattered less to Christine than her choice to stop passively sitting in front of the screen yet again and saying nothing. She didn’t win the argument about who was right and who was wrong. Sometimes we find ourselves in conflict with overwhelming odds and reach the limits of our other kinds of power, personal power is still available to us. Being true to your own values and feelings is a private ‘win’ for yourself regardless of the outcome.
What seeds will you sow for the future?
As we have seen again and again in this book, assertive skills show us how to negotiate with others and honour them as fellow human beings, regardless of the unequal trappings of status and power in which we are all enmeshed. They help us to maintain respect and care for others without losing sight of our own individual concerns, giving us the means to find a balance between self and others, a balance that easily gets forgotten in the general endorsement and insistence that aggression is the only way to achieve anything.