How to Start Standing Up for Yourself
by Tiffany Walking Eagle | 8-minute read
If you clicked on this post, I’m guessing that, like me, you struggle to stand up for yourself.
Whether it be in your personal relationships, at work, at the grocery store, or wherever, standing up for yourself can be difficult and scary!
Maybe you need to start asking your spouse to help around the house. Maybe you need to set boundaries with family or friends. Perhaps you need your coworkers to pick up some slack or your boss to treat you fairly. Maybe you just need to learn that it’s okay to point out the fact that a mistake was made on the meal you ordered. (Anyone else like me and just doesn’t want to bother the server?)
Whether in big ways or small ways, learning how to stand up for yourself will greatly improve your mental health and well-being because be honest: the fact that you don’t stand up for yourself has lead to a lot of unnecessary stress and even some resentment. Right?
Learning to stand up for yourself won’t be easy and it sure won’t happen overnight, but it is absolutely possible with practice, patience, and persistence.
Take time to think about what you want to change.
Sometimes we let things slide and hold back from expressing our needs for so long that we haven’t taken the time to think of practical ways we could improve our situation.
If we spend long enough in the cycle of being taken advantage of and continuing to allow it, it may start to feel like there is no other option other than what we’ve been doing.
This is just my own small example, but one thing I struggled with is asking my husband to help around the house and clean up after himself. I went for so long telling myself well, I work from home and have a more flexible schedule, so I should just do it, that after a while, taking all the cleaning and housework upon myself started to feel like my duty. I wasn’t even sure what splitting up the chores would really look like in reality because I became so accustomed to just doing it all!
But even if we haven’t thought of how to change the situation, our choice to allow things to stay the same causes us stress.
If your boss is putting too much on your plate, start thinking of ways practical ways your workload could be lightened. Could some of your coworkers take on more responsibility? Could your schedule be streamlined?
Spouse/partner/roommate or kids not doing enough around the house? Make a list of chores they could help with, and think about habits they can work on to make things easier.
Relative or friend stressing you out with their expectations? Think of what changes would make things easier and what boundaries could be set.
Practice and start small.
After you’ve thought of a few practical ways to stand up for yourself and what you want, take the least intimidating thing on your mind and start there.
Run through how you’re going to approach the conversation and what you’ll say. Maybe write it out or say it out loud to yourself. Practice, practice, practice, and get comfortable with it.
By starting to set boundaries in small ways, you’ll start to strengthen the metaphorical “muscle” it takes to make standing up for yourself a healthy habit.
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Watch for little things you do that reinforce your habit of not standing up for yourself.
Do you find yourself always scurrying out of people’s way, patiently waiting for people to move instead of saying “Excuse me,” or allowing people to cut in front of you in line?
Do you often hunch your shoulders or hide? Do you find yourself saying “sorry” a lot more than you need to?
These things might not seem related to your struggle to be assertive, but they are. Your body language and daily actions have more of an impact on your confidence than you realize.
So walk a little taller. Politely ask to get through when someone is in your way. Practice not saying sorry so much. Teach yourself that you are worth standing up for, and you are not one to be taken advantage of.
Try to check yourself when you slip back into passive-aggressive behavior.
As tough as it may be to accept, oftentimes those of us who don’t stand up for ourselves or set boundaries resort to passive-aggressive behavior, even in nearly imperceptible ways.
Even if all you do is gripe to yourself when yet again you are doing your roommate’s dishes or your boss asks you to do work they should be doing, that groaning and negative attitude takes its toll on your mental health over time. After a while, the annoyance and stress is going to build up and you just may end up exploding.
It’s not your fault that you’re being taken advantage of, but there are situations where the other person is completely unaware of what they’re doing, and the only person getting loaded with frustration is you.
When you keep choosing to push forward allowing the behavior to continue with passive aggressiveness as your only outlet, you’re continuing to train the person taking advantage of you that what they’re doing is okay, and you’re teaching yourself that it’s okay for you to be taken advantage of.
So when you find yourself griping, practice being honest about the impact of your reaction, Could you have chosen to say something to the person instead of biting your tongue? Is your current behavior going to cause change or keep things the same? Does griping or being passive-aggressive help?
You’re going to struggle with this at first, and even after you’ve figured out ways to stand up for yourself, you’ll probably slip back into your old ways at times. And that’s okay. But what’s important is to start being honest about the situation and check yourself so you can work toward continued improvement.
Remember that people may react negatively at first.
If you’ve been allowing certain behaviors to continue for a long time, confronting the offender may not go over well at first. Why wouldn’t they feel blindsided when they’re used to being able to get away with the behavior?
It helps to go into the conversation knowing that you may get a negative reaction so you can mentally prepare.
However, on the flip side, sometimes we build up these confrontations in our minds to be far bigger and more difficult than they need to be. If whoever you’re having the conversation with respects you, they may actually be incredibly understanding. So give them that chance! You’ll never know until you try.
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Understand that others’ initial reaction may not represent their ultimate response.
Another important thing to know going into a difficult confrontation is that someone may react negatively or defensively initially, but once they’ve had a chance to process what you’ve said to them, they may respond more positively.
In other words, take people’s initial reaction with a grain of salt sometimes, and try to keep your own emotions under control with that understanding.
Take ownership of your emotions/reactions and accept that you’ll need to change too.
Work toward taking back your power in the situation by shaking off a victim mentality and realizing that you’ve been part of the unhealthy dynamic too by allowing it to continue. This isn’t to make you feel bad or place blame, but rather to help you understand that you do have power in the situation and that you don’t have to be stuck in the unhealthy cycle forever.
Getting out of the cycle will take work, and you will likely have to change some of your own reactions and behaviors.
Breathe and confront calmly.
It can be difficult to rein in emotion once you work up the courage to confront because we’ve stuffed down our true feelings and emotions for so long, they start flowing out like a rushing river.
But try your best to stay calm and breathe before hurtling accusations or getting defensive or saying anything hurtful that you can’t take back.
Mentally plan for taking a moment before you respond, breathe, and think before you speak. You are much more likely to be heard and have a productive, respectful conversation if you can keep emotions under control and speak honestly from the heart.
Realize that you can be both kind and assertive at the same time.
Maybe not everyone will relate to this, but hopefully some will.
I don’t say this to brag at all, but I’m betting a lot of you reading this can relate: I have a reputation as being a sweet and kind person. The problem with that is too often I will allow others to take advantage of me under the guise of just me being kind. Frankly, I enjoy being thought of as sweet and kind (don’t most of us?) and I tend to live in this fear that if I stop always saying yes to things or if I start standing up for myself, I might start to lose my reputation as the sweet, kind girl who is always there and who always helps.
I think there’s too much separation between being assertive and sweet in our minds. We tend to put those two traits in separate boxes but in reality, you can be both!
You can be assertive and sweet.
You can help people when they need it and you can say no when you don’t have the time or capacity to help.
You can be sweet and kind and helpful to others while also being sweet and kind and helpful to yourself.
I hope these tips help you learn to stand up for yourself. Be patient, give yourself grace, and keep practicing! As always, thanks for reading. <3
Related: The Truth About Self-Care