Does Your Mind Take a Vacation When You Need it Most?

Sometimes we may link assertiveness up with personal loss. Perhaps we were assertive and spoke our mind to someone and this appeared or did result in us losing that person. This can put a damper on how you handle situations in your future where you need to be assertive because you are now linking up being assertive with loss, or a negative outcome.

If I may, something to keep in mind, although I respect that this fear is real... is those that we have lost in the past or rejected us in the past ... were not supposed to remain.

There isn't a person that I can think of whom I've had to be assertive with or set a boundary with whose disappearance was to my detriment. Depending on who we lost and how close we felt to them at the time can quite easily be linked up together. What happens is a person links up a great trait with a negative outcome. Which, I understand completely. What's happened is a belief has planted itself in your mind that when you're assertive, you lose people. This does not necessarily have to be 100% true.

Have you had any experiences with people whom, perhaps you have been assertive and there were good results? I ask you this because in order to change a belief we need to come up with proof that it is false. So we can give the new belief a foundation which can be built upon as you recognize that the two are improperly linked together. Does this make sense? :)

When someone else's actions make you crabby and withdraw, people go through mentally what is called dissociation. You're mind goes bye bye, to protect itself from an impending threat or from a fear it has as to what it is confronting in that moment.

Here is a definition: (Wikipedia.org)

"Dissociation is a state of acute mental decompensation in which certain thoughts, emotions, sensations, and/or memories are compartmentalized because they are too overwhelming for the conscious mind to integrate. "

Simply put, your mind goes buh bye, while the rest of you is standing there, not knowing what to do with itself.

Many people go through this. It can happened more in closer relationships which are important to you which links up to the fear of loss. It's also tied neatly into other instances in life, thereby making it an even bigger trigger.

One thing that helps greatly is realizing that those who I may have lost by being assertive I wasn't supposed to have in my life. However the trigger it left behind was the pain of losing the individual.

Setting boundaries with others, is some thing which can help you. I understand that if you may have some difficulty addressing someone, setting a boundary may feel difficult as well. Here is a link which provides excellent information on it as well as exercises as well you may find helpful.

http://www.coping.org/relations/boundar/intro.htm

Here is a wonderful link on being assertive. If you click on the home page, (the link is upper left hand corner), then click home scroll down to the bottom you can type in the term "assertive" and then click the dot which is located below the search box, which searches the site itself. It will give you several resources which you may find helpful.

http://www.coping.org/relations/assert.htm

Dissociation can be caused through abusive relationships, can be related to post traumatic stress, and/or anything that may have caused another person an emotional trama.

Learning how to express yourself can be done in an online group as well. While writing can bring a feeling of anxiousness as well it's a step in the right direction towards learning how to express yourself within a group of like minded people. I remember when I first got into coaching I'd put a post out into this old group and the anxiety I had when I posted something that expressed my views was ... well, deafening. Over time, after seeing rational responses and having intelligent, sharing conversations with so many people the fears subsided.

You may be wondering why I have not spelled out the steps you can take, and instead posted a link to an external site. Reason being is that it is up to you to take the time and learn about how to overcome being afraid of being assertive. I also don't want to recreate the wheel when there is so much good information out there.

Hope this helps!