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!

Concrete Doesn't Stop the Grass from Growing ...

I have a question. :)

Have you ever seen grass grow? "between concrete"? Well have you? or a weed or a small tree just break it's way through concrete and if left alone the concrete what? Gives away ... doesn't it...

What once started as a small seed ... grows into a mighty oak.

The concrete is permanent. Or so it thinks if it were alive ... yet the seed doesn't know this because it's never discussed this with the concrete. It just decided that it wanted to grow and to be a big tree...

Thus you have your idea. A seedling. Do you see concrete? Or do you see... something that will move as you push through.

It's the same thing in life. If no one ever told you that you could not succeed would you react differently and move forward faster?

What if no one ever said bad things, it didn't exist and comparison to other was only about using what somebody else knows to help grow yourself?

What if emotions were simply our bodies and mind telling us that it's time to shift and change?

To grow ... up and through concrete.

Concrete in life can be looked at as if it were scar tissue that we can get due to events that have happened in life which hurt us. If you look at a scar that you get, say on your knee, the skin in that spot is never the same. Yet you heal and move on, hope for the best.

Now after you got that scar did you say, Oh I can't walk down the stairs anymore? Because I got hurt?

No. You still had to use the stairs but maybe you're a little more cautious this time, more thought to your solutions and what choices to make.

Maybe! You decided to take the elevator!

Either way, you decide to not focus on the scar. It's the same thing with anything you want to do in your life.

While we are not a blade of grass wandering mindlessly through concrete, we do have the opportunity to rethink and reorganize our thoughts and learn how to do things better next time.

So how about you? Are you a seedling whose going to turn into a mighty oak? Or are you concrete ? :) Stiff and unyeilding.

If we think about it, the concrete could be alot of those necessary losses in life. Like toxic relationships, people stuck in one mindset and not coming out or refusing to see things differently.

Quiet Self Sabotage

I love quiet self-sabotage. Don't you? :)

Quiet self-sabotage is that dirty little scoundrel who makes you do other things which are also a priority, and all the while, you're putting off doing something you really need.

Lets use working out as an example. Okay?

Say you want to work out. That's a great goal, and something you really want to do.

So you decide on a plan, put it off a little bit, I think many people do this. Then "finally" you win out over the inner brat who "doesn't wanna" do it. For a variety of reasons I might add.

Now, you know you want to work out, maybe you've started, but your inner brat doesn't wanna one day. You're not really paying it much mind initially because you've developed a routine.

You decide to push working out off until later. It's for a really good reason. Maybe you decided to do your spring cleaning or change the oil in the car, or maybe you needed that extra 1/2 hour of sleep because you went to bed too late the night before (mind you that could be on purpose too, for the perfect "reason" as to why you wouldn't be able to get up early and work out) maybe you're doing things and the kids are in the room you'd need to use, so you want to wait till they're doing something else (instead of setting up a boundary with them to leave you be while you go work out).

So many reasons, so little time. They are, truly, all very valid reasons. You're doing something, at times, which are a priority... so you can easily brush off the thought that you "intentionally" blew off working out. Because you accomplished SO MUCH(!) that day.

The reality is, that your inner brat won. :) Sneaky little bugger isn't it?

Yes, it is a sneaky little bugger.

So the questions become, why are you allowing the inner brat to win, thereby making you feel badly about yourself, on an internal level (like self loathing, self consciousness, feeling out of shape, self esteem issues, etc., I think you get the picture.) when you can say "oh shut up! I see what you're doing to yourself! I'm going to fit this in no matter what you say!

Never underestimate the inner brat's ability to deter you from what you really want to do. This is called resistance. It quietly morphs into this big goony goo goo monster, subtly distracting you from what you need to do for yourself, but in a manner that "still" makes you feel that you've done good things and accomplished priority matters.

Interesting how that works isn't it? I think so... :)

This thought process can be applied to many other things as well. Pay attention ... you'll see it. I promise.

Then you can address the inner brat w/rewards and the consequences of it's subtle manipulation. Funny how that works isn't it?

Sue T.