When it comes to standing up for yourself, what does it look like? Are you able to?
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
When it comes to standing up for yourself, what does it look like? Are you able to?
it’s scary, because it feels like other people say it’s bad to stand up for ourselves. but when we stick with it, and do it in a way that is assertive, then it feels GOOD!!!! it feels powerful and strong.
actually, learning how to stand up for my/ourselves was one of the big ways we learned to be less suicidal. or, i guess, part of the way we learned that. learning that we have the right and the power to stop things that are hurting us. for me/us, feeling powerless to stop or change pain is what makes the suicidal feelings come up. and a lot of that pain is from things other people are doing.
but it also means thinking long and hard about whether the pain is coming from inside or outside, and the standing up for ourselves only makes us feel good when we are doing it the right way. it still doesn’t make us feel good if we’re controlling or mean or stuff. but when we can get to a place where we’re calm, and feel confident that we deserve to be treated differently, and we believe that other people will listen when we speak up…. that’s the part that feels good. ESPECIALLY when they listen when we use “i statements”. (lol–“I” statements.) you know–speaking from our own experience, and acting like they don’t know they hurt us, and didn’t intend to hurt us, but ALSO like they need to know what they did was hurtful. kind of playing dumb so it doesn’t give them room to be defensive or pretend it’s our fault.
maybe it’s a little bit of a power thing. i feel in control of the situation when i know i’m doing the right thing, and the other person is digging themself in further and further when they are still being jerks. and eventually, they get tired of being a jerk! (i think this probably only works with people who aren’t abusers, or who are abusers but don’t have the power to do anything to me.)
I’ve gotten better at standing up for myself over time. Sometimes with actions more than words – because words seem to be hard to say sometimes.
It’s been hard. But it also got harder to NOT say or do some things. The less “hard” thing became doing or saying something, as opposed to holding all my feelings in.