Mental Health | Decoding Human Interactions
Reclaiming Your Self-Respect
Will the people-pleasers please stand up?
(This is the 1st of 3 articles where I share skills for interpersonal effectiveness that are adapted from Dialectical Behavioural Therapy.)
Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was astute in observing this:
Hell is other people
Amongst the top three things that bother you right now, one of them is likely about what someone said or did.
Chances are that someone is kith or kin.
And if you are reading this article, chances are that someone either has power or authority over you or is a person you don’t want to offend. Or that someone may be a person who continually takes advantage of your reputation for being “nice”.
And you are kinda fed up.
If you have people-pleasing tendencies, you may be struggling with self-respect. You cringe inwardly when you think about your people-pleasing ways.
Denying ourselves to please someone else always comes at a cost.
The cost is you resenting yourself for your people-pleasing tendencies. The cost is you feeling lousy about not standing up for yourself when it mattered. That cost is you believing that you are weak.
It’s time to reclaim your self-respect.
Try this F.A.S.T. method when you interact with people who trigger people-pleasing instincts in you:
- F is for Fairness
Choose fairness for both yourself and the other person.
The next time you feel compelled to agree to the other person’s request, pause. Pause and ask yourself if agreeing to the request is fair to you.
Then choose or suggest an outcome that is fair to both you and the other person.
2. A is for Anti-apology
Just stop apologising already.
By now, apologising has become a coping mechanism for you, a way to disarm someone who is unhappy. People who know you well expect you to apologise.
Surprise them. Look them in the eye with confidence. Stand straighter and make your body frame larger. Imagine that there’s a string at the top of your head pulling you upwards towards the ceiling — that will give you a strong and confident posture.
And offer no apology if you didn’t do anything wrong.
3. S is for Sticky values
Honouring your personal values is the crux to preserving self-respect.
The other person may not share the same personal values as you and that’s okay. What’s important is that you know what your personal values are and that you stick to them.
When we make choices that honour our personal values, we usually end up liking ourselves better. Even when other people didn’t like our choices.
4. T is for Truthful
When interacting with the other person, be truthful.
When we lie to get what we want or to manipulate the other person, we tend to end up disliking ourselves even though we’ve achieved our goal.
This is all the more important if truthfulness is one of your treasured personal values.
The main goal of deploying the F.A.S.T. skills is to preserve self-respect.
Whilst the skills may preserve your self-respect, do note that it may weaken the connection you have with the other person, especially if the other person has a poor response to your asserting your values.
Sometimes maintaining a good relationship with the other person is the more important consideration.
In that case, check out the 2nd article in this series for the G.I.V.E. skill which promotes maintenance of interpersonal relationships.
Thanks for reading, and may you be well.
