Do You Struggle to Accept Kindness? How to Let it into Your Heart

Image by Star Flames/Pixabay

What do you do when someone offers you a compliment? How are you with praise, appreciation and expressions of pride? I hope you are able to receive these offers of love and validation with grace, taking them into your heart so they nourish and replenish your spirit. But I suspect that, for many of you, it’s not so simple. You may feel a little embarrassed and bat them away: ‘Oh, that’s nice of you, but anyone could have done it.’

You may even squirm, finding praise deeply uncomfortable. I have some clients who actually wince when I say something nice to them! This confused me for a long time, until we addressed the problem directly and I began to understand why it’s so hard for some of us to take in the good. Here are two of the things my clients taught me about why compliments and praise can evoke such negative reactions.

It jars with a critical sense of self

Sadly, many of my clients have a highly negative sense of self. They think they are somehow defective, dislikeable or in some other way uniquely weird, different or lesser beings. This has been hard-wired into their brains through repetition, over many years. They have spent so long thinking critically and negatively about themselves that these ways of thinking have developed quick, direct neural pathways – this makes it habitual and all too easy to think they are stupid, weak or pathetic. Heartbreaking but true.

So when I tell them how proud I am of them for managing a tough homework task like standing up to their verbally abusive boss, or finally saying no to their boundary-disrespecting family, I am offering them what’s known as a ‘corrective emotional experience’ – something unfamiliar and the opposite of what they are used to. Because many of my clients were never praised or lifted up as children. They were attacked, shot down and invalidated, over and over again. So parts of them learned to believe these unkind, untrue messages, until those parts held beliefs that they were stupid, weak or pathetic.

For these people, my offer of love and respect has nowhere to land. It doesn’t compute in their brains. So I have to find more creative ways of offering it, perhaps titrating my level of warmth and validation so it is just enough, just the right amount and can sneak through their defences, allowing just a little warmth or the unfamiliar sense of being seen and accepted for who they are, which they so badly need but struggle to take in.

trauma makes them suspicious

People who experience a great deal of trauma in their childhoods develop protective parts of themselves which are hypervigilant, wary and mistrustful. They have good reason to be this way – caregivers hurt, abused and betrayed them, so it was highly adaptive to be mistrustful around these people. I always say that if you are growing up in a dangerous, hurtful, threatening environment, it’s a great idea to be mistrustful. Thank god for those protective parts, because they probably kept my clients as safe as they could have been, despite the verbal, emotional and sometimes physical grenades that were lobbed at them on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, these parts can also make my work tricky, because developing ‘earned secure attachment’ is a key healing ingredient in therapy. It’s also a fundamental part of the integrative trauma therapy approach I have developed, because all the research shows that the relationship between therapist and client is the most important part of any effective therapy. These protectors make connecting with my clients tricky, so a lot of patient, painstaking work is necessary to help them see that I have no intention of hurting or taking advantage of them, like their caregivers did.

The brilliant Dr Janina Fisher, a trailblazer in the trauma-therapy field, once said that if you have been profoundly hurt by those closest to you, all the things we therapists think are helpful – trust, connection, feeling either positive or negative emotions, focusing on your breath or becoming mindful of somatic symptoms – feel threatening and unsafe. So when I tell someone, ‘I know you worry that everyone finds you weird and annoying. But you seem like a really nice, kind person to me,’ those protectors scent danger and can get spiky, dismissive or shutdown in return. I’m trying to offer an – honest, heartfelt – corrective emotional experience and it makes them angry, passive-aggressive or dissociated and numb. Not ideal.

The practice: Taking in treasure

Another thing I learned from my clients is a practice I developed to help with this very problem. It’s called The Treasure Chest and you can listen to it on Insight Timer by clicking the button below. This offers a concrete strategy to help you stop pushing away praise, compliments or other good things that come your way. Because these are little pieces of treasure. A kind word or warm comment can be deeply healing, if you learn to take them in.

An accumulation of these small offerings of kindness will, in time, help those protective parts relax. And whether you are at the milder or more severe end of the trauma spectrum, learning to tell a different story about yourself is crucial. How does it serve you to tell that critical, self-denigrating narrative, over and over? Far better to make the story of you something kind, compassionate and understanding. And taking in these little pieces of treasure will help you do that, because other people – especially those who know and love you – see the real you. Flawed and messy, like all humans, but also unique and wonderful, in so many ways.

I hope the practice helps – my clients seem to love it, so I very much hope you do too.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Listen to My Latest Guided Meditation: Working with Your Inner Critic

Image by Math

If you struggle with low self-esteem, anxiety or depression I’m guessing you are highly self-critical. That’s because I see this in my consulting room on a daily basis – and decades of research have proven harsh, negative self-criticism to cause a wide range of psychological problems.

Luckily, trauma-informed therapy models like schema therapy and internal family systems therapy give you a powerful, highly effective way of managing the Inner Critic. This is the part of you that sends you those harsh, hurtful messages – and learning to quieten and transform this part is a key part of any therapy process.

My latest guided meditation for Insight Timer – Working with Your Inner Critic – will help you first get to know this part, then begin a dialogue with it. Learning to identify and speak to your Inner Critic is a crucial step in your healing journey, whatever you may be struggling with.

Like all of my Insight Timer recordings, Working with Your Inner Critic is free, with an optional donation. You can listen to this practice now using the button below:

I hope you find it helpful – you may also want to watch my recent webinar, How to Manage Your Inner Critic. Get exclusive lifetime access for just £10. If you would like to watch this powerful, 90-minute webinar, just click on the button below:

I hope you find this meditation and webinar useful as part of your healing journey.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

When (and Why) Do We Learn to be Self-Critical?

Image by Jerry Wang

How self-critical are you? You might be one of those people who mildly admonish themselves when they make a mistake: ‘Oh Jenny, that was a bit foolish, don’t do that again.’ Or – if you are anything like most of the people I see for therapy – your Inner Critic may be super-harsh: ‘James, you’re an idiot! Why do you make the same stupid, pathetic mistakes over and over? You should be ashamed of yourself, you ******* waste of space.’

As you are reading this, and have signed up to a mental-health newsletter, I’m guessing your Critic is up the harsher end of the scale. If so, I’m sorry – that probably makes your life exceedingly difficult, affecting your confidence and self-esteem on a daily basis. Your Critic might jump on every little thing you say and do, looking for tiny errors to beat you up about. Not much fun, right?

But have you ever thought about why your Critic does this? Or when it learned to be that critical voice in your head? Let’s try and answer those questions – and both the why and when might surprise you.

When does the inner critic come online?

As a schema therapist, I have worked with hundreds of Critics. I have tried using techniques drawn from cognitive-behaviour therapy, compassion-focused therapy, schema therapy and internal family systems therapy – all of my therapeutic big guns. That’s because I see the Critic, internally, as the main driver of most psychological problems, from anxiety-related issues like social anxiety and public-speaking anxiety, to depression, eating disorders, problems with anger, in relationships, with substance abuse and addiction.

You name the problem with your thoughts, emotions, moods, body and behaviour and the Critic is probably involved in some way. As we will see below, I don’t think the Critic means to cause any of these problems – in fact, it’s probably trying to help – but nevertheless, it unwittingly does.

The exact age at which your Critic came online is, of course, hard to pin down. But my hunch is that it was around four or five years old, because that’s the age at which we start to get cognitive. For the first time, we can start to think things like (if you’re the girl in the photo), ‘Why does mummy always like my sister’s paintings more than mine?’ or, ‘Why doesn’t Sally want to be friends any more? Did I do something wrong and now she hates me?’

And we can think these more ‘metacognitive’ thoughts because our prefrontal cortex is really starting to develop at this age. This crucial part of your brain, which is just behind your forehead, takes a long time to develop – it doesn’t fully mature until you are in your early twenties. And when we start thinking about what other people think of us, whether they like us or like someone else more, that maybe they find us annoying or dislikable, our Critic emerges.

This part of you starts monitoring everything you think, say and do, checking for anything that might lead to a bad outcome – someone being angry with or rejecting you, say. And if it notices that, it starts giving you a hard time – to modify your behaviour. Which leads us to the why…

Why does the critic criticise?

It’s hard to believe, I know, but the Critic really does mean well. Even the meanest, harshest, most aggressive Critic is trying to help. How? In my opinion, Critics are always trying to motivate or protect you, or both. The motivation is easier to spot, like when it tells you to get up off your behind and go for a walk, you lazy so and so. Or telling you not to eat that yummy piece of cake, because you’re big enough already. A bit harsh, but clearly pushing you into doing something helpful.

And the protection – which started when you were a small, vulnerable child – is all about stopping you saying or doing something that will lead to you getting hurt. If this is hard to accept about that relentless voice in your head, just notice two things:

1. First, your Critic gets loud when you are vulnerable or threatened in some way. That’s because it’s freaking out – it sees the danger and is trying to warn you, in its somewhat clumsy and ineffective way

2. And second, what are the themes of your critical self-talk? Just notice them and I bet they focus on, for example, the thing you said to that colleague that led to them being cold with you; or the drunken story you told at that party that hurt your partner, so they snapped at you and you felt regretful and ashamed the next morning

Hard as it is to see at first, the intention of your Critic is good – it’s just the method, or behaviour, that needs to change. Understanding this is a crucial first step on turning down the volume on that relentless self-criticism, treating yourself more kindly and with greater respect.

I hope that helps – and if you would like to know more, do come along to my next webinar, How to Manage Your Inner Critic, on Saturday 25th March 2023. Email Anna, our lovely Heal Your Trauma administrator at info@danroberts.com if you want to find out more, or book your place now using the button below. I hope to see you there!

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Come to My Webinar – How to Manage Your Inner Critic – on 25th March

If you want to know how to be less self-critical and treat yourself with more kindness, compassion and respect, then do watch the recording of my How to Manage Your Inner Critic webinar.

This webinar includes a combination of teaching, powerful experiential exercises such as breathing techniques and practices based on Internal Family Systems, which are highly effective at both understanding and managing your inner Critic 🌟

Purchase the recording now for just £10, to download or stream whenever you want:

Do You Struggle With Self-Criticism?

Do you struggle with self-criticism? If so, your Inner Critic may call you names like ‘stupid’ or ‘pathetic’, which drains your confidence and impacts your self-worth on a day-to-day basis.

Because this is so painful for us, it can be easy to think we need to get rid of our Critic, or make them shut up. Unfortunately, not only is this very difficult to do, it is also counter-productive, as it tends to make the Critic stronger and louder. Instead, we need to befriend and work with the Critic to help you understand the function of this much-misunderstood part, which is always either motivational or protective in some way (I know that’s hard to believe right now, but having worked with hundreds of Critics in my consulting room I have consistently found it to be true).

As an Internal Family Systems-Trained Therapist I use this warm, compassionate, highly effective approach with all my clients. And that’s because it is so effective for a wide range of problems, from complex trauma to anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, eating disorders and addiction. It’s also, in my many years of clinical experience, the most effective approach we have for helping your Critic calm down and stop giving you such a hard time, which in turn will help you feel calmer, happier and more at peace.

If you would like to learn how to work with your Critic, watch the recording of my 90-minute Zoom webinar – How to Manage Your Inner Critic, which took place on Saturday 25th March 2023, from 3pm-4.30pm.

How to Manage Your Inner Critic features 90 minutes of teaching, powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, and a 15-minute Q&A with me.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

• What we mean by trauma and how common it is – and why experiencing trauma means we tend to develop a louder, more powerful inner Critic

• Why Internal Family Systems is such a revolutionary model, offering brand-new ways of understanding psychological problems and how to heal them, including a road map to transforming your Critic

• Why we all have an internal system of ‘parts’ – both young, wounded parts and protective parts which work hard to make sure those young parts never get hurt again. And why, counterintuitively, your chief protector is often the Critic

• How to understanding the function of your Critic – almost always either to motivate or protect you – which in turn helps you approach the Critic in a more nuanced, validating and ultimately transformative way

• You will also learn some simple, powerful techniques to help you work with your Critic – as well as the young parts that get triggered when the Critic is loud, harsh or overly negative
  

Don’t miss out – purchase access to the recording for just £10, to download or stream whenever you like, using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

You Are More Than Good Enough, Just as You Are

Image by Daniel Hering

I’m going to tell you a secret. You are completely, 100% likable, lovable and more than good enough, just as you are. Who you are, right now. Not next year, when you’ve had therapy and lost 10lb and met the love of your life and bought a big house. Exactly as you are today – with all your strengths and weaknesses, things you’re proud of and things you’re not, successes and failures... Perfect, with all your many imperfections.

Don’t believe me? I thought not. And here’s why – because most of us don’t believe that we are good enough, deep down. We think we’re not clever, thin, pretty, successful, popular, strong, resilient, academic – or whatever our personal sore point might be – enough. And that’s because many of us have a schema, called Defectiveness.

When I take a new client on for schema therapy, I identify which of the 18 schemas they have (we all have at least some of them, including the person who’s writing this). And most people score highly for Defectiveness. It’s so common, I call it the ‘common cold’ of schemas. And like all schemas, it’s a neural network in the brain made up of thoughts, memories, beliefs, emotional and physical responses. These networks develop when we’re young to help us cope with repeated stressful experiences. They are like a template for how to respond when we encounter similarly stressful experiences in our lives.

And Defectiveness often develops when someone tells us we are stupid, or lazy, or weak, or some other hurtful thing, over and over. Not just once, but day after day, week after week, year after year, throughout our childhoods. And so, of course, we start to believe it. We think, ‘Maybe I am stupid.’

Sometimes it’s not what we’re told, but what we intuit from a situation. So if we have a sister and our dad clearly loves her more than us, we might start to think, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why does he dote on her and treat me like a waste of space? Oh, maybe it’s because I’m not as smart as her. Or perhaps I’m just not as lovable as she is.’

So that schema starts forming, slowly at first, but getting more and more wired in as we struggle through a painful childhood. And then you find yourself, at 30 or 40 years old, feeling deep in your bones that you are stupid, rubbish, weak or a failure. I must stress at this point, that none of this is true. It’s just a story you have told yourself for so long that it seems like a 100% accurate description of reality.

Schemas can be healed

Another crucial point is that, just because schemas are strongly wired in to your brain (because you have been thinking those self-critical thoughts and telling yourself that negative story for so long), they are not set or fixed in any way. If you often read my posts, you will know how much I like the idea of neuroplasticity, which basically tells us that our brains are malleable and can be rewired at any moment in our lives.

For example, if you travel to a new city, in a new country, there is a huge amount of new information to absorb – new language, new food, new transport system, new city layout, new customs, new currency, and so on. And when you engage that miraculous supercomputer in your cranium to learn all this stuff, you create new neural architecture to hold all that information. That’s what we mean by rewiring the brain – creating new synaptic connections between the neurons to hold brand-new and important information.

This is how schemas are formed, in your young, fast-growing brain. And this is how schemas can be weakened (or healed, in schema therapy language) when you’re older. Schema healing is always possible, for any of us, at any time in our lives. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, of course – but it is always possible.

The practice

Tell yourself a different story

One of the ways you can start healing your schemas, right now, is by rewriting the story you have been telling yourself since you were, probably, around five years old. And one of the ways to do that is using a technique I learned from the brilliant psychologist Dr Paul Gilbert, founder of compassion-focused therapy. To paraphrase Dr Gilbert, his story goes something like this.

‘When you were about to be born, imagine you could have looked down on the Earth and seen all the potential families you could be born into. Some of those families were warm, loving, kind and stable; and others were full of conflict, unhappiness, anger and criticism. Would you have picked the unhappy one? No, of course not.

‘Did you choose your tricky brain, with its highly developed threat system that made you vulnerable to feeling stressed, anxious and unsafe? Of course you didn’t.

‘Did you choose to have painful schemas, or a harsh inner critic, or negative and self-loathing beliefs? Of course not.

‘Did you choose to have debilitating anxiety and worry, depression, or overwhelming feelings of shame and a lack of self-worth? Nobody would.

‘So, as you didn’t choose any of those things, the thoughts, feelings and moods you struggle with on a day-to-day basis can’t be your fault.

‘But, as an adult, it is your responsibility to do everything you can to try and heal from your painful childhood. Read self-help books and blogs like this one. Go to workshops and webinars held by teachers and healers you respect. Listen to podcasts. Get some therapy. Choose a partner who is kind and supportive. Exercise, sleep, eat nourishing food – all of those things are within your power and you can start doing them right this moment.’

I love this idea, because fault is entirely negative and self-blaming, whereas responsibility is positive, hopeful and leads to proactive problem-solving. If you would like to put this into practice, why not try journaling about your own life – telling yourself a different story about all the things that were out of your control, so you clearly didn’t choose and cannot have been your fault.

Think about the way that all those things, when put together, made you the person you are today. And hopefully this compassionate, non-blaming story will help you feel better about yourself and your life, however much of a struggle it may be for you.

I hope you find that helpful – and that you can tell yourself a different story, starting today. Remember: You are likable, lovable and more than good enough, just as you are.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Bullying is so Traumatic for Kids (and Adults)

Image by Kuanish Reymbaev

I was badly bullied at school. It was one of the worst years of my life – the last year of primary school, which should have been a happy time but was anything but. For some reason I’m still not 100% clear about, I got held back a year while all my friends went on to secondary school. I was then dropped, gazelle-like, into the pride of hungry lions that were the kids in the year below.

And although I have always been big, I was a sensitive, easily-hurt kid – perfect prey for bullies. So this gang made my life hell, for a year. And this experience was deeply scarring for me. It stays with me to this day, despite a great deal of work in therapy (I am finally close to healing those wounds, but it has taken a long time and much hard work).

Why am I telling you all this? Because, as with many painful psychological experiences, I know what bullying feels like, from the inside (known as emotional empathy). This is very different from intellectually understanding it (cognitive empathy), from reading books and being taught on a therapy training.

Why bullying is so traumatic

What I most remember about this awful time is the feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness. Whatever I did, or tried to do, didn’t make any difference. I told my parents, eventually, but – although of course they tried their best to help, especially my mum – when they told the teachers, it just got worse.

If I tried avoiding the gang, they always found me. I couldn’t fight back, even if I had been that sort of kid, because there were five or six of them and one of me. And this horrible kind of helplessness, in the face of attack – physical, verbal, emotional – is what turns a bad experience into a traumatic one.

I guess the silver lining of these events, which happened almost 50 years ago, is that they have helped me both understand and in turn, help trauma survivors. It’s why I always tell my clients that I understand trauma, dysfunctional families, alcoholism, bullying, depression and so much more, because I lived through it all as a child.

It has also helped me see that, as a society, we underestimate just how traumatic bullying can be for kids. I am still affected by those experiences, several decades later. And so will you be, if it happened to you. Those memories – like any kind of trauma memory – need processing, with an effective trauma-informed therapy like schema therapy or internal family systems therapy (the one I am currently having).

If you experienced bullying as a child, please don’t minimise or ignore it. The little boy or girl inside you still bears the scars of those experiences, however long ago they were.

Bullying hurts adults too

For many people, their bullying comes not in childhood, but later life. An abusive partner, horrible boss or vindictive colleague can be extremely painful, however old you may be. Again, please don’t ignore or dismiss these experiences. If you’re stuck in an abusive relationship, charities like Refuge or Women’s Aid can help you escape it – and stay safe once you have left.

If the problem is at work, and you have an HR department, speak to them about it right away. They have a legal obligation to protect you and prevent bullying or abusive behaviour in the workplace. If you’re a member of a union, tell them – they will be able to help. And, finally, if all else fails, find a new job! Life is too short to spend every day in fear of being belittled, targeted or abused in any way.

A key part of my Heal Your Trauma project is cutting through the fog of ignorance and misinformation that exists around trauma. It’s a huge problem, affecting millions of people around the world. Many experiences can be traumatic for us. And we can always do something about it, including reading blogs like this one, finding support groups, good therapy, reading self-help books, speaking to friends and family. All of those things will help – so please don’t ignore your traumatic experiences.

Get help – you deserve it.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Stay Sane in the Age of Social Media

Image by Marvin Meyer

When you think about it, our relationship with technology is a strange thing. Sometimes I walk down the road, or travel on the Tube – and every single person I see is staring at their phone.

How did that happen? In the space of just a few years, we have gone from a species that talked to each other, read books or the newspaper, or perhaps just stared into space and daydreamed of our next holiday, or a date with that gorgeous new guy at work, to a species that is glued to some form of screen, pretty much every waking moment of our lives.

Very strange. It’s particularly odd when you also understand that the human brain is just not built for all this digital stimulation. Your brain, and mine, are built for the environment that our ancestors lived in for millions of years. Living in small bands, out in the wilderness, in total silence apart from weather, birdsong, the humming of insects and cries of larger animals.

No phones. No TVs. No radios, even. So all of our stimulation came from Nature – watching the sunset, summer meadows bursting with wildflowers, or hazy mountains in the distance. And from each other, of course. Our brains are so strongly wired to be social that many neuroscientists see the brain as something that exists both within and between us – a ‘social brain’ that needs inputs from other brains to function optimally.

The social media boom

One of the strangest – and, I think, trickiest – aspects of this digital revolution is the recent boom in social media consumption. A quick Google search tells me that there are currently 206 million Twitter users worldwide, a billion people on Instagram and almost three billion Facebook users! That’s over a third of the 7.9 billion people currently living on our planet.

In many ways, this has been a positive thing for humanity. Think about those social brains, primed to interact and share information with others. It’s one reason we use all of these social media platforms, so we can share photos of our holiday on Facebook, for example, or wedding shots on Instagram. This helps us feel bonded with those we love, which can only be a good thing.

But, as has been well-documented, all of this social-media use has some major downsides. I think many people over-share, desperately seeking likes, retweets and other dopamine-inducing activity. This worries me, as s people don’t seem to realise that once you share something on the internet it’s out there, forever.

So what might seem like a good idea when you’re 20 (all those wild festival photos, or drunken holiday antics with your mates), may not feel so good when you’re 30 and applying for some serious job.

Protecting your mental health online

As the internet, smartphones and social media are likely to be a fixture in our lives for many years, here are a few guidelines for navigating this tricky territory safely, for yourself and others…

1. You’re not always right – and other people are not always wrong. One of the most damaging aspects of, say, Twitter, is that it pushes us to adopt binary, right-or-wrong, black-or-white positions. We feel passionately about our position, as a pro- or anti-vaxxer, for example, which quickly leads to being in a camp of us or them.

   It’s fine to have strong opinions and even to express them, in whatever way feels good for you. I am a passionately political person, with strong views on all sorts of stuff. But I never get into arguments on Twitter. If someone politely disagrees with me, that is perfectly OK. If they are rude, aggressive or offensive, I immediately block them (and report them if necessary) and move on. Angry Twitter rants are destructive to your mental health and, I’m afraid, will almost never persuade them to change their minds.

2. Spread kindness, not hostility. Imagine if, instead of us all getting angry and ranty all the time, we instead tweeted, retweeted and generally posted positive, kind, compassionate messages. The ripple effect of this would be a beautiful thing – everyone actually being nice to each other, praising, liking, encouraging… (It’s a little idealistic, I know, but why not dream?).

   At the very least, we can politely disagree with those whose views are different. And I think we did, a lot more, before social media swept across the internet and into our lives. For example, I am very much a left-wing person and always have been. I have voted Labour in every election since I was 18.

   But I am always interested in other people’s views, as long as they are not too extreme or hateful. I’m curious about those who disagree with me and why they think what they do. Sometimes I have to admit that, on a particular issue, their view makes more sense than mine, however irksome that may be. If we all had a bit more tolerance of difference, the world would undoubtedly be a better, kinder, less angry place.

3. Trauma-informed social media use. If you have a trauma history, social media can be especially difficult. My first suggestion would be to go easy on the news in your feed, especially about scary or upsetting events that are out of your control. We all consume far too much violent, negative media – news stories, TV programmes, movies, books and video games. And it has an effect, particularly if trauma is in your background. So limit your news diet, especially if you are struggling with your mental health in any way.

   Points one and two are especially true for you – please don’t get involved with people who are abusive or aggressive. Block, delete and move on.

Tread lightly around areas that might be triggering for you. If you experienced abuse of any kind as a child, reading/hearing about/watching anything on that theme might be really tough, so be kind to yourself and if it’s making you uncomfortable, step away from the screen. We don’t have to know about or be on top of every issue, or breaking news story, so it’s fine to let something slide by and do something that feels more nourishing for you instead.

Finally, it’s important to figure out what the Buddha called the ‘middle way’ with all of this. Most of us use social media in some fashion, so it’s hard to go cold turkey and give it up completely. There are lots of kind, decent people online – because most people are kind and decent, even if it doesn’t always seem that way on Facebook or Twitter.

There are also lots of stories about inspiring, uplifting, hope-inducing things, so try to focus on those and go easy on the angry, upsetting stuff. Life’s hard enough already without looking at the world through a cracked, distorted, designed-to-outrage lens.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Be Assertive – Even With the Most Difficult People

Image by Tim Savage from Pexels

Think of the most difficult person in your life. Now imagine you are in conflict with them and need to find a way of communicating that solves the problem. Sounds daunting, right? But there is a simple, easy-to-learn formula that will help you manage even the most challenging people in your life — it’s called ‘assertive communication’ and I will guide you through the simple steps involved so you can make assertiveness your new superpower.

Like all new skills, assertiveness is not easy to learn — and even harder to put into practice. But think of it like learning a musical instrument, or driving a car. At first, it’s really hard and clunky. It takes huge amounts of concentration and you still make tons of mistakes every time you try. But, over time, it gets a bit easier each time you strum that guitar or park in a tight spot.

And then, one day, as if by magic, you try again and it just works. You can play that Beatles tune easily and it actually sounds right. Or you can drive to the supermarket smoothly and confidently, without scaring the life out of your dad in the passenger seat.

We think of this as muscle memory but actually, it’s the development of a neural network in your brain called a ‘schema’. This is a blueprint for how to play the guitar or drive your car that fires up every time you do it. It’s something your brain develops so that it can save energy for oft-repeated tasks (your brain is constantly looking for ways to conserve energy, as it has a vast number of tasks to perform for every second of your existence with only finite energy resources).

The same goes for being assertive. Just practice over and over — starting with the easiest people and situations, before progressing on to the tough ones — and before you know it you have nailed it. Critical partner, undermining boss, negative friend — whoever the difficult people in your life are, you will find relationships with them a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.

Why is it so hard to be assertive?

Before I teach you how to be assertive, we need to ponder why so many of us find this simple skill so daunting. In my therapy practice, I work with many people every week who are unassertive, letting themselves be bullied or steamrollered by more confident, pushy folk. And many of my clients have been bullied as kids, either in the family, at school or both.

This sapped their confidence, making them feel helpless and weak. As I often tell my clients, think of a three-year-old girl being shouted at by her dad. What can that little kid do? She is tiny and her dad is huge. He is much stronger, smarter, more cognitively and verbally skilled than her. She feels scared and under threat — so the threat system in her brain fires up and triggers the fight-flight-freeze response.

She can’t fight, as he is much bigger and stronger. She can’t flee, as it’s her home and she has nowhere else to go. So the only option is freeze — think of a deer in the headlights, muscles quivering with tension but frozen in terror. That’s what happens to us when our freeze response is triggered.

How maladaptive schemas sap your strength

If this happens over and over — as it did for many of my clients — we develop those schemas I mentioned earlier. But these are not helpful schemas, they are what we call ‘early maladaptive schemas’, in this context maladaptive meaning unhelpful.

That poor little girl will probably develop a Subjugation schema, which makes her feel powerless, subjugating her own needs, wants and desires to strong, dominant people like her dad. She may also develop a Mistrust/Abuse schema because she was verbally and emotionally abused throughout her childhood. And maybe a Vulnerability schema, because she feels vulnerable and under threat in the world.

As an adult, these schemas fire up whenever she feels stressed and threatened by someone who reminds her of her angry, bullying dad. She will probably be especially triggered by male authority figures, so a nasty male boss will be like Kryptonite for her. And when those schemas get triggered, she feels intense emotions like anxiety, bodily sensations like a plunging in her stomach, breathlessness and a racing heart.

Even though she is a smart, capable 40-year-old lawyer, mum, wife and activist, in those moments she is three again, powerless to fight back against the critical, angry man who is shouting her down.

Demystifying assertive communication

Luckily, even if we have experienced a destructive, disempowering childhood, as adults we can learn to heal those schemas and deal with difficult people in a more confident, assertive manner. There is a simple model for having difficult conversations that I have taught to hundreds of clients — and used many times with the challenging folk in my own life. Here’s how it goes.

Let’s say you have a tricky coworker, Nancy. She seems to enjoy putting you down and belittling you in front of colleagues, even though you treat her well and she has no reason to attack you. It’s just how she is with everyone (assuming they let her get away with it). In a meeting, when you presented your idea for boosting sales of a new product, Nancy interrupted you, said it was a stupid idea and would never work.

This was, of course, hurtful and humiliating. For the rest of the meeting, you sat there fuming, angry thoughts and feelings churning away inside you like a toxic cocktail in a blender. Normally, that’s where the anger would stay — eating away at you inside, while you thought of a thousand witty putdowns that remained resolutely unsaid.

But not today. Because yesterday you worked with me on a new way of handling the Nancys of this world — using assertive communication to stand your ground and say what you needed to, even if that led to the conflict you so desperately try to avoid. So after the meeting, you (Sarah) march into Nancy’s office, sit across from her and get assertive.

Sarah: ‘Nancy, can I speak to you about the meeting.’

Nancy: ‘Oh, I don’t have time for that Sarah, I’m swamped!’

S: ‘This will only take a minute (refusing to be dismissed). I just want to tell you that when you interrupted me and shot my idea down like that, I really thought it was rude and disrespectful (step 1). Also, it made me look bad and feel embarrassed in front of the team (step 2). So in future, I would appreciate it if you would let me finish and respond in a more respectful manner (step 3).’

N (looking shocked): ‘Oh… um… well… I didn’t mean to upset you. I just come off a bit snappy sometimes. But your idea was a bit lame…’

S: ‘You are entitled to your opinion, of course. But again, in future, I am asking you not to interrupt me or speak to me in that rude way. Are we clear?’

N: ‘Um… I guess. Sorry.’

S: ‘No problem. I really appreciate your apology.’

Take-home points

Did you notice the way you refused to be dismissed and stuck to your guns? Also, that you used a three-step formula: ‘When you said/did A, I really felt B, and in future, I would appreciate it if you did/didn’t do C’

Simple, no? And that’s the point. When you’re being assertive, keep it short and simple. Don’t be tempted to add lots of words, or dress it up nicely. Be polite but firm. You don’t need to be rude or aggressive. Just say what you need to clearly and directly — that’s incredibly powerful.

And even though there is no guarantee that the other person will respond well, they usually do. Also, remember this isn’t a one-hit scenario. If Nancy does it again in the next meeting, you say the same thing again: ‘Nancy, remember when I asked you…’ Sometimes it takes a few reminders for people to get it, but they eventually do.

So, please do try this at home. Start with someone easy and a minor situation, to practice. Then work your way up to the toughest people, one step at a time. You will be amazed at how effective it is.

Good luck! I hope you enjoy your new superpower — and the newfound strength, confidence and self-worth that will start flourishing every time you use it.

Warm wishes,

Dan