I have issues with confrontation. I will stand up for myself, or I will try, but if it turns confrontational, I don't know what to do.
Perfect example of this, a job I had a while back, a coworker's radio was too loud for me to concentrate and help people on the phone-which was my job, so I asked her to turn it down and she flat out refused. The first time this happened I was flabbergasted. I thought she was a little standoffish toward me, but I just thought it was because I was new. Not trying to make a deal of it or anything, because I didt know it was gonna become a deal, I just asked her nicely if she could turn it down, and she just said NO. I was incredulous and didn't know what to do. I think I tried it once or twice more, giving the benefit of the doubt, and maybe giving her a chance to rethink. But when it was clear that this was going to be a deal, and even a big deal, I just backed off.
I guess it wasn't worth a fight?
(I figured out later that there must have been some bad feelings in her part before I was ever hired, hindsight isn't actually 20/20, it just makes it easier to see the connections.)
The first time I remember standing up for myself, and it didn't go well, either.
I must have already been in school, because I knew one character in this story from school. Mrs. B was a teacher or librarian or school nurse, someone from school, and I knew her as a safe adult. She was fair with students, kind, fairly quiet, that quiet authority type. The antagonist in this story was her husband, a loud strange adult to my tiny child brain.
How this story goes, Mr. and Mrs. B went to the same church as my family did, and we'd offen see them and sometimes chat with them after service. My folks both worked in the school system so they knew Mrs. B outside of church, too.
When my folks would be occasionally chatting with Mrs. B, this strange adult that I really didn't know would sometimes attempt to chat with me, or I should say joke around with me, because all I remember was him teasing me that he was going to kiss me.
As I said, I really didn't know him, and he wasn't like any other adult men I had met before. I didn't really have teasy uncles even, all the adult men in my life were more the quiet authority type.
I. Was. Terrified.
I probably didn't understand that he was just teasing, only little brothers and neighborhood bullies teased, not adults. I don't remember planning ahead, but one Sunday morning, Li'l Shelly had had enough, and I told him in no uncertain terms that if he tried to kiss me I was gonna punch him in the nose. I think I even remember shaking my tiny fist at him. I was standing up for myself. I thought.
My parents were shocked that I would talk to an adult like that, of course I wasn't going to punch him, I was probably prompted to apologize. I remember serious scolding in the car after embarrassed scolding in public.
I realize they didn't know I was afraid if him kissing me, Li'l Shelly had never told them. So they just saw a child speaking rudely to an adult. But I didn't realize that at the time.
Did I somehow internalize that standing up for myself was wrong?
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