Читать книгу The Courage to Be Yourself - Sue Patton Thoele - Страница 29

My problem is that I forget what I know.

ESTHER HEFFRON JOHNSON

It's so important to break the pattern of looking outside ourselves for self-esteem. Asking others to mirror our value back to us inevitably leaves us feeling used and invaded. We also allow ourselves to be invaded if we constantly do for others and often resent that our own needs are not met; we doubt our decisions and beliefs and therefore acquiesce whenever someone disagrees; our children, mate, coworkers, and friends borrow from us without asking; we accept responsibility for other people's feelings and try to “fix” things; or people feel free to use our time thoughtlessly.

We become vulnerable to invasion through fear and lack of education: fear of rejection, imperfection, or confrontation and a lack of education about how to stand up for ourselves. Because we fear other people's reactions and don't know how to respond, we allow them to violate our limits and boundaries. Fortunately, our physical and emotional responses tell us when someone has trespassed on our private selves. We can learn how to tune into those feelings and use them as valuable clues for maintaining reasonable limits.

Invasion brings feelings of being taken advantage of, of having to give up something. If one of your children goes into your bathroom and borrows your hairbrush without asking, do you feel invaded, as if you've given up the right to have your things where and when you want them? If a hairbrush boundary has been clearly spelled out, the child has stepped past it, and you may well feel angry and resentful.

When you've just settled into a warm bath after a hard day at work and the kids bang on the door for you to settle a disagreement, whether you'll be invaded or not will depend upon your reaction. If, because of a false sense of responsibility for their happiness, you leap out of the tub and rush to solve their problems, you've allowed them to invade you. I know women who say they never have a moment to themselves because of the demands of their jobs and families. One woman told me she constantly feels as if she's being “nibbled to death by ducks.”

Routinely doing for others what they are perfectly capable of doing for themselves invites invasion. Because doing too much has been an ingrained habit of mine for most of my adult life, especially with my kids, I was tickled with myself recently when I gave my adult son the name and number of a woman to call who has some medical referrals for him instead of making the call myself. A tiny triumph, one might think, but he had asked me to get the referrals for him and my knee-jerk reaction was to do so. Normally, calling her would be fine with me, but I am busier than my son is right now and probably would have felt resentful if I'd followed my habitual pattern of doing simply because asked.

In my mind I earn a gold star for honoring how I really felt and setting a limit. My son actually won also, because a resentful mother is neither a fun nor loving mother.

But it's not always outer circumstances that allow invasion and keep women going at a killing pace. Often invasion comes via requirements we impose on ourselves through adhering to the Have- It-All/Do-It-All syndrome. While it's true that the demands on a woman to play many roles are stressful, we do have the right to make choices that put ourselves first. In fact, regularly giving ourselves permission to be first may actually help others to grow as well. If we don't bound from the tub at first call, our children will need to rely on their own resources to solve their dispute. As we assert our independence, they will need to find their own.