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Yes vs No illustraion
Have a tendency to say yes when you feel like uttering no? Find yourself being considerate and obliging to those who treat you poorly or with indifference? Feel as if many of your relationships are all give and no get?
You may be an accommodator or what some call a “people pleaser.”
Individuals who balk at asserting their rights and needs or who feel they must always defer to others earn derisive labels like “pushover” and “doormat.” But the mindset of most accommodators is more complicated than these unkind slurs suggest.
“It’s not that I don’t want to say no and put my foot down,” Alice told me. “In fact, I’ve done it.”
“And what happens when you do?” I asked.
“I pay for it big time, and not just at the hands of other people. I even end up punishing myself,” she replied.
Own Worst Enemy
Accommodators are frequently their own worst enemy. A case in point was Alice’s troubled relationship with her adult son. A dutiful single mom, she sacrificed mightily to put him through college and then helped finance his first house.
“He goes weeks without calling me, and then when I call, he can be bland and kind of off-putting,” Alice explained.
Her typical pattern was to silently suffer her son’s cold shoulder for a long time and then, after sufficient resentment accumulated, abruptly level him with a verbal broadside.
“Last week, I yelled at him that I didn’t deserve to be treated this way,” she explained. “I let him have it.”
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Second Guessing?
The result? Even though her son was contrite, after the dust settled, Alice felt awful, as if she owed him an apology instead of the other way around.
“After I stand up for myself, I feel this twisted glob of guilt, unworthiness and second-guessing,” she explained.
Many accommodators struggle to change this pattern because, when they set limits and push back, it unleashes inner turmoil that leaves them emotionally writhing. The cost in anxiety, guilt and prolonged self-criticism simply proves too high.
The most prescribed antidote here is the middle ground between being passive (“Whatever you say”) and aggressive (“I’m not going to take it anymore!”). This is the interpersonal style called assertiveness, and while we hear far less about it today than in times past, it remains an effective approach for folks like Alice.
Becoming Assertive
Being too accommodating creates a reservoir of resentment that erupts in angry confrontations, followed by the inner angst that Alice described. By asserting one’s rights consistently and respectfully, which requires saying no at times, resentment is kept at bay. However, assertiveness is more than a method. It is a state of mind, one that makes a statement to others and, therefore, to one’s self, that “I matter.” Excessive accommodation, then, is a denial of one’s deepest self and of the innate value of one’s existence.
To become an assertive person, rather than merely act like one, Alice challenged the old mental scripts holding her back. This involved listening to her unhelpful self-talk (“It’s not nice to say no”) and questioning the validity of these behavioral prescriptions. As proved true for her, it also helped to identify the source of these mental scripts, which often emanate from others, like parents, teachers and peers, rather than one’s self. In other words, which self-talk statements were her own and which were planted in her psyche by someone else?
Eventually, she discovered that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most accommodators already know how to say no—to themselves—as in “No, don’t assert yourself.” They simply need to extend the same message to others.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
