Why Can’t I Stand Up for Myself? + FREE Uncovering My Barriers Worksheet

We all have something we want in life. For example, you might be looking for a loving relationship that makes you feel safe and valued.

Alternatively, maybe you’d like to wake up each day feeling happier or more fulfilled.

Or perhaps you want to feel more confident about standing up for yourself with members of your extended family.

Whatever it is, you might be crystal clear on WHAT it is that you want. And you might even have some ideas about HOW to make it happen.

But despite this, you’re having a hard time actually achieving your goal or fulfilling your desire. And in some cases, you might even struggle to take the first step.

And for that reason, you might be wondering, “Why can’t I…?”

I know what it’s like because it’s a question I used to ask myself all the time after my marriage ended years ago. I would often think, “Why can’t I just feel happy?”, “Why can’t I find a partner who’s right for me?”, and “Why can’t I treat myself in the loving way that I care for friends and family?”

Thank God that was temporary!

From my own experience, I know that these “Why can’t I?” questions can be frustrating. After all, feeling happy or treating ourselves lovingly seems like a pretty simple thing. So why can’t we just make it happen? Is there something wrong with us? Are we incapable of achieving even the most basic goals?

No.

There’s nothing wrong with you. And you’re 100% capable of getting what you want and living the life you’ve been dreaming of.

But you might be having a hard time making it happen because there’s something standing in your way.

What is this something?

That’s exactly what I’ll be addressing in my new blog post series called “Why can’t I…?”

In it, I’ll be tackling four common goals and desires that I’ve seen my clients and students struggle with time after time. For each one, I’ll uncover the main reasons WHY people struggle to achieve it and I’ll share what YOU can do to break through these barriers so you can enjoy the life you want.

To kick things off, we’ll start with one of my favorite “Why can’t I?” questions:

“Why can’t I stand up for myself?”

Let’s get to it!

Standing Up for Yourself Can Feel Hard

Standing up for yourself is about knowing what your boundaries are and ensuring that others respect them.

But if you’re like a lot of the people I’ve worked with over the years, you might find that standing up for yourself doesn’t come naturally to you. You might even feel terrified or sick to your stomach when you just think about doing it.

For example, maybe you avoid telling your partner how you really feel about something they do because you don’t want to trigger a fight or “rock the boat.”

Or maybe you avoid standing up to your sister when she makes insensitive comments about you because keeping your mouth shut and pretending to ignore her just feels like the easier thing to do.

The problem is that although staying quiet might feel easier in the moment, it ends up being harmful in the long run. Why? Because it means that our needs continue to go unfulfilled. And it makes us feel increasingly angry and resentful, which can hurt our relationships with others.

But if standing up for ourselves is so important for us and for our relationships, why is it often so incredibly hard to do?

What’s Holding You Back?

If you’ve been wanting to stand up for yourself but have had a hard time doing it, here’s the first thing you need to ask yourself: What’s holding me back?

You might be tempted to answer this question by concluding that you just don’t know what to say. And if you are, you might believe that standing up for yourself would be easy if someone just gave you a script to use.

But from working with clients in my practice and with students in my assertiveness courses, I can bet that giving you a script—even one that was tailored to your specific situation—wouldn’t do the trick.

Why?

Because not knowing what to say likely isn’t the main obstacle in your path.

Instead, there are probably barriers that are stopping you from even wanting to initiate a conversation that would allow you to stand up for yourself. And if you’re so terrified of even initiating a conversation with the person you want to be assertive with, having a script isn’t going to help much.

That’s why before you can even think about what you would say to stand up for yourself, you need to identify WHAT is holding you back from initiating the conversation in the first place. Specifically, you need to uncover the barriers that are stopping you from asserting your boundaries with other people.

FEARS ARE COMMON BARRIERS

When I’ve helped my clients and Assertive Alchemist students uncover their barriers to standing up for themselves, I’ve found that the most common barriers they have are fears.

There are many types of fears that might hold you back from standing up for yourself:

Fear of Rejection

You might avoid standing up for yourself because you’re worried that the other person will reject you or end their relationship with you for speaking up. For example, you might worry that if you tell your partner that you don’t appreciate the way they talk to you in front of their friends, your partner might break up with you.

Fear of Conflict

If you have a fear of conflict, you might be scared to stand up for yourself because you’re worried that it’ll trigger a fight or argument with the other person. For example, you might worry that if you stand up to your partner, it’ll lead to a massive fight.

Fear of Retaliation

This barrier might hold you back by making you worry that if you stand up for yourself, you’ll be punished in some way. For example, you might fear that if you stand up for yourself with your partner, they’ll give you the silent treatment or withhold sex.

Fear of Hurting Someone

If you have a fear of hurting someone, you might be concerned that if you stand up for yourself, you’ll make the other person feel bad. For example, you might worry that if you tell your partner how you feel, you’ll hurt their feelings and make them feel like they aren’t a good partner.

Fear of Failing

Finally, you might even have a fear that you’ll make a mistake or fail when trying to stand up for yourself. For instance, you might be worried that if you try to tell your partner how you feel, you’ll make a mistake or fail to express yourself the way you want to. And as a result, you might just stay quiet.

Now you know what some of the common barriers are to standing up for yourself. So here’s my question for you:

What are the barriers that are holding YOU back from standing up for yourself?

Take some time to sit quietly with yourself and really think about what’s stopping you from expressing yourself. Keep in mind that although the fears I shared above are some of the most common ones, they aren’t the only barriers that people can have when they struggle to stand up for themselves. So the barriers that you have might include some of the fears above and they might include other barriers.

Our barriers can be challenging to identify. After all, in many cases, we might not be aware of the fears and beliefs that hold us back from standing up for ourselves. And even when we are, we might have a hard time admitting that we have them and that they’re holding us back from asserting ourselves the way we want to.

So to help you identify YOUR barriers, I’ve put together a worksheet that’ll help you uncover and break through them step-by-step. Get your copy of my Uncovering My Barriers worksheet right here.

Where Did Your Barriers Come From?

Before you can tackle your fears (and any other barriers you have to standing up for yourself), you need to know where they came from.

In many cases, the barriers that stop us from standing up for ourselves are rooted in our past. That is, an experience from your childhood or earlier on in adulthood may have shaped your fears and beliefs about standing up for yourself.

For example, maybe you grew up in a household where standing up for yourself was highly discouraged. So whenever you tried to stand up for yourself with your siblings or even with your partners, you were yelled at, scolded, or punished in some other way. This might have taught you that it isn’t okay to stand up for yourself and that if you do, you’ll be punished for it. As a result, you might have a fear of retaliation and a fear of conflict when it comes to standing up for yourself. And now, even in relationships and interactions that don’t involve your family, you’re reluctant to stand up for yourself and your needs.

Alternatively, maybe in your past relationship, your partner always ignored you when you tried to stand up to them and tell them how you felt about something. As a result, you developed the beliefs that your needs don’t matter in a relationship and that it’s pointless to speak up. So in your current relationship, you believe it’s futile to stand up for yourself even when you want to.

Thinking of the barriers you identified in the last section, try to pinpoint where they came from.

What experiences did you have as a child that might have led to these fears and beliefs? Did something happen in a past relationship to shape how you think and feel about the idea of standing up for yourself?

It’s by understanding your barriers and knowing where they came from that you’ll be able to break through them successfully. This will ultimately allow you to feel more confident when standing up for yourself in ANY situation—not just one you have a script for.

Understand WHY You Can’t Stand Up For Yourself

Standing up for yourself is important for fulfilling your needs and maintaining healthy relationships with other people. But it’s something that doesn’t always come naturally. And it can even feel awkward or scary to do sometimes.

The good news is that if you’ve been having a hard time standing up for yourself in your relationships, you aren’t out of luck. You absolutely CAN assert yourself and your boundaries successfully and confidently. You just need to first identify and break through the barriers that are holding you back.

As I said above, identifying your barriers can be tricky, especially if you’re unaware of them or if it’s scary to acknowledge them.

That’s why I’ve created a FREE Uncovering My Barriers worksheet. It’ll help you uncover the barriers that are holding you back and develop a plan for tackling them with confidence.

And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and master classes.  

See you again soon!

Vera

P.S. Once you’ve tackled your barriers to standing up for yourself, you’ll be ready to actually do it. For some tips on expressing yourself effectively, check out the strategy I outline in this video. It’s one of the key assertive communication strategies that I’ll be sharing in my upcoming Assertive Alchemist course. Stay tuned for more information about launch dates for this and other Velini Academy programs.

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