Learning new ways to do things
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: WA Rainforest
Posts: 209
Learning new ways to do things
I've been reflecting a bit on the simple ways my approach to other people has changed since starting down this road to recovery. The other day I saw that one of my neighbors had cut out their lawn and left the rolled up pieces laying in the front yard, and I needed some replacement sod for my own lawn. How best to approach this? the ACOA in me wanted to sneak over in the middle of the night and surreptitiously snatch a few pieces of sod. The rational healthy adult said 'No no no silly, you can't possibly carry that stuff that far, sod is heavy, and someone will hear you and look out the window and they'll see you sneaking around in their yard like a thief.'
Of course the normal thing to do is ask! One of the catchphrases of recovery is 'Ask for what you want, the worst that can happen is they'll say No'. But the thought of knocking on their door and asking filled me with anxiety - why?? Well because in my mother's world saying No is just the beginning! and probably so for a lot of us! As a child I didn't dare risk asking for what I wanted because doing so exposed me to harassment and ridicule and continued persecution. No, much safer to just sneak around and take what I needed when no one was looking! or do without. To this day I do not tell my mother what I want because she'll make sure I never ever get it, and that I never hear the end of my stupidity and unreasonableness in wanting something. I've solved that problem by not wanting ANYTHING from her.
But what about the rest of the world?? I've had to tell myself over and over - with normal people the worst they will do is say No. There's where the world we grew up in is so different from the real world! and where our learned behavior has to change! With Normal People - the worst that will happen is they say No. (and if they do worse than that then there's something wrong with them!)
So I knocked on the door. They said take all I want. They let me pull my car into their driveway to load it up, showed me where the best pieces were.
And it's only taken me 50 years to get to this point!
Of course the normal thing to do is ask! One of the catchphrases of recovery is 'Ask for what you want, the worst that can happen is they'll say No'. But the thought of knocking on their door and asking filled me with anxiety - why?? Well because in my mother's world saying No is just the beginning! and probably so for a lot of us! As a child I didn't dare risk asking for what I wanted because doing so exposed me to harassment and ridicule and continued persecution. No, much safer to just sneak around and take what I needed when no one was looking! or do without. To this day I do not tell my mother what I want because she'll make sure I never ever get it, and that I never hear the end of my stupidity and unreasonableness in wanting something. I've solved that problem by not wanting ANYTHING from her.
But what about the rest of the world?? I've had to tell myself over and over - with normal people the worst they will do is say No. There's where the world we grew up in is so different from the real world! and where our learned behavior has to change! With Normal People - the worst that will happen is they say No. (and if they do worse than that then there's something wrong with them!)
So I knocked on the door. They said take all I want. They let me pull my car into their driveway to load it up, showed me where the best pieces were.
And it's only taken me 50 years to get to this point!
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Starting over all over again
Posts: 4,426
Originally Posted by mushroom 
... As a child I didn't dare risk asking for what I wanted because doing so exposed me to harassment and ridicule and continued persecution. No, much safer to just sneak around and take what I needed when no one was looking! or do without....
Originally Posted by mushroom
... There's where the world we grew up in is so different from the real world! and where our learned behavior has to change! ...
Then I come here and you guys remind me.
Originally Posted by mushroom
... And it's only taken me 50 years to get to this point!...
Thanx for the reminder, mushroom, no head-banging for me today.
Mike
AKA 'grewupinabarn'
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: New Hampshire
Posts: 471
Ohhhhh....so true
The word "no" was the least of my worries. The judgment, shaming, blame-shifting, and of course ridicule would follow on directly. And it would come back to haunt me for months, even years.
As a teacher, and in other jobs, I have noticed that it is usually the other way around. The asker sometimes follows the 'no' with a bit of pleading and appeal, maybe a guilt trip or a thoughtful reasoned argument. I had to get used to this as I would NEVER have considered pleading my case after hearing a 'no'.
Great post!
Well because in my mother's world saying No is just the beginning! and probably so for a lot of us!
As a teacher, and in other jobs, I have noticed that it is usually the other way around. The asker sometimes follows the 'no' with a bit of pleading and appeal, maybe a guilt trip or a thoughtful reasoned argument. I had to get used to this as I would NEVER have considered pleading my case after hearing a 'no'.
Great post!
Member
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Back East
Posts: 704
Garbage in, garbage out
I have the same issue, but it comes out in different ways, e.g., not asking my landlord to fix stuff.
The dispos-all in this apartment hasn't been working for... at least three years. I mentioned it to the landlord once -- when he was up here to help us deal with a bat that had somehow gotten in through a hole in the wall and was flying around in our bedroom at 4:30am! -- but never mentioned it again.
The thing is, my landlord and his wife are totally nice people -- friendly, we talk to them all the time, they're pretty easygoing and understanding about stuff... so it should be no big deal to ask him to come up and replace the dispos-all, right? Wrong. I (that is, we) just deal with it not working -- which really isn't that big a deal, of course; I mean, if the furnace or the water heater went on the blink, we'd suck it up and ask him to fix them... but all the same, I'm so confrontation-averse that I go for years without asking my landlord to fix something that... he's supposed to fix!
T
The dispos-all in this apartment hasn't been working for... at least three years. I mentioned it to the landlord once -- when he was up here to help us deal with a bat that had somehow gotten in through a hole in the wall and was flying around in our bedroom at 4:30am! -- but never mentioned it again.
The thing is, my landlord and his wife are totally nice people -- friendly, we talk to them all the time, they're pretty easygoing and understanding about stuff... so it should be no big deal to ask him to come up and replace the dispos-all, right? Wrong. I (that is, we) just deal with it not working -- which really isn't that big a deal, of course; I mean, if the furnace or the water heater went on the blink, we'd suck it up and ask him to fix them... but all the same, I'm so confrontation-averse that I go for years without asking my landlord to fix something that... he's supposed to fix!
T
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