Consequences of Not Standing Up For What you Believe In
Photo via Jackson Hendry
There are many moments in life when the most difficult thing and the rightest are one and the same, and in those moments all too often, there is a temptation to stand down and not say anything. Past a certain point there are psychological consequences for not standing up for yourself, and far enough removed from speaking out on your own behalf, it becomes difficult if not impossible to ever resume the practice.
It is, unfortunately, perfectly normal to assume that children do not have voices to express their own thoughts and feelings, or at least they shouldn’t. Some children are clever enough to find ways to maneuver around these assumptions and find ways to be heard. Some are patient enough to wait it out until the day when they can establish more equitable relationships with their peers. And some are left with the lasting imprint of being silenced too long and too often. These are the people for whom speaking out remains difficult. Barring some kind of unexpected trauma, it is rare to find an adult who all of a sudden loses the will to speak. Such habits are are not easily changed because they are ingrained in childhood during important windows of development.
If you are unable to stand up for yourself, for whatever reason, you are unable to achieve full psychological maturity because important psychological tasks are left unattended to. These tasks include the formation of identity and learning how to skillfully navigate relationships with others. The first and sometimes most crucial element of someone defining what their identity is, is being able to define what it is not, and inevitably this requires making choices and sticking by them, despite opposition. It also requires an environment that is tolerant if not supportive of a person’s desire to question and push back against the established norms in a system. Without such tolerance, growth and development becomes much more difficult to accomplish. This is when a person is left to either choose to open rebellion against their environment or silence.
Without a clear sense of identity, a person is at risk of becoming enmeshed and being consumed by the fantasies of others. The way it happens is that other people begin to shape and mold such a person into whatever version of them fits their agenda, and this person feels powerless to stop it. In part because this shaping and molding is often done without malicious intent, and when a person’s identity is underdeveloped, they often cannot respond to identity threats unless they are overt and dramatic. It is the lack of worth communicated through a lack of self-protection that places an individual at risk of assuming a victim mentality, which is the only identity left open to the powerless person who experiences everything as happening to them.
Obviously, I believe it is better to stand up for yourself, and that doing so requires not only learning how to speak, but also learning how to tolerate and lean into discomfort. The point I will continue to make is that anxiety is a part of living and has to be leaned into at times. Part of the work of achieving psychological maturity is learning how to stay present, make choices, and protect yourself in the face of anxiety, instead of experiencing the world as happening to you, which leads to a feeling of powerlessness. There is always an element of nervousness in important matters, an anxiety that comes with speaking up when there is something to lose, but there is also something to gain from doing it anyway.
These moments of difficulty exist to help you find out who you really are and what you really believe in. They exist to help you find your chosen community, the ones you want to engage with precisely because you do feel like you have power and a voice when you’re in their presence.