Mindsets That Make You Afraid To Stand Up For Yourself

Being able to stand up for yourself doesn’t come easy for some of us. When we’re faced with someone making snide comments to our face we just smile and giggle along. When we’re being bossed around by family members or coworkers, we silently comply. No matter how angry or annoyed we are in these situations or others, the words just seem to get caught in our throats because we’re too afraid to speak up.

There could be many reasons why fear rears its ugly head in the face of confrontation. It could be due to social anxiety, low self-esteem, not knowing what to say…not knowing how to fight in case it comes to that lol. Or it could be a mixture of all that and more.

But I found that there are at least 6 mindsets that causes the fear to stand up for yourself. These mindsets are a direct result of your biggest insecurity and negative self-talk. Subconsciously you believe these things, but you might not say them out right when you’re talking down to yourself. Uncovering these mindsets will give you a chance to heal from them. And soon being pushed around will not even be an option for you.

This list is not all inclusive and just serves as a way to recognize any limiting beliefs you may have. At the end I share a story on how just putting a name to these mindsets helped me gain confidence to stand up for myself.

6 Mindsets That Make You Afraid To Stand Up For Yourself

1.Thinking You Aren’t Worthy Of Respect

The basis of thinking you aren’t worthy of respect is low self-esteem and comparison (you can’t see your full value, but you can see every one else’s). You think you’re inadequate because you believe you are missing something that other people seem to possess. This leads to you counting other people as being “better” than you. And leads to you weighing their importance as being more than yours.

This lowly outlook of who you are as a person will have you tolerating blatant disrespect left and right. You won’t think you’re worthy of anything more than that, because again, you can’t see the value you have. It may even begin to feel normal to be treated poorly because thats the way you’ve been treating yourself for years.

Quick Exercise:

Write down a list of all the negative things you believe about yourself
Then ask yourself if you believe any of those things make you unworthy of respect
Seriously consider if the things you listed are THAT much more different or worse than other people’s flaws
Everyday you wake up (and throughout the day) tell yourself you are worthy of respect

(Note – you are MORE than worthy of respect. You’re worthy of every good thing that comes your way and that’s ON the way.)

2. Thinking You Deserve To Be Mistreated

If your self-esteem is low enough, you probably feel like you DESERVE bad things to happen to you. In fact, you may even expect it. In your mind, it’s only fitting that a terrible person like you should get treated like trash.

If you’re at this point, then self-pitying probably feels good to you. When someone hurts you, you might get a false sense of peace. Because the pain feels like its validating all your negative thoughts. And it seems like nothing worse could happen, which feels sort of comforting in a twisted a way. But feeling like this can lead to an unwillingness to stand up for yourself.

You’ll continue to allow yourself to be walked over and talked to any kind of way. Because the desire and will to be treated differently is buried beneath your own self-hate. Essentially, you don’t even require to be respected by others.

Signs you’re unwilling to stand up for yourself:

Immediately agreeing with whatever mean thing someone says about you
Having thoughts like, “That’s exactly what I get”, when something bad happens you
Making up excuses for peoples actions
Placing the blame of peoples action onto yourself
Having a warm, fuzzy feeling of excitement mixed with bitterness when you think about someone’s hateful words toward you (or is that just me?😶)

3. Guilt

Now for my people pleasing girlies (still with low self-esteem of course 😘) who cant bear to hurt someone’s feelings. The few times when you stood up for yourself in the past, you were overcome with guilt for WEEKS. Playing it over and over in your head. Wishing you weren’t so mean. Thinking you overreacted!

You always feel bad for people and are extra careful in your tone of voice and the things you say. Even to the point of letting people say whatever they want to you and treat you however they want. You’d rather be on the receiving end of pain, then to potentially cause it, so you refuse to stand up for yourself. Just so you don’t have to deal with that nasty, gut wrenching feeling of guilt.

So what do you do? You smile when someone gets smart with you. And say sorry when someone pushes you out of the way. And you do whatever anyone tells you to do… Then you beat yourself up for letting them get away with it.

(Note – People are stronger than us people pleasers give them credit for. Not everything we do is going to hurt their feelings. And it is perfectly okay for us to express how we feel)

4.Thinking Your Emotions Are Invalid

Do you ever find yourself acting or pretending like you aren’t hurt or mad by someone’s actions? Deep down you feel a fire growing in chest, but you quench that fire with thoughts like: “Oh, its not a big deal” or “They probably didn’t mean it like that, I shouldn’t get angry”.

You’re gaslighting your own emotions when you do that. Personally, invalidating my feelings like this on a daily caused me to be confused about what I was feeling in any given moment. It also made me confused in situations of confrontation because I didn’t know the appropriate response.

Not fully understanding your feelings in this way will have you questioning if you should be pissed off or not. You become passive simply because you’re unsure if you need to stand up for yourself or if you don’t. You’re too busy fighting with yourself on if your anger is justified. When you should be busy putting that person in check.

For a few tips on allowing yourself to feel emotions, read point number 2 in:

How To Stop Living For Others (Social Anxiety).

5. Not Trusting Yourself

I’m going to start with a few ways you may not be trusting yourself:

You don’t trust that standing up for yourself will be justified or an overreaction
You don’t trust that your words will come out right when you’re standing up for yourself
You don’t trust that you won’t start crying and you don’t want to be embarrassed
You don’t trust that you can calmly stand up for yourself and you don’t want to be seen as the bad guy or say something you regret

All of this will hinder your ability and willingness to stand up for yourself. You become hesitant to say anything because you don’t know how you will make it go or how it will make you look. It will feel like you’re afraid of the other person, when the whole time you’re afraid of YOU.

6. Thinking You’re Subordinate

This one is more so for those of us who have been sheltered by our parents, or lived our whole lives with social anxiety, or who simply haven’t experienced much in life for whatever reason. Having a limited knowledge of the world and a lack of experience leaves you feeling incompetent.

You might look at everyone else as sort of authority figures because they seem much more versed in life then compared to you. Or you simply just look at yourself as being the lesser human. Even if its someone younger, these feelings may be in the back of your mind.

This is also a reason you feel imitated by everyone you come across and why you’re afraid to stand up for yourself. If you see yourself as less than, you will accept any kind of treatment that comes from those who you see as being above you. If you were raised to always be respectful, you may also be subconsciously dealing with those morals that were instilled in you. Which gives you a reluctance to “talk back” to those perceived as authority figures.

How Knowing What Mindsets You Have Will Make You Less Afraid To Stand Up For Yourself

Much like being diagnosed at the doctor’s office or therapist will help you get the right treatment you need. Putting a name to what mindsets you have will help you know exactly what thoughts to come against.

To me, this is the first step to learn how to stand up for yourself. The more you heal from past hurts and low self-esteem you will develop a greater sense of care for yourself. Right now you may not see yourself as worthy of good things, but once you see that you are. You won’t WANT anyone to treat you as less than you know you deserve. Standing up for yourself WILL become easy for you.

I wish I could write a step-by-step “how to stand up for yourself” post. But truthfully, I haven’t learned that exact lesson yet. But here are a couple resources that may be able to help.

Blog posts on how to stand up for yourself:

Story Time

While standing in an Auntie Ann’s after work, I was at the side of the register thinking of what I wanted to get (this is where the line usually forms at this particular location). The moment I stepped closer to the register and opened my mouth to speak, a guy comes from nowhere, steps in front of me and starts ordering.

My old self, who had all of these mindsets rolling around in her head, would have nervously giggled and said “sorry, you can go.” Then she would have made more space for him and beat herself up for the next 10 years for letting it happen. But this more healed version of me, casually stepped back in front of him and started speaking over him to place my own order. He backed down and we both went on about our day.

I wanted to share this because in that moment I wasn’t even mad and there was no fear of if I should or shouldn’t speak up. There was also no voice in my head telling me how stupid and mute I was. Instead it was just the simple fact that I was next in line and that I wasn’t about to let him act like I wasn’t standing there. I wasn’t even worried about him or his rudeness or my social anxiety. I truly believe its because these mindsets were no longer hidden from me and for months I had been working on reversing them.

Final Thoughts

I hope this list will lead you to evaluate what your own mindsets are. Or that you realized that you were believing something mentioned on this list. Either way. Let it inspire you to start changing your thought patterns. So you can grow your confidence in a way that standing up for yourself becomes second nature. Remember to pray to God about everything and that he is willing to help you in this area.

What other mindsets do you believe make you afraid to stand up for yourself?

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