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5 Steps To Speaking Up Powerfully When You Feel You Can't — forbes.com

Part of the series "Communication That Fosters Positive Change" Speaking up effectively for yourself is an essential process Every year, I work with scores of professionals from all walks of life who come with one key problem – they can't speak up for themselves or assert their boundaries. In many cases, their boundaries are non-existent, which translates into their allowing anyone to do anything they wish to them. These individuals are being disrespected, devalued and trampled on, in work and in their personal lives. Further, they find they can't make effective decisions that will help them navigate through the challenges or take the right steps to increase their success. They find they simply can't tell their boss, “No, this doesn't work” or speak up to their spouse and say, “Stop this behavior – it’s damaging to the family!” Among the thousands of people I've worked with over the past 12 years, I’ve seen that speaking up powerfully for oneself is one of the most universal challenges human beings face today. But it’s particularly difficult for women the world over, given how our society and culture trains both men and women to think and behave, and shapes how we all perceive assertiveness. I’ve personally lived the devastating challenge of not being able to speak up for myself.  This problem stemmed from my childhood, but I carried the effects of it with me through my 20s and 30s. In the final years of my 18-year corporate career, during a time when I worked in a role that was very toxic to me, I began experiencing something called chronic “tracheitis” – a serious and recurring infection of the trachea.  As one who has been a vocalist and performer all my life, this was particularly frightening to me. For four years, every three to four months like clockwork, I'd become extremely ill with this infection. It was terribly painful and debilitating.  I’d lose my voice entirely for days, and the throat and lungs would burn incessantly. I’d develop a high fever, and become debilitated to the point of not being able to function. And I literally couldn't speak. The voice would disappear completely, and this experience would enrage me. I remember trying to talk to my little children and nothing would come out. I would feel so helpless, and I knew something was terribly wrong, but couldn’t get to the bottom of it. Doctors couldn’t find a root cause either, so they just treated it with courses upon courses of antibiotics that wreaked havoc on my body.  Interestingly, this illness literally evaporated the day I was laid off from my toxic job in October 2001. The tracheitis disappeared, never to return. I know exactly why that is now, but back then, I hadn’t a clue. Many years later, I began to study this phenomenon of not being able to speak up and how it affects our emotional, physical and behavioral functioning.  I saw too why it remains deeply challenging for women to speak up assertively.  First, our culture still punishes assertive women. Gender bias is real, and there is true backlash against women who are assertive, strong and powerful. Our beliefs and behaviors around personal communication emerge from how we are trained and treated in childhood , and the culture we are raised in. What happens to us when we try to speak up for ourselves, or when we even think we want to speak up, will shape us dramatically. Everything that you experienced as you attempted to develop and assert your boundaries as a child and teen has affected you deeply and is within you now, unless you've done the work to revise it, heal it, and change it.  What went on then has made an indelible mark on you. To help you take new steps to learn to speak up more powerfully for yourself, and advocate for your own needs, values, and wishes, below are five key steps to begin to engage in today. #1: Examine what you learned in childhood. If you struggle at all with speaking up, take some time this week and examine closely what you learned in childhood about how safe it was to speak up for yourself.  Ask yourself, “What do I remember about how it went when I said to my authority figures “No,” “I don’t’ agree with you,” or "Don't do that to me." If you’re in touch with yourself, you’ll most likely remember some very pivotal, emotional moments. Maybe it went well, maybe it went terribly. Perhaps you got hit or were fiercely ridiculed.  Perhaps you were laughed at and told you were stupid. Sit with it, and think about what you learned about speaking up and how you were treated when you tried to assert and defend your boundaries. Ask yourself these questions: Did I have strong role models for effective, empowered communication? Did my mother speak in an empowered way? My father? How did the people around me (including my teachers, relatives and other authority figures) act when others spoke up for their rights and their boundaries? How about my siblings? Who did it well, who didn't do it well? What happened when they tried? How did gender play into who had the power and authority in my family and life? Then think about how all this affects you today. If you realize that there was suppression in your childhood, read on for how to move forward to address and heal that.

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