Do you compromise your feelings on a topic
to avoid confrontation?
Does this make you lose respect for
yourself?
Do you get angry with yourself afterwards?
Integrity is a word that gets used a great
deal when talking about personal issues. People with integrity are considered
people to aspire to and respect. But what is integrity, and how do we obtain
it?
Integrity meaning: 1) the quality of being honest & morally upright;
2) the state of being whole or unified. (Oxford English Dictionary)
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I
get so angry with myself, and mostly it’s because I’ve said yes to something I
don’t really want to do. I say yes because I feel guilty if I say no. Maybe the
other person wants to do it and I feel like I am stopping them if I don’t;
maybe I feel like I am disappointing them if I don’t. Either way I’ll agree to
things to keep the peace, to try and please someone, but I end up annoyed with
myself.
I’ve spent a lot of time working out how to
start listening to myself and my feelings, and learning to trust myself and put
myself first, but I have struggled to do that when it comes to interacting with
other people. On my own I am quite firm, but with other people, especially
those close to me like my husband and my children, I will let their wishes
override mine because otherwise I feel like I’m being mean or selfish. But it
hasn’t helped me – or them. I have ended up becoming frustrated with myself,
and angry with them. And then no one has a good time.
What I realised I needed to do was set
personal limits and boundaries. And on the face of it, that seemed quite
simple. But it is not just setting up rules for yourself, saying, ‘I’ll accept
this, but not that’, ‘I’m okay with this, but not that’ – although that can
work - it goes deeper, it is about your sense of self and your personal
identity. And I realised that was what people meant when they talked about
‘integrity’.
“Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate
one’s identity.” – Erich Fromm
It wasn’t just about setting some rules and
teaching people those rules, as in ‘okay, this is what I will and won’t
tolerate from you’, it was about listening to myself inside and knowing who I
was and what I stood for within the relationship to myself as well as to those outside of me.
It wasn’t just about what things I wanted
to do, what places I wanted to go, or what my politics were or what I believed
in, it was about my very sense of self, my right to BE. It was about my self-worth.
“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage
to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.” – Brene Brown
Only once I realised I was valuable as a
person, that I was worthy of everything in life, was I able to think clearly in
terms of my personal limits and boundaries. And I could only hold those limits
and boundaries once I was sure that I
wouldn’t violate them myself, that I wouldn’t try and second guess and
persuade myself to do something I didn’t really want to do, for the desire to
please another. (A desire they were oblivious to, I might add, as in most cases
they were unaware it wasn’t something I wanted to do – until I got angry after
the fact!)
Once I was true to my heart and able to
trust myself to care about my own feelings, could I say I had integrity. And
then those limits and boundaries weren’t rules I had to set and make sure I
followed and keep a tight hold on, like a referee making sure no one goes over
the line, they became the standard, the foundation of who I was and the basis I
made decisions from.
“Your personal boundaries protect the inner core of
your identity and your right to choices.” - Gerard Manly Hopkins
It took me several years to understand this
and several steps:
- First I had to listen to my feelings and be a friend to myself. Realise that the inner me was as important as the outer me, and that I was worth giving my own time and attention to.
- Then I had to trust my feelings and show them respect, not belittle them or overrule them all the time, or second guess them. I had to stand up for them – I had to stand up for me.
- I then had to care about those feelings, and nurture them, consider myself someone I wanted to love and care about. (NB: caring about the thoughts I have about myself is as important as caring about my physical body. If I want my body to be well and pain-free I need to feed it healthy food and exercise it, so if I want my mind to think clearly and be able to make good decisions I have to feed it positive thoughts that are supportive of me as a person and constructive to what I want).
- Once that had been achieved, the limits and boundaries came naturally. I could think more clearly about what I was and wasn’t prepared to do to please others. I started automatically considering myself in all my decisions: factoring in my own wishes and desires.
From there on out I factored myself into
everything I did – something that people who have integrity don’t even have to
consciously do.
“Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy,
normal, and necessary.”- Doreen Virtue
It’s not easy to work all this out. We all
have to find our own routes into this. I definitely didn’t have a full
understanding of integrity until I understood what limits and boundaries were
(and that I had none) and how to set them. It took active action.
I would look up information about how to
set limits and boundaries and write out what I wanted mine to be and focus on
them. I had to stop myself and ask myself whether I was going along with
something to please someone or if I genuinely wanted to do it, especially
whether it would be a decision that I would regret later on down the line.
I would also ask myself, what would happen
if I said no here? Often the result of saying no to something was a lot easier
than my guilt had led me to believe.
Learning to say no is part of building self-esteem and self-worth, thus coming full circle. Integrity is knowing your
worth and not compromising it.
“Living with integrity means: Not settling for less
than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want
and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict
or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values.
Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.” -
Barbara De Angelis
I find it so difficult to set boundaries when other people want or need me. It takes so much to deal with confrontation so I avoid it at all costs.
ReplyDeleteIt's taken me years to put myself first, but when I do I feel so much better and others can see my needs to.
It's one of the toughest things to do, if you are not a natural boundary setter, but it does feel really good when you do it.
DeleteThis is a great piece, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete