Why am I so nervous about standing up for myself?

[Rochyella84]

I have always been this way and it drives me mad - I absolutely detest conflict of any kind and go out of my way to avoid it. But sometimes situations arise where conflict is inevitable.

Take my current situation. I run a small business and have a number of people who subcontract for me. I have given a lot of my time to supporting one particular person, and last week I discovered that she has been piggybacking off my business in order to build up her own (think - providing clients with her personal contact details in order to take future business away from my company). When I raised it with her I received a curt and dismissive response, not the apology I was expecting. I have arranged a call with her this week. She is in the wrong here and she should be the nervous one - but instead, I am here feeling tense, anxious and stressed about having to discuss the issue. I keep rehearsing what I will say over and over again until I drive myself insane. Why do I find this so difficult? I have every right to stand up for myself and the business I built from scratch - I wish I had more confidence with this sort of thing.

Most people hate confrontation. You're not alone. Keep practicing. Get angry. Be pissed off.

Perhaps in this scenario you don't even need to have it out. Fire her.

Childhood trauma?

I am the same. I accept it now. The anxiety focuses my mind and when I confront, I've thought through what I want to say.

Course it's not always like that, but I like to see the positive in my personality traits.

How we’re you raised? As a kid did you have to sort your own problems or did your parents do it for you? I’m the queen of confrontation and I was brought up to fight my own battles but I have in-laws who weren’t that way and are hopeless at it. I can’t really give advice because it’s something that just comes naturally to me but it’s better to just have at it on the spot. I would have confronted her there and then rather than allowed it time to stew

Or did you have a parent who dominated everyone?

I feel similar to you op, and its something I wish I have tried to change in myself. I had some psychotherapy once and they tried to get me to think about what my fear was… what it was that I was so worried that would happen in the conflict? For me it was routed in a fear of others thinking badly of me, a fear that somehow I had misunderstood the situation and had been mean to the person when I should have been kind. Ultimately a fear I was wrong. Not sure if you’re the same? Or maybe yours is different. I had to remember the times I was right, and needed to stand up for myself to squash the fear. Helped to name the fear.

Boundaries. You need to have boundaries. Not take it personally, but that is out of order. Perhaps you shouldn’t leave the ball in her court still, so she’s done wrong and you’re expecting her to apologise/fix it etc, FOR you.
That’s not how it works. You decide what the consequences of her actions are now.
You don’t need to be confrontational about it. Sit for a bit and decide what YOU want to do, what are the consequences.
I would drop her like a hot potato and make sure that the contacts she’s ‘appropriated’ know it was done on the sly. A court: I am no longer associated with X, transparency and professionalism are paramount in my business therefore we parted ways. And let them decide.

I’m like this in my personal life but have no issues at all in my professional life weirdly. I think you just have to practice being assertive. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will be.

This - 100% this. I am you. Countless times this weekend I have asked myself if maybe actually I have misread the situation, could I be wrong, by calling her out could I actually embarrass myself, what will she think of me when I say all this to her. But truly I know 100% here that she is in the wrong. 100%.

In response to the other points, no childhood trauma, raised in a supportive home, no domineering parent. I'm an introvert by nature and I care what people think of me.

Yep I recognise all those thought loops so well! Kindred spirit! Ok so you know that you’re right here so you need to try to find a way to quieten those loops. I’ve never found a way to stop them… but with mine it helps to talks to other people… or write them down. Somehow giving them air rather than just being in my head shrinks their power. Then you can also try out a new phrase… my old (ingrained) phrase was ‘I must be liked by everyone and do my best for everyone’ so I tried to change it to ‘I’m going to make the best decision with the information I have in this moment’. It helped me to feel less long term responsibility/control. We are all only making decisions based on info we have at the time. We can’t control the future in the present (it’s so exhausting to try!). You’ll know what to do and say in the meeting. Relax now. It will be fine.