Procrustes’ bed
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Reactions to change
Then there are certain circumstances in which people may react with suspicion and hostility to our changing - and this includes times when we are developing more of the assertiveness that comes with increased self-esteem. By “assertiveness”, I don’t mean aggressive behavior; I mean standing up for ourselves in a mettaful way - a way that respects the needs and feelings of both ourselves and others. When others have become habituated to our being compliant or passive, then it threatens them when we change, and they may well act like Procrustes’ bed and try to “cut us down to size”.
Diane, one of my students from San Francisco, who is the very dynamic director of a research institute, had mentioned that self metta had caused her problems in the past. I was curious and asked her to say more.
“You asked about how self-love hadn’t worked for me. Obviously that is not actually the case, self-love can’t actually cause harm, but how it has always appeared to me was that any time I ever tried to act in my own behalf, or feel some self-respect, or proud of myself, I have been smacked down or reminded in some way - either directly or indirectly - ‘who do you think you are?’ Either verbally, or the situation I was in turned on me, or whatever.
“After years of reflecting on this, I have come to believe that this is an inside job. In other words, I think it’s always been more about my attitude than about what others were actually doing to me. I think my self-regard was so low that (a) it probably ended up manifesting itself as arrogance, and (b) push-back from any quarter was enough to make me retreat back into self-loathing, with every situation re-proving to me that I (or whoever) was right, I was in fact worthless except as some kind of slave to work or other people or to my own dysfunction and that I might as well not try. Thus another slide back into the swamp.”
Diane had inadvertently constructed a Procrustean bed for herself. When she tried to assert herself, she sometimes became aggressively arrogant rather than truly assertive, and that, not surprisingly, caused reactions in the people around her. If we’ve behaved passively in the past, it’s almost inevitable that we’ll exhibit some compensatory aggression on the way to becoming more assertive.
But even when Diane was being more truly assertive, standing up for herself in a respectful way, others would respond aggressively to her in an attempt to limit the change that she was undergoing. I think it’s a very useful practice to notice how the changes that you are going through have an effect on others. As I’ve said, those changes will often be welcomed with open arms.
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