Stand Up for Yourself!

“It doesn’t matter what I want.

You’re telling me what’s good for me, what’s proper…

You’ve been telling me since I was three years old and I’m sick of it.

You’ve glared and scolded and frightened me…

and now I’ll tell you something you’ll never forget:

What I do is none of Lynnfield’s business.

I invite the whole town to take a jump in the lake!”

Theodora Lynn (Irene Dunne), Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

Don’t allow anyone to judge you. Stand right up to them and retain your power by setting them straight. No one has the right to tell you who you should be, how you should live your life, what you should or shouldn’t do, what you should wear, how you should act, or who you should or shouldn’t associate with.

In the film Theodora Goes Wild, Theodora Lynn (played by Irene Dunne) hits bottom with her meddling self-righteous Aunts and their equally as intrusive friends. She’s tired of dressing like a frump, acting like a dead saint and of being told who she can or cannot associate with. She’s also tired of having to live the life everyone else thinks she should live, and she’s doubly tired of being treated like she is a lesser-than any time she diverts from the path her family has carved out for her. In short, she’s tired of being judged by others and she’s not going to accept anyone’s judgment against her any longer.

No one has the right to make judgments against anyone else, and yet most all of us are conditioned from childhood to think that we do have such a right. I live in Tucson, Arizona, where the temperatures average around 106 degrees during the summer. When it’s this hot, I have the option of wearing shorts to work and I do. Even in our retreat house chapel I will wear shorts. I know there are people who don’t approve-- and I don’t care. I don’t live for the approval of anyone else anymore. I gave up seeking the approval of others when I entered recovery. No one else can make me OK with me. Only I can do that and so the only approval I need is my own.

I wear what I want to wear and it’s nobody’s business to tell me otherwise. Anyone who thinks they have that right is overstepping his or her boundaries. If anyone ever approached me about how I dress, I’d give them a Theodora-style lesson-- I’d tell them as nicely as possible to go jump in a lake.

First and foremost I’d let them know that every adult person has the right to dress him or herself as he/she sees fit. Then I would point out to them that they are not my mother or my father. And, even if they were, I’d inform them that once we are adults, no one, not even our parents, has the right to tell us how we are to dress or act. If they needed more encouragement to get off of their self-righteous throne, I’d start messing with them by analyzing how they are dressed. I’m sure that they would have little appreciation for the tables being turned on them.

The need to tell other people how they should dress or how they should act is a deep-seated codependent need to control others and it’s rooted in the need to feel superior. Most people who have this need actually feel badly about themselves. They suffer from very poor self-esteem. As a result, they are too fearful to focus on themselves and so they focus self-righteously on others. They make themselves into the fashion or lifestyle police and they think (quite wrongly) that they have the right to pull aside anyone who doesn’t meet their standards and to give them a good tongue lashing.

You are not required to accept this type of behavior from anyone. And you can rightfully tell them that just as they have the right to choose for themselves, so do you. And that what you choose is no one’s business but your own. Everyone is responsible for their own life and no one else’s. This means we need to stay focused on ourselves. If we are happy with the life we choose, if we are happy with how we dress and act and think, then that’s all that matters. But we most certainly do not have the right to impose our beliefs and our ways of doing things on others. That is blatantly over-stepping boundaries.

Nor do we ever have to accept the self-righteous condemnation of anyone else in this world. We can own our power by setting proper boundaries with people who think that they are part of some sanctimonious God-patrol. So retain your personal power by realizing that you only need your own approval and no one else’s.