How Do I Stand Up For Myself?

And now it's time to Ask the Shrink. Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of Ask the Shrink. These are questions that I received. If you want to ask me a question, have me answer it in an upcoming Ask the Shrink episode, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com that's shrinkforthshyguy.com and you can send me a message directly through the site there. So this question is from Prabhu. Prabhu says hello, doctor. I've been listening to your show for a few months now, and it's really helped me out. Thank you. I am more outgoing and I have a question for you. I just wanted to know if you have any segments on conflicts, how to argue, Raise your voice, Stand up for yourself and other people. Especially if I'm out with my girl and. And someone comes up to her flirting, how to proceed? Especially if I'm walking towards my girl and another man puts his hand on her. She walks over to me and the bro is looking at me, but I haven't said anything yet. Please help. Don't laugh. Sorry. That statement just makes you want to laugh. I'm not laughing at you. It's just. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's a telling way that you ended that question. Please help. Don't laugh. I'm not gonna laugh at you, man. Like, I'm here to help you, and I get it. And this is a great question. And I don't know if I have a segment on how to argue. Raise your voice. I know I have my new book, Not Nice, which has a ton of stuff in there about how to speak up for yourself, but who knows when that is and where that is in production at this point. But. So let's give a few pointers on this. Well, just use the example that you had. So if I'm out with my girl and someone comes up to her flirting, that's a good thing. I would chill out on that. It probably means she's attractive. So well done, sir. Right. I mean, you know, if your woman is exuding feminine energy, she's beautiful. She's. She's has a certain way about her that probably attracted you to her. That means other men are going to be attracted to her as well. And we don't want to smash that or clamp that down. Now, if that stirs up insecurity in you, there's a couple things to look at. One is just to see, do I feel like I'm enough? Do I have a sense of doubt? Like, she could do better than me. Because the place you want to get to with your self esteem is she is lucky to be with me. Now to balance that out. So you're not like a raging egomaniac. It's. And I'm lucky to be with her. Cause she's awesome. I'm awesome. A woman is lucky to be with me. If you know that if you've like done your own self work to become the best version of yourself. And of course we're all growing, but you know a solid version of yourself and you know your strengths and you know what you bring and you show up and you can meet her needs in a deep way. Then you know you're awesome and there's less of that threat from other men because then you can be like, oh, yeah, like they're. They're attracted to her because she's a bright shining light. She's awesome. So that would be one thing to look at. Now if I'm walking towards her and another man puts his hand on her. And that could mean a whole lot of things. I need more specifics there. She walks over to me. So my sense is she gets up and moves over towards you. Well, if the guy was not doing something extremely inappropriate, like grabbing her, but if you just like put his arm on her shoulder or on her back and she kind of like smiled and got up and moved away towards you, I wouldn't even. I wouldn't even give it the time of day, right? Because if you gotta like fight him off, you're like, she's mine. That's showing that underlying insecurity, isn't it? Like, I gotta prove something now. Well, what if you just like, all right, what if you just turn around and walk somewhere with her? And a way to work with jealousy or insecurity is instead of hiding it, which a lot of guys do, they try to hide it. They're like, that didn't bother me at all. But then you're kind of a dick the rest of the night or you're sulking or who knows what happens? Instead, we want to just address it. Be like, whoa, what was that like, you know, was it fun talking to him? What did he say? How did it go? Right? And you're just curious. Not in a weird defensive way, but you're just curious. And it's fun and it's playful. And sometimes you guys can bond. You know, if it's really a suave, you can be like, damn, he's smooth. And you kind of laugh about it. Or if it's Clunky and awkward. You could be like, whoa, that sounds terrible, right? And you guys can bond over that. So that's a beautiful thing. Now, if he touched her in an inappropriate way or a way that felt, like, really disrespectful, that's gonna be an interesting one because you're gonna, you know, you can factor in how assertive you want to be, what kind of environment you're in. If you're out drinking and it's a kind of a rowdy place, you know, is it worth getting into a fight over? For me, the answer is always no, because I suck at fighting, so I'd probably lose. So I'm not gonna go up to him and be like, what the fuck, man? You wanna go? Cause that's just gonna be a mess. So I'd probably just like, let's just get out of here. Like, forget this. Let's not spend any energy on that. Now, if you're more of a tough guy than me and you wanna go up to him and be like, hey, you know, I'd appreciate if you respected her and didn't do that, and if that felt good to you, then you could do that. Now, I guess your question might be like, well, how do you do that? So I'd say the key is congruence in your body. That means you're walking upright. And if you're upset, you're showing that you're upset. That means you look them in the eye and you have a strong, clear voice tone like that. And you're also. You're not smiling at them. Because a lot of time people come up to someone and they're like, hi, I didn't like the way you were doing that. And they're kind of smiley and soft. And it's a very mixed message. It's very incongruent. So you want to be congruent. You want to walk up to him and be like, dude, what are you doing? I didn't like the way you were touching her. I don't think she was liking that either. And you look him in the eye and you face him now. Fucking bar culture, man. Because who knows, maybe he's going to come at you and be like, you want to go, man? And then you got to decide how you're going to handle that. But the key is any sort of assertiveness is you want to not yelling. Yelling makes you look out of control and makes things go kind of crazy. But it is firm, clear, slightly louder volume and direct tone. Strong eye contact. And if that freaks you out, then you want to practice it. Practice it in lower level situations. Do it more often, get more familiar with it so that you can maybe even practice it in the mirror. As strange as that sounds, it's just about getting familiar. It's getting the strategy familiar in your body and your nervous system so you can pull it out when you need to when you're nervous. So hope that helps you. Prabhu. And if you get into a fight at a bar, that has nothing to do with me. This advice is for entertainment purposes only. Alright man, you're awesome. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are. Sam.