WORKING TOGETHER TO CREATE AN ABUSE-FREE FUTURE
6/16/08
Publisher: Beverly Engel
www.beverlyengel.com

Hello everyone,

Recently a reader and subscriber to my ezine wrote me an email asking if I was okay. She said she knew I was busy but that I hadn’t written an ezine since September and she was worried about me. I was touched by her concern and shocked to realize how long it actually has been! She also wrote that she hoped I took as good of care of myself as I do my readers. The truth is, that not writing the ezine was taking care of myself. For the months of Oct and Nov I found I just didn’t have anything to say. Starting in December I became very busy. I accepted the position of Executive Director for a major domestic violence agency for Santa Barbara County. Taking this job has been a huge shift for me since I haven’t actually worked in an agency for 15 years and haven’t worked for someone else for 25 years! For the past 15 years I’ve had a small private practice but mostly have been focused on writing books.

It may seem surprising to some of you that I would take such a position and frankly, it was to me as well. But it happened for several reasons. First of all, I’ve been missing working with others who have the same passion for breaking the cycle of abuse as I have. When I went to New Zealand last year I met with a group of people who worked for a domestic violence agency and loved the feeling of comraderie that we all shared. Second, I needed a change in my life. I didn’t know what I wanted to change, but I felt that change would do me good. Third, I felt I wanted to create change in a more hands on way than I was able to do with my books.

Our agency, Domestic Violence Solutions for Santa Barbara County consists of three shelters, two transitional living facilities, and two counseling centers for outpatient clients. We also conduct Intimate Partner Abuse groups for the abusers (male and female). The goal of the organization is to break the intergenerational cycle of abuse.

To this end we also go into the high schools and teach young people how to have healthy relationships and how to identify emotional and physical abuse. This program is highly successful and we plan on expanding it in the near future to junior high schools.

The agency is located in three separate areas—Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Lompoc so I do quite a bit of driving. This actually suits me since I am getting to know three new areas and I do some of my best thinking when I am driving.

I’ve also had to move to get closer to the three agencies and I love my new home in Los Alamos. Instead of a bay view I now have a beautiful view of the green (for now) hills with live oaks covering them. I said I wanted change and did I get it!

I love my new job and am learning so much. I feel I will be able to offer my readers even more insights and help in the future (that is, if I ever get a chance to write again!).

In the News from Beverly segment I will include announcements of upcoming events, workshops or conferences relevant to the treatment or prevention of abuse. Feel free to send me announcements you feel readers will find of interest. I cannot guarantee I can include them all but I will do my best to include what I feel is relevant. I will also announce my own upcoming workshops and books. I ask that you order books directly from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com as I do not sell individual books directly to readers. If you would like to attend a workshop, feel free to email me directly at beverly@beverlyengel.com.

Please forward this ezine to anyone you know who is interested in preventing or healing childhood emotional, physical or sexual abuse or emotional, physical or sexual abuse in adult relationships. If you are receiving this issue as a forward, and would like your own no-cost subscription please follow the instructions at the end of this newsletter.

PRIVACY POLICY: I will never rent, sell or trade your name to anyone for any reason. Thank you for trusting me with your personal information.

The woman who emailed about her concern for me also wrote that she knew that I had a new book coming out entitled, The Nice Girl Syndrome, and she wanted to know when it was coming out. If any of you are also interested, it will be out in the middle of July. The following information is an excerpt from the book.

THE NICE GIRL SYNDROME

By Beverly Engel

Are you a Nice Girl? Do people tend to take advantage of your patience, compassion and generosity? Are you constantly let down because other people don’t treat you as well as you treat them? Do you constantly give others the benefit of the doubt only to be disappointed when they don’t come through? Do you tend to give other people too many chances? Is being too nice becoming a burden? If you answered yes, to some or all of these questions not only are you not alone but you are in the majority. There are millions of other Nice Girls in the world who think and feel exactly as you do. In fact, it is safe to say that every woman has some Nice Girl in her. .

Being a Nice Girl doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with morals. Monica Lewinsky was a Nice Girl because she was naïve enough to believe that President Clinton loved her and was actually going to leave Hillary for her. She was a Nice Girl because she put his needs ahead of her own and was willing to continue lying for him, even after they were caught, and because she kept hoping even when it was clear he had dumped her.

Neither does being a Nice Girl necessarily have anything to do with being kind or generous or respectful. Oprah Winfrey is all those things but I don’t believe anyone would describe her as being “nice.” As warm as she is she also sets very clear boundaries, letting people know what she will or will not put up. And she is a person you wouldn’t want to cross.

A Nice Girl is more concerned about what others think of her than she is about what she thinks of herself. Being a Nice Girl means that she is more concerned about others people’s feelings than she is about her own. And it means she is more concerned about giving people the benefit of the doubt than she is about trusting her own perceptions.

Nice Girls tend to be targets for con artists, rapists, and other attackers. Because they tend to be focused outside of themselves—helping others, worrying about not hurting others’ feelings—they don’t focus enough attention on protecting themselves—their feelings and their very safety.

Because they tend to be gullible and to give others the benefit of the doubt Nice Girls are far more likely to be taken advantage of, cheated on, abused, or abandoned by their partners than not-so-nice girls. Cindy suspected that her husband was having an affair for quite some time. He suddenly started having to work late, he was no longer interested in having sex with her, and she even thought she smelled perfume on his shirts when he came home. But each time she confronted him he swore to her that it was not true. He seemed so sincere and so deeply wounded because of her accusations that she always doubted herself. “I decided I was just a suspicious person and that it was unfair for me to accuse him when I had no proof,” she shared with me during her first session. The reason Cindy had begun seeing me? She found out that her husband was, in fact having an affair and that it was only one of a series of many.

Nice Girls are also far more likely to be taken for granted, overworked, underpaid and passed over for promotions than not-so-nice girls. For example, Kendra has been passed over for a promotion two times now. Each time her boss explained that the reason he hadn’t recommended her for a promotion was because he needed her too much where she was. “I just can’t function without you,” he’d tell her. “You’re my right arm.” It felt so good to Kendra to be needed that she didn’t recognize she was being manipulated. And it never occurred to her to ask her boss for a raise since she was so indispensable.

Other Reasons Why You Need
to Give Up Your Nice Girl Image

In addition to being targets for abuse and manipulation, there are other reasons to

give up your Nice Girl Image, namely:

· Because people don’t respect Nice Girls.

· Because if you don’t tell others what makes you angry, upset, unhappy or disappointed there is little chance of fixing the problem.

· Because people don’t really know you unless you tell them how you really feel.

· Because if you don’t tell people how you honestly feel you are being dishonest.

· Because unless you are honest about who you are and how you feel there is little chance of you experiencing true intimacy in your relationships.

Being too nice can be a difficult habit to break. Instilled in them at a very early age, some women have an easier time shedding this unhealthy behavior than others. Letting go of the need to be seen as “fair,” “understanding” or even “selfless” can be a painful process. Others have a fear of confrontation, most often brought about from having experienced constant conflict in their childhood home or having been emotionally or physically abused as a child. More than simply becoming more assertive or learning to establish boundaries, the process of letting go of niceness involves unearthing and then discarding deeply buried false beliefs and replacing them with the truth.

In The Nice Girl Syndrome you will get help in unearthing these often illusive false beliefs. You will then learn to replace these unhealthy and false beliefs with healthy ways of thinking about yourself and others.

We’ll start out by encouraging you to examine your beliefs and attitudes. Once you have examined your beliefs and attitudes and have come to recognize how they contribute to your unhappiness and to negative patterns, you will need to take action. Some of the action steps you will be encouraged to take are the following:

· Stop playing sweet, gullible and naïve. It’s outdated and it invites people, especially men, to take advantage of you.

· Stop giving people second (and third and fourth) chances. If someone shows you who he or she is, pay attention and act accordingly.

· Stop being “fair” and start being strong. Women’s need for fairness often gets them into trouble. Their tendency to want to look at both sides of a situation often blurs the real issue and they can be easily manipulated.

· Learn that setting limits and boundaries and expecting others to take care of their own needs can be the greatest “act of kindness” you can perform. You don’t do anyone a favor by allowing them to take advantage of you.

· Let others know when they have hurt or angered you. By not speaking up when someone insults or mistreats you you are inadvertently giving permission for them to continue to treat you in the same way in the future.

· Confront your own anger. Sometimes under all that niceness lies a huge storage bin of repressed and suppressed anger.

· Acknowledge that often the real reason you take care of others is because you secretly want to be taken care of. You hope the person you’ve been taking care of will turn around and take care of you in the same way.

· Acknowledge that sometimes it is easier to sacrifice yourself for others than to focus on your own problems or take the risk of going after your own goals.

· Be honest with yourself about your real reasons for being a Nice Girl. When we look for the motive for our “niceness” we often find guilt, shame, fear of confrontation, fear of rejection and an intense fear of being alone.

· Allow yourself to be bad sometimes. It’s not only okay to be bad but it is healthy. In fact, if you don’t allow yourself to be bad at times you will continue to attract people into your life who will act out your “badness” for you.

BEVERLY’S NEWS

The Nice Girl Syndrome will be out in the middle of July. Look for it at your local bookstore or order it from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com. I appreciate your support.

PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY REVIEW

I received the following starred review from Publisher’s Weekly (starred reviews are rare).

Engel (Healing Your Emotional Self), a psychotherapist and domestic violence expert, has sharp words for the “nice girls” of the world who care more about being perceived as sweet and pleasant than strong and self-protective. Drop the phoniness and passivity, she exhorts, arguing that while society superficially rewards nice girls, they suffer deeply in their intimate and work relationships by losing personal power and parading inauthentic selves. Avoiding conflict and playing naïve may seem to offer payoffs, Engel notes, but the payoffs aren’t as big as the price women pay for not holding their ground—“They may get taken care of but they aren’t respected. They may get special attention but from the wrong kind of people.” Readers will find Engel’s elucidation of the four causes of “The Nice Girl Syndrome” and the “Seven Types of Nice Girls” (i.e. Doormat, Pretender, Enlightened one) deeply funny and familiar. Most useful for its thorough treatment for how “nice girls” are socialized and for Engel’s concise antidote (the four “Power C’s”: confidence, competence, conviction and courage) this book will challenge, entertain and empower its readers.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• I’ve recently become am an expert “blogger” on the Psychology Today website. My blog is entitled ”The Compassion Chronicles.” Check out my recent blogs by going to http://blogs.psychologytoday.com