My favorite trend gaining some notable notoriety amongst social media users is the call to embrace your "Villain Era". The "Villain Era" represents unleashing and embracing less acceptable parts of yourself that go against typical social messaging other or people pleasing. Full-heartedly supporting any movement to reclaim "socially unacceptable" parts of ourselves, I wrote this post so that you can make a plan for how to embrace your own parts that others have deemed villainous to their own oppressive agendas.
The movement calls into question exactly what we are villainizing. Selfishness? Clear expectations? Boundaries? These are all important ingredients for healthy relationships and wellbeing. Unfortunately, patriarchy, traditional gender norms, white supremacy, and racism have dictated what are favorable ways to act and be in society -- ways that perpetuate disempowerment of certain groups while perpetuating the power structures of other groups. This post serves to join the call to unleash your inner villain, all while questioning: is it really that villainous to take care of myself by setting boundaries??
This post is for those of you who find themselves falling into the trap of people pleasing and over-accommodating others at the expense of themselves. Allow yourself to explore what your villainous alter ego can offer and how you can use it to better your life with increased wellbeing.
People Pleasing & The Fawn Response
It's worth diving a bit into why we often revert to people pleasing as a way to navigate relationships and workplaces. People pleasing is a learned response to stress or activation that we often learn as children with our families of origin. We may learn to please as a survival mechanism to receive love, affection, connection -- striving to be "good children" and receive that all-coveted adult praise and attention.
As adults, we've learned that in stressful situations, we can "neutralize" the threat by befriending it or being pleasing to the threat (aka our boss, demanding co-worker, judgy friend, angry stranger, etc.). Many call this the "Fawn" response, an add-on to other well-known stress responses: Flight, Fight, & Freeze. At its core, it's not such a terrible strategy in the sense that it usually works to neutralize the threat and get us what we want in the end -- praise & attention vs. punishment & shame, and even survival vs. death or violence.
The catch with the Fawn response, is that if used chronically, it can cost us more than it's worth. Instead of addressing the stressor -- the toxic boss, workplace, or friend, or relationship we need to leave--we learn to manage the stress by losing ourselves to please the stressor. This may work in the short-term, but in the long-term there can be increased levels of chronic stress, deteriorated mental health, increased anxiety, fatigue/exhaustion, or low sense of self-esteem and self-worth. When we consistently sacrifice our selves, our integrity, our internal knowing in order to simply survive, there are often negative consequences we must deal with, however unintended they might be.
How to Embrace Your Villain Era
If you are someone who struggles with people pleasing and "fawning" in the presence of others when stressed or activated, then the Villain Era is for you. While it might feel like an extreme departure from the way you're used to behaving in certain contexts, embracing attitudes and actions that larger society villainizes gives you a chance to play with some alternative behaviors that could open up possibilities for how to navigate some common situations.
Here are some signs that you are embracing your Villain Era:
Setting AND enforcing boundaries
Choosing yourself
Honoring your limitations
Prioritizing pleasure
Taking instead of giving
Walking away from what no longer serves you
Speaking up for yourself
Saying no
Not taking on more just to be a "team player"
You might find all or most of these daunting in the sense of ... okay, well how do I do that? Or you might know these things are important and are already working on how to show up differently in your relationships. Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum, it's important to know that no one is perfectly good at all these things all of the time.
And--you don't have to do all of these things all of the time. For example, there are situations where it does make sense to say yes and be accommodating! In order to discern what action or choice is going to best serve you in each moment, we need to practice what doesn't come naturally so that we have options.
Remember, there's always room to grow and learn and unlearn. There are many ways to incorporate these actions in your life. Here are a few suggestions for the most common contexts we find ourselves in: workplace, intimate relationships, and family relationships. Most of these suggestions come from my work with clients and the most common challenging situations they face.
Embracing Your "Villain Era" at Work
For you "fawners" out there, the villainous trait to lean into at work is saying "no." There are a variety of reasons saying no to your boss or co-worker or client/customer feels wrong (or may not even be possible). It is important to examine the reasons why "no" may not feel appropriate (or be appropriate) for any given situation.
Is it that your boss has been un-supportive of you in the past, is it that your workplace culture favors productivity and results over wellness of their employees and sustainable workload? Does it feel impossible because maybe you haven't really tried it before? The answer may impact how you respond and navigate the situation.
Often, at work in America, if you aren't taking care of you, no one else is going to. So you need to be the one to take stock of your own limitations, your mental and emotional energy and place boundaries around what you can and simply cannot do, taking a realistic approach. Taking on more work from a coworker in order to be seen as a "team player" might sound like a good idea at the moment, or you might even notice that people treat you differently when you say yes all the time, you might be more likely to be chosen for a promotion -- these are all reasons why we say yes and keep saying yes. But there are important reasons to say no, too. Protecting your humanness by protecting your mental health sometimes trumps wanting your desk-mate to like you.
I don't mean to simplify this challenge. Saying no at work is HARD because the workplace system is built so that saying no is not easy and so that we DO NOT prioritize our own wellbeing. By saying no sometimes to more work that isn't yours, a late work night, weekend work calls, mobile phone notifications, you are saying yes to something else : YOU, your needs, your time, your relationships, your hobbies, your activities, your peace, your rest, your humanness.
If this is something you would like to practice, I suggest finding a space where you're alone, thinking of a situation where you would like to say no and practicing the word "NO" out loud followed by some type of gesture (pushing away from your body, palms facing out, shaking your head from side to side, stomping your foot, or balling up your hands into fists). Giving ourselves permission to say no sometimes just takes practice.
Embracing Your "Villain Era" in your Partnerships:
Embracing the villain in your intimate partnerships can look like being selfish and taking/receiving. Something to practice if you are often the caregiver or over-functioner in the relationship is to assert your own needs and receive care from your partner(s) instead of resorting to your usual giving tendency. Now most relationships are flexible on which partner is giving or receiving over a variety of situations. I am talking about people who have the tendency to give first, who have difficulty letting go and receiving care for themselves, their body, their needs...whether those be emotional, physical, romantic, sexual or otherwise.
Play around with being the needy one, the selfish one. Be the one to ask for something you want or need. Try taking what your partner is offering you, instead of politely declining. Try asking directly for what you need, and letting your partner provide it. Hopefully, these suggestions inspire some of your own ideas on how you would like to show up embracing your villain for the purpose of challenging the limits and stories you put on yourself to not need or enjoy other people taking care of you.
Embracing Your "Villain Era" in Family Relationships:
Embracing boundary setting AND enforcing can be a powerful way to embrace your inner villain in family relationships. Here's what I mean by setting AND enforcing boundaries.
First, you must identify where you would like a boundary with a family member and why. This helps your conviction when communicating the boundary and commitment to enforcing the boundary whenever you face push-back. For example, several of my clients struggle with questions, topics, or comments made by various family members over the phone or during time spent together. Many of my clients start to notice feeling anger, resentment, discomfort, hurt, or irritation in response to their family members. These are important emotional responses to listen to, for they might be telling you exactly where a boundary needs to be placed. Boundaries feel villainous sometimes because of how we've been raised, typically our family of origin dynamics and the roles we play or have played in our family. But just because it feels wrong or bad, doesn't mean it is wrong or bad. Boundaries are a necessary ingredient for healthy, happy, secure, and safe relationships.
As Prentis Hemphill's definition of boundaries remind us: "boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously." A lot of family members would verbally agree that that's exactly what they want with you, even if they're unhappy or uncomfortable with what that means or takes on their part.
Depending on the relational, structural, cultural, racial, or ethnic context of your family relationships, the factors influencing if, how, and where you enact boundaries may be extremely complex and take more time and consideration before setting or enforcing any type of boundary. If this is the case, it may be helpful to explore options relating to your specific situation with a therapist who shares identities with you or is culturally-competent enough to facilitate an exploration of ways for you to show up authentically and with care in your family system. Here is a lovely list of examples for verbal boundary setting related to changing topics or responding to questions you do not want to answer (credit: Amanda E. White: Therapy for Women @therapyforwomen):
"I'm not comfortable talking about that. Let's switch to a different topic."
"I understand why you're curious. It's just not something I want to discuss."
"I would prefer not to answer that."
"I'd prefer if you didn't bring that topic up again, unless I bring it up first."
"I've told you that I'm not comfortable answering this/talking about this, please don't bring it up again."
"It really negatively impacts me when you continue to ask me about this/talk about this after I've asked you not to."
"Asking that question puts a lot of pressure on me. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but I would prefer not to answer that."
Now comes the enforcement. Boundaries are just talk, unless we are prepared to DO something when they are violated or crossed. Enforcing a boundary is about what YOU will do if the boundary is not honored. This is an important and sometimes tricky step.
"I do not want to discuss this topic with you. So you can't bring it up or I'm going to yell at you..." is not usually the most constructive or helpful enforcement of a boundary.
"I do not want to discuss this topic with you and if you continue to bring it up, I will need to take some space from our conversation...." can be a better way to enact self-agency and enforce boundaries.
Remember, enforcing boundaries is not meant as a punishment but a natural consequence for not honoring a boundary. It is about what YOU will do IF/WHEN this boundary is crossed. With time and maybe some help from others, you will learn to fine tune this skill across the various relationships in your life so that you can create safety and security with others while honoring yourself.
I hope this post just whets your appetite for all the myriad ways there are to lean into this alter ego of sorts, the parts of yourself that you've learned to exile, the parts you're afraid to let run the show. Practicing flexibility with yourself and how you show up at work or in relationships can promote beneficial outcomes for your physical health, mental health, and overall wellbeing.
The Riverbank therapists would love to support you and any work you would like to do around this or other related topics such as boundaries, family of origin, intimate relationships, sense of self, self-worth, asserting needs, self care, etc. We have therapists in-person in Seattle and who provide virtual therapy across the state of Washington. Click here to book a free consultation with one of our therapists today!
Good luck to all of you embracing your "Villain Era" out there!