how does a doormat become more b*tchy?! (I mean that as--more self-protective, confident, self-assured!)
Hers's another thought: respond/react to every potential "doormat" situation as though it was about to happen/be done to D14. GRRR!!! Be your own "Mama Bear! After all, it's our own "inner child" that learned this behavior to adapt, to survive. Be that child's Mama Bear. That child needed/still needs an adult to protect him/her.
Or, as I heard author Terry Real once put it, "It's time to tell that child to take his sticky little fingers off the steering wheel. You'll drive now."
Gardener
"My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own." Cyrano deBergerac
