Learning to be assertive

Being assertive

Often people confuse assertiveness with aggression and believe that to assert yourself is to be stubborn in a disagreement, stand your ground and argue a point without any compromise.

In fact, being assertive means communicating your needs, wants, feelings, beliefs and opinions honestly and directly. A major part of assertiveness is about rights. It's about your rights and the rights of other people. So, the aim is to stand up for your own rights, while also respecting the rights of others.

Setting the scene for you to be assertive – getting your mind right

Our fixed beliefs about ourselves decide the roles we play in life and have a lot to do with the inner voice that tells us who we are.

There's a small amount of you that's inherited, but things like a short temper or shyness are learned behaviours rather than inherited, unmovable traits. Most of your personality consists of learned habits that you've built up during your life so far. Experts call this inner voice your life script. Examples of life scripts can be both good and bad, and can be: I'm impatient, I am bad at confrontation, I am a great friend, I can’t change, I don’t think I am worthy.

Whatever your fixed beliefs are, good or bad, if you tell yourself long enough that you are a certain way, you will eventually believe it, and that belief will shape your life.

So if you can change your self-talk to positive statements, your subconscious will hear these, and gradually it will come to believe you, until the new state has become true.

Responding to challenges - tactics you can use

Handling everyday put downs

When someone puts you down verbally, it's really a form of aggression. Often aggression is not physical, it's verbal. The temptation is to be aggressive back, or to be submissive and let them get away with it. But to confront them assertively would be the best option.

It is important to:

1. Realise that ‘put downs’ is aggression
2. Realise that they may not be a bad person, they may be having a bad day, or not realise they are even doing it
3. Decide that you're not going to be submissive
4. Remain calm, and speak calmly
5. Tell them how you feel, and what you would like them to do differently next time

Fogging

If you're suddenly and fiercely verbally attacked, such as someone saying, "I can't believe you've done this!" or "You're useless! you can buy time with fogging, and this is a technique where you accept only partially, what they are saying.

You might say something like, "I accept that I could probably improve in that area" or "Well, there's always room for improvement, I guess." The great thing about fogging is that they no longer have a target to attack. You've accepted that they might be right, but without accepting that you're wrong, and they have nothing left to attack, and you have bought some time to work out what you want to say.

Peeling the onion

Whenever you have a problem or issue to deal with, or even if you don’t know there is a problem, asking probing questions helps you get answers.

Peeling the onion, is a layering questioning style to use when you are trying to get the actual truth of a situation and to avoid making assumptions. Children understand how to do this intuitively, but we tend to lose this skill as we grow up. Have you ever answered a child’s question only to be asked again “but why…?”

To get to the bottom of a situation, remain calm, and ask “Ok, I see, apart from that…….” when they finally say, "No, no, that's it." Then you know you've got the real reasons out.

The broken-record technique

This a technique where you repeat one phrase over and over. The reason that you do this is you’re sending a message to the other person that they are not going to get passed you.

It’s tempting to try to be clever and to come up with different arguments each time, but the problem is, if you do that, they’ll pick on your weakest argument.Then if they defeat that, you can’t retreat back to one of your other arguments.

Planning a second discussion

A really useful assertiveness idea is that it's never too late to go back. Sometimes you wish you'd said something at the time, but you missed your chance. The good news is that it's okay. You can go back and have another go. In fact, it's probably going to work better. You'll probably be stronger when you've had a chance to plan and then go back. If you think about it, when they first attack you, it's probably a moment that suits them. It probably doesn't suit you. But with this, you can choose the right moment for you.

Knowing the most effective words to use

• I understand
• I feel
• What I want
• Is that OK?

Used in that order, without missing a step. Why these four steps in the order they are? The reason is that steps two and three are the slightly aggressive ones. The ‘feel’ and the ‘want’ steps of, you know, "I don't want talk to you now. Can we do it later?" is quite aggressive if you waded straight into that. But they've got this fluffy steps one and four on either side. So you say, "I do understand, but," I feel like this, I want this. "Is that OK?"

For more resources about learning to be assertive see http://www.chriscroft.co.uk/