Assertiveness Training

Assertiveness training involves learning the basic social skills that deal with clearly expressing yourself to others, persisting with your goals in the face of opposition and appropriately standing up for your self in the midst of conflict or criticism.

Understanding assertive versus passive and aggressive behavior

Passive behavior is charactorized by its overly "nice" and submissive quality. the individual engaging in passive behavior is typically afraid of conflict and overly-afraid of social rejection. The passive individual frequently holds the belief that if you behave "nicely enough" to somebody who is acting rudely, obnoxiously or pushy towards you, that the rude person will eventually understand how "good" you are and will gratefully stop acting in a rude, obnoxious and overly demanding fashion. Frequently a passive individual keeps his or her personal opinions, feelings or desires to him or herself while looking for those things to say that will best win the other person's approval. Consequently, the passive person frequently feels very frustrated and angry inside, believing that people don't truly "understand" him or her, or don't really "care" about them when they don't intuit the passive person's desires underneith their "nice" behaviors. The passive individual cares too much about other people's approval and focuses too little on honestly expressing him or herself to others and letting natural compatibility or natural incompatibility determine one's relationships.

Aggressive behavior is often seen as "bullying," "intimidating" or "manipulative" by others and is charactorized by a lack of concern for other's opinions, feelings or desires. Often the basic goal of aggressive behavior is the domination of others through verbal or physical displays of power and threats of violence or retaliation.While the aggressive individual sometimes gets his or her way in the short run, in the long run aggressive behavior is self-defeating, in that the aggressive individual ends up having few friends and many social enemies. Also, with the addition of alcohol or social conflict with another aggressive individual, aggression quickly and easily crosses the line into illegal and punishable behavior.

Assertive behavior is charactorized by a contant search for a "win-win" solution to social conflict, as well as by non-aggressive social methods for standing up for oneself in the face of aggressive social criticism, attack or manipulation. The individual maintaining an assertive position usually maintains that he or she is the ultimate judge of his or her own behavior, although other people are free to have their own opinions and approve or disapprove as they see fit. An assertive person stands up for his or her tastes, desires, values and opinions while respecting other people's freedom to have their own individual differences on these things. A person who behaves assertively understands that he or she is naturally incompatible with certain people and is naturally compatible with certain other people, therefore social rejection is simply an acknowlegment of social incompatiblity with a given person and not a reflection of their worth as a person. An assertive individual looks for naturally compatible people to establish friendships with while leaving naturally incompatible people alone to live their lives as they see fit.

Assertive social conversation and communication

Assertive social conversation and communication involves learning and then practicing a number of basic skills involving self-expression, such as

Self-disclosure
In self-dicslosure students learn how to reveal aspects of their past history, opinions, values and desires they normally would have been to anxious to reveal in the past. A key element of successful assertiveness is the development of rejection tolerance, so that disclosure of one's self is not seen to be as threatening as it is typically viewed by someone preoccupied with the thought "but what will they think if I say that!!??" Free information. Free information is the offering of facts about yourself in an unsolicited fashion. Sometimes this free information is given to the other person simply as a means of self-disclosure and as a means of enhancing a valued relationship, sometimes free information is offered as an invitation to the other person to relax and begin talking on a more personal, intimate level.

Persistence
Persistence is often required in social situations where you are dealing with a bureaucracy and are facing systematic resistence to your reasonable requests. A key social skill practiced in assertiveness training that teaches persistence is called

Broken Record
Broken record involves saying what you want over and over again without getting angry, irritated or loud, regardless of how the frustrator is stonewalling your reasonable requests.

Assertively coping with criticism
Assertiveness is the middle ground between passivity and aggressiveness. Often when people are criticized they tend to react either by"lying down and playing dead"; in other words by being completely intimidated by the criticism and not standing up for themselves, or else people respond by overreacting and becomming angry, loud, insulting and obnoxious. We tend either to give in to the criticizer or fight the criticizer by criticizing back. Either way the conversation goes downhill and the relationship suffers.

Dealing with criticism in an assertive fashion involves learning and then using the following social skills:

• Fogging
  Fogging is simply agreeing with the of the criticism leveled at you, agreeing in principle with the criticism, or agreeing with the odds regarding the criticism leveled at you. In any of the above cases, however, you hold fast to your desires or view of the criticized situation in spite of the criticism. You do not become defensive, angry, or intimidated, however.
• Negative assertion
  Negative assertion occurs when you offer free information about yourself that you agree is negative. You offer that information, however, in a way that also communicates that you accept yourself as a person in spite of this negative trait or behavior. When you accept yourself as you are--warts and all--others find it difficult to manipulate you based on their criticizing your negative traits.
• Negative inquiry
  Negative inquiry involves asking the person who is criticizing you if they have any additional criticisms of you they would like to share. Negative inquiry communicates to the other person that you do not automatically reject yourself simply because you recognize you're human and have some negative behaviors and charactoristics. It often leads also to the complaint that is unexpressed but which is at the root of the other person's dissatisfaction with you.
  

All assertiveness skills are designed to lead up to the moments of

• Workable compromise
  where you and the other person begin to non-manipulatively negotiate the differences between the two of you, and
• Working agreements
  which you and the other person reach between the two of you and which represent the solutions the two of you have worked out regarding your differences.

Assertiveness training is usually conducted in a small group setting, usually taking from four to six sessions. Occasionally, however, assertiveness is taught in the context of individual counseling and as a part of developing a student's overall social skill level.

It's easy to understand assertiveness on a conceptual level. What is challenging, however, is mastering the assertive social skills to the degree that you utilize them spontaneously in the midst of an argument or a socially conflicted situation. That is where previous practice in a small group setting can be so beneficial.

Assertiveness training groups
Assertiveness training is presented by Counseling Services on an occasional basis as the campus need for it arises. If you are interested in developing your assertive social skills, call Counseling Services at 487-2538 Mondays through Fridays 8 am to 5 pm and let us know. We will either sign you up for an upcoming assertiveness training group, invite you into individual counseling to develop your assertiveness skills on a more private basis, or we will take your name and number and call you when a group is getting ready to begin.