ABSTRACT
It can be galling to be told when recounting a story of someone’s impolite behaviour towards you, and how you got upset about it, ‘Oh stand up for yourself. Be assertive, not a crybaby.’ You may experience a triple dose of resentment: towards the person who was impolite; towards your friend for being unsympathetic; and towards yourself for acting passively and reluctantly acknowledging that your friend’s comments had ‘the sting of truth’. I (MN) remember a client complaining to me that she was always being told to stand up for herself but no one actually explained how to do it: ‘Is it supposed to come to me in a vision? Others said that the worm will nally turn one day and I had to go and look that up as I didn’t know what they were talking about.’ Being assertive can seem simple, but deceptively so as we shall see. Before we have a look at assertiveness, it’s important to point out that, traditionally, assertion training has been applied to areas such as con ict, exploitation, marginalisation, depression, anger, passivity, injustice – the unpleasant side of life. However, being assertive also includes the expression of positive feelings towards others but the person is reluctant to do so, for example, ‘I think my boss has done a wonderful job on the project and I would like to say so but I’m worried that my colleagues will see me as a crawler.’ While we emphasise standing up for yourself in this chapter, also remember to stand up to yourself, that is, the self giving instructions to the self, such as getting on with important tasks you’ve been avoiding or making sure to include pleasurable activities in a heavy work schedule. In this way, the self acts as a mentor and protector to keep your life in balance.
