Lots of people find it hard to ‘be assertive’. There are ways to try out assertive behaviours on others, and it can become easier if you practice often, riding out the nerves in each situation. Generally speaking, if you are clear and short in your intentions, you should be able to get your position across to someone.
What makes this difficult is your initial emotional state when you begin, and the curveballs the other person might throw your way. These in turn, can increase your emotional state and throw you off course. For some people this is why they don’t attempt to be more assertive.
It is difficult to predict the other person, and can be exhausting to constantly try to regulate your internal anxious state when in these interactions. Recently I have come up with an idea as to why this is so exhausting.
Borrowing from psychodynamic theory (ISTDP) that suggests anxiety functions to pull us away from a true emotion, I suggest assertiveness actually comes from the family of the emotion..
ANGER!
We can feel angry when someone pushes our own boundaries, when we feel we are made to go against something we believe in, or after being attacked in some form (physically, or emotionally). Anger is the natural reaction to these circumstances.
For example, if someone has dismissed your opinion on something, they’ve pushed an internal boundary. If you feel that anger is something very ‘rude’ or ‘not appropriate’ then any level of this emotion might not be tolerated by you, and instead anxiety comes in. This means you would not try to be assertive as a part of you feels this would be acting on anger, which you equate as ‘bad’, so you stay away from it.
Therefore, it might be if anger is an ‘awkward emotion’ for you, it might mean that you have trouble being assertive.
What can you do about this? Well if you’re in a situation where anger would be a natural reaction, then try and allow yourself to notice what the physical experience of the the emotion is like – make some space for it – remember to breathe.
It might bubble up inside .. and .. it will bubble out (rather than explode). This can be good by allowing yourself to recognise and make space for this previously unwanted emotion. That gives you validation that the emotion fits the situation:
“Yes! You are right to feel like that after they ignored what you were saying!”
As the feeling passes you can then decide what to do. The theory is that your next move will be guided from a more emotionally healthy place.
Let me know what you think!
Dr Brian
P.S. Shouting and being physical with anger counts as ‘acting out’, not making space within yourself for the physical sensations of the emotion.
