today we're going to be talking about assertiveness and some of the common
misperceptions and myths about assertiveness hi everyone in today's video we're going to be
talking about the concept of assertiveness and some of the common misunderstandings and myths
associated with the interpersonal style of assertiveness but before i get into
that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist
in the province of british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only
it is not intended as a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental health
professional now with those things out of the way let's start talking about assertiveness and the
most common myths that people have about what assertiveness is and how assertiveness works
so the first myth is that assertiveness and aggressiveness are the same thing
so a lot of times when people think about what it means to be assertive or what does it look like
when someone's being assertive uh they'll picture the person in the bank who's yelling at the bank
teller and pounding their fist on the uh the bank teller's desk and saying i want my money well
that's not assertiveness that's that's well it's being a jerk but it's also aggressive um
assertiveness and aggressiveness are not the same thing and i did a previous video that
talked about some of the key differences between assertiveness aggressiveness and being passive
but the key difference between being assertive and being aggressive is when a person's aggressive it
really is about them expressing what they want and dominating and domineering the other person
not allowing the other person to have opinions or to be able to share their opinions it's all about
winning it's all about this is my opinion and my opinion's right my opinion is the only one
that counts but assertiveness is about just allowing myself to express my opinion and
allowing other people to have an opinion as well it's not about winning it's not about dominating
the other person it's not about being right it's about being open and sharing my views and
being respectful of others to allow them to share their views and it's okay if we agree to disagree
because it's not about winning so assertiveness is not the same thing as being aggressive
the second common myth about assertiveness is that assertiveness is a personality style
so i'll often hear from my clients yeah you know what it's just not in me to be assertive i'm not
that type of person i'm not an assertive person so it's almost like they see that assertiveness is
a personality characteristic and if it's a personality characteristic i can't really do
anything about it essentially some people are born assertive and some people aren't and if you're not
born assertive then you can't be assertive well assertiveness isn't a personality characteristic
assertiveness is an interpersonal style it's a skill and it's not who you are it's what you do
and it's how you relate to other people and you can learn different ways of relating
to other people so just like any skill assertiveness is something that can be
learned can be practiced and you can get better at it so it almost be like saying
it's not in my personality to play the trumpet or i wasn't born with you know having trumpet
in my nature well that doesn't make sense because playing trumpet isn't something you're
born with it's something you learn to do same with assertiveness it's not something that you're
born with it's not something that's an integral part of your dna or your personality
it's a skill and just like any skill if you practice it you'll get better at it and you'll
get more confident with it so it's not who you are assertiveness is about what you do
another common myth about assertiveness is when you start to be assertive uh start with the most
difficult people in your life because those are the ones you need to be assertive with
that makes sense a little bit on the surface right if if you're having these
really difficult interpersonal interactions with other people or these there's these really sort
of challenging people in your life being assertive with those people might seem like it would really
help and make things better because if i can fix those relationships then my life will be better
but going back to the notion of assertiveness being a skill you need to build up that skill
so like for example when you're learning to play a piece of music you're learning to play piano
you don't start with a really difficult piece of music to start to learn how to play the
piano you start with something a lot easier learn it and then gradually build your way up
it's the same with really difficult people what you want to do is to start easy
start with interpersonal interactions that maybe don't have a lot of a lot of significance so maybe
you start by practicing being assertive with the uh the person who's calling you on the phone and
trying to sell you insurance and you can practice being assertive with that person because
you're not going to ever see that person again or talk to that person again so it's okay if
the interaction doesn't go great so going back to the notion of assertiveness being a skill
you want to start with uh practicing assertiveness with easier people in
your life and then working your way up to some of those more challenging interpersonal interactions
another common myth about assertiveness is that you need to be assertive all the time
and in all social interactions right and this kind of makes sense on the surface because
if we talk about assertiveness being kind of the most effective interpersonal style it makes
sense then why wouldn't i want to be assertive all the time well because not every situation
requires you to be assertive and if you try to be assertive in every situation it's probably
just going to lead to unnecessary sort of conflict or challenges with other people so i'll give you
an example suppose uh you're visiting your your grandmother and your grandmother offers you some
tea in a very grandmotherly sort of way and you say to her no thank you grandma it's it's fine
i don't need any tea but she eventually comes by and she pours you a cup of tea anyway now
you could say oh hold on a second grandma i told you earlier that i didn't want tea
and so i would really appreciate if the next time that rather than you pouring me a cup of
tea that you would listen to what i asked of you and not disrespect me by pouring the cup of tea
it's kind of a ridiculous thing to say right sometimes it's okay to not
be assertive sometimes it's okay to not share exactly how you feel because not every social
interaction requires it so if your grandma pours you a cup of tea even though you told her that
you didn't really want a cup of tea it's okay you don't need to be assertive about that situation
another myth about assertiveness is that when a person's assertive they know exactly what to say
uh the most assertive thing to say in every situation um this is just really unrealistic
it's unrealistic to expect that you'll know exactly what to say the right thing to say
in every situation have you ever been in one of those situations where you're
having a conversation with someone and you know an hour or two after the conversation
you think to yourself ah i wish i had said this you know we we don't always know the assertive
thing to say in a situation so someone might uh ask us to do something and we're
really not comfortable with doing it but we don't really know exactly how to say no
you don't have to know how to say no every single time what you can do though is to ask for more
time so if you're not sure what to say you're not sure what the assertive response is you're not
sure exactly how you feel about the situation it's perfectly okay to say you know what that
sounds good let me think about it and i'll get back to you tomorrow
because by asking for more time it gives you some time to think about the situation a bit
more clearly it gives you a bit more time to sort of process what you want in that situation
and then also to be able to think about what it is that you want to say and how you want
to communicate assertively to that other person so you don't have to feel like if you're an assertive
person you know exactly what to say every single time every single interaction so it's okay
to ask for time to be able to come up with the best thing that you want to say in that situation
and finally the last myth associated with assertiveness is that assertiveness
is only to be used for conflict situations that assertiveness is only necessary for
dealing with conflict or in situations where you might disagree with another person well the thing
about assertiveness that's really important to understand really important to recognize is that
at its core assertiveness is really about you just expressing what you think expressing how you feel
sharing what's going on inside of you sharing your thoughts with other people
essentially assertiveness equals openness it it equals a sense of i'm sharing who i am
with this other person i'm letting them in to what's going on in my head what's going on
my thoughts and how i feel so it's not just to be used for conflict or dealing with conflict
assertiveness can be used for deepening relationships for actually
helping you form a deeper connection with the other person because you're being genuine
about who you are you're not trying to figure out what is the best answer here what is the
the way that the other person wants me to behave what is it that i should be saying so that this
other person will like me what you're doing when you're being assertive is you're sharing who you
are and how you feel allowing the other person to share how they feel and in doing so the two of you
can make a deeper connection so assertiveness isn't just about conflict it can actually be
useful for deepening relationships making uh friendships closer making intimate relationships
closer so assertiveness equals openness
so i i hope that helps give you a little bit of a better understanding of some of the the aspects
of assertiveness and what assertiveness isn't and some of the myths and misperceptions that people
will often have about assertiveness so hopefully that helps clear up some some
misunderstandings or beliefs that you have about assertiveness i'd love to hear your thoughts or
comments about this so please leave me some comments in the comments section down below
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