The Five Steps of Assertiveness

Download or read book The Five Steps of Assertiveness written by Steven T. Griggs, Ph.D. and published by Steven T. Griggs, Ph.D., A Psychological Corporation. This book was released on 2018-06-20 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I’ve been a practicing psychologist in an outpatient setting for over thirty-two years. I run into eight conditions or "issues" almost every day (addictions, anxiety, ADHD/learning disabilities, assertiveness, children’s behaviors, mood disorders, relationships and self-esteem). Assertiveness is important unto itself, but plays a very strong role in the other seven areas. Usually, when people are assertive, the problems in each of these groups diminish. Assertiveness is a skill that everyone needs and uses to some degree, in just about every situation. It turns out assertiveness can be taught to almost everyone. I’ve taught it to children as young as two. Older adults can learn new tricks, too, including this one. I’ve taught assertiveness to schizophrenics. I even got a Brazilian teenager to learn it without me being able to speak Portuguese (I taught him non-verbally). Anyone can learn to be assertive. I’ve read most of the pop-psychology literature on assertiveness over the last 30+ years. Many of the books are excellent. They, like this ebook deal with a variety of assertivness aspects; for example, they talk about this peak experience for handling other assertive people, not feeling vulnerable or subservient, taking an assertiveness exam, standing up for yourself, competently assessing yourself and others, developing verbal assertiveness skills and self confidence, feeling self assured and expressing yourself and your opinions, feeling comfortable being outspoken, even being opinionated, how to stop being a human doormat, how to stop feeling intimidated and to deal with domineering people, being straightforward, stopping people from walking all over you, how to stop feeling inhibited, insecure, hesitant, and so on. Most of these books are too long to cover this relatively simple subject. NEW concdept: I’ve boiled down assertiveness into five basic. I’ve made this as easy to understand as is humanly possible, combining what I’ve read with what I’ve learned from clients. NEW concept: there are three levels of assertiveness. There are five ways to communicate: assertiveness, non-assertiveness, passivity, passive aggression and aggressive. NEW concept: to be assertive, you have to know the difference between content and process in your communication. You have to know how to "articulate the process" using just the right words, which I supply (almost eight hundred synonyms of the basic nine human feelings). This latter idea is the one thing that will increase your assertiveness fifty percent, even if you do nothing else. It's also something you can learn in under two minutes. I describe the two general categories of excuses and the seven most common reasons used to justify not being assertive. Then I describe thirteen points that make assertiveness effective. I sprinkle examples throughout the ebook, but include another section at the end with several more in-depth examples. Like my other ebooks, this one has no fat. Think of it as a "Cliffs Notes" publication. It's "sort of" a quick read (about an hour or two). I have to explain only a few new terms, because there are new ideas and the terms you probably already know are put together in new ways. The theory I espouse is different from standard "behavior change" books. It works better and is very simple to understand. That's the point of an ebook. My research has not turned up another ebook that does what mine does.