What is assertive communication?
Colloquially, we speak of assertiveness when we manage to express what we feel without using value judgements, without emotionally hurting the other person and avoiding conflict situations. However, assertiveness also consists of being honest with oneself, communicating what we want without impositions and without letting other people make decisions or speak for us. If these two conditions are present in our communication, we talk about aggressive communication patterns in the first case (when we impose) and passive communication style in the second case (we let others speak for us or make decisions).
Likewise, if I want my communication to be effective, that is, if I want the other person to understand me, we must take care of the content of our discourse. But then, what do we communicate and how do we communicate it?
Before going into what we communicate and how we communicate, I share with you a link on the roots, definitions and dimensions of assertive behaviour. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/65876.pdf
What do we communicate?
It is important to communicate using “I-messages” e.g. “I feel happy because… or I feel sad because…”.
And why should we use these types of messages to start expressing ourselves assertively? Because the information we receive from the outside may or may not be reality, our thoughts may or may not be reality, but what is real is what we feel. In other words, in order to have an assertive communication and therefore give an assertive response, we must analyse the following route to be honest with ourselves and express what we feel.
INFORMATION FROM OUTSIDE -> THOUGHT -> EMOTION -> RESPONSE
Information from outside: Is the information from outside completely real? The answer is NO.
driving on the road and a car is in our blind spot, the information we see from the outside is not totally real.
Our thoughts: Is the information from my thoughts totally real? The answer is NO. For example, if
we meet someone and they don’t show up for the appointment and we call them and their phone is switched off, we may think that they have left us stranded, especially if it has happened to us before.
if it has happened to us before. But it could be (it has happened to me) that the person has run out of battery on the phone and has also
too much of a stop. Therefore, our thoughts are not reality, as information from the outside is mixed with past experiences.
Our emotions: the only thing on that little road that is real is what we feel, because if you are happy no one can convince you that you are sad or the other way around.
Response: our response has to contain “I-messages”. For example, it is common to say “I feel you are not helping me” instead of saying, “I feel overwhelmed”.
Analysis of both expressions
“I feel that you are not helping me”: in this expression we are interpreting the other person’s behaviour and as such we may be wrong.
“I feel overwhelmed”: this describes our emotional experience and as such we may be right.
Finally, the answer we give has to be honest with our needs, i.e. if I feel overwhelmed, it is because I need to be helped.
So, this is the most profound step and it is where the great difficulty of assertive communication lies. The basis of assertive communication lies in empathy with ourselves and with the other person, as well as in the recognition of our needs, since our emotions emerge from them. Assertive communication depends on this step and it is difficult because we are not educated to recognise and express our emotions, which arise from an unresolved need, but we are educated to judge when we are not respected.
Being assertive is a practice and as such, it is achieved if we practice it. Assertive communication will allow us to assert ourselves and make requests that previously generated anxiety and fear and that we will therefore avoid. In addition, it will allow us to better understand the emotions of anger or sadness in another person, knowing that they feel this way because of unmet needs. It also helps our self-knowledge as well as our self-esteem.
