By Natasha Josefowitz, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, California — Assertion. Is it a skill? Is it an attitude? Are we born assertive? Do we learn it as children? Can we acquire it as adults? Most of the literature on assertion assumes that people are unassertive because they don’t know how to be assertive—they lack the skill. The assumption is that we can be taught to be assertive with practice. Most assertiveness workshops use role-play, on the premise that if you practice assertion in simulated situations, the behaviors will be transferable to real events. Of course, practice can help people discover the various ways of approaching a topic or person, but practice may not be much help to the people who are shy or afraid to act unless they can understand the underlying reason for this difficulty.
So, the question to raise is, what makes some people too shy or too afraid to get their needs met? Studies indicate that there is an inhibiting factor that prevents some people from being assertive. Shy or fearful people do not feel entitled to express their thoughts and feelings, make requests, or refuse the requests of others. They have low self-esteem. They do not think that they are good enough, smart enough, or attractive enough; they feel, therefore, that they have no rights and perceive others as not granting them any rights.
Inhibition is the inability to speak out or act on your own behalf, on behalf of others, or on behalf of an idea or value system. Let us go a step further. What is the basis for inhibition? It is the assumption that attempts to be assertive will meet with a negative response and that this negative response matters. If you predict a negative response but feel it does not matter, you won’t be inhibited. But when it does matter to you, the predicted negative response can so influence your behavior that you are prevented from being assertive.
There may be both rational and irrational components to inhibition. You may be correct or incorrect in assuming that a particular assertive stance on your part will result in negative consequences for you. There are a couple of ways to check reality. One is to ask others. If no one else would be inhibited in your place, then you can question the reality of your predictions of a negative response. The other is to recall the ways your parents controlled you as a child. Did they show their disapproval by anger, by tears, by indifference? Does the potential of others’ anger, tears, or indifference still control your behavior now? When you feel inhibited from being assertive, visualize the type of negative response you predict your behavior will elicit. Does it remind you of an earlier parental reaction? If you had a father who controlled you by anger or even just by its threat, do you predict an angry response to your attempts at meeting your needs? If your mother cried when you misbehaved, what you fear most is hurting people?
Since the inhibitor factor in assertion is often the displacement of early childhood socialization patterns into the present, determine which people most inhibit your assertiveness and try to identify what it is in them that reminds you of a parent or teacher. It may be a look, a walk, a voice, an expression, an attitude. You are attributing to a boss, a colleague, a subordinate, or a friend a motive that once belonged to an authority figure that used to inhibit you. Once you are able to identify this element, ask yourself, “Do I choose to be inhibited by this person who in not my parent?” Chances are that similar attributes in a variety of people will trigger this inhibition in you. I have found that very cold, formal men remind me of my father, who was always quite distant, and therefore others’ potential withdrawal can still control my behavior.
Once you have identified the pattern, chances are that whenever you meet it in others it can still influence you, even though you are an adult. The only way to deal with non-assertion is to keep looking for the pattern so that once you have identified it, you are making your unconscious reactions conscious and therefore more under your control.
Copyright © 2013. Natasha Josefowitz. This article appeared previously in La Jolla Today. Josefowitz may be contacted at natasha.josefowitz@sdjewishworld.com