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Much
has been said lately about standing your ground and refusing to
let others trample on your feelings, but often the way we express
it, kicks off another set of difficulties, say Steven J Stein
and Howard E Book
Assertiveness
if often characterised as a mid-point along a line drawn between
passiveness and aggression. Passive people have difficulty expressing
themselves to others. They bottle things up and avoid dealing with
uncomfortable situations; they wait for others to come to them,
for things to be handed to them on a platter (but, since they don’t
or can’t communicate what they want, others aren’t likely
to provide it or aid them in obtaining it.) That is why they frequently
miss out on any number of life’s opportunities, and why others
may take advantage of them. Often they feel like the proverbial
doormat, always being stepped on. Some just lie back and take it;
they don’t really
care about what’s become the normal order of things.
Others,
thoughts, are what’s known as passive-aggressive, They may
seem to go along for the ride without complaint, but inside, they’re
seething with resentment about the fact or suspicion that others
constantly exploit their good nature. Instead of speaking out or
confronting the issue in an honest way, they repress that anger.
But only for a while. Then, usually when it’s least called
for, they lash out, at times subconsciously.
Passive
aggression can manifest in a variety of ways. Sometimes it’s
as simple as not responding to requests or expectations, like the
husband who agrees, in a voice that sounds like a speak-your-weight
machine, to take out the garbage “after the next commercial.”
Of course, the garbage trucks come and go and the husband remains
on inactive duty in front of the TV, having “gotten back”
at his wife for her constant “nagging”.
Passiveness
and passive aggression are clearly long-standing patterns of behaviour,
and they’re hard to break. In hopes of doing so, back in the
mid-1950s, Dr Albert Ellis developed his Rational Emotive Behaviour
Therapy. Several years age, we had the opportunity to participate
in the Associate Fellowship Program that Ellis runs at his New York
Institute. One of the assignments included an exercise designed
to help people overcome the passive or passive-aggressive form of
assertiveness deficiency.
Each
participant was asked to describe something that he or she was afraid
to do in public—the only conditions being that the activity
couldn’t be illegal, unethical or lead to any real harm or
danger. In fact, most of the activities involved baseless fears—the
idea that, if these things were done, other people would thing the
participant silly. The exercise demanded that each person carry
out this very activity. One woman dreaded the idea of riding the
subway and having people watch her. Her assignment was not only
to board a train, but also to shout out the name of each station
as the train pulled in. At the end of the day she could easily have
been hired as a conductor.
Another
participant was a young man (we’ll call him Stanley) who must
have weighed at least 300 pounds and stood six foot five. He was
a successful psychologist, but he too had a secret fear. To be precise,
when he received food in a restaurant that was improperly cooked,
he was incapable of reporting the problem to the waiter; he’d
rather eat something raw or broiled past all recognition than ask
to have it taken back. You can easily guess what his assignment
was.
On
Sunday afternoon, several of us accompanied Stanley to a nearby
Chinese restaurant. The waiter stood abut five feet tall, and weighed
perhaps 125 pounds, but Stanley started wolfing it down, in the
hope that he’d finish before the waiter returned. No such luck.
Stanley was in obvious distress; his face was flushed and his hands
were shaking. His anxiety, which we’d been on the verge of
making fun of, was very real. At last, summoning up every ounce
of courage he could muster, he asked in a voice barely louder than
a whisper that the “too-cold” hot and sour soup should
be taken back. Of course, the waiter politely whisked the bowl away,
and Stanley’s body instantly relaxed. He looked, and admitted
that he felt, as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his
shoulders.
Stanley’s
experience demonstrates that it doesn’t matter how big you
are physically, or how much power you may wield in a given social
interaction. The ability to assert yourself is a state of mind,
as well as a skill that can be fine-tuned with practice.
Indirect
assertiveness
At
times, the impact that speaking up might have on others who are
present at the interaction requires that assertiveness be muted:
Victoria, who had been invited to a dinner party at the home of
people she did not know well, found herself seated next at a man
named Charles, a well-spoken and generally delightful companion.
He had a way with words, and entertained the table with stories
of his travels around the country as sales manager for a software
firm. But Charles also had a far less pleasant side to him, which
became apparent when he launched into a series of jokes about blacks,
Jews and Asians.
Victoria
was highly uncomfortable; she found racist humour crude and demeaning.
But she was a guest in someone else’s home, and the host seemed
to be entering into the spirit of conversation.
She
considered ignoring Charles, in hopes that he would move on to something
else, but it soon became clear that he wouldn’t. If only the
two of them had been present or if they’d been amidst strangers,
she would have voiced her wishes quite clearly: “I don’t
like racist comments. Please stop.” However, she was an invited
guest at a dinner party, didn’t know the hosts all that well
and did not wish to embarrass them or their other guests. Her strong
sense of reality testing allowed her to read the political complexity
in the situation.
She
decided to voice her concerns, but in an indirect manner that would
get her point across without causing unnecessary embarrassment or
tension at the party.
“Charles,”
she joked, “do you know any good lawyer stories or salesman
stories? I’d like to make them the butt of our jokes for a
while.” Everyone laughed, and Charles seemed to get the point:
he came up with an innocuous and suitably self-deprecating joke
about salesman.
The
party continued, and Victoria felt good about the stance she had
taken. She knew she would have reproached herself later if she hadn’t
spoken out, and she was satisfied at having found a positive midway
between passive silence and clear assertiveness, which might have
offended her hosts.
Much
has been made lately of the virtues of standing your ground, of
gaining self-respect by refusing to let others trample on your legitimate
feelings. Fair enough—but often the way we express this new
confidence kicks off another set of difficulties in our relationships.
Making your own views known, or getting what you personally desire,
forms only half the picture.
Focusing
on that component alone is aggressive. Bearing in mind the wishes
of others while attempting to get your own wants, met by legitimate
means is assertive.
The
benefits of assertiveness
There’s
very little to be gained from being passive. Passive people fail
to voice their wishes at all - or, if they try, they take refuge
in an unclear and ambiguous manner. They tend to back down, cave
in and acquiesce to someone else’s position. As a result, they
feel constantly unhappy and defeated.
Passive-aggressive
behaviour does no good, either. It’s like the stack of oily
rags in the furnace room that sooner or later flares up in seemingly
spontaneous combustion. People who behave in this way seem to be
pushovers, but they’re prone to brooding and tend to nurture
long-delayed revenge. Then they suddenly explode in ways that—because
they’ve been bottling up their unhappiness for so long - are
even more out of proportion and unrelated to the events at hand.
Aggression
dead-ends; it never succeeds for long. For one thing, the aggressive
and anger-driven personality is under non-stop self-inflicted stress.
This is a very unpleasant state of mind and body; it’s terribly
draining to be forever argumentative and looking for a fight. As
well, you never know when someone bigger, louder and pushier than
you will come on the scene. Worse yet, you never know when your
aggressive ways will catch up with you in deadly earnest. A recent
study of first-time heart attack victims showed that anger was a
better predictor of a second attack than stress, cholesterol level,
nutrition, exercise and other factors.
Assertiveness,
however, is full of benefits. It’s really quite liberating,
as many formerly passive personalities have found. It opens up many
new possibilities and does indeed “win friends and influence
people,” bringing you into closer and more honest contact with
those you meet. When you’re assertive, even in an unpleasant
or uneasy situation, the other person feels respected and accepted,
not put down. Behave aggressively, and he or she reacts defensively
and angrily, tries to make a end run around you by achieving some
unrelated effect or walks away laden with unpleasant thoughts and
feelings directed toward you.
(Excerpt
taken from The EQ Edge by Steven J Stein & Howard E Book Macmillan
India Limited)
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