Assertiveness training is a benefit to all people in their relationships and interpersonal interactions. Assertiveness training is not about acting differently. It is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that looks at correcting what people think about assertiveness. Historically the concept of assertiveness is credited to Andrew Salter who theorized the excitatory and inhibitory aspects of a person. Salter’s theories led to Wolpe, Lazarus, Alberti, Emmons, and others to define and expand the idea of assertive behavior. Assertiveness training takes on a variety of forms and can be group therapy, brief training, or one-on-one sessions. This type of training is beneficial to education and psychology because it can help with social anxiety, psychological issues, and addictions. One of the difficulties of assertion training is the idea that assertiveness equals aggression or hostility. Aggression and hostility are not the same as assertiveness and assertiveness training have benefits for many areas of life.
Assertiveness training can be traced back to the 1940’s and Andrew Salter who began theorizing about different aspects of a person. Salter discussed two different persons, the excitatory and the inhibitory. Salter (1949) says an excitatory person is “a matter of emotional freedom and has nothing to do with social participation…The criteria of excitation are honesty of response and the content” (p. 48). The idea of the excitatory person is the predecessor to an assertive person. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Salter (1949) defines the inhibitory person as “simultaneously too selfish, being wrapped up in themselves and not selfish enough because they do not fight for their emotional rights” (p. 48). The inhibitory person lets people push them around because they are too concerned with how they are perceived by others to stand up for their boundaries. These beginning theories from Andrew Salter were built upon by other psychologists to become what is now known as assertion training.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s assertion training became a popular topic of study in the psychology world. One of the foremost psychiatrists that studied assertion training and created practices to implement assertion training is Joseph Wolpe. Wolpe (1973) calls assertiveness “the reciprocal inhibitor of anxiety…expressing emotions other than anxiety in a socially acceptable way” (p. 89). Wolpe’s theory moves from Salter’s excitatory idea of emotional freedom to a societal context of assertive interactions with others without anxiety. Wolpe has two outliers of assertiveness: opposition and affection. Opposition is assertiveness with socially reprehensible behavior and can include aggression, bullying, violence, or intimidation. Affection is inadequate behavior that includes unexpressed wants or needs in appropriate situations. According to Wolpe, assertiveness lies between the extremes of opposition and affection and includes reasonable expression of emotion and boundaries (Zuercher, 1983). Beyond behavioral therapy, the self-help book Your Perfect Right became popular during this time period and helped extend assertiveness to everyone. Alberti and Emmons (1974) presented the idea that assertiveness is a “behavior which enables a person to act in his own best interest, to stand up for himself without undue anxiety, to express his honest feelings comfortably, or to exercise his own rights without denying the rights of others” (p. 2). Their viewpoint moved assertiveness from a broad social context to a personal inward perspective. From Alberti and Emmon’s definition of assertiveness it can sound like a person trying to get what they want; however, the authors include that this must be done without infringing on the rights of others. This history can be confusing because of the wide range of definitions for assertiveness.
From what has been presented about assertiveness, assertiveness means to verbalize, demonstrate, and respect your boundaries and the boundaries of others. Cloud and Townsend (1992) state that, “Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership” (p. 29).
Assertiveness is standing up for and vocalizing your emotional and physical needs. It’s about standing up for and letting people know those needs that you have and expressing them in a socially acceptable way. While there are many different definitions used for assertiveness at its most basic point it’s about communicating a person’s individual needs. There are many different types of assertion training. Kahn (1979) discusses contrasted role play as a type of treatment. This exercise exposes clients to exaggerated situations where the client plays the weaker response roll until reaching a point that pushes them to anger and assertiveness. The client then discusses what happened in the role-playing and the anger assertion that resulted from the anger from the client. Twentyman, Pharr, & Connor (1980) used the technique called self-statement modification. The group or the client is given a scenario and they rehearse what they would say to themselves as if they were in the interaction. The clients are presented with a model who made passive self-statements, then they are coached through more positive self-statements that would result in a more assertive response. Assertiveness training can take several different forms, but the goal is the same, to give people the tools they need to stand up for their needs in demeaning or intimidating situations.
The reasons for assertiveness training vary from client to client, but it has been shown to be a useful tool for counselors in a range of situations. One example is the work with adolescents who struggle with self-esteem and the help assertion training is to reducing stress levels. Parray & Kumar (2017) from their study show self-esteem was increased in students after assertiveness training because it increased their awareness of their emotions and feelings and helped the students learn how to confront others in appropriate situations (rephrase summary). Assertiveness training helped to reduce the stress and anxiety of social communication and fears in the students involved in the study. This study shows that the assertiveness training gave students the skills to navigate social situations and problems more effectively. Another positive of assertiveness training is found in its role in the treatment of depression. Sanchez, Lewisohn, & Larson (1980) conducted a scientific control group study with patients suffering from depression. One group received tradition treatment for depression and the other group received additional assertiveness training. The participants that participated in the assertiveness training reported lower levels of depression and more comfortable engaging in assertive behaviors. Assertiveness training works for the treatment of depression is because when someone can’t vocalize their own needs it leads to feelings of inadequacy and inability to care for themselves that in turn leads to a depressed state for the individual. The training gives them the tools to express their personal needs which can counter the thoughts of inadequacy. The reason why assertiveness training is still relevant is that people need help expressing their needs in a healthy and socially acceptable way.
There are opponents to assertiveness training that state that it is too vague in the definition, patients think it should solve everything, and the facilitators can be poorly trained. Ruben & Ruben (1989) explain that one of the biggest weaknesses of assertiveness training is the obscurity of the definition of the word assertiveness. There are as many definitions as there are theorists or counselors that use assertiveness training. The definitions change and so do the implications and methods of the treatment. Another issue from Ruben & Ruben (1989) is when the patients believe assertiveness training will solve everything. The training can sometimes be presented as a treatment to solve just about anything without recognizing the formal limits of the training. Consumers may feel disappointed when they do not reach their personal goals after the treatment because they are not presented with realistic expectations and the potential risks of the treatment. The last issue regarding assertiveness training is addressed by Shelton (1977) regarding poorly trained facilitators. He brings up the availability of training books and videos that can make assertiveness training easy to facilitate. The result is the involvement of facilitators who are not properly training to ensure client success. While these negatives are valid issues, these could be avoided if the client does their research and discusses their treatment options with a licensed counselor and find out the training and specialization of the counselor they are working with.
Assertiveness training has evolved over time to be incorporated into many different forms of treatment from codependency to depression and anxiety. It’s taken more of an individualized focus instead of the broader scope of the assertiveness training of the 70’s and 80’s. A lot of research has shown the implications that assertiveness is strongly connected to the attachment patterns that a person shows. Wismeijer et al. (2014) show the idea that a person’s rejection sensitivity, the sensitivity, and anxiety that a person experiences when they are presented with the potential of being rejected, is connected to that person’s attachment experiences. Wismeijer and collages (2014) present the potential that a person’s rejection sensitivity determines their tendency to act assertively. Therefore a person’s assertiveness is a reaction to their attachment experiences not simply a lack of behavioral training.
Attachment patterns have been shown to have a direct effect on a person’s ability to understand and recognize their personal needs and emotions (Rutten et al. 2016). Rutten and collages (2016) take their findings and hypothesize that if a person has trouble or cannot recognize their needs internally then they will assuredly have difficulty expressing and being assertive about their needs to others. This presents the need for future research looking and the connections between attachment patterns and experiences of people and their assertiveness. This research shows that there is more than just behavioral training needed in the work of assertiveness. The connections of assertiveness and attachment show there is a large cognitive component to assertiveness that needs to be addressed as the training of assertiveness continues.
Assertiveness training is a benefit to all people in their relationships and interpersonal interactions. It helps in relationships if the cognitive aspects are included. People’s attachments and experiences must be taken into account and the counselor cannot solely focus on behavior changes. This approach cannot be shortened into a self-help weekend retreat, but instead, it is an individualized cognitive approach that can help people gain confidence to interact and better their relationships. As stated in this paper, assertiveness is having the ability to stand up for and verbalize your needs to others.