3.5.11 Beyond Assertiveness

Over the past decades the skill of assertiveness has come to the fore as being of value in helping oneself and helping others, and is now considered to be a vital quality in building respectful relationships, reaching consensus, getting our needs met and our rights taken seriously without being either too meek on the one hand or too aggressive or belligerent on the other.

I include a discussion on assertiveness in this Chapter because the exhortation to be assertive in our dealings with others transcends all modalities – in our modern world anyway. It is hard for anyone to be critical of its principles or practice in helping people – and in life in general.

Let us consider the impact of practitioners being assertive with people in deep distress – those with most if not all of the characteristics of our Focus Group.

If we are assertive, we are clear and unambiguous, people know where we stand, and we are modelling qualities that we desire for them in their lives and in particular in resolving conflict.

True!

I think highly of assertiveness myself and I try my best to use it in my dealings with others – though it is often a challenge for me as it is not at all my default state of being.

However I have some thoughts about its value and general use which I will explore in the posts following.

Because of that, writing this Sub-Chapter, I am mindful of my argument in the second half of this post that our prejudice (or prejudices) can influence the way we think – and also the outcomes of our research or enquiry. That is, we may distort results to suit what we want to hear – or see.

So (like all subject matter in the website) I welcome comments!

In a previous Chapter I mentioned how supporting people in general, but in particular families in the Focus Group, has a cultural dimension. I mentioned anger and language as two areas where the culture of the mainstream might differ from that of our Focus Group.

In another post I referred to our (Irish) love of indirect communication, and gave examples of our native tongue which suggests that indirectness, mixed with a little hesitancy, has been for many centuries, (and still is) part of our culture.

Now, no matter who we are, it is true to say that we deserve the reputation we get – good or bad! While there are some negative stereotypes of Irishness, (excessive use of alcohol, general fecklessness etc.), there are two positive aspects that, I believe, come from our highly honed skills at indirect communication.

1. Consider the connection between feeling welcomed and feeling safe.  Over many centuries of colonisation, (maybe because we were, during those centuries, a very hurt and often fearful people) we developed skills at temporarily hiding our true feelings so that strangers (i.e. agents of the colonising power) would feel safe in our company. After all, if they didn’t, it might have had negative consequences for us. Eventually we got so accustomed to this trait that we transformed it into a positive attribute. Nowadays, with the reputation that we have for the heartiness of our welcome (and friendliness in general) we may be reaping the rewards of what once could have been deemed to be a negative trait.

2. We have, considering our relatively small population, a well-deserved reputation (around the English speaking world anyway) for the quantity and the quality of our poetry, music, and other creative arts e.g. acting, drama etc.  Poetry and art is full of ambiguity and suggestion, in that meanings are suggested rather than explicit.  Did our skill at communicating indirectly, constantly practiced, foster the development of parts of our brain that appreciate the uncertainty and mystery of poetry, art, music, and outside the box type thinking?  I believe that it is certainly a possibility.

I accept that the indirect communication that is part of our language may pre-date colonisation.  Or it may not – I don’t know enough about the history of our language to decide one way or another.  However it obviously worked for us because we kept doing it.

The second characteristic, (love of music and literature, the arts etc.) is a part of us that practitioners use a lot in designing responses, programmes etc. to assist young people who leave school early.  It is great to see the growing interest in writing, free-form music such as rap, and different forms of art, grafted on to our more traditional types of music and song. (For example, I’d say that every town in Ireland has songs written about it).

But, in family support work our best use of our creativity is using it to build respectful, warm and consistent relationships with isolated and marginalised people.  I will not dwell on creativity now, as an entire Sub-Chapter is devoted to it in Section Five.

I mention it because I believe that creativity can sometimes be enabled or facilitated by unassertive, indirect communication.

Sometimes we are hurting deeply, emotionally, but we don’t, consciously, know that we are hurting. To acknowledge emotional pain, and that we need help is a sign of health. Or sometimes we know that we are in pain but we don’t really know how to ask for help.

Perhaps when we asked for help as children we were either ignored altogether, or the help that we were offered by significant adults in our lives was not empathic with our needs, or it was conditional on achieving goals that were impossible to achieve, or someone got angry. (For example, as a child, being true to myself, described in this post – about half-way down).

So we never learned the art of identifying what we need, asking for appropriate help, and then responding positively to the help given.

Indeed, our primary mission in life became finding someone, anyone, who will take away our pain.

But, because it is very difficult to say I-want-you-to-take-away-my-pain directly, it is usually expressed in code – or, indirectly, i.e. what many people would label as unassertively.

The behaviour that we exhibit (which is perceived by others to be needy) is usually a cry for help, but becoming aware of it, identifying it and then articulating is a different matter.

To sum up, in order to ask for help and then ensure that the help we get works for us we need to:

~ Have the ability to discriminate between what we need and what we don’t need.

~ Have the confidence to inform the helper that what they are offering is not what is needed, and either ask for something different or go somewhere else.

~ Have the skills, and be comfortable enough with intimacy, to appreciate the help given, be grateful for it, internalise it and build on it.

These tasks are challenging for everyone, including adults who, as children, grew up in a good enough family with reasonably secure attachment.

If we have been very hurt we might find them even more difficult. It’s not that we don’t have the intelligence to do the tasks, it’s because our experience of trauma:

~ Dulls our ability to identify, refine, and then express our needs.

~ Reduces our confidence to the point where we often believe that we are wrong in our analysis of events. [1]

~ Causes the build-up of emotional armour that inhibits the intimacy that is necessary to admit that help is needed and ask for it.

The third one is of particular importance. Asking for help with an acute emotional problem is an intimate act which, as I said above, can be challenging at the best of times. If our attachment experience as a child has been disorganised, we may perceive giving away power (which we have to do when genuinely asking for help) as being unsafe.

[1]. In a previous post I identified the type of prisoner that this website is concerned with.  I believe that identification of need is where, for example, prisoners of conscience, or prisoners of war, and people who are sent to prison for committing a crime, differ.  The former are usually acutely aware of their needs and can articulate them clearly to achieve a particular end.  The latter, generally, struggle greatly in this area. 

From the practitioner’s perspective, if we ask people directly what they need we are assuming that they have learned the skills to do the tasks as described in the previous post.

Our assumption can cause us to be frustrated and burnt-out, because we feel that we are being clear and assertive but despite all our efforts the very hurt person doesn’t respond in a way that pleases us. We then run the risk of drifting away to a more amenable person who appreciates our assertiveness!

There is a further dimension to this which is also very important for practitioners to be aware of.

If I am very hurt I may feel too vulnerable to articulate my needs assertively.  There are some reasons for this given in the previous post but another one might be because it involves taking too big a risk.  The risk is that I may feel that the person to whom I express my needs may put me under pressure in respect of the outcome. 

Then, whether it results in a positive or negative outcome, I will have to take responsibility for it!

Surely, you might say, isn’t that a good thing?  Shouldn’t I be learning responsibility?

However the pressure that I feels to avoid making a mistake may be a little more than the bit of embarrassment that one might have if one gives the wrong answer to who won the World Cup in 1990 or what is the county town of Westmeath.

Once again let us go back to the formative years of childhood to expand on this.

That is, my needs for safety, love, warmth and above all, truth.

If I am a child growing up in a household where there is little or no democracy, and where abuse, both physical and emotional, and maybe sexual, is prevalent, and there is only one method of conflict resolution, (that is, fear) there is a good chance that it is I who will be punished (or at least lose out), if I am too assertive in identifying and expressing my true needs.

After all, (a bit like the colonised afraid of the coloniser), expressing my needs directly and clearly at best will be ignored or misunderstood, and at worse may cause great offence to a very powerful person who has complete control over me, who has no appreciation of my rights or needs and who might get very angry with me if I express them – particularly what may be the more intimate type needs, i.e. love, truth, safety etc.

In these circumstances it is a lot safer for me if things are vague, because then I don’t have to take responsibility for the outcome if it is bad for me.  It is far better to muddle away for a while until I see which way the wind is blowing and try and predict the safest outcome for myself – denying my true needs (emotional/spiritual) and either accepting they won’t be met or substituting false needs (possibly material/cognitive or even a simple need for attention) that, I sense, are easier for the very powerful person to meet.

Now it must be remembered that the very powerful person (in many families – obviously – the parent) is probably very hurt too.  It’s just that he’s an adult.  He will also, (probably), feel very uncomfortable and totally unfamiliar with me expressing my true needs, as in the previous few paragraphs.

And it will probably evoke unconscious memories of how his needs were not met – those unconscious memories manifesting in expression of the Atlantic Ocean of emotions that we mentioned in the Chapter on Systems Theory, the origins of which he will probably not be aware of. 

Because he has never experienced his own emotional/spiritual needs being met, meeting these needs is a bit of an alien world to him.  Most probably, he will also struggle with the at ease intimacy of the good enough family, and certainly with offering unconditional love. 

Asking for something emotional is completely different than asking for something material or practical. So he may be relieved on sensing that I am substituting material, (or even cognitive) needs for emotional (or spiritual) needs, as it will undoubtedly be a lot safer (and therefore easier) for him to meet the material than the emotional.

And it is relatively non-threatening to give loads of attention – though this attention sometimes might be of a negative type!

In this post I describe the difference between objective and subjective. (I also discussed the difference in the Chapter on Cause and Effect, in ways of describing the Sun).

If an entire childhood is dominated by experiences as described in the previous post the accompanying feelings are hard to shake off when we are adults.

Adults who were once children whose experience of attachment was disorganised often live on high alert and are highly tuned to the smallest nuance of disapproval because disapproval implies at least ridicule, maybe rejection, and possibly physical punishment and resultant physical and emotional pain, as I explained here.

Now, as an adult, if objective logic challenges a subjective view of my situation the logic is perceived as threatening because of the stake that I have in not being wrong – and indeed how dangerous it is to be wrong.

The only way that I learned to have power is to either keep vagueness to the fore, or agree with the objective logic because a more powerful (or knowledgeable or educated) person says it, and pretend to go along with the objective logic, but secretly maintain a subjective view.

Even the simplest direct query that might threaten this power can be perceived as meaningless, or even an attack…..

Now, in ordinary day-to-day life, if I am a normal reasonably well-adjusted person there are times when I might temporarily suspend reality and reject rational argument (i.e. objective logic).

These times would usually be when I am highly charged with emotion.

Examples could be when I am having an angry tantrum, when I am transfixed with fear, consumed with anxiety, or, during or immediately after either a tragic event or indeed the opposite, a highly joyful or pleasurable event, or falling in love, or becoming infatuated with someone or something. When the event has passed the emotional waves reduce in size until they are mere ripples and rationality returns.

I propose here that if I have experienced disorganised attachment as a child, and it remains unresolved, and I find myself in a particular situation – including a situation where I am actually looking for help – I can feel very threatened by objective logic. I may default very quickly to the familiar state of highly charged emotion and/or a state of temporary suspension of reality, or both.  In such situations I can devise my own logic. I find it almost impossible to take things lightly or accept reason and I may be so well-practiced at concealing my true feelings (such as disapproval of the powerful decision-maker) that I am not even aware of it myself.

Practitioners who are hung up on linear growth or progression sometimes regard people who always default to an angry place, and are not making discernible, measurable or recognisable improvement as stuck. (See bottom of this post too).

This, of course, is a very subjective statement.

The person seeking help probably regards the practitioner as stuck in their misunderstanding of his situation.

And who is right? 

Continuing the exploration of the struggle that very hurt people sometimes have in accepting objective commentary on their situation, it is worth noting that very hurt and abused children construct a subjective fantasy world where they are safe.  They have to construct a fantasy world to survive – this is where dissociation comes in, which I described in the Chapter on Trauma and Related Topics.

If anything in their fantasy world is challenged it may actually be viewed as a threat to their survival.  I believe that refuting what a third party would deem to be logical or reasonable is a mild form of disassociation.  As, indeed, is the well-known attribute of the addict – denial.

On a practical level, as adults, it means that if something that we identify clearly as a goal doesn’t work out then we have to admit that we are wrong.

I believe that this is why some people can find an indirect approach, where something is implicit rather than explicit, to be attractive.

Being asked to take responsibility for too much, too quickly, is threatening. And a bit like assertiveness, it is perceived, in respect of the practitioner, that there’s a bit of I’m all right Jack about it  

Also, on being asked direct questions to identify needs – for example, on an assessment form – the very hurt person intuits that the practitioner just hasn’t the time to listen – and in a lot of cases it might be true!

I believe that all or nothing thinking (if I can’t have it all I don’t want any of it) that is so harmful to being at our ease in the imperfect world that we inhabit is linked to hurt and feeling misunderstood in childhood.

This is also linked to subjectivity.  After all, if an outsider looked objectively at the situation where the person, as we say, threw his toys out of the pram, (i.e. puts his chances of success in jeopardy), the observer would, in the vast majority of cases, see the person’s world completely differently. 

But all or nothing thinking is usually the result of an entire childhood observing significant adults in one’s family of origin. I also believe that it results in punishment of self, i.e. depriving oneself of pleasurable feelings such as happiness, joy, calmness, contentment etc.

In many cases it may be self-destructive and perhaps suicide is the ultimate tragedy of all or nothing thinking.

We will always hide that which we are embarrassed about, feel guilty about, or, in particular, feel ashamed of until it is safe.

Shame is the most subjective of the emotions.  If we are seeking help, we may think, deep inside us, that that which we are ashamed of has the potential to turn the helper away, so that’s why it is hidden.

As helpers, on encountering the outward manifestations of shame, we have a choice.  We can decide to get a job in an organisation that focuses on telling people what should be done, perhaps in a (psychologically) protected environment, using one-way knowledge flow which the very hurt person can take or leave.

Or we can choose to adopt a more with than for approach.  The with approach can be a lot more uncomfortable – as it may challenge our prejudices around the-way-things-should-be. But it is very empowering and (I believe anyway) has more potential to have a long term inter-generational effect. The for approach, on the other hand, can, of course, be very helpful but offers far less in the way of empowerment.

The resultant rewards of the with more than make up for the initial discomfort!

Linked to safety is the practice from solution focused therapy that we intentionally affirm that which we feel will make a positive contribution to someone’s healing while not putting much energy into that which we feel will have a negative impact.

And we can use this in an adventurous way if we wish.  When people talk about something in a genuine heartfelt way it is obvious that their energy lies within it, and it is probably what will prevail. This is where leadership comes in – as I said above – affirming the positive but not really ignoring the negative either because there may be some wisdom, in particular in respect of safety, hidden within it. This will usually involve utilising the much under-rated root foundation of time.

And, as we will state in the Chapter on Chaos, Critical Mass and Fractals, the regular day-by-day exposure to different values, habits and norms is what causes sustainable change, not the big once-off event.

If we want to build warm, long-term relationships with very hurt and angry people their safety is the most important element of the relationship-building.  I believe that (in our work supporting angry or chaotic people) if they are safe then we, the practitioners, will be safe.

And safety is a very subjective condition. It is impossible for me to reassure you that you are safe if you don’t feel safe.

While there are situations where directness and assertiveness is helpful and appropriate I believe that relationship building can be helped if our general demeanour is indirect and even somewhat naïve on first meeting. I believe that this enhances safety of the person who comes looking for help.

The assertiveness can come later – if it is needed at all!

And if, when using our person centred ethos, our goal is to solve an emotional problem we do it, as stated above, with people not for people.

Thinking about this led me to ponder on whether or not, if we pride ourselves on being assertive, will we ever do anything because we feel sympathetic towards someone?  Like a parent would for a child even though they know that it’s not the right thing – just cut them some slack in the hope that it will bring some good – through relationship and relationship alone – the essence of person-centred therapy.

Person-centred modality is much more time-consuming, and if we like and value assertiveness it can be challenging because it can involve sharing power. Furthermore, as I said above, it is sometimes uncomfortable.  But journeying with people – acknowledging, and in some manner mirroring the situation that they are in, is worth it.

And from a bureaucratic, cost benefit analysis point of view it is far less expensive over the long term if it is done right.