When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: How to Cope - Using the Skills of Systematic Assertive Therapy by Manuel J. SmithMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I read this book after Anna Salamon recommended it, because it aligned nicely with my current interest in assertiveness (what is it? is it good? should I do it and if so how?)
Overall it was 1) kind of boring and repetitive and 2) painfully 70s, but maybe had some good points?
I’m often skeptical when people talk about being assertive: I think I feel like it might lead to lots of trouble/conflict, and I don’t feel sold on why it’s important or necessary. I’m the kind of person who, if I go to a restaurant and the waiter gets my drink order wrong, I never complain. People sometimes say I should, and I’m like … why? Idk, this drink is fine too?
The (I guess obvious now I think about it) answer this book gives is that it’s not about the drink, it’s about your self-respect. If you have a strong sense of self-worth, if you believe that you aren’t responsible for other people’s feelings and don’t need to justify your actions to anyone, then you can safely do things like compromise, or put others’ needs before your own because you want to. But it has to be done from a place of self-respect.
(Being unassertive doesn’t just mean always doing what other people want you to do: the book posits that the alternative to being assertive is often being “manipulative:” taking actions in an attempt to get others to meet your needs without being willing to openly and unapologetically express them.)
I guess this is just something like a meditation on boundaries, fully generalized. If you don’t want to have sex with someone, and you believe that your preferences are valid, and don’t require any justification or excuses, and you feel comfortable expressing them … well, then maybe you can reasonably decide to have sex with them anyway because their preference is stronger than yours and you want to make them happy. But in the absence of all that you just end up in that shitty place where you don’t feel that you have the right to enforce your own boundaries, and you have to constantly choose between ignoring your own needs and invalidating others’.
How do you tell the difference? I’m still confused about that part. I’ve been aware of this general concept for a long time (“a meditation on boundaries” is five years old), but I think I’ve still done plenty of the second thing while telling myself it was the first (“it’s not that I don’t have the right to do what I want here … but they do make some valid points … and it doesn’t really seem worth it to make a thing out of it just from a cost-benefit analysis perspective …”) So yeah, I still feel unsure about that.
(Reading this in an era where the Karen has obtained such cultural prominence is also … interesting … a lot of the content on women asserting themselves that was presumably kinda radical in the 70s feels positively problematic now. You want us to ask to speak to the manager??)
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