Assertiveness and healthy self-esteem

Author: Yaymelis Garcia. Master Clinic Social Work Student, Campus Tampa, FL.

Assertiveness is a characteristic of the personality that promotes healthy self-esteem and contributes appreciably to the development of interpersonal relationships that facilitate personal growth and emotional satisfaction in individuals.

What is assertiveness? There are various definitions of assertiveness, so I thought it prudent to illustrate this concept to our readers based on some ideas offered by M. Navarro on the subject, in an article of his published on the Internet:

“It is a set of principles and rights that make a personal life model focused on achieving success in human communication, its essence lies in the ability to transmit and receive messages in an honest, deeply respectful, direct, and timely manner. Assertiveness is a way of life (...) assertiveness means that the stimuli that come to us are exactly those that were sent to us, and it makes us send those messages that we really want to send and that essentialize our respect and that of others (...). Assertiveness is the tool to succeed in the human relationship, where there are no winners and losers, there are only beings that relate to each other in an area of deep respect.”

Assertiveness implies the ability to express freely and spontaneously, without unfounded fears or unnecessary anxieties, our thoughts and feelings and act consistently with them, but with due respect for the feelings and thoughts of others. Being assertive is summed up in the ability to defend our rights and maintain due respect for the rights of others.

Self-esteem is the fundamental pillar of assertiveness, it can be conceptualized as the value we have of our person, and the value we assign ourselves; it is related to how much we accept ourselves, with the degree of satisfaction with what we are, do, think, and feel. The foregoing is linked to the degree to which we respect and defend our rights and the attitude we assume in relation to the rights of others.

The way in which a subject expresses his assertiveness allows us to infer how his self-esteem is doing. Subjects with adequate self-esteem show respect and consideration for their personal and value themselves positively, while subjects with low and inadequate self-esteem show difficulties in expressing their assertiveness and may behave aggressively or passively, treating themselves harshly, with excessive demands and a general devaluation of their person and everything they do.

Healthy self-esteem implies not only the potential to maintain gratifying values and relationships with oneself; but also the ability to relate assertively with others and also have the necessary psychological strength to take risks and fight, legitimately, to achieve our goals and face the obstacles that oppose it.

A healthy assertiveness also enables us to fairly value our achievements, as well as the achievements of others, adequately express our thoughts and feelings, and remain open to give and receive affection from our loved ones and closest friends.

When our self-esteem is damaged, it makes us feel incapable and inadequate, we appear insecure and excessively dependent on the opinions and approval of others, and the self-concept we develop makes us feel unhappy, depressed, or anxious.

The stimulation of the following three main areas: the feeling of personal identity, the sense of belonging, and the feeling of self-efficacy, enables us to show adequate assertiveness and healthy self-esteem.

Stimulating the feeling of personal identity implies deepening self-knowledge, knowing more about the person we are, accepting ourselves as unique and unrepeatable beings that we are and learning to recognize and positively value our positive personal qualities, and also to work on perfecting our weak points.

Our sense of security is reinforced when we feel we belong to a certain group: family, work, etc. This identity with the group is built and reinforced by the feeling of being loved and esteemed by it, of being important to its members, this raises our self-esteem.

Feeling capable of successfully undertaking certain activities, reaching certain goals, or performing effectively in certain situations or circumstances, reinforces our self-esteem and our assertiveness. Positive thoughts and an optimistic vision of our coping possibilities stimulate our feeling of efficacy.

Reflecting on the expression of our assertiveness, using a table of assertive rights, can help us realize where our difficulties lie and start working on them. A table of assertive rights is a document that is prepared so that the subjects who consult it can clarify their rights and at the same time reflect on a set of learned tendencies, such as the excessive search for approval and support from others, excessive concern for other people's opinions regardless of where they come from and the tendency to justify unnecessarily or to get defensive very often.

Some of the assertions that arise in the table of assertive rights are:

• You are the one who must judge your behavior, thoughts, and emotions and take responsibility for it.

• You are not required to offer excuses or reasons that justify your behavior, outside of the situations in which it is established to be done.

• You are the one who must decide whether or not you are obliged to seek solutions to other people's problems.

• You have the right to say no to proposals that you find inappropriate.

• You have the right to vary a previous decision or criteria if conditions have changed or you simply have changed your mind.

• You can make mistakes like every human being and you must take responsibility for them.

• You have the right to say “I don't understand”.

• You have the right to do anything, as long as it does not harm the right of another.

Increasing and perfecting our assertive behavior will result in an increase in our esteem, and healthy self-esteem; For what we must first define our goals and interests. This implies: identifying what we want and expressing what we feel and need, fighting to achieve our objectives without fear of making mistakes, and in the event that this happens, being willing to learn from our mistakes, living responsibly, and, above all, accepting ourselves. in addition.

If we are assertive and show healthy self-esteem, we will be in better conditions to deal with life's challenges and have a life with much more enjoyment and well-being...

References

By Dionisio F. Zaldívar Pérez. Assertiveness and healthy self-esteem.

By Isabel Garcia Santiago. (junio 22, 2021). Autoestima y asertividad: ¿conoces la relación?