The most natural reaction to criticism is to feel awful or angry. The beauty about using assertiveness techniques is that it exposes whether the criticism is justified or not and, knowing this, you are then able to decide whether to take it on board or
One of the hardest things to handle is when you feel ganged up upon. Whether someone criticizes you in their home or office, if an authority figure berates you or even when there are two or more people against one, it’s easy to default into
How does imagining your agreement to part or all of what the person said make you feel? Does it leave you feeling awful about yourself or empowered because you have taken control of the conversation? Do you feel optimistic because you now have the opportunity
Take time to role play how you would have worded your agreement to the person who delivered the criticism, what would you have said and how would you have said it? Think carefully about what body language you would have used, the volume of your
Take your example of a time when someone criticized you and explore if there was anything you agreed with, even if it was just agreeing with the fact you could have spoken softer in the moment. Although it’s often hard to recognize the part we have
Last week we looked at asking questions to those that criticize us (negative inquiry). This week we explore how to agree with valid criticism, a technique called negative assertion. The following steps are only relevant to situations where you believe the criticism not to be malicious
Whenever I receive criticism it always helps – once I’ve digested things mind you – to talk it through with a friend. It’s important when considering which friend to talk it through with that you choose carefully. Someone too blunt and it can make your
For me working upon my self-esteem has been one of the most difficult and yet rewarding endeavors I have ever undertaken in therapy. One of the biggest lessons I learnt was that my character and my character alone was how I should measure how to
I recently had a situation at work whereby I needed to draw on all of my assertiveness training and assert myself to the most senior people in the company. Although I stood my ground it was incredibly stressful whilst I was working in what I
When role playing your responses to put downs, did you feel more in control of the direction of the conversation? How did the role play make you feel? How did it help you? Thinking about the role play in this way will enable you to
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