1. Our inherited survival responses; coping with other people by fight, flight, or verbal assertiveness 1
Problems other people give us: is conflict inevitable?
Our primitive survival behaviors: how we become so aggressive or tend to avoid other people
Our verbal problem-solving ability: the unique difference between us and other animal species
How learning to feel anxious, ignorant, and guilty as children can make us passive, manipulable, and nonassertive as adults. Can parents control their children's behavior without making them feel anxious, ignorant, or guilty?
2. Our prime assertive human right--how other people violate it 24
How we are manipulated into doing what others want
Assertive Right I: You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself
How we can stop being manipulated by other people
The manipulator's basic tool: external structure. Need there be rules to cover every situation?
Three ways to simplify how you look at your relationship with anyone else: commercial, authority, and equal interactions
Is being assertive immoral or illegal?
3. Our everyday assertive rights--the common ways other people manipulate us 47
Assertive Right II: You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior
Assertive Right III: You have the right to judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people's problems
Assertive Right IV: You have the right to change your mind
Assertive Right V: You have the right to make mistakes--and be responsible for them
Assertive Right VI: You have the right to say, "I don't know."
Assertive Right VII: You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them
Assertive Right VIII: You have the right to be illogical in making decisions
Assertive Right IX: You have the right to say, "I don't understand."
Assertive Right X: You have the right to say, "I don't care."
4. The first thing to learn in being assertive: persistence 72
Assertive rights and assertive behavior: Both are important in living assertively
Substituting verbal persistence for silent passivity
The systematic skill of Broken Record
Habit: How people talk you into doing what they want
Practical goals in being assertive: Workable Compromise, keeping your self-respect, and the limits of being assertive
5. Assertive social conversation and communication 88
Why are we often tongue-tied?
The conversational skills of following up Free Information and Self-Disclosure
Disclosing your own worries to other people: One way to stop manipulation
Eye-to-eye contact: An important part of assertive behavior
6. Assertively coping with the great manipulator: criticism 100
Nonassertive critics: How they manipulate you into doing what they want
The systematic skill of Fogging
Agreeing with critical truths and still doing what you want
Agreeing in principle with logical criticism and still doing what you want
Agreeing with the odds that you will fail and still doing what you want
The systematic skill of Negative Assertion
Asserting your negative points: What you can do when you are 100 per cent in error
Coping with compliments or criticism: They are no different when you are assertive
7. Prompting people you care about to be more assertive and less manipulative toward you 120
Assertively inquiring about yourself and what you do: How this eliminates right and wrong statements used to control your behavior
The systematic skill of Negative Inquiry
Prompting criticism: How it can reduce manipulation
Prompting criticism about your work performance: How this can lead to a promotion
Prompting criticism about yourself: How this can lead to a closer relationship with people you care for
8. Everyday commercial situations--assertively coping where money is involved 133
Putting the systematic skills together to cope with typical commercial conflicts: Door-to-door salesmen. Returning defective merchandise. Angry customers. Getting defective merchandise fixed. Dealing with the public. Getting repairs or refunds from auto dealers. Problems in getting and giving professional medical treatment
9. Everyday authority situations--assertively coping with supervision or expertise 173
Using systematic skills to assert yourself in authority interactions: Between employee and supervisor. In a job or graduate school interview. Choosing between job offers. Speaking to an audience or presenting a report. Between parents and children. Between teachers and students. With teen-agers
10. Everyday equal relationships--working out compromises or just saying "No" 227
Using assertive skills to cope with people who are equal to you, but not as close as some: Lending out your car. Imposing neighbors. Friends who want a business loan. Interfering parents. Dates and lovers who manipulate you
11. Really close equal relationships--sex and assertion 273
Asserting your sexual wants and your other wants: the wants are different, the assertive behavior is the same
Fear and Anger: the emotional bases of sexual difficulties
The Anxiety Model, the Anger Model, and the Mixed Model: treatment modes for sexual problems
Learned sexual problems and how they can be treated with relearning
How being nonassertively passive or manipulative can contribute to sexual difficulties
How being assertive can help with changing your sexual lifestyle: Hidden anxiety agendas about change. Compromises on different sexual wants. Assertively prompting your partner to learn new ways with you to overcome a routine sex life or a routine lifestyle
Anxiety, passivity, and lack of sexual foreplay. Decrease in sexual frequency: a sign of withdrawal of close contact with a mate, in and out of bed
In Summary 318
Do you want to assert yourself or do you want to control other people?
What happens to society if a lot of us become more assertive and less manipulable?
Suggested Technical Readings 321
Glossary of Systematic Assertive Skills 323