When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (12 page)

ASSERTIVE RIGHT X
You have the right to
say, “I don’t
care.”

You can see a lot of overlap in all of the assertive rights described since they are only detailed derivatives of your primary right: to be your own ultimate judge. There is also much overlap in the most common beliefs that underlie manipulation of your behavior by other people, since they are only different ways of saying one thing: you are
not
your own ultimate judge. One common thread that runs through all the nonassertive beliefs and devices that other people use to manipulate
your behavior is the assumption that as a human being, even if you are not perfect, you “should” strive for perfection, and if, heaven forbid, you cannot improve yourself, you “should” at least
want to
improve your human, ungodlike ways of doing things. If you go along with this way of looking at yourself, you are open and ready for the thousands of ways in which your behavior can be manipulated, limited only by other people’s ingenuity. If you were to verbalize this belief, it would sound something like this:
Because of your human condition, you are base and have many flaws. You must try to make up for this humanness by striving to improve until you are perfect in all things. Being human, you will probably fail in this obligation, but you still must want to improve. If someone else points out how you can improve yourself, you are really obliged to follow his direction. If you do not, you are corrupt, lazy, degenerate, and worthless, and therefore unworthy of respect from anyone, including yourself
. This belief, in my opinion, is the ultimate “sucker’s play.” If you set yourself up to be perfect in anything (even in being assertive!), you will be disappointed and frustrated. You have the assertive right, however, to say that you don’t care to be perfect according to anyone’s definition including your own, since one man’s perfection is likely to be another’s perversion.

You can see manipulation in many of your relationships, based upon this belief that you “should” want to improve yourself. If your marriage is like many others, your spouse may try to control your sloppy behavior by saying, for instance, “You are always leaving your clothes draped around the house! Don’t you ever want to improve (or do things better, or learn what’s important, or become civilized, or be a decent human being, or stop being a slob, etc., etc., etc.)?” If you fall into the manipulative trap that you “should” want to improve your behavior (according to someone else’s arbitrary choice of what constitutes improvement), you are then forced into giving reasons why you left your clothes draped around so casually—you were late last
night, or you were too tired, or you just forgot, or you really don’t do it very often, or any number of other childish responses. If, on the other hand, you assertively make your own judgment on your own wish to improve or not, you are likely to respond more realistically to the situation, such as, “I realize that I should want to keep things neat, but sometimes I just don’t care. I know it upsets you, but let’s see if we can work out some compromise. If you don’t try to cut me up when I do something that you don’t like, I’ll try not to cut you up when you upset me! Just tell me when I do something that’s bothersome and I’ll do the same for you.” No beating around the bush! Just straightforward communication!

At work, you can often observe people telling each other how they can improve their performance, how it would be easier or more efficient or more esthetic to change things. A case in point is that of Sid, a nonassertive store manager who had learned from experience how best to set up his merchandise displays. At the time of therapy, he was quite depressed because certain new members of his staff kept manipulating him into letting them set up displays, instead of waiting on customers as he wanted them to do, by continually pointing out how his way of doing things could be improved. Sid did not know how to cope with this manipulation except by finally letting his repressed anger erupt at his salesmen, with negative consequences for the operation of his store. After several weeks of systematic assertive therapy, Sid was able to cope calmly with this type of manipulative interference without disrupting things. He also felt, at least initially, quite smug in his discovery that not only did he not have to be perfect, he didn’t even have to want to improve!

The manipulation produced by believing that you “should” want to improve yourself is, in many situations, the kind of manipulation that can be the subtlest and hardest to cope with. The only sure way you can halt this manipulation is to ask yourself if you are really satisfied with your own performance or yourself
and
then make your own judgment on whether or not you wish to make a change
.

Many learners, after beginning the process of becoming more assertive, state that they often become confused in distinguishing between manipulation of their behavior and what they want to do themselves. They often say things like: “I want to do this or that, but I think, ‘I can’t do that!’ No one else is manipulating me. Am I manipulating myself?” Using a quick rule of thumb to help them clarify what they are doing, I often ask them to phrase their internal conflict in any of three categories: “I want,” “I have to,” or “I should.” The
I want
category is straightforward, i.e., I want to have steak for dinner three times a week, I want to go to the movies instead of watching TV, or I want to spend the rest of my life living on the beach in Tahiti. From these wants, certain
I have tos
or contingencies follow. The
I have tos
are compromises that you work out within yourself and with other people. If
I want
steak three times a week, I have to get the money to afford steak three times a week. If I have to get this money (and I also want to stay out of jail), I have to work at a job that pays enough money so I can afford steak three times a week (or some other compromise that works!). If
I want
to go to the movies tonight,
I have to
forgo watching my favorite TV program. If I want to spend the rest of my life lounging on the beach in Tahiti, I will have to get used to “tropical lunch” (whatever you can mooch). All these contingencies on what you do because you want certain things are quite simple. You simply decide if the
I wants
are worth the
I have tos
. Many people, however, confuse the
I have tos
with the
I shoulds
and muddy the clear waters of their thinking.
Shoulds
, as a rule of thumb, can be categorized as manipulative structure used to get you to do what someone else wants or arbitrary structure you have imposed upon yourself to deal with your own insecurity concerning what you “can or cannot” do. For instance,
I should
work because everybody
should
be productive, not just because I want meat on the table three nights a week;
I should
get out in the evening because
I shouldn’t
watch TV all the time;
I shouldn’t
want to go to Tahiti because no one
should
be a beach bum. Whenever you hear yourself or someone else say “should,” extend your antimanipulative antennae up as far as possible and listen carefully. In all likelihood, some message that says, “You are not your own judge,” will follow.

4
The first thing to learn in being
assertive: persistence

After digesting all the material about your assertive human rights, you may find yourself in the position of the learner who said: “I’ve secretly felt that way about myself and other people all my life. But whenever I expressed it, I was always told that way of thinking was wrong.… That I shouldn’t feel that way. I’m glad that other people think I have a right to my own thoughts and ways of doing things. I understand everything you say. Great! But … I still don’t know how to be assertive. What do I do now?” If you ask this same question, the answer is a simple one: “Do nothing.… Yet.” To be assertive, you need to know your assertive rights and also learn how you can enforce them. One is a philosophy and the other is a set of assertive behaviors. As I pointed out in the introduction to this book, our human alternative to primitive fight-or-flight coping in a conflict situation is our great verbal problem-solving ability that allows us to communicate with others to work things out. A significant part of this ability is our assertive verbal behavior: what we do when we assert ourselves. Just talking about our assertive rights is insufficient to enforce them. That your assertive rights exist, that you accept them as part of yourself, does not mean that other people will either respect or understand them, or change their manipulative behavior, even if you explained your rights to them. For example, if you were in an auto parts store and responded to the clerk’s attempted manipulation with: “Stop manipulating me!” he would probably reply: “What manipulation? I never laid a hand on you! Did anybody see me touch her? Did you see me manipulate her, Harry?” Or if you said: “I am my own ultimate judge,” in response
to his manipulation, he would probably think: “What kind of a nut is this? I’m trying to explain something about our carburator exchange policy and he wants to talk philosophy!” Or if you were to explain your assertive right to your mother when she manipulatively tries to get you to see her more often, she would likely think that not only are you willful and spoiled as an adult, just like you were as a child, but now you have some crazy ideas too. She, like the auto parts clerk, may not be interested in your assertive rights at all, or she may just brush them aside with something like: “That’s nice to know, dear, I’m glad I insisted you go to college. When are you coming over to see me again?”

To enforce your assertive rights and to halt manipulation of your behavior, you seed to change your own behavior in response to manipulation—the behavior that allows you to be manipulated. The rest of this manuscript deals with learning a set of assertive verbal skills that are effective in enforcing your assertive rights in your relationships with other people.

BROKEN RECORD

In introducing students to the first systematic assertive skill, BROKEN RECORD, I begin by asking them: “Why do you usually lose in a conflict with the auto mechanic about correcting the sloppy repairs he made on your car?” Their answer to this question is typically a profound silence. Having thus established that the class doesn’t know any more than I do—why they keep getting frustrated—I offer the following opinion: “You don’t know why? I’ll tell you why! Because you usually give up after you hear the first ‘No.’ He tells you ‘No’ and you say ‘Okay’ or mumble under your breath something less than flattering about his possible sexual habits and walk away. You lose because you give up too easily. This guy (like many other people) has only a few ‘Noes’ in his bag. If he’s got three ‘Noes,’ you only need four. If he’s got six ‘Noes’, you only need seven. It’s that simple!” At this point, one of
the students typically says: “But I can’t do that. I can’t ignore someone when he tells me ‘No.’ ” My response: “What do you mean, you
‘can’t’?
I don’t see any handcuffs or ball and chain on you that keeps you from doing anything. I’ll respect that you
don’t want to
, but I won’t respect that you
‘can’t.’
And if you don’t want to, my guess is that you are trained like the rest of us: you should be nice and listen to the poor garage mechanic when he says ‘No.’ Right? After all, he is only trying to make a living like the rest of us. Right? (Here the class usually picks up the litany with a sarcastic chorus of “Right!” including the one bearded left-winger present in all classes who adds an upraised clenched fist to his “Right on!”) He’s got six kids he’s trying to feed and educate just like you. Right? If he loses money in his business, he won’t be able to support them in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed. Right? But where does it say that if he screws up the job on your car, you should keep him in business and let him make a profit by subsidizing his sloppy work?”

If you are like this student and many others, you need to learn to be more persistent in asserting yourself.
One of the most important aspects of being verbally assertive is to be persistent and to keep saying what you want over and over again without getting angry, irritated, or loud
. Most often, to communicate effectively in a conflict situation, you have to be persistent and stick to your point. Nonassertive people tend to get bogged down in excess verbiage and give up easily when someone tells them “why,” shows them “logically,” or gives them “reasons” for not doing what they want to do. In learning how to be persistent, the nonassertive person must not give reasons or excuses or explanations as to “why” he wants what he wants; he needs to ignore guilt-inducing statements. One verbal skill that teaches people how to accomplish all of this simultaneously is a technique first used in assertive therapy by my close colleague Dr. Zev Wanderer, who gave it its descriptive title: BROKEN RECORD. By practicing to speak as if we were a broken record, we
learn to be persistent and stick to the point of the discussion, to keep saying what we want to say, and to ignore all side issues brought up by the person we assert ourselves to. In using BROKEN RECORD, you, the learner, are not deterred by anything the other person may say, but keep saying in a
calm, repetitive voice
what you want to say until the other person acceeds to your request or agrees to a compromise. The purpose of BROKEN RECORD training and rehearsal is not to teach you to speak like a broken record, but to teach and reward persistence, no matter what words you use. To see how you can accomplish this result, let’s look at a very simple real life BROKEN RECORD dialogue in a commercial situation.

Dialogue #1
Carlo and the
supermarket
clerk

The following BROKEN RECORD dialogue is one reported by Carlo, a Chicano community relations worker. Carlo received instruction from me as part of a staff development program in effective communication. During the fourth session, Carlo reported that on the previous Saturday he had done the week’s marketing for his wife and when he returned home, he could not find his meat purchases. Since his father was at the house for dinner, Carlo asked if he would like to accompany him to the supermarket to get his meat purchases back.