I’ve been thinking a lot recently about assertiveness. What is it? And why can it be so
difficult? Assertiveness can be defined as the ability to communicate your thoughts, feelings,
needs and boundaries to others without causing harm to them or to yourself. This can be
broken down further by looking at the assertiveness scale.
Understanding the Assertiveness Spectrum
Developed in 1973 by Spencer A. Rathus, the assertiveness scale looks at assertiveness as
a kind of spectrum. It is important to note that this scale is not a moral hierarchy, rather a
framework for understanding different types of self-expression.
Passive → Passive Aggressive → Assertive → Aggressive
Passivity tends to be where a lack of assertiveness can cause harm to the self, as we don’t
communicate our needs or limits to others, causing them to be ignored or totally steamrolled.
This can sometimes be described as being “too nice” and will be our area of focus in this
blog post. Passive aggressiveness happens when we accept unwanted circumstances but
communicate our discomfort indirectly – think stony silences, eye rolling, deep sighs and
sarcastic comments. At the top end of the scale is aggressiveness; anger – at crossed
boundaries and unmet needs – turned outwards in the service of causing damage to others.
Anger: The Hidden Driver Behind Assertiveness
So, how do we find that sweet spot in the middle? And how do we stay there? The word
“anger” is key here. Part of our difficulty with assertiveness is often a problem with
processing anger, stemming from unhelpful beliefs around anger and negative experiences
associated with it. Anger, in its pure, healthy, adaptive form is a powerful and useful
motivator. It evolved to serve a purpose – to help us know where our boundaries are and
when they are being crossed, to speak up against injustice against ourselves and others,
and to draw attention to needs that are not being met.
A caveat: while anger is often a helpful messenger, those with neurodivergent minds or a
history of trauma may experience anger in a more dysregulated state. That is not to say that
it cannot be listened to, just that it may sometimes require a bit of extra compassionate effort
to recognise and decode.
The Origins of ‘Problematic Niceness’
When we are very young, we begin to test drive anger. How many times have you seen a
toddler who is obsessed with the word “no”? They scrunch their little faces up in frustration at
every suggestion and issue the adults around them with a fiery denial – “NO!!” This is a very
natural and healthy part of their development. They are learning to assert themselves and
set their boundaries in a way that facilitates a sense of autonomy and emotional growth.
Gabor Maté, a physician and leading voice in the world of trauma work, in an appearance on
the Diary of a CEO Podcast, stated that “[children] learn ‘no’ before they learn the word ‘yes’.
When families punish that, the child supresses the “no” and learns to supress anger.
Problematic niceness – niceness that is too much – is often a suppression of healthy anger.”
When parents tell their kids that their anger is not welcome, often by becoming frustrated or
exasperated themselves in response, the child learns that anger is a threat to their
connection with the people responsible for loving them and for keeping them alive. They
often internalise a belief that goes something like “I am only lovable if I am ‘nice’ and not
angry”. Most of the time, this is far from the intention of loving parents. They are doing the
best they can. But the impact remains the same. Anger becomes associated with feelings of
shame, anxiety and disconnection with the self.
Authenticity vs. Connection: The Early Dilemma
The child is left with an unconscious choice – authenticity vs connection. Do they remain true
to their experience and their sense of self, vocalising pain and anger despite being punished
for it? Or do they maintain their bond with their caregivers, pushing down unwelcome
feelings and wearing a mask of acceptability?
At this point, you might be asking – “What does this have to do with me? I’m a grown adult,
not a toddler!” Fair point. The issue is that the brains of little kids are like sponges. Those
messages around their worth – that we are only worthy of love, acceptance and connection
when we express “nice” emotions in a palatable way – seep in really easily to their brains
and inform their sense of self. These beliefs will linger on into adulthood if they are not
challenged and altered in some way, often showing up as chronic niceness, a fear and
avoidance of conflict, and the persistent suppression of anger – all leading to minimisation of
our needs. This conflict between authenticity and connection is like a through-line from when
the child first started to struggle with it right through to adulthood.
Reconnecting with Your Needs and Boundaries
When you have been in this space for a long time, you may experience this suppression of
emotion as a general sense of discomfort with the self and with relationships. However, you
may not see where the exact cause of this discomfort lies. Where are you currently not
saying “no”, when this is what you would prefer to say? This is a good place to start when
practising assertiveness. It’s all well and good talking about being assertive – setting and
maintaining boundaries – but when we are so conditioned to be “nice” and think of others to
the detriment of ourselves, we may be so disconnected from what our needs and boundaries
are that we don’t know how to recognise them.
Overcoming the Fear of Assertiveness
So, what about when you’ve identified your needs and boundaries? This is often when the
work becomes a bit more difficult. You have the awareness of when and where you are
repressing anger and the desire to change your relationship with it. Now you have to put it
into practice. And this is when you come up against those sticky feelings of shame and
anxiety. The amygdala, the part of your brain responsible for regulating your fear response,
will go into overdrive. It learned a long time ago that asserting yourself led to big, scary
feelings associated with conflict and rejection – and it wants to protect you from that.
This is something to be grateful for, of course. It’s nice to have the amygdala in our corner
looking out for our emotional security. But we want to tell it to calm down a little – we’ve got
this! We can tell others when they have crossed our boundaries, hurt our feelings, or simply
the word ‘no’ – and we can handle the discomfort associated with that. The amygdala’s
problem is that it learns not from words, but from experience. We have to keep practising
these skills over and over to prove to the amygdala that it is safe to do so – and with time, it
learns to trust these new experiences and turns down the dial on those difficult, protective
emotions. It can feel frightening to do this work, but it can be helpful to say to yourself – “This
isn’t scary, it’s just new.”
When Assertiveness Shifts Relationships
Now, you’ve done all of this work of navigating your fears and discomfort around listening to
your feelings of anger and asserting yourself. You are expressing yourself in a way that feels
healthy and respectful. But what if there’s still something that’s not working? What if you still
aren’t seeing the sense of connection that you are craving in your relationships? Let’s see if
we can explore that a little bit.
Sometimes, when you’ve spent a long time prioritising others’ needs over your own, those
around you become accustomed to that version of you. They may feel unsettled or even
threatened by your shift towards greater self-expression and firmer boundaries. For some,
this discomfort may be unconscious and relatively benign. If the relationship is one you
value, and the other person shows a willingness to grow with you, there’s often room to
rework the connection together—to help them learn how to meet the current, evolving
version of you.
But not every relationship will withstand this transition. Sometimes, people are unable—or
unwilling—to meet us in this new place. This may be because they haven’t done their own
emotional work, and your growth highlights something they find difficult to face in
themselves. Other times, unfortunately, it may be because the relationship was never safe to
begin with. Some individuals benefit from your passivity, consciously or otherwise, and may
resist your boundaries in more harmful or controlling ways. This is painful, sometimes
frightening—and it is not okay.
Assertiveness Isn’t About Control – It’s About Integrity
Ultimately, something that may be painful to realise is that assertiveness is not a guarantee
of desired outcomes, but merely a tool that we can use to grow our sense of respect for
ourselves. It cannot control the responses of others but what is does is to align our
behaviours with our values – and this is really meaningful. This is not to discount the pain
that comes with feeling misunderstood or disconnected in our relationships. What we are
trying to learn is to validate the integrity and effort this work takes and to stop over-relying on
the responses of others to give us a sense of control and equilibrium.
Of course, we do not want to run riot with our newfound confidence and use it to steamroll
our relationships with those we care about. We are human and, as such, exist in
relationships with others by nature. Being liked and accepted is part of that. But for those
relationships that can honour this work you are doing and allow you to show up fully as your
real self, this is where we can truly find the balance between authenticity and connection.
The Courage to Be Angry
To conclude, I would like to say that this is vulnerable stuff we’re doing here. We often think
of vulnerability as something that happens when we share our sadness or tears. Brené
Brown, a researcher known for her work on vulnerability and shame, describes vulnerability,
not as a weakness, but as emotional risk and courage. I think it’s really vulnerable and
courageous to let your feelings of anger come to the surface and to use them as a
protective, productive force in your life. This is especially true for those of us who have been
so conditioned to associate anger with fear, shame and big, scary conflicts. I wish you all the
luck in the world on this journey and I urge you to be gentle with yourself as you move
through it.
If this post has resonated with you, you might consider reflecting on the following questions:
Where in your life might anger be trying to tell you something important? What might shift if
you gave yourself permission to say ‘no’?
By Christopher McCarthy
Counsellor