Addiction Recovery Skills: How to Gain Assertiveness to Power Your Recovery

Website design By BotEap.comAlcoholics and addicts are called to learn new life skills to replace the roles that chemicals have played in their lives. Some of the most important skills to learn in early recovery are effective communication and relationship skills.

Website design By BotEap.comAssertiveness is necessary for communication and relationship skills. This self-assured style involves not only being able to stand up for one’s rights without trampling on the rights of others, but also being able to say “no” without feeling guilty. It encompasses taking responsibility for one’s own feelings, behaviors, decisions, actions, and reactions, while relinquishing responsibility for those same things in others. It includes being able to appropriately express a wide range of emotions to others.

Website design By BotEap.comAssertive and confident behavior involves being able to communicate openly, honestly, and directly about one’s wants and needs. The establishment of firm limits does not imply the construction of impenetrable walls. It tells others where you stand and describes a series of appropriate behaviors towards you.

Website design By BotEap.comPassivity denotes an absence of self-confidence and assertiveness. It usually involves the abandonment of one’s own rights, wants, needs, to the wants or needs of others. The absence of appropriate limits allows others to treat you how they want, regardless of what you want.

Website design By BotEap.comAggression involves pushing the boundaries of others to satisfy your own wants or needs. It may involve verbal, emotional, sexual, spiritual, or intellectual abuse. This could involve manipulation and dirty fighting tactics. People can also be passive-aggressive, which is about being aggressive in a sneaky, covert way. Most of the time, it is about expressing anger in a hidden way. A classic example is the typical backbiting, talking behind the back of the kind of behavior that is seen in the world of work every day. Most people exhibit this behavior from time to time. The following are examples of passive aggressive responses to a request you don’t want to make:

Website design By BotEap.com1. Say “ok” but have no intention of doing so.
2. Say “ok”, with the intention of doing it, but putting it off until they finally do it themselves.
3. Saying “okay”, doing it, but doing it wrong, thinking “I’ll never be asked to do that again”.
4. Say “okay”, do it and do it right, but go around everyone complaining about its imposition in the first place.
5. Instead of saying “no”, give 15 excuses for why you can’t do it and the real reason is that you don’t want to.

Website design By BotEap.comAn appropriately firm way to deal with an unwelcome request is to say, “No, I don’t want to do that,” or “No, thanks,” or “No.” When you’re not used to being assertive, a simple “No” can seem aggressive.

Website design By BotEap.comMost people have some area of ​​their lives where they feel quite confident in standing up for themselves. Even the least confident person has an area where they can be assertive and the most confident person has an area where they can’t seem to get it right.

Website design By BotEap.comThe skills you use to be assertive in one area are transferable to other areas where it seems like you will always give in. All that is needed to transfer these skills is “risk”. The risk is usually the fear of loss when you avoid trying to be assertive. This fear of loss often has to do with loss of esteem, self-esteem, loss of goods and services, or loss of relationship. Most of the time, fear is out of proportion to the likelihood of actual loss.

Website design By BotEap.comTo find out where you are least confident in your ability to be assertive, ask yourself if you normally behave in a confident and assertive manner when involved in the following circumstances:

Website design By BotEap.com1. Hang up on telemarketers without listening to their sales pitch?
2. Bring something defective to Walmart?
3. Return a steak that is not cooked as requested?
4. Say “no” to your neighbor when he wants to borrow something.
5. Set boundaries with someone at work who tries to take advantage of your good nature, either by trying to get you to do your job or by asking you to cover for them.
6. Negotiate changes at work, either for more money or for a change in working conditions.
7. Saying “no” to one of your siblings who wants something you don’t want to give: time, energy, or other resources.
8. Saying “no” (and staying “no”) to one of the children who wants something you don’t want to give, do, or buy.
9. Setting boundaries with the older generation (your parents or your spouse’s parents) when they want to meddle in your affairs where they don’t belong (eg money or marriage).
10. Assertively convey your feelings to your partner who has done something that involved your hurt feelings.

Website design By BotEap.comCan you see patterns in the areas where you want to be confident and assertive and where you have the most trouble? What are they?

Website design By BotEap.comIn what areas of difficulty can you achieve being assertive by practicing the skills you already have? If you took the risk, what would happen?

Website design By BotEap.comLook at the areas that lack secure firmness and ask yourself, “What haven’t I been willing to risk?”
Most of the time, fear is not based on reality. If you find that you can’t confidently assert yourself in close personal relationships, the risk is probably fear of abandonment. You may be afraid that those significant others will not love you if you are honest with them or if you take care of yourself.

Website design By BotEap.comAssertiveness is a worthwhile effort. Build and reinforce self-esteem. Passivity, aggression, and passive aggression undermine self-esteem. Learning to be confident and competent in your relationships with others is an important recovery task. Confident and assertive communication is a component of acquiring these relationship skills.