Assertiveness | Find Your Voice

Do not allow anxiety to interfere with gaining the support you need. The following gives guidance in how to tell someone about abuse. It also bolsters you in not taking personally anyone’s lack of support or disbelief if that occurs.

Believing you deserve abuse is an injury from coercive control. Abuse damages your belief in your worthiness, leaving you vulnerable to those who want to dominate.

When you say you allowed abuse, you are blaming yourself for something over which you had no control. You probably learned to accept this from your partner's blame and hearing similar media assumptions. Often society makes victims responsible for their abuse, rather than the one who abuses.

Time Out and Broken Record are the last two conflict management skills. As with any assertive skill, assess your safety if someone has a history of being abusive.

Anger Starvation and Positive Admission are two constructive ways of dealing with another’s anger, disappointment, or frustration.

This fourth blog in my assertive communication series shows why these skills are important and how to be constructive in their use.

Expressing Emotions and Empathy is the second of the Assertive Communication Skills series. They complete the self-defining skills along with requests and refusals covered earlier.

This assertive communication skills series begins with two self-defining skills: assertive request and assertive refusal.

Assertive Beliefs is the seventh blog in my empowerment series for victims of partner abuse. You must believe you have the right to be assertive before using skills: this article builds that foundation. It covers definitions, benefits, beliefs that may interfere, an assertiveness skills list, and steps to work on the belief that you have the right to stand up for yourself.

Noticing and adjusting your thoughts is an important mental health skill for everyone. Change negative thinking and you'll change your life.

This blog is the beginning of a seven-part series regarding therapeutic basics that I found addressed survivors’ concerns and encouraged post-traumatic growth. Each of my next six blogs will go into more depth. I think you will find they help you to empower yourself.

Intimate partner abuse survivors have one or more of the following experiences with their own anger. Actually, all but the first one are common for others as well. This blog will explore each type before talking about anger as a superpower.

We often want to retaliate and give people a dose of what they’ve given us, but this does not maintain our power.

It is often an irony that we fear what we also want. We may want success in some particular way, but we are terrified of achieving it and may undermine it. Success bringsrecognition and that is often very uncomfortable for us. Being visible may have represented danger in the past if we've experienced any type of abusive relationship at home or work. We may have learned to hide ourselves so as not to elicit criticism or abuse. If we haven't fully healed this, it will block ou

In an ideal world, all of our experiences growing up would be positive. Our family members would unfailingly give affirming messages about ourselves, ones that told us we were worthy of love. This kind of treatment would get internalized as positive beliefs and thoughts, such as “I’m a good person” or “I’m love-able”. Unfortunately, our environments aren't always ideal! Even the best may at times provide input that is negative or punitive, rather than positively disciplini

Assertiveness is not a personality trait but rather a learned set of behaviors. Assertive behavior expresses what we think and feel in ways that are respectful to others. If we have not grown up with assertive models to learn from, we may not know how to be assertive or even feel we have that right. Some people believe that being assertive is being rude or un-feminine. No one is assertive 100% of the time. Knowing our thoughts and feelings is a process, and sometimes it