How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration

by David Richo

Assertiveness is the personal power to: —Be clear about your feelings, choices, and agenda —Ask for what you want —Take responsibility for your feelings and behavior

The practice of assertiveness means acting. Act as if you are already the healthiest person you can be. Do not wait until you feel better about yourself or until you believe you have what it takes. Act as if you are self-actualized and your beliefs will follow suit. Act while you fear rather than waiting until you feel unafraid.

“Acting as if” is a form of playfulness.

The art in assertiveness is to ask strongly for what you want and then to let go of it if the answer is No.

When you are attached to staying in control, you are betraying the part of yourself that is fearless.

Be Clear

that assertiveness means being clear, not necessarily sure.)

Ask for What You Want

Take Responsibility

Refusing to express feelings, act, or decide because of what MIGHT happen to you. • Making excuses for others’ hurtful behavior and not dealing with them about it. • Over-politeness: always putting others first or letting them take your turn or disturb you without your speaking up. • Acting from a sense of obligation (a form of fear). • Smoothing over situations so that the real feelings do not emerge (from yourself or others). • Over-commitment: doing too much for too long for too little thanks, and when even more is asked of you, doing it dutifully. • Not registering your recoil from biased remarks or jokes. • Abandoning yourself by assessing abuse of you from the past or present as justified or “understandable.” • Avoiding decisive action by coping with an unsatisfactory situation or relationship or hoping it might change. WHAT WE ARE NOT CHANGING, WE ARE CHOOSING.

Aggressiveness: Changing Power to Control

More at discipline as control is illusory

Putting others down by name-calling, insults, or blame. This includes sarcasm, even among friends, or meant in jest. • Rescuing others: doing for them what they can do for themselves. This victimizes and infantilizes them and gives you dominance over them. • Emotional or physical violence. • Competitiveness and attempts to prove people wrong. • Acting spitefully or vengefully toward people who are rude or hurtful to you.

You ask for what you want and honor the response.

You really are responsible, so you act that way and you ask the same from others.

Achrayut

Neurotic fear engages the flight/fight pattern but never follows through on it.

Neurotic fear shows us what we have failed to integrate.

Swimming is, in effect, how water (subjective threat) is integrated.

admit your fear and its basis to him directly.

Acting because of fear is cowardice; acting with fear is the courage that survives it.

reversing our No to what seemed unabsorbable to a Yes to what is integratable.

make contact with our own liveliness, the positive excitement which had been blocked by fear.

The demon power of fear is, after all, exactly this apparent choicelessness.

Acting with fear, i.e. including it, locates and affirms an alternative.

Fear Integration Loss Letting go of attachment Change Adjustment Self-revelation Self-acceptance Loneliness Support system Intimacy Commitment Power Assertiveness Feelings Acceptance of vulnerability The Void Staying with it Failure Letting the chips fall where they may Success Self-esteem

Anger does not lead to danger, distance, or violence. Drama does.

drama means ego-centered, manipulative theatrics with an explanatory storyline attached. Many of us have never seen real anger, only drama.

DRAMA TRUE ANGER Scares the hearer Informs the hearer and creates attention in the hearer Is meant to silence the other Is meant to communicate with the other Masks the dashed expectation or fear of not being in control with a false sense of control Contains sadness or disappointment and these are acknowledged Blames the other for what one feels Takes responsibility for this feeling as one’s own Is a strategy that masks a demand that the other change Asks for change but allows the other to change or not Is violent, aggressive, out of control, derisive, punitive Is nonviolent, always in control and within safe limits Represses the true feeling Expresses an assertive response Occludes other feelings Coexists with other feelings Creates stress because one’s bruised, scared ego is impotently enraged Releases the aliveness in one’s true self Is held on to and endures as resentment Is brief and then let go of with a sense of closure Insists the other see how justified one is Needs no response Applying this distinction to the experience of rejection, notice the difference in reactions: Drama is a belligerent reaction to rejection that punishes by further distancing Anger is an intimate response to rejection that bridges the distance or allows it without long-held resentment Drama is based on indignation that one was not treated with the love and loyalty one unconsciously believes one is entitled to Anger is based on displeasure at what happened but with consciousness that this fe...

Anger, like all feelings, is not caused by an event but by our belief about or interpretation of an event.

Unmet expectation

An Action occurs (open to any interpretation) My Belief interprets the action in a specific way A Consequence occurs: the feeling based on the belief

So A: What happened B: What I believe C: What I feel

example: A: You did not keep your promise. C: I became angry. B: I believe I am entitled to be treated fairly. I expected you to be honest. I believe I was insulted by this betrayal. You have now identified at least four beliefs behind your interpretation of the broken promise: entitlement, expectation, betrayal, and insult.

The anger has pointed to where it still hurts.

They let go of entitlement by asking for what they want while acknowledging that sometimes people come through and sometimes they do not. They drop expectations (one-sided) and ask for agreements (two-sided). They ask for amends when they are insulted and shun those who consistently refuse to treat them respectfully.

Affirming Anger 1. I accept anger as healthy and I examine the belief behind it and the personal history it evokes. 2. I take responsibility for the feeling as legitimate and as totally mine. 3. I express my anger but I choose not to act out aggressively by retaliation, vindictiveness, or malice.

Achrayut middah

I embrace more adult beliefs about myself and the world so that my anger now arises from an informed sense of justice without the “insulted, arrogant ego” dimension.

All self-knowledge is purchased at the cost of guilt. —Paul Tillich

Guilt is not a feeling but a belief or judgment. Appropriate guilt is a judgment that is self-confronting and leads to resolution.

Neurotic guilt is a judgment that is self-defeating and leads to unproductive pain.

Appropriate guilt is resolved in reconciliation ...

Neurotic guilt seeks to be resolved b...

In appropriate guilt there is acc...

In neurotic guilt there...

appropriate guilt is an adult response; neurotic guilt is the response of a ...

We may fear the consequences of not being liked or of our losing control when we have strayed too far from an inhibition.

Guilt after acting or after the omission of an act can also be a way of minimizing the power of the choice we have made. We are less responsible if we judge ourselves guilty because then our whole self was not committed! Paradoxically, guilt thus lets us off the hook and creates a false sense of righteousness.

A Mask for Anger Guilt can mean justifiable anger toward a respected parent, authority figure, or friend who seems to have obligated or inhibited us. We believe it is unsafe or wrong to feel or to express this anger. This leaves only us to be wrong and so the unexpressed anger turns inward as guilt. Thus guilt lets others off the hook while we abuse ourselves with anger that was meant for them.

Genesis of resenting

A Dodge of Truth Guilt is sometimes used to avoid an unacceptable truth. For example, during childhood, rather than face the painful truth that my parents did not love me, I believed myself to be guilty of not measuring up to their expectations.

It is impossible to eliminate neurotic guilt entirely.

Admission Admit directly to the person involved that you hurt him or acted irresponsibly or neglectfully. Ask to hear about the pain he feels and listen to it.

Amendment Make amends in two ways: first, cease the behavior; second, make restitution directly or to a charity or to a substitute person if the original person is unavailable or unready for your amendment. Amendment