It is not annoying anymore, but just silly

As far as I know, the concept of assertiveness in the form it is known today was developed by a reduced group of American psycologists in the 70s. Among them, I recall that therapy was mainly divulged to the public and laymen by Manuel J. Smith, from UCLA, with his When I say no, I fell guilty. The book was a tremendous success, a real must, and twenty years downstream, at least here in Spain, theory and therapy were well-established in Psycology curricula as well as in courses of continuous-education for employees, from first-sector industries down to business and finances.

I can say that, in spite of lots of deviations and misconstructions occur over decades of practical applications of assertiveness principles by therapists and scholars (as it might sound natural), I find the technique derived from its fundamental points quite a neat and an elegant one, very useful to achieve high levels of quality in one-to-one communication, as much as in conflict resolutions (the number of cases to be applied are countless). Though I am aware of new improvements and corrections done to the main original core since then, I ignore the to-date implications, ramifications and current directions of research and clinical practice.

Anyhow, I am fond of the concept of assertiveness developed by Smith in his book and I find it once and again applicable and useful in my daily life.

The basic grounds of assertiveness are, in my understanding, as follows: 1) Out of the interaction with our fellowmen, conflicts arise; 2) We are not very different from animals in the responses, except that our brain has evolved and added some extra layers to our reptilian original nervous system; 3) As a consecuence, we humans have the option to respond to external estimuli in a new way, different from the two basic animal responses: aggresive and pasive ones; 4) The new way, assertion, allows us to construct communication schemes of better quality, reach agreements and develop high-levels of mutual respect.

The backbone of assertiveness, around which revolves the therapy, is repeted a thousand times by Smith as follows: Individual A may wish to have B do something, something A needs or, simply, something A wants B to do. The same is valid for A wanting B to behave in a particular manner or to think such and such or to work at this and that company, etc. If A does not behave by means of assertion, it might tend to use more primitive techniques, provided he holds some advantage respect to B and knows how to use it. One of those techniques, clearly aggresive, is manipulation. The impact of the theory is even more dramatic as, in a score of cases, individuals A and B are attached by strong emotional ties (family, friendship, partners, etc.).

You may notice how usual and how difficult these situations are, precisely because of the emotional strings between A and B. The typical example consists on not lending my car to my brother-in-law as he askes for, because I don´t want to and that would make me feel bad and, at the same time, remaining unaltered against any possible manipulative statements ("I don´t undestand you", "Are you ok?", "Don´t you trust me?", "Remember what I did for you when...", "It will only be a moment", "You know how much careful I am", and so).

Manipulation can be exerted in 3 common directions, according to Smith, etc.: to get you feel anxious, ignorant or guilty. You can easily pick up examples of each of these manipulations.

Many manipulative actions of the sort can be found in parental control, any time a dad or a mum, probably with best intentions, but mistakenly, try to have their kids do what they want. The amazing thing is to find the same actions in public institutions against the citizen!

Particularly to me, traffic police in Spain has always been a little too much paternal and abusive against the common driver, but it gets worse still! Neon signs like "Thanks for not speeding" or "Remember: it is better to be late than never"; Radio-station adds such as "He has no legs now" or "You can keep someone waiting on you for ever" are as much annoying as manipulative in the sense discussed before.

Today, as I drove to Madrid, I spot a couple of times a neon sign on the road: "Parking lots full downtown: this Christmas, use public transportation". It was obviously a lie (I did park my car), the same sort of falacy a parent will build (mistakenly, again) to lure his kid.

It is not annoying anymore, but just silly.