Assertiveness for Women: The Power of Saying No A 3-Step Guide

Struggling with assertiveness and/or being conflict avoidant is a top complaint we hear from our female clients. Assertiveness is a skill women usually spend years working on.

Women are still socialized to get along with others. To be the soothing, mediating, emotionally skilled person in relationships and in family. Woman are sacrificers, will ignore their own needs and preferences to make others happy.

There are consequences to this. Health is compromised. Intimacy is compromised, you do not bring your needs and full emotional range to relationships. Women are still the expected caretakers and are more likely to have full-time jobs and many other tasks as well.

Sound stressful? Describe your life?

Read on for a 3-step process to learn to be more assertive in your life.

Assertiveness for Women: Step 1- Create Space to feel.

Learning to please others as a female child starts with ignoring your needs and possibly justifying other’s poor behaviour as we grow up. This can also be part of trauma if a child is expected to be a caretaker to their parent learning a “faun” response (a trauma response of people-pleasing including appeasing and caretaking) as part of their role in the family.

So the first step is allowing yourself to have an emotional reaction to feeling you are doing too much, need a break. Allow yourself to feel resentful that you do more than others and sacrifice effortlessly Ex. You and your husband both work the day the hospital booked a medical test for your child and you cancel your meetings. Women are more likely to make it work and leave their workplace.

These feelings of annoyance and sadness need to be given space so they will come to the surface. Take time to get to know yourself and your patterns Ex. It is mostly my partner I get resentful towards and get irritable as a result. Maybe your mother is your point of stress.

This simply giving space for emotions to come to the surface of awareness can be a largely internal process, using this new information can come later. You will likely feel decreased anxiety symptoms as well.

You will need to push through blocks Ex. They cancelled on me again. It is OK, they get busy etc. Then you let it go and it becomes awkward to say something later, right? These are blocks to letting people know what you feel and need.

If you cannot access feelings at all you might want an Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) coach.

Assertiveness for Women: Step 2- Big Conservations.

The next step is communicating this new information to the people in your life. Ex. Tell your friend it bothers you that she is always late. Tell you partner you sacrifice your needs often to keep the peace and want to try something different.

Begin with sitting down to calmly, in a non-blaming way, tell a loved one how you feel. Let them know how it is impacting your relationship and your mental health. Let them in on your new personal goals to try new things.

This is a longer conversation with intention and letting your person know that there will be follow-up. Then we move to Step 3.

Assertiveness for Women: Step 3- Small Comments.

This is using a single sentence to follow-up on the Big conversations in Step 2.

A single sentence is for several reasons. You do not want to feel repetitive and irritable all the time. The goal is not to trigger a person’s defenses so they self-protect and your goals are thwarted.

So a sentence that refers back to the Big Conversation. Ex. Remember when I talked to you about how I am always the one that changes my schedule to make your life easier? Can you please take care of it this time?

Know that people get secondary gains out of your sacrificing. So change will be challenging and take time. You are worth it and deserve this.

Maybe it is about introducing self-care into your life. Ex. You will attend a yoga class every Saturday.

You may find a friend struggles with seeing you change. You will need to stay committed to yourself and your improved well-being.

We are here to help.

Lisa S.