Various formats are possible. Most total 8 hours of instruction, though a 6-hour version is also available.

The function of therapy is to put clients firmly in charge of their own lives. But if they can’t be assertive, their lives are not truly their own.

Much of the time, clients come into the therapy room feeling caught in painful, intractable conflicts with those around them that leave them feeling hurt, angry, and helpless. And more often than not, these situations persist because clients are attempting the impossible. They are trying to change what everyone else is doing. And it doesn’t work.

Being assertive doesn’t mean attempting to control the behavior of others. It’s about controlling our own actions. By helping clients develop their assertiveness skills, we can help them build healthy communication styles, stand their ground, become less buffeted by what everyone else expects of them, and effectively navigate conflicts in their relationships with less hostility. We can teach them how to live and interact with other people without losing themselves in the process.

Most clinicians have been shown the necessity and value of assertiveness, healthy communication, and boundaries at some point in their education. However, most clinical programs include little or no instruction on how to actually build assertiveness skills. Essentially, they’ve been taught the rationale, but not the technique.

The Course Contents

In this course I teach not only the importance of assertiveness skills, but how to impart those skills to clients in an experiential way.

We explore the four basic styles of communication (assertive, passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive) and the motives and beliefs that drive them. We identify specific barriers that prevent clients and clinicians alike from using an assertive style, including:

• How stress can pull people away from assertive responding

• Social history and the unchanging, rigid expectations for others to act “how they always have”

• The ways that beliefs — such as “assertive people are obnoxious” or “politeness means being a pushover” — shape behavior

During these experiential sessions, clinicians practice specific action-oriented strategies to overcome those barriers. Given these tools, clients can recognize their own communication style and identify what is stopping them from being assertive.

With the techniques clinicians gain from this course, they can train clients to navigate boundary-challenging scenarios — such as saying “no,” giving and receiving feedback, making requests, and dealing with conflict — while feeling less threatened and staying true to themselves. We’ll help clients establish and maintain good interpersonal boundaries and cultivate more fulfilling relationships.

Throughout the course, participants are invited to perform the exercises in their own lives as a way to fully embrace the material and prepare to apply it in a clinical setting. Many participants have reported that the program has helped them in their own lives as much as it has helped in their practice.