Counselling for Building Your Assertiveness Skills & Setting Boundaries

Being more assertive by setting your boundaries and confidently communicating them to others

Being assertive is not necessarily easy, but it is a skill that can be learned. Developing your assertiveness starts with a good understanding of who you are and where your boundaries lie. Assertiveness Counselling works by helping you define what you feel comfortable with and how to communicate the message firmly but without anger.

Being Assertive starts with knowing your Boundaries!

Boundaries is a popular word in counselling . . .  but there is a reason for that. A boundary (literally) marks out the limits of an area, it creates a dividing line. When we refer to boundaries in our personal lives we are talking about a ‘line’ or ‘limit’ that we draw in relation to how we allow other people to treat us. It is our own personal dividing line.

Thus, many of the issues that are discussed and explored in counselling can often have links to personal boundaries and how we do and do not allow other people to treat us. Our personal boundaries  can have links to our past, our upbringing and how we feel about ourselves because of the variety of experiences we have had.

How is being Assertive linked to our Boundaries?

Assertiveness is about knowing clearly what your own personal boundaries are, and then feeling able to clearly and calmly communicate those boundaries to someone else when you feel they are being breached.

How can Assertiveness Counselling help?

It is very difficult to be assertive when you do not know where your boundaries lie.

• What is it that you are trying to explain?
• What is it that you will and won’t accept?
• What is it about the scenario or situation that is triggering a reaction in you?

What Assertiveness counselling can do, first and foremost, is explore the issue of your personal boundaries and help you to learn, not only what those boundaries are and how they work, but what the meaning of those boundaries have been for you in your life.

Lack of Assertiveness is often a lack of managing your boundaries

Confusion about how to handle boundaries can result in two very different reactions:

Either becoming ‘timid’, ‘withdrawn’, allowing others to ‘walk all over you’, not saying what you are thinking and feeling, or saying ‘yes’ to things you in fact would rather say ‘no’ to.

Or

It can result in aggression; reacting angrily and with frustration to the other person with an explosion of emotion.

Being Assertive is not Being Aggressive

Assertiveness is the place between these two areas. It is about being comfortable enough in your own skin and sure enough in what you do and do not want, to draw boundaries around those things for yourself and then to be able to communicate them to others clearly and calmly, without aggression but also without feeling as though you have not said what you felt.

Counselling is also the place where you can learn the practical tools to become more assertive once you have discovered what it is you want to be assertive about and what the blocks to that have been for you.

Take the first step to being more confident, agree to only those things you want to do and feeling more in control, contact Rachel to discuss Counselling for Assertiveness and setting your boundaries.