Do you hold back from speaking up for yourself? 

Boundaries, anxiety and assertiveness are interrelated… 

and understanding this might actually change your life for the better! 

Many people confuse assertive communication with aggressive communication, but they are distinctly different.

• Aggressive communication prioritizes your needs and desires at the expense of the other. 
• Passive communication does not assert your own needs at all.
• Passive aggressive communication is trying to get what you want without stating your needs.. and it often ignores the other’s needs or desires. 
• Assertive communication is basically an “I’m ok, you’re ok.” It is stating your needs, desires, wants and opinions, without forcing them onto others.

Assertive communication is the most effective way to set boundaries.  It is also usually the most effective mode of communication in business, personal relationships, and everyday situations.

If you fall into passiveness, you may feel a lot of anxiety when you need to assert yourself. 

If you tend toward aggression, you may be in survival mode. This may be because at a young age, you learned that your needs won’t be met without aggression. 

Neither of these communication approaches is likely to achieve what you really want.  The needs of passive communicators are often ignored, and the response to aggressive communication generally focuses on the aggressiveness, not the issue at hand.

Then, when the response does not achieve your goal, you feel worse, your anxiety might increase, your boundaries might be violated.

However, the opposite of this develops a positive feedback loop, so each step is strengthened and supported as one part is improved.

• If you are able to work on lowering your anxiety, you will be able to be more assertive and hold better boundaries.
• As you hold better boundaries, your anxiety will go down.
• As you speak more assertively, you will see more positive results, you will be able to hold your boundaries better, and your anxiety will go down!
  

Intervening with any one of these items will begin to affect the others.

However, understanding the interconnection and working on them all, gently but steadily, will create massive improvement!

If you would like to hear more examples and explanations of this topic, you can find my video on this topic here: Boundaries, Anxiety and Assertiveness