on the second day. I'm sure you guys are totally jumped in to go out and enjoy the rest of the evening, but I appreciate you taking time to come tonight. I'm Teresa Martini, and I'm going to, the title is Director to Intern Changing Careers as a Single Mom, but really the core of what I'll be talking about is humility and audacity and facing things in our lives that feel impossible and sitting with the discomfort of that. So let's get started. I work with OMARA Health and we support people with preventing chronic disease, so the majority of our participants might be in situations where they're prediabetic or have heart disease, and we provide a program for that. But before I got to this place in my life, I guess the other big piece about this talk is, this isn't a tech talk or a how-to, this is more of a story and the journey that I've been on for a while now. And so I'm going to start at the beginning when I was a Florida Gator. Any Gator fans in the audience? No. Lily's like, no, none. So I was a Gator. But I didn't get an engineering degree as a Gator. I got a degree in anthropology, but can't really get much of a job with a degree in anthropology or an aspiring degree in anthropology. So I ended up working at the Northeast Regional Data Center on campus and began learning HTML. And this was back when HTML was called Wilbur. It was HTML 3.2. And this was in 1997, and websites looked like this.  And so I started my career then, and then over the next couple of years learning HTML, standard generalized market language. In 1999, I started learning cold fusion back when it was a layer of cold fusion. And I learned that by just poking over somebody's shoulder on another team and being like, that's really cool. What are you doing? That seems way better than what we're doing with these static HTML templates. And they were like, yeah, come on, come learn with us. And so I went and joined another team and started moving my way up. And so I did that for a couple of years. I did cold fusion and spectra and started working my way into Java. And then the 2001 bubble burst.  I don't have a degree in it. It's not my background. And the imposter syndrome was really deep. I was always the only woman on my team. I never met another woman engineer. So this is amazing to me. And so when the bubble burst, and I knew all kinds of senior engineers who knew Java fully, weren't just starting to learn it, and they couldn't get work because work was so slim. I was like, well, you know, oh, this is also sorry, just jumping ahead a little bit. So to give you a context, if you were young enough that you weren't around back then, employment declined by about 17% loss of 85,000 jobs. And so if you look at this, 97 is when I got started. And then the peak went up. And then 2001 is when the bubble burst on this graph. And so I figured until things pick up, you know, until I get another gig, I'm going to go volunteer with domestic violence agency. It's in town. It was in San Francisco at the time. And so I started volunteering, and then they were like, oh, we really need someone to fill this position. Would you mind just working for us for a little bit? I know that's not your career. You've got one more experience. Just for a little bit. I was like, nah, sure. It's like glorified volunteering because that's about how much you got paid. But the thing is, is this is how they were tracking data. It was agonizing for me. I wanted to cry. I may have cried at seeing how awful the situation was in the nonprofit sector and their tech capacity. They had this shelter that I was working at had a dial up modem, like that kind of dial up modem on one computer. That's all they had for the whole company. And so none of the social workers had computers to track data for clients. Everything was written on paper. And like literally, they had someone in a van driving between the different locations to pick up these binders and transport them and then do more of this business, sorry, that business on the paper. And it was painful. So I wrote grants and I got them computers and I built them a VPN and I built them a server and I built them a website. And it's in three languages because they have a lot of clients who speak different languages. And I did all that and it felt really good.  But it felt really good. And I felt like I was making a really big difference.  I decided to adopt my son June 2008. And if I hadn't done that work, I would have had a hard time adopting him because I learned a lot in my work that has made me a better mom.  Obviously as mom and was coming with me to work, this is me carrying him during the walk against rape because I worked for women against rape. But then things started settling with me being a mom.  I just not yet, not yet. And so then after things settled with being a mom, I started getting this seed planted of an idea that I was going to take that step and go back, maybe go to grad school, maybe do something to really solidify those skills and get back on track. Because I got a little rusty with time. And I continued volunteering on the side and building websites on the side for a bunch of different nonprofits. But they weren't, I wasn't doing engineering and I wasn't building dynamic websites because they couldn't maintain them. So I was just building static HTML and teaching them how to do them on their own. So I'm like making that step starting to think about it again. And then I had my daughter. So now I'm still a single mom and I've got two kids.  And so this is 2011. And she also is coming with me to work. She came with me to work for eight months. I carried her and wore her. My colleagues carried her. And she was our outreach materials, our marketing person. And so then 13 years later, after my, you know, after a little while, it will pick up. 13 years later, I'm having dinner with a friend of mine. And she says, hey, have you heard of boot camps? My friends started this really cool boot camp where you go and it's like 18 weeks and you learn how to be a software engineer and then you get hired afterwards. And people make like $8,500,000. I know someone who made $125,000 out the gate.  And it sounded kind of crazy to me, but I looked into it a little bit.  That's really, that sounds impossible, right? And then I look at the cost. And this is basically what I thought of all of it. And this is impossible. It's insane. There's no way I can budget it. There's no way I can justify that much time away from my kids. There's just no way. Like everything's just no way. But I'm stubborn. I'm really stubborn. And so I decided what would it be like to sit with that impossibility, that sense of impossibility, and that I can't do it. And what would it be like to just try and take time and be calculated about it and try to make it work and find the money and find the community and resources. And so I jumped. And I decided to quit my job. December of 2014, I applied to Dev Boot Camp. And in January, I was accepted. And I resigned from my job. I decided I wasn't going to do the halfway, I'm going to work part time and do, they have a period that's called phase zero for nine weeks where you're working remotely. And most people work, still keep working their jobs until then. And I was just like, no. Because I knew that in order for me to be successful, I wasn't going to be able to do the commitment that everyone else is going to be able to do on site where they're most of my cohort basically lived at Dev Boot Camp. Don't tell anyone because you're not supposed to sleep there, but people do. And I couldn't. I had to leave every day and I had to go home and still take care of my kids. But so February, I got started. There were a lot of risks involved around like couldn't do the full hours, not guaranteed a job offer. And going back to my previous career would have been possible because I was the director and I had a lot of respect in the community. But it would have been a conversation for sure. Like why did you have this gaping hole in your resume? Oh, I was trying to change careers, but decided to come back. People in the nonprofit sector are very concerned about long-term commitment of their staff. And so that would have looked really bad. So a lot of risk involved. And so self-care was a huge thing for me during this process. It was really important that, and part of that self-care was setting those boundaries and saying, you know, no, I'm going to go home at six o'clock. I'm going to read my children their bedtime stories. I'm going to tuck them in at night. And then I'm going to keep going. But I'm also not going to stay up all night long coding. I'm going to cut it off at 10 o'clock because I write shitty code when I'm tired. And I actually write pretty good code pretty fast when I'm well rested. So what I would be knacking my head against for two hours at night, late at night, I'd do in five minutes the next morning. So that was part of my self-care process. And I asked a million questions, a million. I can't even fathom the amount of questions that I asked because if I tried to pretend that I knew shit, I would get nowhere. And if I just put myself out there and kept asking and asking and exposing my ignorance a million times a day, I would make progress. And I also felt like it was really critical for me to be a mentor because even though I knew nothing, I knew a little bit more than the people coming behind me. And so every phase of the boot camp, I was mentoring someone else. And when I finished the boot camp, I became a mentor at Hackathon. And I taught classes at Woman Who Code, I think, was the way I taught it. And kept teaching people. And rockets. So one of the other strategies that really helped me be successful was they had, they have all these coding challenges in the boot camps, right? And so you're supposed to go through and do all of them. Well, that was impossible. I simply did not have the time. And so I would just jump straight to the hardest thing that they had. And I would just dig in deep with that. And it served me really well. And it was so fun. And so staying really closely connected to my sense of joy around coding and not letting it be this painful process was also a really big part of me being able to be successful with it.  And it was amazing. And so anytime I couldn't get a test to pass, or any time that I didn't know the answer, I was just like, yes! I've hit a place where I can move through and I've identified it. And now I can learn and overcome and then hit the next failure. And it's going to be beautiful. And so, yeah, if you're ever in a situation where everyone around you is having success and they're high-fiving each other, I totally encourage you to turn around to the people you're failing with and high-five them and be like, yes, we're failing. And we are going to get through it and learn. So celebrate that learning process. So I finished our boot camp. And this was June 2015, which I don't know if the last speaker is here, but the last speaker was talking about when the Supreme Court decision was handed down for gay marriage rights that happened that weekend. It was amazing, so weekend to celebrate.  And interviewing in the tech industry had changed dramatically from when I was in it before. Before, you would just get hired on this contractor, basically. And it was a temporary contract. And if it went well, you'd get hired on full time. And if it didn't, you'd move on. And it was kind of a mutual thing. And there was no whiteboarding ever. And so this really awesome strategy that I had in my head was I would bring the whole weight of feeding and housing my children to the interview in my head. It was great. I was so stressed that I couldn't think about anything. People would ask me these basic questions and information was absolutely in my head. And I could not get it out. And then there were times when I actually had managed to get it out. And there was this one guy. He had a stack of papers, right? And he throws it on the table and says, you're amazing. And goes on and on about how amazing I am. They didn't hire me. And so I started to get also this feeling that my assessment of situations was warped. And I would think the things were going well and they weren't. And so it just went into this really back to this space of determination but feeling a little starting to lose hope. And so I was in this place of often like when I was losing hope that weight of taking care of my children became heavier. And this happened in my mind all the time. And so what I did was I needed to turn back to community. I needed to stay rooted. This is my cohort that I went through WCAMP with. And I turned back to them and was just like, y'all, I'm struggling. I'm not just struggling. I'm struggling emotionally. I'm getting, I'm spiraling. I need to get grounded and I need help. So I started checking in with a group of people weekly. And they were phenomenal in supporting me. And then soon after that I got this awesome breakthrough. I got an interview with Omada. And this was the interview. And it was the most amazing interview ever. We paired for the day on a story that was in the backlog. And that went into production that day.  It was a pleasure to work with them on this story. And it was like, even if I don't get the job, that was just a really reaffirming experience of just getting to code with people. And I had met Lily through Railsbridge and she connected me with the interview. And I began being a software engineering intern with them. And so that was September 2015. And again, lots of risk. I turned down a couple of full-time positions with other companies to take this internship. And it was banking on the notion that this team is amazing and this company is doing amazing work and going to learn so much more as an intern in this program with mentorship and guidance and pairing than I will going into this full-time position with this other company where their mentorships seemed a little more shaky and maybe not as solid as Omada's was. But again, not guaranteed a job, didn't have health benefits, was still taking more risks. And so I asked again a million questions. What does this give us? Like, why are you doing this this way? You know, I hear what you're saying, but I have no idea what you're saying, what it means on a more fundamental level. Like, you're going through a process, sure, I hear you, but what does the underlying code mean? I noticed this thing breaks the build randomly. Is there another way we could approach this? Haven't tested a situation like this before? What do I need to consider? Like, these are all, you know, it's just a consistent pattern that I've had in my life of exposing ignorance and in order to move forward at a more rapid pace. And you write the most scalable, well-tested object oriented software in the world said nobody ever, because that's not my goal that would be ridiculous for me to ever expect. But it's one of those things where like, you want, you want to hear that. But it's letting go of that ego and letting go of your expectations and accepting that really the best compliment I could have ever gotten from the team was that you asked the best questions of any intern we've ever had. Because that means that I'm going in the right direction. And there was a solo project that I did during this internship where, so the team pairs and we have an agile process. Does anyone not know what those two things mean? Awesome.  You're not pairing for a month. And again, I went through this, a similar kind of feeling that I was getting during the interviewing process where I was feeling isolated and alone and disconnected from the team. So I decided to start pairing like soloing next to a pair. The pair would be here and I'd be like just sitting near them. And I implemented my strategies that I needed to feel connected and be able to feel like I was part of the team and learned so much during that month. And then it was time to come back to pairing. And as a junior developer, it's so easy when you're pairing to just let the other person drive all the time because they're fast and they know what's going on. And they don't have any questions, not nearly as many questions as I do. And so my co-worker had this amazing idea. She brought me some toys. She was like give these to people you're pairing with. And so that way they would step back and would keep their hands busy while I was able to take the initiative to step forward and drive. And this is how I feel about my team. They're a really, really incredible team. Is my thing not showing? How long has it been not showing? I'm like looking at this screen and seeing, awesome. Can you fix that while I do this? All right. Oh, thanks. You guys are great. Cool. Well, I really love my team. This is a really great picture of them. And we're all celebrating together. And maybe you'll get to see it. And no, I can't see anything, so I'm a little lost. Oh, and so soon after, in January, I got hired on permanently as a software engineer with Omada. Yeah. It was a very, very exciting and hard one. Still not showing. But I must keep looking through because it helps me know where I'm going. And now I'm part of this much larger, amazing team of about 40 or 50 engineers. I don't know.  Around 40. Yeah. Lily's one of the amazing engineers on my team. And my kids and I celebrated. And it's funny because I asked my son, if you could describe what I went through with changing my career to somebody, what would you say? And he was like, you're really stressed out, mom. And, and that's kind of one of the, I think they bore the brunt of that process. I might still go blank. And I'm still ignorant. And I just want to encourage you to, when you hit a point where you feel like you can't do something to just, I really love Ms. Frizzle. I don't know. You guys like the magic school bus. It's a pretty awesome show. You should watch it even without children. There we go. So I just want to encourage you to take chances and get messy. And I still want to show you a picture of my awesome team. There, there. And that's, that's it. You guys have any questions for me? You know, one thing that Omada and Daboo Camp both did that made a world of difference for me was being flexible with my time. So for example, most of the team leaves at six and I leave at 4.45. I also get in earlier than anybody else. Usually when I get in, the only people there are the chief architect and the CEO. And so allowing me to, to do that, it means I solo a lot in the mornings. But it's really great for me to be able to do that because I can sit there. I can pick up a story and I can dig into the code and read so that when my pair comes in, I'm more able to just kind of jump in. And then Omada also has great health benefits for kids. Like it's actually not that expensive for me to ensure my children, which is great. In the nonprofit sector, I always had to pay full, like, full price for me because it was really expensive to ensure them. So there was that. I'm sure you guys do lots of other things. Oh, I mean the team's just really supportive of their times when I, I'm struggling with something at home and I can talk to my colleagues and team members about what's going on and get their support. And they're not just like, oh my God, she's talking about her children again. And there's actually, I'm not the only parents on the team. There are two other parents that are on my direct team. So there's a lot of empathy. So there's a few questions in there. So I'm going to hit them one at a time. So one, you asked about the salary and how true I felt that to be. I was within, I got hired out of the, within the range that they said to expect. I think the people who, that's, it means that you sneeze it. Okay, cool. If I sneeze it, come back back. So the higher range where my friend was like, I know people who've been hired on at 125. Usually those are people that already have tech backgrounds, maybe in a different aspect of it, like UX or design or something. And they're kind of expanding their school set, but aren't brand new to it.  What were the other questions? The time commitment for the program. Yeah, people went way beyond the time commitment that they said to make. I couldn't do it. So I just, I did not do the time commitment that they tell you you need to. And I told them ahead of time, like, this is what I can do. Can I come through the program? And they're like, you can try, like me as well, like we're not going to stop you. But it's going to be hard. You talked about the imposter syndrome. What helped you get through that?  So I don't think I got through it the first time. I think I succumbed to it and I left. And I didn't put the amount of effort that I could have to keep going. And I think part of it was because I was really inspired by what I was distracting myself with. And that felt really powerful to me and healing in a lot of ways. But part of it was also because I was like, oh, well, there are all these people I know who are way more awesome than I am, who have been hired on and or who can't get work. So I wasn't trying as hard as I probably could have.  This time I said I really kept the mentality of I love this. This is something that I was really passionate about and had so much fun doing. And I remember my colleagues back then and they didn't know anything either. Like they were learning as they went to and a lot of them had CS degrees. But I feel like there are a wide range of skills that you need to be an engineer. And some people are seriously lacking in being able to interact with people. And that makes you a really bad engineer. And then there are some people who may not have the fastest typing and the ability to very quickly come to a solution about a problem. But you have the ability to look at the bigger picture and think about the team as a whole in ways that maybe someone else can't. And I think you just have to really appreciate yourself for your skills that you have and recognize that code is code and you can learn it. And it's hard and everybody struggles. Everyone hits their head against stuff. I have senior engineers on my team right now that sometimes take a couple of days to figure out a solution to a problem because it's complex. And so do I. And that's okay. And just keep asking a lot of questions. I know if that answered your question. Really quickly. I've been doing this for almost 20 years and I still start with that. They made me the manager of my team. And I think part of it is each thing that you pick up is a new challenge or new ticket. You don't know how you're going to solve it until you solve it. And you just have to keep that in mind and kind of just say, you know, effort. Like you say, I'm just going to try. And I almost always figured it out. And if I don't ask for help. So, you know, thank you. But my question was about the boot camp itself. Do you feel like that? Does that give you enough to be able to take on the job that you have now and not be too lost? You know what I mean? Too lost. Too lost.  And it's like, gosh, it looks like there's five problems in this one problem. And I'm not sure where even they get start. You know, I don't know. I mean, maybe this is part of my bias for doing it for a long time. Because I think it takes a while to just learn how to solve the problems. But you know, I'm trying to get into my head of how useful are these boost camps? I guess I disagree. I feel like learning how to ask questions, learning how to follow the clues that you see in front of you, reading errors, and paying attention to the details. I don't think it takes that long to learn that. And I feel like it is something you can pick up quickly. I felt like the camp was amazing. I learned how to learn. And I learned how to let go of any ego. And I learned how to be humble and audacious at the same time. And believe in myself. And not see something as too hard to overcome. And like, you know, fairly early on, probably one of the first weeks I was there, they were like, hey, here's where the gems are when you install, when you build rails. This is where the gems are. Go open them. Read the source code. Like just go through and just read thousands of lines of code a day. Read a thousand lines of code a day. Go read a hundred pages, a thousand pages in a book a day. Like just go through and just consume what you can. And eventually you'll see patterns. And that's what code is. A lot of it is just looking for patterns. And how far? I don't want to go over my time. It's 206. I'm over time, aren't I? No? How much time do I have? Five minutes? Thank you. And so, yeah, I feel like that's what the boot camps do. They teach you how to learn. And you can, they pick a language, but you can apply that same process to any language and pick it up. So that's, I feel like what boot campers are really, really good at is just like jumping in and learning something quickly. You had a question. Sure.  So what's one thing that's easier for you as an engineer because you've been a mother? I would never say I'm an expert at being a mother. Sure. And yeah, no, I feel like, I honestly would never, ever in my life call myself an expert at anything because that would mean that I have hit the end of my learning process and I will never get there on anything because I'm always going to be learning and trying to be a better person. But to your question about what, about parenting has informed me as an engineer, I mean, I think there are a lot of things, I guess being like, it's funny, someone mentioned something about like healthy relationships and how giving people specific positive feedback is actually a strategy for couples that last a long time. I'm single, what do I know? But it's, that's a strategy I've used as a supervisor, because I used to be a director, so I used to have a whole huge team of like 125 people that I supervised. And so that, as a supervisor, as a parent, as a teammate, you know, on my current team, that is something that's always served me very well, giving people very specific and positive feedback, not just like, you're great to pair with, but I really appreciate when you, I really enjoyed how you wrote the test and I made the test pass, so I really enjoyed how you had me write the test and then you made the test pass. And so giving specific, getting really specific about that has been, has served me well. It's one example. I was curious if, in your interview process, if you faced any sort of age discrimination, did you face people asking you about your age or, did you face anything like that? And if so, how did you, how did you address it? I'm not sure if you're assuming that I'm younger old. You look really young, but I know you've got a couple of kids. Yeah, I mean, I guess I am one of the older people on my team. I'm 37. I don't think I faced age discrimination. Maybe I did and I wasn't aware of it. I don't know. I think more than anything, I don't know that it was, I don't know that it was directed discrimination. It's more the process of interviewing right now is not optimal. I think that the process, and actually you were describing it, sir, I don't remember your name. We were talking about this earlier today. He was describing an interview process that his company does, and I went through a similar interview and it was awful. It was the most anxiety-ridden interview I've ever had. I was not able to communicate my knowledge barely at all, because I felt like I was just being hammered and it was more like an interrogation than an interview. One guy literally cut me off. Like every question he would ask me, I would answer and he'd cut me off while I was talking and he'd hammer me with another question, and then as I was answering that one, he'd cut me off and hammer me with the next one, and that's just a really shitty way to interact with people. That's just not very humane or kind. Honestly, I left that interview being like, I don't want to work for your company, even if you make me an offer, because I don't want to work with people who are going to interact with me like that. I don't want to work with team members who might be cutting me off and moving us along in that way. I feel like there are much better ways to be. I would just encourage people to examine your interviewing strategies and what those strategies are serving, like what purpose they're serving, and how they are leading you towards your goals and how you want to build your team. Thank you.


This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on teaching assertiveness skills. Over the next little while, we're going to define assertiveness and explore the consequences of non-assertive behavior. As a clinician and as a human being, I've recognized that there are a lot of issues that come up when people are not able to be assertive when they don't have the skills to be assertive. Look at what some of those are that may be manifesting in the clients that are coming into your practice. We want to look at what's going on with clients that might have an underpinning of non-assertive behavior. Then we'll identify the roots of non-assertive behavior because there are some pretty predictable reasons why people either become aggressive or passive and miss that whole assertiveness boat. Then we'll talk about overcoming the stress barriers, the social barriers, and the belief barriers to being assertive, and you're probably scratching your head going, well, what are those? We'll talk about those in a minute. They make a lot of sense once you get into them. We'll talk about doing a reality check, looking at non-verbal behavior and I'll give you a little hint about what's coming up. There's a wonderful website that I found on non-verbal behavior that I'm going to start using not only with my clients, but also with some of my supervises and some of my students that are trying to learn to read non-verbal behavior because it gives a lot of really good tips and it's free. I love free. We'll talk about giving your opinion in an assertive way, providing constructive, not critical feedback, and finally making requests of people without trying to control them. We don't want them to feel like you're demanding something. We want them to hear it as a request that they can choose to either accept or decline, but we also want to figure out how to present it in a win-win sort of way. People when they hear it are more inclined to accept as opposed to decline. Start at the beginning. What is assertiveness? Assertiveness means stating your feelings, wants, and needs clearly. Part of that means we have to understand what our feelings, wants, and needs are clearly before we can tell anybody else. I refer you back to mindfulness. We need to help clients identify what they're feeling, what are they wanting, and what are they needing. A lot of times our clients are not wanting somebody to do this for me right now. They are feeling powerless. They're feeling out of control and they're wanting control. So as clinicians, we can help them look at the underlying issues behind some of their demands. We want to state our feelings, wants, and needs with ownership. It's my feeling. If I am feeling guilty, if I am feeling angry, if I am feeling however, it's my feeling. It is not your responsibility. You know, something you may have done may have triggered it, but it is my responsibility for owning that feeling and choosing what to do with it. And we want to state it with conviction, but I don't know. And, obviously, I'm being sarcastic. If we have a feeling, if we have an opinion, somebody asks us, did you like that movie? We want to say yes or no, not yes, but, you know, I don't know, what do you think? Assertiveness means stating what you think or what you feel and your opinion without having to hedge it. Why is it important? Because when you are passive or aggressive, your feelings, wants, and needs are often not heard. Think about the person who's extremely passive. They tend to be very quiet. They never seem to have an opinion of their own. It's just whatever, that's fine, it's okay. They have opinions. So the question is, what needs are they getting met by being passive? But also, what needs are they not getting met by being passive? And what may be causing them to feel upset? Now, this isn't true for everybody. My grandmother, bless her heart, is probably one of the most passive people in the world. And she would go along, go with the flow. And I mean, granted, she was born back in the 1920s. And that was kind of the way that women were supposed to behave. But it didn't bother her. She wasn't depressed, that she wasn't able to assert her feelings and be an equal partner all the time. She was very happy with the way things were, until one day, she had finally had enough. And she turned around to my grandfather, and she was all of about, you know, five foot soaked in, you know, a hundred pounds soaked in wet. My grandfather was six three, and a big dude. And he was mouthing off about something. He was kind of cranky. And she turned around to him one day and she said, you know what, Eddie?  And my grandfather stood there and he was in shock. And he was just like, oh my gosh, we've been married for like 30 years and you've never talked back. And she promptly turned around again, didn't miss a beat. And she said, you know what, Eddie? I didn't mean that. I want you to take a whole handful. That was the beginning of her assertiveness coming out. Little background, my grandfather was a, was an alcoholic. And when he was using, he tended to be a lot grumpier. And she had finally had enough. So she decided to start setting boundaries. And it took a little bit of time to look at, okay, what do you get about getting from being passive? This is what you were taught you were supposed to do. But what is it that's eating you up inside?  So that, that was when she decided, you know what, I need to start being assertive slash pseudo aggressive. And they started getting along a lot better after that once she was able to state what her needs were in relation to his drinking. When people's feelings are not heard. Let me talk about aggressive real quick. When people are aggressive, we all know somebody who is really aggressive. They will get in your face. They will be loud. They will demand things.  We want to be around people who we seem to feel mutual respect for. So either way, these people are not getting their needs met. The aggressive person gets even more aggressive when they feel like their needs aren't being met. And the passive person tends to feel more hopeless and depressed. So it leads to feelings of isolation, resentment and anger and depression or helplessness. And it depends on the person. Not every person's going to have all of these. But thinking back into clients that I've worked with over the past couple of decades, the majority of my clients have not had assertiveness skills. And they have been passive and passive and passive to the point that they just finally exploded. Now this may have happened back when they were knee-high to a grasshopper. So by the time they were adults, they were just flat aggressive. Or it may have come on over time. The point being, we need to look at when did you stop feeling like your needs were being met or feeling like you were being heard. So what's this stress barrier? We know the stress reaction is fight, flee or freeze. And I put freeze in there because sometimes you just, you can't do anything.  Becoming assertive is stressful. When you're in one of those situations and you're trying not to either back down or lash out, you're trying to learn a new skill. It's stressful. I mean, anytime you learn a new skill, it's stressful. You have to change the way you interact with others. So you're going to have to stop and really think about it. Now it's not overly stressful to the point where it's not worth doing. But I want clients to realize that it's going to be stressful. You're going to have to think about it for a minute and give yourself time to pause, figure out what you're going to say, and then say it. But also others have to change the way they interact with you. So it can be stressful that way because they don't know what's going on. All of a sudden you're acting differently and they're just like, whoa, you know, Sally suddenly has an opinion or, you know, whatever the case may be. So there's a whole upsetting of the apple card, if you will, the homeostasis in the system, whatever social system you're in, is going to be upset a little bit. So that's a little stressful. In the past, when people were in a stressful situation, we want to ask them, what did you do? Did you withdraw? Did you become aggressive or did you just shut down? Remembering that people who come from addicted families, the motto, don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. So a lot of times, people in addicted families either shut down or withdraw. Every once in a while, you've got some people who act down. But more often than not, initially, they're so withdrawing and shutting down until they start feeling so abandoned and so resentful and so angry that they're just like, screw the world. It's going to be my way or the highway. And I don't care anymore what anybody else thinks. The stress response is designed to protect you. So when there's a stressful situation, we want to fight or flee. We've got to work against that and convince our body, convince our brain that there's not a huge threat here. We don't need to fight or flee. We need to take a breath for a second, figure out what to do. Ignoring this urge is extremely difficult until assertiveness is proven itself. What do I mean by that? When people are used to being aggressive, guess what? They've been aggressive in the past and it's worked for them. So their brain is followed away with, that works, let's do it again. If they've been passive in the past, maybe that's how they were taught.  You just kind of need to back off for a while. If that worked for them, then that may be their go-to response. Assertiveness, standing up and saying what you need, even if maybe you knew how or you tried, if it's been punished before, then a lot of times people are going to be even more antsy about trying it again. They're going to want to go to the things that they know work. So until we prove to them that assertiveness works through group activities, through role playing, even in individual counseling, when people are talking to you, when clients are talking to me, I ask them what they're thinking. I ask them what their opinion is. And if they start to hedge, we might talk about why they're hedging instead of, or if they start to become aggressive. We might talk about what threat did they perceive and what is it that they're needing right now. So we can back off on the emotional level and start looking at it cognitively to help them figure out what the next best step is for them at that point. Once they've gotten used to using it in counseling, in group therapy, in role playing situations, in safe places, then they can start trying to use it at home or with safe people. And I suggest that they pick one or two safe people, not just, okay, now it's time to release this on the world.  Some people are going to be more accepting and supportive of self-improvement than others. So I ask them to choose one or two people with whom that they are going to try to start being assertive. And we talk about what that would look like. We talk about situations that this might come up. We may role play those situations out ahead of time and say, okay, maybe you and your roommate constantly have these arguments over leaving dishes all over the living room. And it ends up being this big knockdown, drag out, blow up every time. So if you're going to try to use this with your roommate, in what way could you approach him or her to address this situation? We're gonna talk about how to create those situations a little bit later. Helping the person make this transition and have successes with assertiveness is crucial to them adopting assertiveness as a communication style. The social barrier, people in your social circle expect you to act and react a certain way. If Sally has always been very quiet and timid and never really had an opinion and all of a sudden she starts coming out with opinions, people aren't gonna know how to deal with that. If Jane over here is always the more aggressive one, the more dominant one and suddenly backs off and it's just like, you know, we can do what you want. Then people are gonna start wondering, are you depressed? What's going on? Did something bad happen? Is it me? Changing your behavior confuses other people. We expect certain types of behavior from the people that we interact with. If it's a complete stranger, it's one thing. I mean, common politeness dictates how you react and interact to strangers. But if you're dealing with somebody at work, your coworkers, you know, each person you interact with in a slightly different way and you expect them to react in relatively the same way each time. Our egocentric society leads people to expect that if you change your behavior, it has to do with them.  Why aren't you talking to me? You're usually here. So other people could get very confused and the power dynamic starts to change as we move from aggressive and passive to assertive on both parts. People strive for consistency. If you used to be aggressive, changes may be interpreted as depression, disengagement or worse, exploitable weaknesses. If you used to be passive, people may interpret the change as rejection and push away. So if you start asserting what you want, people may be like, but no, I liked being able to be the one that kind of ruled everything. Then we can talk about in therapy, if people decide to disengage from the relationship when the person starts using assertiveness, we can start looking at the quality of the relationship prior to that. What does it mean if this person is less involved with you now that you're stating your wants, needs and desires? And the belief barrier. Reality is 90% perception and 10% fact. Our interpretations influence our reaction. So anytime you are in a situation, somebody could say something and you could interpret it as sarcastic, you could interpret it as supportive, you could interpret it a whole host of different ways based on prior learning with that person and a whole host of things. So what influences our interpretations? Vulnerabilities, people who are in pain or exhausted, having difficulty getting through the day may have difficulty dealing with any more input. So they may interpret things more negatively. Maybe somebody who's in chronic pain, the boss comes in and asks them to do something else and they just like lose it. They interpreted that as the boss not caring and dumping even more stuff on top of them even though they're in pain and they're exhausted and they can barely get things done. So if I were talking to a client about that interaction I might say, what did the boss know about what was going on with you? And was this person actually trying to dump more stuff on and make your life worse? That's an interpretation that the boss doesn't care. So we wanna look at the cognitive distortions that may be accompanying some of this. Prior learning experiences. If somebody calls you and says, come to my office or if you get home and your spouse says, we need to talk. Both of those, the interpretation is generally not something that's super positive. Most people have negative prior learning experiences with phrases like that. So somebody may interpret it differently than what it was meant. Transference and overgeneralization. If you're talking to somebody and they remind you of somebody from your past that you, let's be positive that you really got along with then you might interpret more of what they say as positive. If you didn't get along with them you might interpret more of what they say as being aggressive or attacking which can cause a stress reaction. So we need to get past this belief barrier these unhelpful thoughts and look at what's before us and see, okay, if we're gonna be assertive we need to get rid of this notion that there's a threat gotta identify anything that's causing a threat. And the other person's nonverbals may communicate to you that there is some element of a threat. So what do we do? First we start with a threat assessment. Failure to be assertive stems from prior efforts to being assertive being punished. So we wanna look and say what's the likelihood that if I'm assertive right now there's going to be punishment. Then we go to fear of rejection. What's the likelihood that if I am assertive that this person will be rejecting of me or my ideas and how much and why do I care? This takes us, that whole need for external validation and need for approval takes us down the self-esteem path which is another reason a lot of people aren't assertive they don't wanna make waves because they want approval they don't wanna be isolated they don't want to be rejected. So they just take all of their thoughts and feelings and wants and put them in a little box and go whatever you want as long as you'll be my friend. These are some of our biggest hijackers to being assertive. So our reality check. First thing is we wanna check our automatic or current beliefs against guess what reality? So the first thing you ask yourself what's my perception of what's going on? We'll go back to the employee who's boss dumped stuff on her and just didn't care that she was exhausted and in pain and couldn't even seem to get what she had already on her plate done. So then I would ask her what evidence do you have for and against this perception? So what were the words that your boss said? What were the nonverbals that your boss communicated? Was he or she communicating I don't care how you feel you just need to get it done or was he or she communicating I need to get this done and I'm oblivious to what's going on with you. Bosses aren't necessarily meant to handhold. They're not necessarily meant to come in and ask you how you're doing every single day. So sometimes it's up to the employee to be assertive and go, you know what boss? I'm doing pretty good just to be here today. So I am gonna get everything I can done to the best of my ability. However, you know, I do have some other stuff going on in my personal life in counseling. Obviously that brings up the issue of appropriate self-disclosure. You know, your boss probably doesn't want to know if you've got explosive diarrhea but if you're not feeling well, then you know that might be something that he or she wants to know. Then we ask how valid is the evidence? So we've got the words, we've got the nonverbals. How valid is this evidence? Did you see it?  So all you heard were the words and you didn't have the nonverbals. We know that 80% of communication is nonverbal. So if you didn't have that, you know, maybe your boss sounded snarky because somebody walked into his office while he was making his phone call to you. So you don't necessarily know what was going on. Then we ask, are you reacting to feelings or facts? Did the person feel exhausted, feel overwhelmed? So they projected all that onto the situation. Did they feel misunderstood? Did they feel like their boss didn't care? Or is there some factual basis to it? Did the boss say, I don't care that you're in pain right now. I need these six things done by Friday. Am I magnifying or catastrophizing? That's something that people need to ask each other or ask themselves, hang on. Sometimes when things happen, people take one thing and it's like, well, he's always dumping stuff on me. Maybe it's the end of the month and they have to have all the billing in by the fifth of the next month. So he needs it done this weekend or this week. So is it always that the boss is demanding all these extra things or just at the end of the quarter or the end of the month or, you know? Have I stated my feelings and needs objectively and clearly? That goes back to thinking about, did you tell your boss, hey boss, I'm not feeling so good today. I really wanted to be here and I'm here but I'm probably not gonna be 100%. So nonverbals. And before I get into that, I will point out that thebodylanguageproject.com is that free website I was telling you about has great articles, great tips for people and it's not super out there. There are great tips for people who are interviewing for jobs, I know a lot of our clients are trying to get back into the workforce but they're also great tips for people who are trying to reconnect as a family if there has been some discord, which often there is to help understand different nonverbals and what they mean. And that's also a thing that we can help parents with because they can see the nonverbals in the kids and you can call them out right then and be like, you know. So anyway, key points with nonverbals when you're communicating, when you're trying to be assertive, you don't wanna be closed off, you don't wanna be in somebody's face, you don't wanna be threatening but you also wanna take your lead from them to a certain extent. So baselining is when you get, guess what? The baseline of how does this person generally respond? How far are they from me? How animated are they? You know, me, I am like super animated whether I'm on camera doing one of these presentations or I'm just at home, I am super animated. So getting a baseline on how that person reacts and interacts, getting a baseline on what that person's relaxed face looks like. Maybe they have one of those faces that looks lost in thought or unhappy when they're relaxed. Understanding that, that's just how that person looks is part of being assertive with them instead of saying, oh, you know, Jane looks like she's really angry or unhappy, I must have done something or maybe I won't be assertive, maybe I'll just keep my stuff to myself right now. But if that's how Jane looks all the time then you're never gonna say anything. So get a baseline. Figure out how people look and act around you just in general. Look for congruence. And this is one you get with kids a lot. When you ask them, did you do your chores? Yes. When the nonverbals are not congruent. Now I had to think really hard to make that happen. Other non-congruences would be if somebody saying, I'm listening, that totally communicates, I'm not listening, I'm standing here under duress. There's a closed off posture, one shoulder's away, head's tilted down, it's sort of aggressive. But you can't just look at one particular nonverbal. It's whether the person looks up and right or down and left or whether they smile or they don't smile. Just one of those things can mean a myriad of different things. So you wanna look for Q clusters and the rule of four. You wanna look for four clues that tell you how the person's doing.  In order to get a better, more global picture of what's going on. The young woman in this picture, when I first saw it, I thought, you know, she looks unhappy, maybe angry. Then I looked at it some more and I said, you know what, maybe she looks like she doesn't feel well. And then I looked at it some more and I thought, you know what, maybe she's bored and she wants to go somewhere else. So just looking at this picture, I came up with three very different emotions. An interesting activity to do in group is to show some of the still images and ask people what's this person feeling? What's this person maybe thinking? And help them identify how much cognitive stuff they put behind their interpretation of someone's nonverbals. One thing I asked them to look at and one of the things we focus on a lot is closed postures. Cause when somebody closes off, they're not open to hearing us. And when we were all in counseling 101, we were taught that we had to have our posture open and leaning forward and all that stuff. So what does closed posture mean? It can mean a lot of different things. If somebody's angry, it means I don't care what you say, I'm not going to hear it. It could mean I'm afraid of what you're about to say so I'm going to protect myself from you. It could mean I'm in pain or I'm exhausted. So go ahead and try to hold it together and I'm going to try to hold it together while you're talking, I want to hear what you say. And you see while I'm trying to imitate those, my facial expressions are different, but my closed posture is the same. So this goes back to the rule of four. You want to look at some of the face stuff in addition to the body posture. And the person could just be cold. So we don't want to assume that just because or uncomfortable, I know a lot of people when they're talking in social situations, especially if they're not super animated, they don't know what to do with their hands. So they cross them or they shove them in their pockets. So don't just assume that because somebody's arms are closed off means that they are angry or not willing to pay attention. So what about opinions? We all have them. Opinions are qualitative statements. It was a good movie, it was a bad movie. The ruling was fair, this person was helpful. Everybody's opinion is going to be qualitative in nature. Opinions are a combination of the current situation plus prior learning. So for example, I know nothing about wine. So if I went wine tasting and somebody gave me a glass of wine and I tasted it and it tasted decent to my palate, I'd be like, that's pretty good. It could be Mad Dog 2020 or something. I don't drink much, you can tell. But I wouldn't know the difference. If it tasted good, it tasted good. So I wouldn't have prior learning to say, well, it tastes good on these elements, but not so much on these. Now coffee on the other hand, I'm a coffee snob. I'm very particular about how my coffee tastes. So I will tell you whether it tastes like it's dark or it's burned or it's this or it's that. So that prior learning is going to shape your opinions. If somebody going back to wine, just because I say a wine is good, it's my opinion based on what I know about wine. It doesn't mean I'm wrong. It just means that I think it's good. So we wanna own our opinions. Not everybody's gonna like everything. I don't like dark chocolate. Some people absolutely love it. I think it has too much of a bitter taste. Good opinions are based in fact. So you wanna say, like I just did, I don't like dark chocolate because I feel it has too strong of a bitter aftertaste. I'm giving some factual reason for my qualitative opinion.  If somebody asks your opinion or you're just putting it out there unsolicited, support it with facts that are observable so people can make their own judgment. If the opinion is negative, identify what you would change. So if somebody says, did you like that TV show? My daughter, we watched some of the Marvel television shows and she just really cannot stand the flash because they're too emotional and lovey-dovey and people cry in every episode. Those are her three big complaints. And I'm like, okay. Well, at least I understand why you don't like the show. And then she will go off on a tangent about what she would change, about how it could be the same show or even better if they omitted all that stuff and did X, Y, and Z instead. So encouraging people, again, even if it's an opinion to come up with solutions, if there was something you didn't like, if you went to a restaurant and you didn't like it, what didn't you like? And if the manager called you up and said, what would have to change for you to wanna come back? You would be able to provide solutions and say, I need this, that, and the other to change. Same thing's true in relationships. When people are trying to mend fences, when they're trying to get back together maybe after a substance abuse episode or a whole variety of things, both parties are going to have some issues. They're gonna have some wants and needs. And in order for it to be a good relationship again, or in order for them to feel good together, what would need to change? And so we can help them identify some of those things. It's their opinion of what would need to change for the relationship to be good. A lot of times when I'm working with couples and you ask them that question, they come up with vastly different things that need to change. So then we start talking about how to meld those together and prioritize and stuff. And when giving your opinion, also respect others' opinions.  And I'm just like, sure, whatever you hand me, I like, it's good. In order for them, they need to respect my opinion because I don't have any other knowledge. Now they can offer suggestions. They can say, hey, try this. It's a little drier or a little sweeter or whatever it is and provide more education. So then I can have a greater base of knowledge to base my opinion on.  Of course, that's a nasty wine. Constructive feedback. Constructive feedback is objective and measurable. It's constructive. When we construct a house, we build it on pieces. Not something in somebody's dream world, but actual boards and nails and stuff. Constructive feedback identifies something that you want to happen, something that you want to change, to build, to grow and what to do about it. So instead of saying so-and-so is lazy, the teacher could say, John has failed to complete his assignments for the past three weeks. That's very objective. That's very measurable. So our goal would be to get his assignments turned in each week. Stupid.  If somebody says, John has difficulty with following basic instructions for opening his register, that gives me something to work with. And I can say, okay, well either we can train in a different way or we can move him to something that doesn't have as many steps.   Give me something objective that I can either choose to change or not. Constructive feedback provides information that a person can choose to address and or presents an actionable problem. I didn't say they had to address it. As part of assertiveness, I can own what I want to change. And I can say, this is what I would need to feel comfortable. This is what I would need to be happy. This is what I would need. It doesn't mean the other person's gonna feel that way. It means that there's a, we've opened a line for negotiation. When you're working with kids, identifying what the problem is that's objective and measurable.   Let's look at those specific behaviors and see what we can come up with. And constructive feedback provides possible solutions and develops an action plan. So you don't wanna go, John's failed to complete his assignments for the last three weeks, you need to fix that. That's not constructive. It's a little bit better than just saying John's lazy, but generally if the person knew how to fix it, they would have done it already. So we want to say, what are some possible solutions? We wanna encourage the person to start brainstorming possible solutions. So the teacher might say, what might help John get his assignments in? Or what's going on in John's life that might have changed how often and how diligent he is about turning in his assignments? So constructive feedback is not critical. It's not aggressive. It's not accusatory. It just is. This is what I'm seeing. These are the objective facts. And if it's a problem, like the person having difficulty opening his register, obviously you're going to elicit some sort of response from the other person to fix the problem, which takes us to requests. You wanna create a win-win. State the reason for your request. I'm feeling exhausted and overwhelmed trying to manage all of these tasks. I recognize that as a result, my work product has gone down and I'm having difficulty prioritizing. Now this is like an example straight up, something I said to my boss one time. But let's look at the three parts of this. I stated how I felt and why. I recognized that there was a problem that affected him because he was my boss and my work product's going down and that makes him unhappy. The third part, I'm having difficulty prioritizing. Stated this is the challenge I'm seeing and if we can figure out a way to prioritize, maybe, you know, because I really want to be a good employee, then state what you need in the situation. I need help prioritizing which of these tasks is most important to you. I remember one time he had handed me a grant. We were coming up in an audit. I had the general day-to-day work to do to make sure charts were in order and then there was something else that came up and I was just like, Richard, all of this stuff has to be done by the same deadline and there's no way I can do it. So I need help prioritizing or I need some assistance because I want to produce a quality product. I want to get this done for you but I can't do it by myself. So I stated two possible solutions and then we talked about, you know, what needed to be done, what could be slacked off on a little bit to make the situation doable for all concerned and so he was, you know, in good with his bosses and everything which was the win-win. So presenting requests in a way that brings the person in and says, okay, this is a problem for you too but I have some solutions. So let's talk about how to make this happen. Assertive communication means stating your feelings, thoughts and needs in a respectful but owning manner. So one of the first challenges or hurdles a lot of our clients have is figuring out what that means.   Did that feel more passive? How would you feel if somebody said that to you in that way? Which is why the role plays are really helpful and why group counseling is really helpful because they can practice assertiveness with each other in group, you know? And it comes up if somebody walks in late, if somebody doesn't show up for two days, if somebody's interrupting, if somebody says something, you know, in substance abuse groups, sometimes the concept of controlled use comes up and that gets people's ire really up so we can practice using assertive communication. If your group is able to handle it and if you feel like you are up to the task, you have to be really comfortable with your group, sometimes it can be helpful, and this is going back to emotion efficacy therapy, sometimes it can be helpful to start a group out with an emotionally charged topic in order to get people's ire up a little bit and go, okay, now we're only gonna communicate assertively and practice doing that. And like I said, you can see just, you can imagine what some groups would do with that so you don't wanna create a situation that's harmful to your clients. There have to be strict ground rules and all that kind of stuff, but I have seen it work in situations and it can be really, really powerful. Social barriers are those created when you start acting differently than those in your social circle expect and you've got to be able to stay strong and stay assertive even if people aren't used to it. Initially, Sally, who may not have had a lot of opinions before may start stating her opinion and nobody listens to her because they're like, whatever, we're gonna go over here and watch this movie. Eventually, Sally can figure out how to become assertive without being aggressive or how to talk to that person and go, I told you what my feelings were or what my opinion was and I felt like you discounted it. I felt like you didn't pay any attention. So it's important for people to start negotiating with those in their social circle and let them know that I'm trying to be assertive, I'm trying to not get my feelings hurt all the time and so things are gonna be a little different and we're just gonna have to work this out. Belief barriers are those automatic thoughts and schemas that help us interpret events based on past learning. So when you got called to the principal's office, when you were in school, past learning would say, if you're getting called to the principal's office, there's some really bad mojo fixin' to happen but as an adult, if you get called to your boss's office, doesn't mean the same thing. So sometimes people will get upset, they will get in that fight-or-flight reaction because they start interpreting things negatively and they create a crisis and get all wound up when there's really not a crisis or at least not a huge one. It could be a little one, but they can manage it. Part of assertiveness also involves helping them learn that they can handle basic crises. Perfect example. I had a client who had a long history of substance use and this time he had gotten out of treatment, he was doing really good, he had a job, he had his own apartment for the first time and I don't know how many years and he was sleeping one morning and somebody came and banged at his door at eight in the morning and his first reaction was, oh crap, it's the cops or somebody coming to arrest me for a warrant or something. He knew intellectually that he hadn't done anything wrong and that he had no outstanding warrants but his first reaction was that old learning experience of if somebody banging on my door, it's gonna be bad. But he calmed himself down, he was like, I got this and walked to the door, opened it up and I don't remember who it was but it was a very pleasant experience, it wasn't something that was threatening or harmful. He had an experience that taught him and he was so proud of himself that he didn't run, he didn't turn out all the lights and pretend he wasn't there, he actually faced it, he had the courage to face it and he made it through the other side and it wasn't so bad. When being assertive, it's best to provide your opinion or observation supported by facts because those ambiguous terms like stupid and lazy and dingy and I'll walk into a building and a lot of us do and we have adjectives that we will use to describe places, institutional. What does it mean if you walk into a place and it feels institutional? It may mean something very different to you than it does to me. So specifically, why do you think it feels institutional and possibly what would you do to change it if you had that option? And finally, when making requests, it's ideal to create a win-win by pointing out what is currently wrong, what needs to happen and how your solutions will benefit both parties. You don't have to explicitly come out and I didn't have to explicitly say, Richard, if you help me out with this, I'm gonna be able to be a better employee for you. That was the undercurrent. But I pointed out that I knew I was struggling to be as effective as I normally was. It's a long road and if you start early, if you start with younger kids, adolescents, it becomes easier but it's a learning process. We don't learn that. When we are born, we learn fight or flee. We don't learn assertiveness and negotiation. A couple of other recommended readings that I really like, a manual for assertiveness trainers. So if you happen to be teaching a class on assertiveness, a skills-based sort of thing, really good book. The Assertiveness Workbook is a CBT workbook to help people learn to be more assertive. And Cool, Common, Confident is a book designed to work with children, younger children and it provides 40 exercises. Most of them are geared around building self-esteem and developing that sense that you don't need to be accepted by everybody all the time, that you're okay for who you are and your opinions are valid. And then teaching them how to identify their feelings, wants and needs and state them in an assertive, respectful manner. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe, either in your podcast player or on YouTube. If you wanna attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes, you can subscribe at hgtbs colon slash slash allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. This episode has been brought to you in part by allceus.com, providing 24-7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006. You can use coupon code, counselor toolbox to get 20% off of your current order. If you're a podcast listener, especially on an Apple device, it would be extremely helpful if you would review counselor toolbox. 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