Sin ser especialista en el tema, me parece una exposición muy clara, detallada y práctica (da muchos ejemplos) sobre la asertividad. Hay varios casos de la vida conyugal y familiar, entre otros aspectos en los que se puede aplicar. Por el lado de los inconvenientes, no lo puedo recomendar a cualquiera porque uno de los fundamentos del autor es que solo cada uno es su propio y último juez, sin tomar en cuenta ninguna consideración moral.o religiosa, que considera como estructuras manipulativas (junto con muchas otras). En este sentido, no toma en cuenta que existen personas creyentes y personas para las que sí importa un sistema de valores morales, de justicia, solidaridad, etc. que agradecerían que se les mostrara cómo pueden beneficiarse de la asertividad sin tener que abandonar sus creencias morales y religiosas. Esperemos encontrar alguna obra más equilibrada en este aspecto.

I learned about this book from a local Podcast where a successful local entrepreneur who sold a business was interviewed. This book gives some great insight into assertiveness and how to be assertive. The method and examples presented are compelling, however I also feel they are a little dated. Useful, but take the guidance in this book with a grain of salt. The book was written in 1975. Its central theme and ideals are still very relevant today, however social norms have changed and that needs to be acknowledged. In a nutshell is this book worth the time to read -- absolutely.

Why five stars? Because if you or someone you love has low-self esteem, learned helplessness, is a child abuse survivor, in an abusive relationship, etc., this book will be very helpful. I think it's the best we have on this essential life skill. To learn to assert ones needs is an important component of self-compassion. The book is a bit over-the-top, maybe even a bit in-your-face, but if a person has zero assertiveness or has learned not to even bother trying to assert their needs or wants, then an over-the-top book can be a great recovery tool. It's repetitiveness is for instructional purposes only--no one reads a book like this to be enveloped in lyrical writing and consuming intrigue. It is somewhat dated, which means that there is probably a market for another author to write a book, perhaps a better book, on the subject.

I thought I knew all about assertiveness. Then I read this book. What a world this would be if everyone had the skills that this book leaves you with. The examples make this a particularly useful and entertaining read. The principles have stayed with me and made a difference in all kinds of interactions. If you had to pick only one self-help book, this classic would be tough to beat.

Helpful explanations of negative assertion, negative inquiry, and broken record techniques to use when you are being manipulated. A lot of the example dialogues are repetitive and tiresome after reading a few. Some of the tactics feel like they're the basis of 'pickup artist' techniques in the sense that the person using the techniques should not take no for an answer to what they want... which, confusingly, also feels manipulative?

This is one of the best books I've ever read. I think it is an essential book for every human being who lacks communication skills and wants to improve them. An eye opener on how people can manipulate you using feelings of guilt and practical steps on how to overcome it. Also great advice on how to take in criticism. Amazing book!

The examples are dated, however, the book and the suggestions are worthwhile and necessary for those who get bulldozed often or who have been raised in manipulative, abusive homes and are unfamiliar with anything other than passive coping styles.

I will be using this book as a regular reference.

The thesis here is that as children, we've been socialized, primarily by our parents, to accept a vague, abstract notion of what is "right" and what is "wrong" entirely as a means to manipulate our behavior, and that this is used arbitrarily to make us feel guilty. This often stems from our parents' guilt of assertion, by, for example, alluding to a higher authority than themselves, such as "the Police" or "God."

The author thus blames the self-reinforcement of guilt on the parent-to-child relationship, causing our inability to be assertive, and our overreliance on socialized forms of fight-or-flight response, usually in the form of passive-aggressiveness or passive-flight.

The author seems to be leaping from one assertion to another, and the theory seems to have holes in it. I couldn't follow the trail of thought here. He was rather vague about the role of arbitrary rules and laws, and the notion of good and bad that's implanted in our childhood. Does that mean that our conscience is merely a product of socialization? That it's merely a superego? It seems to me that the author was too embedded in the zeitgeist of Freud and also evolutionary psychology at the time of his writing. I, for one, certainly do not believe that you can simply reduce our conscience to merely a product of socialization—and that it's simply a product of manipulation through the guilt of our parents.

Okay leaving that aside, we learn there are three ways, generally speaking, of dealing with problems with other people: ancient fight or flight, and the brand new verbal assertiveness that came with our prefrontal cortex or something.

He takes this framework and makes a strange Rousseauian wrapping around it, discarding Ernest Haeckel's recapulation theory, and says we are inherently and naturally gifted with the ability to be verbally assertive. Actually, it's the first thing we do when we come out of the womb. He writes: "As infants, we are naturally assertive. Your first independent act at birth was to protest the treatment you were receiving! If something happened which you didn't like, you let others know immediately by verbal assertion—whining, crying or screaming at all hours of the day or night."

Unfortunately, through our parents' guilt and manipulative behavior that we pick up by osmosis, thus internalizing this, by way of super-ego, we lose our ability to verbally assert ourselves and fall back on fight or flight.

To me, this theory makes no sense. Simply falling on the floor and crying isn't being verbally assertive. It's taking the most manipulative elements of fight and flight, combining them in a cocktail designed for maximum manipulation of those around you.

If anyone simply does not get what they want and starts crying, this is not verbal assertiveness; this is a hardwired biological tendency you default to as an attempt to manipulate the feelings of the other person.

While you might say it's bad for an adult to do this, to simply attribute virtue to this act because the baby has no language, you're revealing an irrational bias toward the pristine quality of nature and the corrupting forces of society.

I'd also point out the problems with stating how arbitrary the rules are for our behavior. It seems to me that morality stems upward from the implicit into the explicit. Thus, we shouldn't assume by default that social conventions are arbitrary, even if we can't give a rationale for them. This is what I believe is the naive arrogance of the liberal radical social reformers.

In the beginning of the book, he said that he abides by the approach of focusing on what works, not why it works. And I wish he'd stick with his own principles, because his underlying reasoning for our behavior is simply a product of speculation and the materialistic zeitgeist of the time, because the actual core message of the book is valuable.

The core value here is that it highlights the contrast between assertiveness and manipulation. Manipulation has three main targets: making the target feel ignorant, anxious, or guilty—these are the languages of manipulation. Thus, a manipulative exchange might be about who can make the other one more guilty.

What I particularly liked about this book is the concrete examples it gives. An example of manipulation is where the mother is bothered by her child playing too loudly in the living room; she might feel too guilty about expressing her needs directly: "Get the hell out of here while I'm trying to sleep!" and thus resort to manipulation through guilt: "Why are you playing with the dog instead of your sister? Don't you know X Y Z? A B C might happen if you don't play with her."

Taking the assertive way, while the child might be feeling guilty for bothering the parent sleeping, feel anxious for the raw emotions experienced, and feel ignorant for not knowing this was a problem, the idea here is that the parent didn't use these feelings as means to get what they want; rather, it's the byproduct of self-expression, and this byproduct can and should, ideally, be minimized, if not eradicated, through continuous exposure and reassurance that it's actually okay, and there's no real need to have such feelings.

What it breaks down to, essentially, is that we feel guilty (or anxious) about asserting our own will over people, so we obfuscate our own guilt by pulling the strings of guilt on other people to get what we want. We also feel guilty, or fear consequences, of irrational things that bother us, and we tackle these problems sometimes with withdrawal (stifled flight response) or passive-aggressiveness (neutered fight response).

A lot of people make excuses and try to manipulate to get out of their own guilt of broken promises. Here's an example of how to break a promise: "I know it's dumb of me to make a promise that I can't keep, but we are going to put off going to Disneyland on Saturday. You didn't do anything wrong and it's not your fault. Let's see when we can go again, okay?"

The author tries to give some philosophical justification of a "Bill of assertive rights" which rests on the idea that you have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions and to take responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.

Taken for what it is, I really like this idea. When I was younger, I picked this tip up from a secondary source which probably took it from here, and it was like an "aha" experience, waking me up to the fact that I'm an adult and I carry the source of truth within me, from which I can be a real judge of what's right. I've also picked up to discard "should" from my vocabulary, and that made a lot of sense to me.

However, I'm not onboard when he says "ultimate judge" of our own behavior. He writes: "If we truly doubt that we are the ultimate judge of our own behavior, we are powerless to control our own destiny without all sorts of rules about how each of us 'should' behave."

The author says that the way we behave ourselves is based on arbitrary grounds, and that all laws and rules are invented by insecure people who try to cope with the complexity and ambiguity of their own behavior; they invent rules for themselves and impose them on others, using the beliefs from our childhood as outlines and templates for these rules.

And in order to enforce these arbitrarily invented rules and standards of right and wrong, they will try to use logic and reason to control your behavior that may be in conflict with their own personal wants, likes, and dislikes.

This seems to be applied psychology of Nietzschean post-modernism. Nietzsche said that our philosophies are just rationalizations for our will to power. Thus, the advice here is to circumvent all the rationalization, all the logic, all the moralism, and just be raw and direct about your will-to-power.

Thus we are advised, instead of complying with requests to answer as to why we want something, we should be perfectly fine to simply state "I want it, deal with it."

Which is strange considering this contradicts the core tenet of this book. The author isn't telling you "Do this." He's trying to persuade you through reason and logic and evolutionary and childhood psychology to act in a different way.

He says that a person does not need a justification for a need; the only justification is the fact that they want it. And that they are the ultimate judge for whether their wanting is right or wrong. This, to me, seems to advocate for naive narcissism.

Being your own judge of your behavior essentially means you make your own rules for living, but these rules must be derived from values. To be your own judge, you must define your own values. This was essentially Nietzsche's call to action, that we create our own values. Because, of course, if values are handed on to us, how can we truly be our own ultimate judge? Schopenhauer said famously that you cannot decide whether you want something or not. You cannot simply use willpower to make yourself like something or dislike something. I think Dostoyevsky's character Raskolnikov illustrated this well; the result of attempting to override your inherited values results in insanity... something that happened to Nietzsche himself. A generous reading of Nietzsche of "Creating your own values" could be interpreted as simply cultivating the wanted traits over time, but this does not avoid the fact that we're essentially stuck with our values, as emergent from the unconscious.

Speaking of which, I don't see a good rationale for being the ultimate judge of our own behavior. Should we assume we have the capacity for it, and when should we do that? Certainly, a toddler does not have this capacity. Usually we put the age of consent around 16 or 18, but it would still be ridiculous to say that we tend to gain the ability to be the judge of our own actions around 20. Isn't that, if I were to use the favorite word of the author, "arbitrary"?

The book included examples of teenage girls being more assertive to their fathers about how controlling he was wanting her to come home earlier. So, would it really be right to say a teenage girl is appropriately deemed the ultimate judge of her actions? And she has the right to take the responsibilities for the consequences? Obviously I'm using some distasteful rhetoric here, but it seems to me that this is incompatible with the commonsense notion that has manifested as a legalized age of sexual consent.

I think the author went too far with the "arbitrary"-ness of right and wrong ultimately. I think he should have stopped at some point. I would prefer to have said that our inherent conscience, which is aimed at an objective right and wrong, can be weaponized, abused in the form of manipulating us to do according to their own guilt or will-to-power. The line of legal codes, ethics, morality, God, the State, dad, is often blurred and confused to our own detriment. I agree with him that it's a common problem to confuse systems of right and wrong with legal codes. They haven't made a clear distinction in their brain between the right and wrong of the deepest sense of their conscience and following some rule to the letter; thus, in Nietzsche's words, they have adopted a herd-mentality and are easily exploited.

What I especially dislike about this post-modern ethic is that by removing objective morality (what's right or wrong, what ought to be), the fallback is extreme subjectivism, which leads to moral relativism. Charles Taylor criticized this in his Ethics of Authenticity, where there was a growing notion, especially in the United States at the time this book was written, where college students were taught to feel justified for their choices or desires by the circular reasoning that they were chosen by them. In other words, we can define our own metric for what's right and wrong; thus, objective justice or truth didn't exist, instead, everyone had their own subjective truth (which leads to people believing they are cats, and ultimately violence).

When everyone has their own subjective truth, then taken to the logical conclusion, we are reverting back to a society made out of two-year-olds, because words will be of no value to deal with conflict through rational discourse.

Further, the framework of this book is flawed. The author gives many examples of assertiveness in action, where they accuse the opponent of trying to manipulate and induce guilt, where the protagonist isn't.

There was a very annoying insistence that everyone the author or one of his clients was dealing with was "manipulating them," especially through guilt. It could be always interpreted both ways.

The irony of all this is that the book is teaching us that there is right and wrong: it's wrong to manipulate and make others feel guilty. And the book criticizes that people use structures of right and wrong to arbitrarily apply them to what serves them best. And this is exactly what this book does too. My opponent's motivations are due to a desire to induce guilt and manipulate, whereas I am simply expressing my desires to get what I want.

Don't get me wrong, there is genuine value in the book. Again, bringing to awareness the hijacking of conscience for strings of manipulation is very worthwhile. And this narcissistic, hyper-subjective, post-modernistic relativistic framework might be a good useful thing to adopt if you're in serious need of some assertiveness. But my enthusiasm for books is limited that offer an overcompensation instead of a truthful target.

A big chunk of the book is dedicated to ways of handling criticism and conflict. I really enjoyed these. The methods used were "fogging," "negative assertion," "negative inquiry" and "broken record". They remind me a lot about frame-control (NLP term, I think). There were a lot of dialogue examples of how you can just assert your way through to get what you want, and I started having dreams where I was fogging and broken recording evil car mechanics as if I was installing new firmware on my mind. I believe the practical utility of having a system like this to follow is very useful.

The cool thing about assertion is that it massively improves your relationships with people. They begin to respect you. There is less residue of stifled guilt, anxiety, and anger, less passive-aggressiveness or withdrawal. The more you assert yourself, the more you like the person you've asserted yourself to. It raises the vibrational frequency for lack of better terms, and for romantic relationships, it unblocks energetic blockages which stifle the sexual energy between you: "Assertion leads to insertion."

Reading material like this is healthy once in a while. It brought to my forefront the manipulativeness that is so mundane and everyday, we virtually swim in it. I've become a bit hyper-conscious of it, maybe to a fault. Manipulation is the opposite of humor. In seduction, men are throwing flattering seductive ploys such as clichés like "I love you," "I think of you all the time," "you are so sexy, etc." Since reading this book, a woman said "Peter, you've been so funny lately," which resulted from me basically doing the opposite of seduction—kind of like Charles Bukowski.

>*me boring conversation*
>her: i was busy (manipulative, making me guilty for interfering with her productive life)
>her: how are you? (manipulative, i have the assertion to not reply)
>me: im busy (self-disclosure)
>she laughs
>her: are you mad? (manipulative)
>me: like always (fogging? i don't know)
>her: why? (manipulative - playing on my guilt that i leave her wondering)
>me: i got two parking tickets today (self-disclosure)
>me: and you let me hanging as always (self-disclosure)
>me: i don't have a family and instead i'm using my saturday reading a book that contradicts itself while checking my phone once in a while to remind myself that you are too busy to attend my meaningless boring messages (negative assertion, fogging, negative self inquiry, compromise? i don't know, i'm getting the hang of these. and no the thing in the parentheses i did not actually say, it would be ridiculous unless she had read the book. anyway it's been a long day, i give it 3/5 stars. wait, am i still in the parentheses?)

This book needs a revision. It has not aged well.

Manuel J. Smith’s When I Say No, I Feel Guilty hits hard if you’ve ever choked on the word “no.” It’s not soft or apologetic—it rips into why rejecting guilt feels like defying some sacred rule we’ve been tricked into following. There’s real anger in seeing how deeply society drills that trap into us, making boundaries feel like betrayal. It stings to confront how far that cycle can stretch.
Smith lays out assertive rights—blunt, potent stuff like you don’t owe anyone your yes or your feelings. It’s infuriating how simple it seems once it’s spelled out, yet so damn tough to live. He nails the conditioning that keeps us hooked on guilt, and it’s impossible not to feel pissed at how it’s all set up. But he doesn’t just vent—he hands you tools. Repeating your stance without flinching, letting criticism slide off—they’re basic, almost too obvious, but they stick. They sketch a life that’s lighter, truer, unburdened by what you never asked for.
It also forced me to see I’ve played both roles: the one crushed by guilt and the one steamrolling over someone else’s “no.” This cuts deep. Sure, there’s a bitter edge to not cracking this open sooner, a quiet fury at how long it took to see. But the book pivots to what’s ahead—not dwelling on, it’s human. Smith’s gritty take isn’t a pat on the back—it’s a shove to stand up. For anyone sick of bending over backward, this isn’t a suggestion; it’s a wake-up call.

P.S : If this book caught my eye earlier it would have crashed people-pleasing party sooner, might’ve RSVP’d ‘no’ to a decade of guilt trips .

It was an OK book, but seems a complicated way of saying NO. What about just saying NO? Maybe I will have more to say once I have digested the methods suggested.

We cope with stressors, due to feeling inadequate to cope with problems and the people who present them, with certain survival responses: either (passive) fight or (passive) flight, or verbal assertion.
While coping, you have certain rights:
1. You have the right to be the final judge of yourself. Manipulation occurs when external rules are imposed upon you, and people try to control your behavior.
2. You do not need to explain your behaviour for someone else to decide if it's right or wrong. [You are not responsible to them for your actions]
3. You have the right to decide whether you take on other people's problems or not. Ultimately you do not have the ability to create mental stability or happiness for someone else and that is not your responsibility. [It is not your obligation, and you don't need to sacrifice your own values for things and institutions greater than yourself]
4. You have the right to change your mind. [You are not irresponsible, and you are capable of making decisions by yourself.]
5. You have the right to make mistakes (and to be responsible for them!). It is part of the human condition to make errors, and you do not need to atone for them. [You do not need to feel guilty, and it does not mean you are incapable of making proper decisions.]
6. You have the right to not know the answer to any question asked. [You are not irresponsible and you do not need to feel guilty. Nobody can know all and if they want to speculate, they can.]
7. You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them. Other people don't have to like you, for you to interact with them. [the goodwill can be used as manipulative leverage | logic is used to judge your behaviors, as if it explains personal confusion and defines what you should do]
8. You have the right to say "I don't understand". We do not always understand what another person means or wants. [You are not irresponsible or ignorant if you can't read other people's desires/needs]
9. You have the right to say "I don't care". You don't need to strive for perfection, you dont need to want to improve on things. [You don't need to make up for your flaws and you are not obliged to follow suggestions for improvement and you're not lazy or unworthy of respect because of that]

Skills to deal with manipulation:
Fogging: Acceptance of manipulative criticism by calmbly acknowledging the probability of truth in the critique. Allows you to receive criticism comfortably without becoming anxious or defensive.

Free information: Recognition of simple cues in mundane conversation to give information about yourself. Allows you to feel less shy to keep a conversation up while allowing them to talk more easily about themselves. Agreeing with the truths within the criticism.
"That's probably true mom. If i didn't go out so often I would probably get more sleep."

Negative assertion: Acceptance of your errors and faults (without having to apologize) by strongly and sympathetically agreeing with hostile or constructive criticism of your negative qualities. Allows you to more comfortably look at flaws in your behaviour or personality without feeling defensive and anxious, or denying error.
"Youre right, I wasn't too smart in the way i handled that", "That was a dumb thing of me to do mom, I don't like it this way myself."

Negative inquiry: Questioning about the negative criticism in order to use the information or prompt the critic to be more assertive and less dependent on manipulative ploys. Allows you to seek criticism about yourself more comfortably, and gives the other person the room to express honest negative feelings and improve communication.

Self-disclosure: Teaches the acceptance and initiation of discussion of both the positive and negative aspects of your personality, behavior, lifestyle, intelligence, to enhance social communication. Allows you to comfortably express aspects about yourself that previously caused feelings of ignorance, anxiety or guilt.

Workable compromise: Allows you and the other person to decide on a middle ground. You can always bargain for your goals unless the compromise affects your feelings of self-respect. And if the end goal involves a matter of your self-worth, there can be no compromise.