When I Say No I Feel Guilty How to Cope--Using the Skills of Systematic Assertive Therapy

The best-seller that helps you say I just said 'no' and I don't feel guilty!  Are you letting your kids get away with murder?  Are you allowing your mother-in-law to impose her will on you?  Are you embarrassed by praise or crushed by criticism?  Are you having trouble coping with people?  Learn the answers inWhen I Say No I Feel Guilty  the best-seller with revolutionary new techniques for getting your own way. From the Publisher The best-seller that helps you say I just said 'no' and I don't feel guilty! Are you letting your kids get away with murder? Are you allowing your mother-in-law to impose her will on you? Are you embarrassed by praise or crushed by criticism? Are you having trouble coping with people? Learn the answers inWhen I Say No I Feel Guilty the best-seller with revolutionary new techniques for getting your own way. From the Inside Flap The best-seller that helps you say I just said 'no' and I don't feel guilty!  Are you letting your kids get away with murder?  Are you allowing your mother-in-law to impose her will on you?  Are you embarrassed by praise or crushed by criticism?  Are you having trouble coping with people?  Learn the answers inWhen I Say No I Feel Guilty  the best-seller with revolutionary new techniques for getting your own way. From the Back Cover The best-seller that helps you say I just said 'no' and I don't feel guilty! Are you letting your kids get away with murder? Are you allowing your mother-in-law to impose her will on you? Are you embarrassed by praise or crushed by criticism? Are you having trouble coping with people? Learn the answers in When I Say No I Feel Guilty the best-seller with revolutionary new techniques for getting your own way. About the Author Manuel J. Smith (1934-2007) was a psychologist and a pioneer in the life-changing assertiveness training movement. He was the author of a number of self-help books including the bestseller When I Say No I Feel Guilty which became a standard text used in assertiveness training in schools and the workplace. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 Our inherited survival responses coping with other people by fight flight or verbal assertiveness”   Almost twenty years ago in college just after being discharged from the army I met an honest gutsy man. Joe was a young professor then and I was one of his students. He taught psychology when I met him and still does. He taught it in a tough opinionated open style. He left his students none of their naïve notions about the discipline of psychology. He refused to give the expected explanations for morbidly interesting aberrations or even for mundane normalities of the human mind behavior or motivating spirit. In place of complicated theories on why we behave in a certain way he stressed simplicity. For him it was enough to describe how things worked psychologically and that they did work using simple assumptions urging us to let it go at that. He held the firm scholarly belief that 95 per cent of what is pandered as scientific psychological theory is sheer garbage and that it will be a long time before we really know our basic mechanics well enough to explain completely most of what we see.   The merit of Joe’s argument is as compelling now as it was twenty years ago … and I agree with it! Long-winded technical or mystical explanations are often intriguing and even literary but not only are they unnecessary they actually complicate without adding a jot to our understanding. To use what psychology does have to offer it is more important to know what will work not why it will work. For example in treating patients I find that it is typically useless to concentrate a lot on why a patient is in trouble that tends to be academic masturbation and can go on for years with no beneficial results. It may even be harmful. It is much more ben