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Alcoholics and addicts are called upon to learn new living skills to replace the roles that chemicals played in their lives. Some of the most important skills to be acquired in early recovery are effective communication and relationship skills. 

Assertiveness is necessary for communication and relationship skills. This self-assured style not only involves being able to stand up for one’s own rights without trampling on the rights of others, it also involves being able to say “no” without feeling guilty. It encompasses taking responsibility for one’s own feelings, behaviors, decisions, actions, and reactions, while giving up responsibility for those same things in others. It includes being able to appropriately express a full range of emotions to others.

Self-confident, firm behavior involves being able to openly, honestly, and directly communicate one’s wants and needs. Firm boundary setting does not involve building impenetrable walls. It tells others where you stand, and outlines a range of appropriate behavior in regard to you. 

Passivity denotes an absence of self-confidence and firmness. It generally involves abandoning one’s own rights, wants, needs, to the wants or needs of others. An absence of appropriate boundaries allows others to pretty much treat you as they want, regardless of what you want. 

Aggression involves trespassing others’ boundaries to get your own wants or needs met. It can involve verbal, emotional, sexual, spiritual, or intellectual abuse. This could involve manipulation and dirty fight tactics. People can also be passive-aggressive, which is about being aggressive in sneaky, covert way. More often than not, it is about acting out anger in a hidden way. A classic example is typical backbiting, talking behind one’s back kind of behavior that you see in the world of work every day. Most people exhibit this behavior from time to time. The following are examples of passive aggressive responses to a request that you don’t want to do:

1. Saying “ok”, but not having any intention of doing it.
2. Saying “ok”, intending to do it, but putting it off until eventually they do it themselves.
3. Saying “ok”, doing it, but doing a lousy job at it, thinking “they will never ask me to do that again.”
4. Saying “ok”, doing it and doing a good job at it, but going around to everyone complaining about their imposition in the first place.
5. Instead of saying “no”, giving 15 excuses why you can’t do it and the real reason is that you don’t want to.

An appropriately firm way to deal with an undesirable request, is to say, “No, I don’t want to do that”, or “No thanks”, or “No.” When you are not accustomed to being assertive, a simple “No” can feel aggressive. 

Most people have some area of their lives where they feel pretty confident about being standing up for themselves. Even the least self-assured person has some area where they can be assertive and the most self-confident person has some area where they just can’t seem to get it together.

The skills that you use to be firm in one area are transferable to other areas where it seems like you will always give in. All it takes to transfer these skills is “risk”. The risk is usually fear of loss when you avoid trying to be assertive. This fear of loss is often about loss of esteem, self-esteem, loss of goods and services, or loss of the relationship. Most of the time, the fear is way out of proportion to the likelihood of actual loss.

In order to find out which areas you have the least confidence in your ability to be assertive, ask yourself whether you typically behave in a confident, firm manner when you engage in the following circumstances:

1. Getting off the phone from the telemarketers without listening to their sales pitch?
2. Taking something defective back to Walmart?
3. Sending a steak back that is not cooked the way you ordered it?
4. Telling your neighbor “no” when s/he wants to borrow something.
5. Setting boundaries with someone at work who tries to take advantage of your good nature either by trying to get you to do their work, or asking you to cover up for them.
6. Negotiating for changes at work, either for more money or a change in working conditions. 
7. Saying “no” to one of your siblings who wants something that you don’t want to give — time, energy, or other resources.
8. Saying “no” (and staying at “no”) to one of the kids who wants something you don’t want to give, do, or buy.
9. Setting boundaries with the previous generation (your parents or spouse’s parents) when they want to meddle in your business where they don’t belong (e.g. money or marriage).
10. Conveying your feelings assertively to your significant other who has done something that involved your feelings being hurt.

Can you see patterns in the areas where you want to be confidently firm, and where you have more trouble? What are they?

In which areas of difficulty can you accomplish being assertive by practicing the skills you already have? If you took the risk, what would happen?

Look at the areas that lack confident firmness and ask yourself “What is it that I haven’t been willing to risk?”
Much of the time, the fear is not reality-based. If you find that you cannot be confidently firm in close personal relationships, the risk is probably fear of abandonment. You may be afraid that those significant people won’t love you if you are honest with them or if you take care of yourself. 

Assertiveness is a worthwhile endeavor. It builds and reinforces self-esteem. Passivity, aggression, and passive-aggression undermines self-esteem. Learning to be confident and competent in your relationships with others is an important recovery task. Confident, firm communication is a component of acquiring these relationship skills.

Question by nunya: Does anyone know at least 4 to 7 places where someone can get long term treatment for drug addiction?
This is for D.A.R.E

Best answer:

Answer by cintchick
The link I included below will take you to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) treatment center locator. SAMHSA is a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services

Enter a city and state, then select “Continue”. You will then be offered options to target your search. In your case, under “Services Provided” you would select “Substance Abuse” and under “Type of Care” you would select “Residential Long-Term Treatment” and/or “Hospital Inpatient”. Again, select “Continue”. You will then see a list of centers with their contact information, as well as a summary of the services they offer and forms of payment accepted.

Add your own answer in the comments!

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Question by Emma: what are some ways to reduce homelessness?
i am writing a proposal on homelessness in richmond va. I am looking for some ways in which we could reduce or eliminate the homeless.

So far i can only think of 2 which are affordable housing and increase in employment rate.

i need two more ways of which we could potentially reduce the amount of homeless or eliminate it altogether

any suggestions would be helpful

Best answer:

Answer by rec4lms
I think that the first issue for you to tackle is to determine why they are homeless.

The issues that I deal with find that a significant percent of the homeless have mental health issues. The second issue (not as large as mental health issues in my experience) is that many people have issues with alcohol or drug abuse. (Many people can function while abusing alcohol/drugs but many can not.) The third issue is that people have no jobs, no money, no credit, and no resources to turn to when they are down and out.

The USA does a horrible job in dealing with mental health issues, with most of the mental health hospitals being defunded or closed. Unfortunately the response the government has taken is to wait for them to commit a crime and then incarcerate them. Thus, determine how many mental health facilities are in the Richmond area that help those who can not afford treatment. (The only place we use is Central State in Petersburg.) Also note that those with mental illness can not be compelled to take their medications without a court order. And I’ve never seen the court order someone to take medication unless they are incarcerated and need to be up for trial.

Alchohol and drug abuse is a completely different problem to deal with. It may be recreational, it may be escapist, or it may be addiction. Some will respond to treatment, especially if they want treatment. However, they have to want to improve. To paraphrase one person that I worked with, when they were taking drugs they felt that everything was perfect.

Lack of job/money/resources is both one of the worst situations but also one of the easiest one’s to directly handle. Note that I listed “resources.” A resource is anything that one person can use. This can include friends and family. Religion is also important in this because even though it is often bad mouthed in TV and movies however in reality church members stick together. Affordable housing is a good idea but often politics gets involved in a situation. Several years ago I was earning $ 19,000 a year, which is not very much. My roommates and I got kicked out of an apartment because a new company bought it and made it Section 8. The reasoning we were given was that we earned too much money. A lot of the rules and laws are kind of idiotic and often geared to the lowest common denominator. Try to improve yourself and you don’t get help, but don’t try and you get supported. (There are many who truly do need help because they have hit rock bottom but unfortunately a lot of people take advantage of that safety net.) My neighbor is a great example of this. Her husband passed away and she works three jobs to keep her kids and house. However, she could quit all three jobs and get federal money. There is no tapering off of assistance, either you get assistance or you get nothing and this makes it difficult because the money for assistance is often more than the money you can earn on your own.

So, I give you the following: 1) Improve Psychiatric Care for those who need it.
2) Increase alcohol and drug treatment options.
3) Rework the Section 8, Unemployment Benefits, and the Food Stamp/WIC programs. We can probably go for Medicaid also but I don’t deal with that all that much.

I know, Too Long Didn’t Read. I used to be positive and felt that I could help those that are less fortunate than I am, and that lead to a career into such. However, a lot of troubles have been brought on by their own problems. Sadly, trying to save the world may have made me jaded but I also feel that it has made me realistic: Some people can only help themselves and the current system works against those who are trying to improve their lot in life.

I hope that this helped.

Good luck.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!