Assertiveness Training in Clinical Practice

How many of your clients' difficulties involve communication, relationships, and boundaries?

The ability to set and maintain effective and fulfilling interpersonal boundaries is a core aspect of personal confidence, self-esteem, social success, positive psychology, and mental health. Yet many of our clients - and many of US - struggle when faced with challenging interpersonal situations.

Assertiveness training is one of the prime building blocks of skills-based therapies including cognitive behavior therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy. Yet many clinicians have scant instruction in this therapeutic fundamental. We are told how important it is, yet given little training in its implementation.

That's where this course comes in. In eight hours of instruction you will learn not only the foundations of assertive communication, but the strategies involved in imparting these skills to your clients.

But that's not all. Clinicians routinely say that this material has helped in their own lives as well. There is a mantra repeated throughout the course: Those who teach must be able to do. You will be encouraged to consider your own challenges, your own relationships, and to practice the skills and exercises that we recommend using with clients.

The course material is divided into a series of bite-sized lectures, most between 5 and 15 minutes, so you can work at your own pace.

Course Content

• Guidelines regarding appropriate clients
• Suggestions for group and individual interventions
• Instructional strategy - making it experiential rather than didactic
• The four primary communication styles
• Nonverbal behavior
• Barriers to assertiveness: Stress, gender, and social history
• Beliefs that get in the way - and an alternative assertive mindset
• Giving your opinion
• Giving and receiving positive and negative feedback
• Saying no
• Making requests
• Coping with conflict and confrontation

You Will Receive