Image taken from: Garrison, B. (2021). Witty Cartoons. https://www.soonerpolitics.org/witty/guilty-chauvin-trial
Dear reader,
Welcome to this project called "stop blaming me". When I was thinking what to do for this project, it just came to my mind the amount of times I have lost people because of the way I express myself, and I want to imagine that I am not the only one who feels guilty when those things happen, I realized that we tend to be aggressive in our interpersonal relationships, so today I bring some activities to communicate in a more assertive way in our day to day and probably in this way we could stop fighting so much with others.
The objectives of this project are:
To understand what assertive communication is.
To put into practice the technique of using "I" statements to express emotions in an assertive way for the purpose of achieving linguistic peace on a daily basis.
Pre-activity: To begin with, I will explain what assertive communication is. I will share some slides to support what I am saying.
While activity: After the explanation, you are going to read a letter and while you read it I want you to think about what feelings or emotions come to you and your mind if for example that letter were addressed to you.
Contextualization:
May 5, 2:00 a.m.
I am walking around the city thinking about how ephemeral life is. When I was listening to the news, I felt like I was living in a hell where people were being slaughtered left and right. One of my best friends called me yesterday and told me that his girlfriend was killed in one of the protests, and he confessed to me that he felt so guilty because last night he had sent her a letter telling her everything that bothered him about the relationship they had. Let me tell you, when I finished reading that letter, I felt so sad and devastated for him because he didn't measure his words, they didn't end in a good way and now, she is dead, and he couldn't fix that, and he never will be able to. Here I will leave you the letter.
The letter you have just read has been adapted for the purposes of the project. It was taken from: Robins, T. (2021). Changing your words will change your relationship. The Tony Robbins Blog. https://www.tonyrobbins.com/love-relationships/words-matter-you-vs-i/
Post activity: Now, you will watch a short video explaining the difference between the use of the “I” statements instead of the “you” statements and a formula for being assertive when communicating will also be presented.
As you have seen in the video, it is very important to express our feelings and needs when we have a problem. Now you are going to put into practice the formula seen in the video. I have divided the letter we read at the beginning of the presentation into sentences. Each of you is going to transform these "you" sentences into "I" sentences. So, access this document and apply the formula in a sentence to make it more assertive.
Reflection: In closing I just wanted to remind you how painful the use of “you” statements can be because they imply that the listener is responsible for something. They don't show ownership of emotions, but instead blame and accuse the receiver. This type of statement is more likely to make the other person feel defensive and resentful, and they will be less likely to want to make amends. At this point, I want you to tell me how assertive communication helps us to foster peace in the classroom or in everyday life.
Finally, I would like to invite you to start looking for peace in your daily life with the use of language that builds and not destroys, in order to live in a better world. Thank you very much for being part of this project and I hope you liked it!
Created by: Paula Mariño
Would you like to know more about the theoretical basis of this project? I invite you to click here
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