Self-Help Tools: Personal Concerns
Assertive vs. Aggressive
You are behaving ASSERTIVELY when you express your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in direct, honest ways that do not violate another person's integrity. Assertion involves respect both for your own needs and feelings and for those of the other person. You are behaving AGGRESSIVELY when you express your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in ways that humiliate, degrade, belittle, or overpower the other person. Little or no respect is shown for the needs or feelings of others.
You are behaving NON-ASSERTIVELY when you fail to express honest feelings, thoughts, and beliefs -- or express them in such an apologetic, diffident, or self-effacing way that others can easily disregard them