Communication 101: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[JustJo]

Originally Posted by Medusa

I was reading some articles and found a pretty good breakdown about different styles of communication here:
http://serenityonlinetherapy.com/assertiveness.htm

According to this article, there are 4 types of communicators:
Passive, Aggressive, Passive-Aggressive, and Assertive

A lot of the examples felt pretty dead-on. Do each of these styles of communication have their own merits? Times when each style is appropriate?
Im trying to get out of my unilateral "Assertive is always best" thinking because I do think that there are times when you have to alter your communication style in order to be "heard".
Wondering if anyone had thoughts?

Hi Medusa, and thanks for the link.

I agree that direct and assertive is usually best...and it's something that I've been working on for years. Having grown up with a single narcissistic parent, I was trained to be passive (and a caretaker), and speaking up for myself was/is challenging. Since my childhood household was also full of anger, I "cope" with that by clamming up and shutting down...so aggressive communicators are hard for me to deal with as well.

I used to fall into passive/aggressive crap pretty frequently, because I really "couldn't" speak up and assert myself. After much work, I'm able to do that...and the passive/aggressive fell by the wayside...except when I'm faced with a hyper-aggressive personality. That's when I tend to fall back into that old dysfunctional pattern.

Since I now find passive/aggressive exceedingly yucky and destructive...I sometimes opt instead for purely passive. I won't fight. I won't engage. If I feel like someone absolutely will not listen to any other view...then I'm done and I shut down. Coupled with that though is a boundary that gets drawn in my head...and I tend to write them off as someone that I choose to ignore completely. The sucky part of that, though, is that I then lose all input from them...even when they aren't in hyper-aggressive mode, because I've drawn that line in my head. Basically, they get labelled "bully" and I stop listening.

I know that's not a great solution either...but I'm at a loss for a better one. I'd be very interested in knowing what others do in this situation, and how they approach it for a better outcome...