Customer Reviews

Self-Assertion for Women

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Pamela Butler does a terrific and thorough job walking women through the obstacles we face to asserting ourselves. She explains step-by-step with numerous examples and sample scripts how to assert in a way that respects both oneself and the other.

Over the years I have found this book excellent personally and professionally. After recommending it to patients in my psychotherapy practice, I have been impressed by how they have been able to incorporate Butler's teachings into their lives.

Butler writing combines serious professionalism with a down-to-earth approach that is accessible to people of all levels of psychological sophistication. While women have some gender related issues that canget in the way of self-assertion, they do not have a monopoly on difficulties in this area; many men can gain much from reading this book.

If you have ever had trouble expressing your boundaries, this is the book for you. It gives clear concise ways to say No very clearly without being offensive. It changed the way I deal with those people who are slightly but annoyingly obnoxious.
I had a house guest who didn't seem to be leaving. The situation gave me a headache, as my "hints" were not working. I read the book, decided what to say, said it, and was amazed at how easily I was understood and respected.

While geared toward women, this book also contains much that's proven useful to men I know. Butler offers accessible, sensible advice on, among other subjects, how to set limits, handle criticism, and distinguish between assertiveness and aggressiveness.

The chapter "What Are You Telling Yourself?" serves as a fine introduction to self-talk; for more on this topic, see Butler's other classic, "Talking to Yourself."

So many of us have been trained to "be nice at any cost"--even when doing so means suppressing and denying our most essential selves and thereby incurring a host of unfortunate consequences, from not fulfilling our potential to full-blown chronic depression (with which women are diagnosed at a rate nearly twice that observed in men). One chapter, "Slef-Assertion in Your Professional Life," contains a fine section on "Positive Self-Presentation," which discusses why women often have such a hard time acknowledging their own competence, strengths, and accomplishments; it's worth a review by anyone who wants to succeed in the business world.

I'm sure much of the content is very helpful, but it's hard to fully get the effect because the book is so unprofessionally put together I was astounded. It's not only highly disorganized (no chapters -- just one loooooong one with strange subheads which are designed to help people find the content they need but they don't make sense). The index doesn't match the pages where the content is. No joke, every single page is riddled with typos -- sentences filled with gibberish words, sentences which don't finish, misspelled words....aaagh what a mess. It looks like someone's first rough manuscript and no one bothered to read it and fix the typos. If she wants people to take this book seriously, she really needs to clean it up.