“This is not confrontation. This is being assertive. This is speaking the thing that occurs to you WHEN it occurs to you, which can be super scary and definitely takes practice. Fortunately, you can practice being assertive by being positively assertive. “I love that t-shirt!” “You are super funny!” “I need to pee, can I get you something while I’m up?” “I know you don’t like this song, but I love it.” All of that? Assertive. It’s good to have a brain filter, but a lot of the time, we have way WAY too many filters, and second guess ourselves in a pinch. Practice removing the filters from positive assertions, and then when something comes up that requires negative assertion (You’re weirding me out. You’re in my way. You don’t get to say that to me.) maybe it will get through.”

— captain awkward (via tinsnip)