In the Power Dimension of the Pattern System, there are two healthy capacities that complement each other-Assertiveness and Cooperation.

• Assertiveness means the ability to think and act for yourself and to exert power to get what you want, protect yourself, or achieve what you think is right.
• Cooperation means the ability to be receptive and work well with others.

Cooperation is a complement to Assertiveness. For healthy relating, you need capacities on both sides. Cooperation helps you to work with people in a connected way and Assertiveness helps you express yourself and your personal power. This is the nature of healthy capacities; they are naturally integrated with each other.

There are four problematic patterns in the Power Dimension-Controlling, People Pleasing, Defiant, and Passive-Aggressive.

• Controlling means being dominant, demanding, and expecting to have things your way.
• People Pleasing means complying with what other people want and trying to make them happy.
• Defiant means rebelling against other people’s power in an attempt to preserve your autonomy.
• Passive-aggressive means outwardly attempting to please people while rebelling against them in subtle ways that leave them frustrated and confused.

There is one exile pattern, the Powerless Pattern, which means that you expect other people to control you. All the right side protectors are primary trying to protect this exile by keeping this from happening, though this is not the only exile they want to protect. The People Pleasing Pattern has such a wide variety of exiles it protects that it didn’t make sense to put them in this graphic.

The patterns on the left and right sides don’t integrate with each other. They are polarized, which means they battle each other to determine how you relate to others. The People Pleasing Pattern involves going out of your way to comply with others, please them, or merge with them, in other words to give away your power. However, the Controlling, Defiiant, and Passive Aggressive Patterns all involve an unhealthy or extreme form of power where you try to have too much power or exert it indirectly.

Cooperation is a healthy version of People Pleasing. Another way to say this is that People Pleasing is an extreme, dysfunctional version of Cooperation. It is an attempt to be cooperative by giving yourself up. And the same applies on the right side. Assertiveness is a healthy version of Control, Defiance, or Passive Aggrression. Or you can say that those three are extreme, dysfunctional versions of Assertiveness.

And there are even more interesting relations between the patterns and capacities. If you have a Controlling, Defiant, or Passive Aggressive Pattern, Cooperation is what you need to develop to break away from it. Thus the capacity on the opposite side of the graphic is the one needed to break from from a pattern. The same applies on the other side. If you have a People Pleasing Pattern, you need Assertiveness to break free from it.