Posts in category: PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

If you’ve ever been the target of someone else’s guilt, you know the feeling all too well. You feel attacked, defensive and stuck…and defending your way out of the situation often just makes things worse.

Why not use a powerful communication tool I’ve developed, called “asking directive questions,” so that you can be a more effective communicator, instead?! By using “assertive communication comebacks”…you will pull the fuse out of guilt bombs dropped on ya, baby…and be more response-able. No longer will you be made to feel like stale gum stuck on the bottom of a cheap shoe!

Positive communicators ask loads of “directive questions” to open up lines of closed communication. This communication “move” creates a “dialogue” instead of a closed loop “monologue” that makes you mad as a perturbed hornet. In fact, these assertive questions prove you aren’t intimated easily or backed off by guilt bombers who are prone to splenetic (bad-tempered, spiteful) displays of negative communication. Instead of repeatedly playing the same old scratchy record of hate that puts you behind in the communication race…you seek to go in a new direction on the two-way communication highway.

When talks with your partner aren’t going anywhere fast or even slipping and sliding steadily downhill, it’s a great time to go inside and ask yourself, “What do I need to have/make happen here SO that I am heard?” Or, “What do I need for my co-communicator to know about me, and my Achilles Heel, to feel more connected and satisfied…paddling in the same canoe together?”

It’s not a crazy thing to do. And after talking to yourself when you’re in a tight spot, it’s a grand time to come out and honestly say: “SO I NEED you to hear that_____!” Effective communication strategies and tools ALL involve some “skull talk” or figuring out what you need to make happen to feel good.

SKULL TALK

Here’s how you can talk calmly and rationally to yourself when you are upset. In fact, I’ve listed some 30 or so sample transactions to get you started.

“O.K. self…you’re frustrated and that’s a cue that you could say or do something idiotic right now which isn’t terribly rational. Therefore…let’s stop and think for a change and stop reacting and regurgitating words that are choking off the energy flow of life-affirming communication. Let me see…yeah, I need to own that right now what I need is _____!”

WHEN YOU FEEL TREATED LIKE A CHILD BY YOUR PARTNER

Who especially is CommTool#6 designed for? Well, everyone that’s for sure BUT especially for pleasers and placators and all of us “unassertive stuffers of anger.” How about when you feel sorry for yourself and lounge too long on the pity pot? Or when your happiness is blasted? And always when a fight is escalating and you feel treated like a child.

And last but not least, it’s a good tool to use when you’re NOT listening to your own WOW…words of wisdom.

When couples can’t talk, they quickly become dissatisfied, and when couples feel acutely dissatisfied, talking openly and effectively goes down the drain. A vicious cycle of partner alienation ensues. No one I know of likes to feel bad or alone, or to blame for a joint problem situation that a couple has to deal with by individual changes.

More than 82% of couples in a recent New Insights Communication survey reported that “talking to him” and “talking to her” when tensions arise is all but impossible…certainly tougher than driving when you are tired or spacing. So much is at stake when we don’t “feel good” in our primary relationship. On the other hand, so much is possible when you use the revolutionary new talk tools that I share in my new communications handbook TALK TO ME.

I’ve got to say that I was gladdened when I read in a USA Today article that reported on a University of Denver Marital and Family Study. IT basically concluded that we men aren’t as bad as my brain has been told for decades we are. As a communications psychologist, I have silently fumed and felt ticked off about all the bad-mouthing we men take but don’t give…for being such goof-off nincompoops, lazy relationship avoiders, and haters of women but not dogs, guys who won’t commit to anything except self-pleasure. Well, I do wish the pleasure part was true.

Are you a partner who is “too sensitive”…or have you been told you are “an insensitive partner?” Moreover, are you talking insensitively in ways that detour effective problem solving? An “insensitive partner” or Instigator-type (I-type) communicator may pontificate and argue about what the problem is…like these talk examples parlay:

1. “I didn’t know things were this bad!”
2. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about!”
3. “Why won’t you give me another chance to make it right between us?”
4. “Do I really have to DO that? I’m not comfortable with the counseling thing!”
5. “Gosh, I don’t know what else I can say or do to try and make you happy!”
6. “That was a low blow…I don’t deserve to be treated this way!”
7. “Talking about mushy feelings-feelings is just a crock of bull!”
8. “I told you that I’m working on being nicer to you!”
9. “I wish you’d stop listening to other people who make you come home all peeved off at me!”
10. “People are putting ideas in your head that weren’t there in the first place!”
11. “It wasn’t my fault…I didn’t do anything!”
12. “It’s just been a week/month/year…give me a chance…I can’t fix everything all at once!”
13. “I’m trying REALLY hard NOT to be mean…to pay more attention to you…to spend more time at home!”
14. “You’re just being moody and irrational…I told you there’s nothing wrong. Everything is fine!”
15. “I don’t do IT all the time…the last time I did IT I apologized!”
16. “Shoot, I was just joking about it and I’m sure it hit you the wrong way!”
17. “Come on, it’s not a big deal…it’s time to get over IT!”
18. “You act like I intended to do IT. IT was nothing against you…I didn’t mean to do IT!”
19. “There you go again…you’re exaggerating how bad IT was!”
20. “I won’t lie to you…I don’t know what else to do!”
    

A partner may change his/her ways for a brief time to placate the grumbling partner. It doesn’t work. The placated partner sees right through this, “I’ll tell her/him what she/he wants to hear to get her/him off my back…then I’ll go back to my preferred way of doing things.”

The only way I know of that works to break a stalemate or “distracting talks cycle” is to use the powerful talk tools I lay out in my book TALK TO ME. Shutting down and not saying anything leads to the “stuffing” of anger and feeling down, helpless and depressed. “Marching off the map” to go to new talk places rejuvenates a limp relationship.

Dr. Dennis O’Grady runs workshops on “Conflict Resolution and Anger Management,” “Change Management,” “Leadership Talks,” and “Talk to Me.” He has earned a doctorate of psychology in 1983 and is the founding President of New Insights Communication in Dayton, Ohio.