Posts in category: PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Watching my mother gladly live the final weeks of her life made my face melt. “Denny, I’m really feeling peaceful and not in any pain at all.” Mom was not fitful, unhappy, scowling, or living her celebratory days as a member of the blame gang. As a psychologist, as I walk now in this world, I see hardened faces glazed over with non-emotion and apathy, or smiling with inauthentic certainty that life is just ducky. Are we half-lifer Zombies? People act as if they can cheat death by not being completely alive.

YOU LIVE AS YOU DIE

Everything’s never going to be right, but you can feel all right about living your life in ways that make you happy or glad to be alive. Signposts that you’ve lost your way:

• You feel bitter and angry
• If things aren’t perfect, you are emotional toast
• Kids feel the weight of your guilt trips
• Nothing’s ever good enough for you
• Young children don’t make you laugh
• You blame “time starvation” or being “too stressed out” for depriving others of your positive attention and respect.

Being brave of heart means you have the courage to live in times of uncertainty, and you can live with a broken heart, though you would choose not to do so. Of course, if you never get really close to people, when they leave or die your life isn’t much changed.

YOU DIE AS YOU LIVE

What expert communicators who die in each second know about the joys of living alive:

1. You don’t look in the mirror and see yourself acting like your mother or father. Expert communicators don’t look down or up at their parents but eye-to-eye.

2. You don’t care much for control, because you know the bottom can drop out of your life at any second. Expert communicators seek first to control their moods and “out-of-mouth” experiences that put people off.

3. You laugh. Expert communicators laugh at fear in the face, fear that makes us suffer and die a thousand deaths before our time.

4. You cry. Expert communicators with a sharp pebble in their shoe, which will eventually hobble them, walk extra miles alongside another, providing comfort, support, and friendship.

5. You struggle. Expert communicators make many talk mistakes, and they take time to learn from their mistakes in order not to repeat them.

6. You don’t let your past baggage weigh your marriage or partnership down. Expert communicators realize that all three time zones of past regrets, present pitfalls, and future worries can control them if allowed.

7. You don’t suck the energy out of the people who care for and love you. Expert communicators give more than they take, while not allowing anyone to take unfair advantage of them.

8. You don’t chase people away when they get too close. Expert communicators like hugs, eyes that dance, a tender touch, a small gesture of kindness that implies, “I’m with you here and now.”

9. You don’t let fear make you fret that your “stuff” is going to get taken away. Expert communicators don’t find winning to be as important as weathering the emotional storms of life.

10. You don’t think of evolving, growing and changing as a killer. Expert communicators study how change technology is a force that can be used for advantage or disadvantage.

11. You don’t beat anyone up mentally, especially yourself. Expert communicators talk in quietly comforting ways to the inner self, especially when they are embarrassed, hurt, or mad.

12. You don’t treat anyone as an icon to obey. Expert communicators work with divine powers and look for the best in people, and they don’t shut down for long after finding the repugnant side of “half-lifer zombies.”

13. You don’t attack when you don’t get your way. Expert communicators want to make their way down the two-way communicator highway, not get their way at the expense of a close relationship.

ARE YOU A HALF-LIFER ZOMBIE, DRIVING ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL OF YOUR COMMUNICATOR CAR?

Heck, of course you’re an expert communicator. You realize there’s only one way out of this life, and this life is what you make it. Are you alive today, living your life with an open heart and strong back that can shoulder the emotional realities of a changing environment? Mom looked at me in her final days and said, “I hope I’m showing you how to die well.” We all have a thing or three to learn from the dying, who showcase how to live a life as a loving communicator.

ABOUT RELATIONSHIP PSYCHOLOGIST DENNIS E. O’GRADY, PSY.D.

Dennis O’Grady is a Dayton region psychologist who provides private therapy for couples and communications training for corporations. Dr. O’Grady’s pioneering interpersonal communications theory will help you get along with anyone, even the difficult or annoying people in your life, and make you a better communicator. His entire communication system is the focus of his third book called “Talk to Me: Communication Moves To Get Along With Anyone,” which is available at www.drogrady.com and Amazon.

What set of communication rules do you follow to avoid a relationship meltdown? Do you and your partner obey the traffic signs on the two-way communicator highway to avoid a talk collision? Why are the rules of the talk road so hard to follow when emotions are heating up and nerves are shot? Empathizer and Instigator communicators alike need to learn how to talk instead of fighting like fools.

A SET OF COMMUNICATION RULES TO KEEP A COOL HEAD AND AVOID A MELTDOWN WHEN TENSIONS ARE HIGH

Recently, one of my relationship communications clients whom I coach said, “I’ve been enjoying your writing about good communication tools to use at home and work. My husband and I have just agreed to, and written down, a set of communication rules to avoid a meltdown.”

TALK RULES THAT WORK

1. NO NAME CALLING doesn’t allow zings or arrows or snotty potty talk.

2. DON’T USE PUT-DOWNS means you can’t tell your partner what he or she thinks; instead you must stick to what you are experiencing in the first-person.

3. ZERO THREATS means there’s no tattling, pouting, indirect paybacks, having an emotional or sexual extramarital affair, or threatening to leave.

4. NO GENERATING PAIN…you can’t recycle painful past memories, create more pain in the present, or predict a future of pain because you feel your partner is an idiot.

5. AVOID LOUD VOICES…the better debater or bigger voice isn’t allowed to dominate the flow of the conversation.

6. NO LEAVING WITHOUT SAYING WHERE YOU’RE GOING discourages the disappearing act, meant to make your partner mad and sleepless or nervous.

7. DON’T RATCHET UP DISAGREEMENTS disallows getting extended family members, friends, or kids in the middle of your business.

8. NO EXTREMISM OR ABSOLUTES doesn’t allow, “You never do….” or “You always are….” extremism that rips apart hope and trust.

9. STOP INVENTING MOTIVES…you can’t “psycho-critique” your partner’s motives, or practice psychology without a license.

10. NO BUTTON-PUSHING…you can’t hit your partner where you know s/he can be hurt just to prove a point.

Even if you can only follow one of these talk rules when tensions run high, things will get better between the two of you.

DISTRESSED PARTNERS KEEP DOING WHAT DOESN’T WORK

Couples in trouble crash in predictable ways. Couples who get into unproductive conflicts and have repeated talk collisions burn out over the long-distance haul of an authentic relationship. Driving rules limit accidents. Talk rules engage a problem-solving mode, or “live and let live” attitude, until you have the energy and skills to figure things out.

NO BUTTON-PUSHING

Distressed partners will talk over the opposing partner by talking louder or even shouting. The previous communications client observed, “No button-pushing is our biggest challenge. We are both very strong-willed and stubborn people when crossed. Thanks for helping us stop arguing, instead of trying to top one another.”

ABOUT RELATIONSHIP COMMUNICATIONS COACH DENNIS E. O’GRADY, PSY.D.

Dennis E. O’Grady, Psy.D., is a Dayton region communications psychologist and organizational consultant who is the developer of the “Talk to Me” communication system. Dr. O’Grady’s third book is “Talk to Me: Communication Moves To Get Along With Anyone,” which boosts your mood and powers your professional business communications while being of positive benefit to your personal, marital and family communication relationships, too.

What makes intense emotions so hard to take? Demanding “You’ve got to calm down!” doesn’t help. Why? Giant emotions make you feel little. Sleepless nights of worry make you sleep-deprived. Acting strong can undermine your close relationships. Putting a happy face on sorrow can turn you into a fake. Staying confused will make you drive around in circles when you ought to be getting on down the Communication Highway. Sure enough, aroused emotions can “make you” feel like little David going up against huge Goliath.

WHAT MAKES MY EMOTIONS SO DIFFICULT TO HANDLE?

In the “Talk to Me” communication system, there are four modes of internal and external communication that can be used to calm yourself down when the winds of change are blowing hard. The talk modes are Emotions, Beliefs, Behaviors and Talks. It’s important to know how to manage your emotions to function better instead of reverting to negative actions that harm a relationship. Some emotional facts you must first face to lessen your fear of your emotions:

1. SQUASHED LIKE A BUG ON THE WINDSHIELD. As the country song tells it like it is, “Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.” Hard emotions hardly go away fast, and blur your vision on the speedy two-way communicator highway.

Downside: You will resort to controlling behaviors, such as raising your voice and acting frustrated and mad with your children or co-workers.

2. AFRAID THE OTHER SHOE WILL DROP. Emotions can scare you, especially when they don’t seem logically linked to any traumatic stress event. Loss also unleashes storms of emotions.

Downside: When you feel helpless or powerless, you will feel depressed.

3. A HURRICANE THAT WILL OBLITERATE YOU. Emotions have the force of a tsunami tidal wave or a hurricane, a force of nature that sweeps you away into oblivion.

Downside: You will try to run away from your emotions and hide; you’ll stop being the outgoing person you are.

4. WHAT IF THE BOTTOM FALLS OUT? This is when you feel your emotions are in control of you, and there’s nothing you can productively do to calm yourself down.

Downside: So you scold yourself for feeling what you do, create a worry avalanche with “What IF…” negative thinking, and get behind the harder you try to be in control of everything.

5. PULLING THE COVERS OVER YOU HEAD. Artificially controlling aroused emotions by shutting them out of your mind or giving them too much mind.

Downside: You have to stuff the emotions, like carrying a heavy backpack filled with rocks or filling up your trunk with junk.

6. REFUSING TO SPEAK, BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING WRONG. Shutting down any attempted communication about your feelings, and putting a happy face on sad times.

Downside: You act aloof or withdraw from your relationships to spare others from feeling your hurt and pain, struggles or sorrows, which can blow up the relationship bridge.

7. SHUTTING DOWN OPEN COMMUNICATION LINES. This is avoiding emotions (“Is anything wrong?”) by shutting down communication (“No, not really!”).

Downside: You send the implied message that your partner isn’t important to you, which alienates and angers those who care about you.

8. EMOTIONS SEEM LIKE GIANTS BUT AREN’T REALITY. Intense emotions make you feel dwarfed by the giant of strange emotions, making you feel like a scared and helpless child, and misread how friendly reality just might be.

Downside: You may revert to comfort foods, bury yourself in work, stay busy until the feelings subside, drink too much, play too hard or play around or drive too fast.

9. EMOTIONS ARE BIGGER AND MORE POWERFUL THAN MY ABILITY TO HANDLE THEM. Simply put, that’s the myth that you must disrupt by turning and facing your emotions instead of running away from them.

Downside: The biggest justification for kids or adults alike is “I couldn’t help myself because I was so upset. What did you expect me to do? It (my emotions) were too much for me to take it any longer.”

Remember this: There are ways you can learn to calm yourself down when your emotions are churned up and dragging you down.

ARE YOU AN EMPATHIZER COMMUNICATOR OR AN INSTIGATOR COMMUNICATOR WHEN IT COMES TO HANDLING YOUR EMOTIONS?

Instigator communicators try to resolve emotions by ignoring the feeling and thinking of something else.

Empathizer communicators try to get past tough emotions by being tough and critical of themselves. Neither approach does enough to help you calm yourself down when you are feeling upset.

BUT HOW DO I CALM MYSELF DOWN?

I wish there was an easy answer to that question, but there isn’t. Of course, learning and using the “Talk to Me” system is one of the answers.

• For example, if you’re an Empathizer communicator, you will learn how to carefully move out of the rut of negative emotions to better meet your life needs.
  
• And if you’re an Instigator communicator, you will learn how to speak of your emotions, without drowning in unruly emotions, with the net effect that you will pull your partner closer.

Either way, as an E- or I-type communicator you will quickly grow in wisdom, compassion, less anxiety and greater peace of mind as the strong and empathetic man or woman you are.

ABOUT DAYTON PROFESSIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST DENNIS E. O’GRADY, PSY.D.

Dr. Dennis O’Grady is the author of three books including his recent positive and effective communication system found only in “Talk to Me: Communication Moves To Get Along With Anyone.” Dennis is a corporate trainer, professional keynote speaker, personal executive coach and father to three daughters who know who they’re talking to by communicator type when relating to teachers and friends. Do you even know your type, and why on earth it matters so much in the selection of tools to use for controlling your mood? If you’re fed up with feeling down, if you’re sick and tired of feeling tired, if you feel like you’ve lost your way or that you’re running around lost in a maze of unsatisfying relationships each and every day then spend a few bucks on talk tools that make emotions easier to take. Try “Talk to Me” if not much is helping you to feel better about being the great person you are today.

I had the unique opportunity to ask Dr. Herb Goldberg, a renowned author and psychologist, some heart-opening and mind-expanding questions about his new book, What Men Still Don’t Know About Women, Relationships, And Love. The 32 questions ranged all the way from what to tell teens about money, to what it was like to be on the Oprah and Phil Donahue shows, to how his adult daughter relates to his work, to stupid things we men and women continue to do to one another. In short, what stands in the way of good communication between men and women….My warmest thanks to Herb for taking time to respond to these 32 freewheeling questions about What Men Still Don’t Know About Women, Relationships, And Love. This is a rare opportunity to look inside the mind of a gifted and humane psychologist who has changed the way we all think about the “gender undertow.”

INTERVIEW WITH DR. HERB GOLDBERG

Dr. Dennis O’Grady: Dr. Goldberg, it’s awfully nice of you to take the time to answer these questions. Thanks for helping all of us “see” a better way for men and women to communicate. In the seventies, the reading public was profoundly impacted by your work on men and aggression, so I knew readers today would like to hear your insights into these 32 talking points for men and women that “The Guru of Male Awareness” could speak to:

(1) O’Grady: What do you like most about being a bestselling author?

Dr. Herb Goldberg: Having been trained early on in psychodynamic psychology by some of the great early teachers and theorists, I became aware of what an incredible tool psychology can be for helping us reframe and understand problems and questions that have defied meaningful illumination since the beginning history of man. Writing bestselling books has given me an opportunity to explore so many of the issues and questions that I find absolutely fascinating. The upside of writing bestselling books has been the opportunity to continue to explore and write about these matters and, at the same time, engage other people in a new conversation about time honored questions and problems.

(2) O’Grady: Is there a hard side to having a hit book?

Dr. Goldberg: There really isn’t a “hard side” to having a hit book except for the possible pressure to stay within certain boundaries that publishers want in order to continue to sell books. It’s a constant struggle to maintain reader interest and publisher support and yet stay faithful to my own vision of what is meaningful. I have to continuously remind myself that this is not about being successful. It is about using the opportunity given to me in a meaningful way and to not throw it away by making fame or money a priority. Writing is the one area in life that I hold sacred and don’t want to contaminate.

(3) O’Grady: Looking back, what do you feel was the core message in Creative Aggression?

Dr. Goldberg: The core message in Creative Aggression is that aggression, in one form or another, exists in every human being, and we must learn to acknowledge it and find constructive ways to express it. I tie it to gender because men and women, as a result of masculine and feminine conditioning, have a tendency to vastly distort the experience of aggression. Women tend to repress and deny it and then manifest it indirectly and in self-destructive and other dysfunctional ways. Men tend to replace vulnerable emotion that threatens them with hyper-aggressive destructive responses. Aggression is real, readily distorted, and when expressed in a healthy way can be life-preserving. Creative Aggression was really all about giving credence to the reality of this human experience and its many manifestations and to say it’s okay to be aggressive, but that it’s important to learn to express it in constructive ways.

(4) O’Grady: In your experience, what is the biggest hazard of being male?

Dr. Goldberg: The biggest hazard of being male, or more specifically, being socialized in a masculine way, is disconnection. Masculine socialization disconnects men from their inner lives, their bodies, their sexuality, and most importantly, their relationships. In short, it slowly erodes and eventually destroys their personal selves. Specifically, it results in alienation from their children, the objectification of women, disconnection from their bodies so they lose touch with their physical selves, and in the area of sexuality, disconnection causes them to experience their penises as disconnected plumbing, rather than experiencing their sexual response and problems as a direct expression of who they are as people.

(5) O’Grady: What is the biggest stereotype about men in need of correction today?

Dr. Goldberg: The biggest stereotype about men is that they are the relationship and love spoilers, all by themselves. In other words, when it comes to most personal experiences in life, men are seen as a destructive force that needs to be socialized, while women are portrayed as the ones seeking love, compassion, and intimacy. This negative stereotype has damaged our capacity to make meaningful sense of and transform interpersonal male-female dysfunction.

Dr. Herb Goldberg is one of America’s best-selling authors and acknowledged experts on men, women, and relationships. For a twenty-year period, Dr. Goldberg’s bestselling books such as The Hazards of Being Male, The Inner Male and What Men Really Want provided guidance to the confused, wary, overwhelmed and frozen; his books broke new ground in the 1980’s and 90’s and were million-selling books in America, with highly successful editions in places such as Germany, Japan, China, France, England, and Scandinavian countries. He returns to writing in order to address the critical relationship concerns for contemporary men and their female partners. Dr. Goldberg was one of the first to write about the psychology of men and now his new book has rekindled the many “I just don’t get it” aspects of men’s contemporary experiences with women. Filled with illuminating case histories, concrete guidelines and sound advice, it is this book, What Men Still Don’t Know About Women, Relationships and Love, that may save the personal lives of millions of men and women who continuously fall into the same traps. As a therapist, researcher, and advocate, Goldberg returns to writing from decades in private practice and teaching at California State University, Los Angeles where he is currently an Emeritus Professor of Psychology. Goldberg has appeared on Oprah twice, a week on Good Morning America, and was a regular guest on the Phil Donahue Show (which included a ground-breaking two time in one week appearance in which Donahue recruited an all-male audience).

According to Goldberg, “It is crunch time for men today. Divorce battles, custody fights, poisonous interactions, and accusations of abuse and harassment alongside the everyday unhappiness are at an all time high. Men’s personal isolation and dependency on women is greater than ever, while women’s anger, withdrawal from relationships with men, and their defensive sense of being victimized also are at a peak. On every level of contemporary life women are growing and emerging while men are shrinking and failing. Without a significant change in awareness, insight, and commitment, men will become increasingly toxic in their personal connections, and unable to maintain close, personal relationships resulting in painful isolation. Men need information, interpretations and guidance that go beyond superficial advice about love and relationships and the usual lectures about how to treat a woman.”

Goldberg tells us that men need concrete personal maps, not general “how to” ideas that act like a temporary “feel good” pep talk. What Men Still Don’t Know About Women, Relationships and Love is a book for all men, and for women, too — since Goldberg explores a woman’s process — the deeper invisible elements that create her experience of relationships, as well as masculine conditioning that produces blind spots, blocks, vulnerabilities in his relationships with women.