Which counterattack do you want to practice?
Have you found communication assassins lurking around your relationships? Here are four counterattacks to send those assassins back into the shadows.
Savvy Psychologist is hosted by Dr. Monica Johnson. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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It appears that many of you have discovered that you have assassins lurking around your relationships, so today we are going to discuss ways to counterattack and send these assassins into the shadows.
Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist, I'm your host, Dr. Monica Johnson. Every week on this show, I'll help you face life's challenges with evidence-based approaches, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.
In today's episode, I’m going to review with you the antidotes for the communication assassins that I introduced in last week’s episode. This will give you a general idea of how to start to reduce the impact of these communication errors on your relationships. If you haven’t listened to the episode on the 4 communication assassins, now’s the time to do so! There’s a link in the description of this episode, or just scroll back a bit in your podcast app.
Last week, I introduced criticism, an assassin that attacks the whole person and can be damaging to the relationship because it’s judgmental and often quite mean. Note that a complaint is different because it focuses on the behavior and your experience of that behavior.
The counterattack is called the gentle start-up, which involves complaint without judgment or blame. I’m sure you’ve heard about using I-statements and these come in handy here. As a reminder, when you use you-statements, it can feel like a punch in the gut each time. For example, “you don’t care about me,” “you’re so lazy,” or ”you're worthless at this, I can’t count on you for anything.”
While I used an I-statement in the last example, it actually has the effect of driving the criticism deeper and is not the correct use of I-statements. This is kinda like the spelling rule of I before E except after C, except for when I-statements are used after you-statements during criticisms. It’s all wrong!
You instead want to describe the problem and express your need using I-statements. An I-statement can be literal or it can be implied—you can feel the I-statement in the dialogue because I-statement utilization requires the user to take ownership of their observations and responses without judgment.
For instance, let’s say your roommate isn’t taking out the trash when it's their turn. If you said the statement, “you’re worthless at this, I can’t count on you for anything,” that’s obviously a criticism. Another way you could say this where the I is obvious is, “I noticed that you haven’t taken out the trash for the last 4 weeks. When this happens I get really frustrated. Can we sit down and figure out a better solution?” Another way to say it where the I-statement is implied is, “When it’s your turn and you don’t take out the trash, I get really frustrated. Can we please talk about this?”
Again, the important part is to remove the blame and judgment from the statement by sticking to the facts and your experience of those facts. You also want to express what you need to the person. Don’t assume that it will be obvious to them. While I know we may have an urge to be judgmental or feel that you-statements are justified, what I can tell you is that it rarely leads to mutually beneficial and benevolent outcomes.
Let’s move on to defensiveness. Giving defensiveness the boot requires taking responsibility. Defensiveness is usually a tactic to deflect responsibility, but what it really does is add more ire to the fire. Taking responsibility for the part that you play in a conflict is like putting a lid on a candle. There may be a little lingering smoke to contend with, but you likely won’t have to worry about your entire house burning down.
In terms of the previous example, the roommate could state, “you’re right, I haven’t been staying on top of my household chores. It would actually be helpful for us to talk and plan together as I’d like to do better.” That type of response leaves the door open to work as a team and tackle problems as a unit. Do you see how that’s more helpful than saying, “well, what’s the big deal, you do it if it bothers you so much”?
Oftentimes we think about increasing intimacy in a relationship through fun activities and physical affection, but you can also increase intimacy and closeness in a relationship by communicating effectively and working through hard issues together. Don’t let the defensiveness assassin put a wedge between you and your relationships.
Contempt can feel like death by a 1000 cuts. The sarcasm, the name-calling, and hurtful body language like eye rolling or exasperated sighs all create tiny wounds that eventually take out the intended victim and bring down the whole relationship with them.
In order to combat contempt, you must begin to build a culture of appreciation and respect within the relationship. It is important to remember that all humans inherently have value and that value imparts a need for respect. When we love someone, but respect is not a part of that love, it feels the same as a backhanded compliment—but worse.
How many of us have spent years in therapy because we’ve had to deal with early relationships where the person loved us, but didn’t have the capacity to express that properly? Don’t repeat those cycles.
So, you may ask—what does a culture of appreciation and respect look like? Thank you for asking! The same way your words can hurt, they can heal. Let’s say you live with a partner who struggles with depression and they have been very stressed with work lately. This has led to them being distracted and withdrawn in social interactions with you. A contemptuous statement would be, “What’s wrong with you, I’m trying to talk to you, and you don’t even bother to listen. You’re so selfish!” A statement that denotes appreciation and respect might be, “I know you’ve been depressed and stressed lately, but when we are together can we both try to be present for this period of time? I’d really appreciate that and if you need to take a time out because your energy is depleted at any point, let me know.”
Lastly, let’s talk stonewalling. This is the assassin that shuts down all communication. As I mentioned last week, many people engage in stonewalling because they become psychologically overwhelmed. The counterattack for this is physiological self-soothing. When we are overwhelmed, we get triggered into our flight/fight reactions and it’s important that we know how to respond when our meter is pushed into the red.
Last week, I told you that instead of tapping out, you should take a time out and that’s really true. Research shows that as little as half an hour away from the argument or problem led to arousal coming down and people were able to come back and discuss the topic in a much more calm fashion.
I would also suggest listening to my episode on 3 TIPs to Reduce Emotional Overwhelm—link in the episode description—and in next week’s episode, I’ll introduce a new skill that helps with reducing high arousal emotions.
Which counterattack do you want to practice? Let me know on Instagram @kindmindpsych. You can also reach out to me via my email at psychologist@quickanddirtytips.com, or leave a voicemail at (929) 256-2191.