I recently experienced an insidious  form of self-doubt .

It seeped in through cracks of my sense of myself, my own inner truth, and eroded my self-trust and self confidence. And it starts with the question “What if…?”

I was trying to tell someone about how I felt about an event in our relationship and his response was "Well, if that is the story you want to tell yourself, then I can’t help it!" Then, slowly a part me, the part that knows all about cognitive behaviour therapy surfaced.  It tells me that my thoughts can generate feelings and all I have to do is change my thoughts ….. well you know the rest. Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t.  The rest for me is that self-doubt starts to seep in. It erodes my sense of what is right or wrong for me. It starts to ask:

• What if you are being unreasonable?
• What if you are being overly emotional?
• What if you have a distorted sense of the events?

The list could go on…everyone will have their own self-eroding “What if” questions. Having hooked into the “that’s the story you want so you are responsible for creating your own misery” message I start to doubt myself. I start to doubt my feelings. But this is where I get waylaid. I should trust my feelings. They are pointing me to something very important. They are pointing me to what I value for myself (and others) in my life.

I can change the questions I ask myself:

• What really matters about this for me?
• What is it that I want to stand up for – for myself?
• How am I honouring what is important to me?

I need to stay with the hurt, fear and sadness and sense into what they are telling me. They are telling me what kind of relationship I want…one in which even feelings which are hard to fathom are still respected, one in which ‘care’ for the other person is not perceived as being at the expense of oneself. One in which my feelings are given space in the relationship even when the other person “doesn’t think they are reasonable or understandable”.

So, no I don’t need to own the story about what happened or didn’t happen. I do not need to get lost in debating the content. I need to own my feelings.  I need to look to my feelings because they are telling me what matters for me in this situation. I need to connect to my values. Am I respecting my values and holding myself to account? Or am I giving them away for momentary comfort; to avoid a fight or uncomfortable discussion, to help the other person feel alright, to not be seen as selfish, mean, judgmental, unloving or needy? I am giving away my values to avoid the emotional pain which surfaces when I hear those kinds of labels which dismiss me as a human being?

Then…later…when I have explored, honoured and respected my feelings and values… if I want to… I play around with the story I had about what happened. I can have the feelings which came first (and are therefore telling me what is most important for me) and  I can walk 360 degrees around the issue looking at it from all angles. I can then see how that changes how I feel now and what values come up by taking a broader view.

But not before I have established some stability from understanding and respecting my first set of feelings and needs.

…a process for living that masquerades as a communication technique…

…compassionate connecting & communicating with curiosity…

…self acceptance and acceptance of others…

continuing on from Dr Daniel Amen’s post…

I have added my own take in connecting with our ANT’s based on NVC and acknowledging our underlying needs. I have italicised in blue a needs approach in the models.

Here are nine different ways that your thoughts lie to you to make situations out to be worse than they really are.

Think of these nine ways as different species or types of ANTs (automatic negative thoughts). When you can identify the type of ANT, you begin to take away the power it has over you. I have designated some of these ANTs as red, because these ANTs are particularly harmful to you. Notice and exterminate ANTs whenever possible.

ANT #1: "Always or Never Thinking"
This happens when you think something that happened will "always" repeat itself. For example, if your partner is irritable and she gets upset you might think to yourself, "She’s always yelling at me," even though she yells only once in a while. But just the thought "She’s always yelling at me" is so negative that it makes you feel sad and upset. It activates your limbic system. Whenever you think in words like always, never, no one, every one, every time, everything those are examples of "always" thinking and usually wrong. Here are some examples of "always" thinking:
"He’s always putting me down."
"No one will ever call me."
"I’ll never get a raise."
"Everyone takes advantage of me."
"You turn away every time I touch you."
"My children never listen to me."

"Always thinking" ANTs are very common. Watch out for them.

ANT #2 (red ANT): "Focusing On the Negative"
This occurs when your thoughts only see the bad in a situation and ignore any of the good parts that might happen. For example, I have treated several professional speakers for depression. After their presentations they had the audience fill out an evaluation form. If l00 of them were returned and 2 of them were terrible, but 90 of them were outstanding, which ones do you think they focused on? Only the negative ones! I taught them to focus on the ones they liked a lot more than the ones they didn’t like. It’s important to learn from others, but in a balanced, positive way.

Your deep limbic system can learn a powerful lesson from the Disney movie, "Pollyanna." In the movie, Pollyanna came to live with her aunt after her missionary parents died. Even though she had lost her parents she was able to help many "negative people" with her attitude. She introduced them to the "glad game," to look for things to be glad about in any situation. Her father had taught her this game after she experienced a disappointment. She had always wanted a doll, but her parents never had enough money to buy it for her. Her father sent a request for a second hand doll to his missionary sponsors. By mistake, they sent her a pair of crutches. "What is there to be glad about crutches?" they thought. Then they decided they could be glad because they didn’t have to use them. This very simple game changed the attitudes and lives of many people in the movie. Pollyanna especially affected the minister. Before she came to town he preached hellfire and damnation, and he did not seem to be very happy. Pollyanna told him that her father said that the Bible had 800 "Glad Passages," and that if God mentioned being glad that many times, it must be because He wants us to think that way. Focusing on the negative in situations will make you feel bad. Playing the glad game, or looking for the positive will help you feel better.

ANT #3 (red ANT): "Fortune Telling"
This is where you predict the worst possible outcome to a situation. For example, before you discuss an important issue with your partner you predict that he or she won’t be interested in what you have to say. Just having this thought will make you feel tense. I call "fortune telling" red ANTs because when you predict bad things you can make them happen. Say you are driving home from work and you predict that the house will be a wreck and no one will be interested in seeing you. By the time you get home you’re waiting for a fight. When you see one thing out of place or no one comes running to the door you explode and ruin the rest of the evening. Fortune telling ANTs really hurt your chances for feeling good.

ANT #4 (red ANT): "Mind Reading"
This happens when you believe that you know what another person is thinking even when they haven’t told you. Mind reading is a common cause of trouble between people. I tell my wife, "Please don’t read my mind, I have enough trouble reading it myself!" You know that you are mind reading when you have thoughts such as, "She’s mad at me. He doesn’t like me. They were talking about me." I tell people that a negative look from someone else may be nothing more than they are constipated! You don’t know. You can’t read anyone else’s mind. You never know what others are really thinking. Even in intimate relationships, you cannot read your partner’s mind. When there are things you don’t understand, clarify them and stay away from mind reading ANTs. They are very infectious.

ANT #5: "Thinking With Your Feelings"
This occurs when you believe your negative feelings without ever questioning them. Feelings are very complex, and, often based on powerful memories from the past. Feelings sometimes lie to you. Feelings are not about truth. They are about feelings. But many people believe their feelings even though they have no evidence for them. "Thinking with your feelings" thoughts usually start with the words "I feel." For example, "I feel like you don’t love me. I feel stupid. I feel like a failure. I feel nobody will ever trust me." Whenever you have a strong negative feeling, check it out. Look for the evidence behind the feeling. Do you have real reasons to feel that way? Or, are you feelings based on events or things from the past?

ANT #6: "Guilt Beatings"
Guilt is not a helpful emotion, especially for your deep limbic system. In fact, guilt often causes you to do those things that you don’t want to do. Guilt beatings happen when you think with words like "should, must, ought or have to." Here are some examples: "I ought to spend more time at home. I must spend more time with my kids. I should have sex more often. I have to organize my office." Because of human nature, whenever we think that we "must" do something, no matter what it is, we don’t want to do it. It is better to replace "guilt beatings" with phrases like "I want to do this…It fits with my goals to do that…It would be helpful to do this…." So in the examples above, it would be helpful to change those phrases to "I want to spend more time at home. It’s in our best interest for my kids and I to spend more time together. I want to please my spouse by making wonderful love with him (or her) because he (or she) is important to me. It’s in my best interest to organize my office." Get rid of this unnecessary emotional turbulence that holds you back from achieving the goals you want.

ANT #7: "Labeling"
Whenever you attach a negative label to yourself or to someone else, you stop your ability to take a clear look at the situation. Some examples of negative labels that people use are "jerk, frigid, arrogant and irresponsible." Negative labels are very harmful, because whenever you call yourself or someone else a jerk or arrogant you lump that person in your mind with all of the "jerks" or "arrogant people" that you’ve ever known and you become unable to deal with them in a reasonable way. Stay away from negative labels.

ANT #8: "Personalization"
Personalization occurs when innocuous events are taken to have personal meaning. "My boss didn’t talk to me this morning. She must be mad at me." Or, one feels he or she is the cause of all the bad things that happen, "My son got into an accident with the car. I should have spent more time teaching him to drive. It must be my fault." There are many other reasons for behavior besides the negative explanations an abnormal limbic system picks out. For example, your boss may not have talked to you because she was preoccupied, upset or in a hurry. You never fully know why people do what they do. Try not to personalize their behavior.

ANT #9 (the most poisonous red ANT): "Blame"
Blame is very harmful. When you blame something or someone else for the problems in your life, you become a victim of circumstances and you cannot do anything to change your situation. Many relationships are ruined by people who blame their partners when things go wrong. They take little responsibility for their problems. When something goes wrong at home or at work, they try to find someone to blame. They rarely admit their own problems. Typically, you’ll hear statements from them like:
"It wasn’t my fault that…."
"That wouldn’t have happened if you had…."
"How was I supposed to know…."
"It’s your fault that…."

The bottom line statement goes something like this: "If only you had done something differently, I wouldn’t be in the predicament I’m in. It’s your fault, and I’m not responsible."

Whenever you blame someone else for the problems in your life, you become powerless to change anything. The "Blame Game" hurts your personal sense of power. Stay away from blaming thoughts and take personal responsibility to change the problems you have.

Summary of A.N.T. Species:

1. "Always" thinking: thinking in words like always, never, no one, every one, every time, everything.
2. Focusing on the negative: only seeing the bad in a situation.
3. Fortune telling: predicting the worst possible outcome to a situation.
4. Mind reading: believing that you know what another person is thinking, even though they haven’t told you.
5. Thinking with your feelings: believing negative feelings without ever questioning them.
6. Guilt beatings: thinking in words like "should, must, ought or have to."
7. Labeling: attaching a negative label to yourself or to someone else.
8. Personalization: innocuous events are taken to have personal meaning.
9. Blame: blaming someone else for your own problems.

Feed Your Anteater and Feel Better

Whenever you notice an ANT entering your mind, train yourself to recognize it and write it down. When you write down automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and talk back to them, you begin to take away their power and gain control over your moods. Convert the ANTs by feeding your emotional anteater.

FEED YOUR ANTEATER AND FEEL BETTER EXERCISE is for whenever you need to be in control of your mind. It is for times when you feel anxious, nervous, depressed or frazzled. It is for times when you need to be your best.

Whenever you feel depressed or anxious follow these ANTEATER steps.

EVENT: Write out the event that is associated with your thoughts and feelings.

1. A.N.T.  (write out the automatic automatic negative thoughts)

2. SPECIES (identify the type of irrational thought)

3. Convert THE A.N.T. (talk back to the irrational thoughts by acknowledging your needs and values)

Here are some examples of ways to convert these ANTs into Acknowledging Needs in Thoughts :

1. You never listen to me. Oh, I really value attention when I speak. I feel connected and more confident.
2. Always Thinking
3. I get frustrated when you don’t listen to me, but I know you have listened to me and will again. I

1. The boss doesn’t like me. I notice she walked past me without saying hello. I feel anxious because I value connection and inclusion.
2. Mind Reading
3. I don’t know that. Maybe she’s just having a bad day. Bosses are people, too.

1. The whole class will laugh at me. I feel scared and worried because I value support & understanding.
2. Fortune Telling.
3. I don’t know that. Maybe they’ll really like my speech.

1. It’s your fault we have these marital problems. I feel helpless in this situation and need support, clarity and understanding.
2. Blame
3. I need to look at my part of the problems and look for ways I can make the situation better.

Your thoughts really matter. They can either help or hurt your deep limbic system. Left unchecked, ANTs will cause an infection in your whole body system. Whenever you notice ANTs, you need to crush them or they’ll affect your relationships, your work, and your entire life. First you need to notice them. If you can catch them at the moment they occur and correct them, you take away the power they have over you. When a negative thought goes unchallenged, your mind believes it and your body reacts to it.

ANTs have an illogical logic. By bringing them into the open and examining them on a conscious level, you can see for yourself how little sense it really makes to think these kinds of things to yourself. You take back control over your own life instead of leaving your fate to hyperactive limbic conditioned negative thought patterns.

Sometimes people have trouble talking back to these grossly unpleasant thoughts because they feel that such obvious age-old "truisms" simply must be real. They think that if they don’t continue to believe these thoughts that they are lying to themselves. Once again, remember that to know what is true and what is not, you have to be conscious of the thoughts and have an intelligent perspective on them. Most negative thinking is automatic and goes unnoticed. You’re not really choosing how to respond to your situation, it’s being chosen for you, by bad brain habits. To find out what is really true and what is not, you need to question it. Don’t believe everything you hear — even in your own mind!

I love this post by Ian Peatey, an NVC trainer based in Europe. My world, too, changed when I started connecting to my needs. At first intellectually and now in a more embodied way. 

What is wonderful, for me, in this post by Ian, who blogs about NVC on his Quantum Learning site is the notion of needs as an orchestra. This metaphor captures the wonderful jazz-like improv of needs ~ their fluidity, their internal resonance, their responsiveness. Beautiful. Thanks to Ian for his post…

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Our Needs Make Us Strong

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Gandhi

This quote sums up my approach to life.

My aspired approach to life, that is. I’ve still got some way to go as the truth is, at the age of 46, I’m still unlearning a lot of accumulated rubbish from my first 35 years.

This stuff is not deep, painful, unusual or traumatic. Sometimes, I think it might be easier to deal with if it was because it would be more obvious. It’s all regular, everyday beliefs about how the world, society and I function. There’s nothing extreme or extraordinary there.

For example, I believed science, logic and rationality rule and mind and thought are King! I imagined once I left college I would be fully equipped to deal with the world and I even knew how the world worked.

I was brought up on a middle-class path of a steady job, slow but regular promotion, saving for retirement, marrying my childhood sweetheart and buying a small house and car (big enough for a family). It was a well worn path trod by my parents, their parents before them and pretty much everyone I knew.

Choosing another way never entered my head.

Live as if you will never die. Learn when you have to.

Peatey

A Life Changing Idea

In 2001, I was presented with an incredibly simple idea that changed my life.

This idea was the start of the answer to questions I’d been failing to ask myself but were lurking under the surface creating an underlying existential dissatisfaction.

The idea wasn’t anything new or weird. I’d even studied it at college, though I’d not been encouraged to think about it beyond a theory of human behaviour to be learned for exams.

At the risk of sounding like some New Age Salesperson I’d like to say how it changed my life:

• helped me understand the dynamic flow of who I am as a human being. Never static. Always changing. I am unique.
• discovered my inner power, my engine. Deep, rich and full of potential.
• felt my connection to every other human being on the planet. I am part of the human race. I am not unique.
• started to sense my connection to the soul of the universe, God, the Source (whatever word works for you).

The very simple idea is I have ‘needs’.

It was really that simple – and that profound!

The word ‘need’ might not speak to you, perhaps because you associate it with a lack of something. I often use the word ‘driver’ or ‘motivator’ instead.

Needs Are To Be Lived

I studied Maslow’s theory of needs at college and intellectually it made sense.

He said we have sets of needs arranged in a hierarchy with Physiological needs at the bottom and Self-Actualisation at the top (with Safety, Love/Belonging and Esteem in between). My understanding of his theory (which may not be his understanding!) was that the hierarchy is fixed and I move up between levels as I mature and my living conditions change. Once I’ve reached a higher level I’ll stay there unless I temporarily regress due to changed conditions.

The idea that changed my life was similar but with a crucial difference. It was introduced to me by Marshall Rosenberg, the creator of Nonviolent Communication and you can find his list of needs here, as an example. The main difference is that Rosenberg describes needs as dynamic and to be lived, and not static and to be studied.

His approach raised several questions:

• What if needs are not arranged in a hierarchy but are within me all the time?
• What if they are in a constant state of ebb and flow?
• What if the feelings I experience are signals about my needs?

Internal Orchestra Of Needs

Consider an internal orchestra, with my needs as the instruments and my feelings as the music.

The instruments are often hidden yet they play a unique tune of my own composition. If I choose to listen!

All the instruments are present at all times, sometimes playing together, at other times a solo piece. If not attended to, an instrument may become louder or discordant. When handled just right, they sing out beautiful and joyful music.

For example, right now I’m filled with the note of joy when I imagine you reading this. It’s created by my needs (the instrument) for sharing and contribution (to peace and tolerance). I’m also feeling a little nervous coming from the need of understanding. (I have no feedback yet, so I can’t check if my writing is clear). And I’m a little peckish and that’s my need for sustenance playing a side tune.

This is right now. In a few moments everything will change and I’ll be playing a different tune.

Needs As A Source Of Strength

I grew up learning that needs were often a lack of something, or a sign of weakness. Being a ‘needy’ person was not a positive thing. So for me it was a huge revelation to redefine needs as my inner resources, as my strength not my weakness.

Without them I cannot experience life.

Aligning needs, thoughts, emotions and actions gives an amazing integrity, clarity and inner power. When I have inner alignment I feel my connection to the Source of all things. I sense I’m part of something bigger.

Needs are at the core of everything I do and the bridge between me and you and all human kind.

We all need food, water, safety, respect, understanding, freedom, autonomy, community, meaning etc. etc.. We share the same needs and they bind us together.

Whenever I think we have different needs, or that our needs are in conflict, they are not needs. I must look deeper to find what sits underneath. When we find our needs, there is no conflict and no fighting.

We see the beauty in each other.

When I’m connected with my needs I’m living here and now and I’m constantly learning. Life is ever changing, so how could I possibly stop exploring it?

NOTE: This was originally published in April 2009 as a Guest Post on a now inactive site. This was an important post for me and I wanted to make sure it stays alive in some way so I publish it here with some minor edits.

I love receiving wise words from LaShelle  and her posting today is another example of how she finds ways to  bring NVC alive in our relationships and the thinking and communication habits we have.

Her Connection Gem of the Week takes a specific issue in NVC and walks you through an example of how it is applied in real-life situations. I really recommend subscribing at this link:

http://wiseheartpdx.org/newsletter.php

Connection Gem of the Week

Analyzing Your Partner’s Needs

The same needs are usually met in different ways for you and your partner.  Your partner’s need for love may be met most easily through hearing verbally about your caring for him or her.  Your need for love may be most easily met by help with the chores in daily life. You don’t have to know why. That’s part of the simple beauty of learning to love from this consciousness.

It’s most tempting to analyze your partner when you do something that doesn’t meet a need.  In your mind, taking a nibble of what your partner ordered for dinner may be a reflection of the intimacy and generosity in your relationship.  And for your partner it may show a lack of respect. 

Be very suspicious of the mind that wants to analyze your partner’s issues around scarcity and how it likely started in childhood when s/he didn’t receive consistent nurturing.  Even if Freud were to descend from the heavens and affirm the accuracy of your analysis, it wouldn’t necessarily do much for your relationship.  There’s a good chance that such analysis would be used as evidence for how messed up your partner is and how healthy you are.

I don’t mean to say that understanding your partner’s history and how that shows up now as sensitivities and preferences isn’t useful.  When that information and clarity is offered by your partner, it can help you access compassion.  It is your impulse to analyze on your own that you want to examine.

If asking before tasting your partner’s dinner, meets his or her need for respect then you have one more simple way of meeting that need.  It’s easy to celebrate this when you take yourself out of it.  That is, you remember that your partner’s reaction to you nibbling his or her dinner is about her or him.  It’s not about you being wrong or doing something wrong.  You simply didn’t know that that wouldn’t meet needs.

When you do something that doesn’t work for your partner, offering empathy (a guess about what feelings and needs are up) is not only a gift to him or her, it’s a gift to you.  Offering empathy can help you get out of the habit of taking things personally and then having to make someone wrong or right.

Life gets so much easier when you perceive other’s behavior as about their feelings and needs and not about you.  Here are some "mantras" that might help you remember this in a difficult moment:

-This isn’t about me.

-It’s okay for my partner to be upset. 

-I know my intentions are good.  I am doing the best I can.

-I don’t have to defend, this isn’t about me.

-My partner’s reactions are not my fault.

-What is my partner feeling and needing?

The next time you do something that doesn’t meet needs for your partner remind yourself that it’s not about you, and then get curious about what does meet his or her needs in that context.

Have you ever wondered what the skills are that support self-development and connection in our world.

I recommend you check out this new NVC-related web-site called "Pathways to Liberation" which gives a comprehensive list of skills. They have also created a skill matrix exploring the development of these skills from “unskilled, to awakening, to capable, to integrated”.

This week I am going to circle where I am on the matrix and then ask 2 two dearly beloved and trusted friends to do the same for me (to check if my self-perception aligns with how others experience me)…

I really like how it is articulated here. You can check out this list of skills here:

http://pathwaystoliberation.net/skills/

These are the skills they list are:

• Presence: Being attentive to what is happening right now.  Not lost in thinking, emotional reactions, etc.
• Observing: Noticing (and possibly describing) our sensory and mental experiences, and distinguishing these experiences from the interpretations we ascribe to them.
• Feelings awareness: Ability to identify and experience our physical sensations and emotions.
• Self-acceptance: Accepting oneself with unconditional caring.
• Taking ownership of one’s feelings: Living from the knowledge that I alone cause my emotions – my emotions are not caused by others.
• Needs consciousness: Awareness of (and the willingness to honor) needs, the essential universal elemental qualities of life (like sustenance, love and meaning).
• Re-connecting to self & recovering from reactivity: Reactivity is internal resistance to what is.  Recovery is letting go of that resistance.  Re-connecting to self is being with one’s own experience with presence and compassion.
• Request consciousness & making requests: Willingness to ask for what one wants, with openness to any response; not attached to any particular outcome.
• Mourning: Transforming the suffering of loss; letting go of resistance to what is, and being willing to allow our experience to unfold.
• Empathy: Being present with another’s experience, with unconditional acceptance of the person.
• Dissolving enemy images: Transcending one’s perceptions that another deserves to be punished or harmed.
• Discernment: Clarity, insight, and wisdom in making life-serving distinctions and choices; recognizing one has choice.
• Living interdependently: Living from the knowledge that every individual is related to every other individual – every part of a system affects every other part.
• Honest self-expression: Owning one’s experience and having the willingness to express authentically without blame or criticism.
• Facilitating connection: Facilitating empathy and honesty in dialogue with an intent to create connection.
• Patience: Remaining spaciously present when one feels stress.  An ability to be with one’s own reactions, without acting out of them.
• Responding to others’ reactivity: Responding rather than reacting to others who are caught up in intense separating emotions.
• Openness to feedback: Receiving other’s perspective about our actions with equanimity and centeredness.
• Beneficial regret: Acknowledging and learning from one’s missed opportunity to meet needs, without guilt, shame, or self-punishment.
• Flexibility in relating: Openness and versatility in interacting with others.
• Transforming conflict: Using conflict with others as a means to connect and create a mutual outcome.
• Gratitude: Finding the value in, appreciating, and enjoying what is.
• Openhearted flow of giving and receiving: Transforming scarcity thinking into thriving creatively; joyfully contributing and receiving.
• Cultivating vitality: Tuning in to oneself to support balanced self-care; cultivating the energy to serve life.
• Sharing power: Transforming domination; valuing everyone’s needs with mutuality and respect; transcending submission and rebellion.
• Transcending roles: Aware that we are not the roles we play; having choice about what roles we adopt and how we respond to the roles others adopt.
• Awareness of response-ability: Freely choosing one’s responses to what shows up in life, owning one’s part in what happens.  Not owning others’ parts, and acknowledging that one’s actions do influence others.
• Supporting holistic systems: Consciously participating in the creation and evolution of holistic systems that foster general well-being.

And if you sign up for "the Matrix" for self-assessment for these skills through the box on the right-hand side of that page, you can then receive access to a document which further elaborates on the skill-set given here.

The basic premise underlying Transformative Communication is that people are trying to connect when they communicate.

Unfortunately sometimes the “way we connect” such as our words, behaviour or strategies do just the opposite…they lead to a communication breakdown.

Furthermore, our culture has developed a language structure that contributes to this breakdown; either in our inner talk or the way we talk with and to others.

Marshall Rosenberg identifies four “D’s” leading to disconnection:

1. Diagnosis: judgements, analysis, criticism & comparison
2. Denial of responsibility
3. Demand
4. Deserve-oriented language

Examples:

1. Diagnosis
   1. Judgement = She is lazy. Those people are greedy.
   2. Analysis = They are just attention- seeking. She is so needy.
   3. Criticism = That’s the wrong way. When will you grow up?
   4. Comparison = Your sister always tries harder at school. She is prettier than me.

1. Denial of responsibility:
   1. You made me angry/sad/punish you.
   2. I have to…..x, y, z
   3. They made me….
   4. I have to follow the rules.

1. Demand:
   1. Direct: You have to do the dishes/clean up your room/go to bed.
   2. Indirect: Can you swap shifts with me? Remember I swapped with you for your sister’s wedding.

1. Deserve-oriented language:
   1. He broke the law so he deserves to be punished.
   2. What goes around comes around.
   3. They are poor because they don’t work hard enough and save their money.

These forms of communication have developed over thousands of years and many are embedded in the way our language, English, is structured. For example the verb “to be” enables us to label ourselves or others and makes something that is “just in this moment” sound like a statement of fact or permanent:

‘I am depressed’, implies that

• I always feel sad, will always feel sad, and I can do nothing about it.

‘Is’ and ‘are’, like all present tense verbs, imply no time, no space and absolute truth. ‘I am depressed’ abbreviates what has happened in the past. So perhaps it means:

I felt sad on many occasions in the past, and I feel sad now.

• With a partner identify which communication breakers you have experienced receiving and briefly state how you felt and still feel, e.g. I feel defiant when I hear moralising; I feel hurt when I hear name calling
• With your partner identify which a communication breaker you use most often with other people and briefly note the situations in which you use them, e.g. judging when frustrated, praising when wanting to get something done, withdrawal when feeling overwhelmed.
• What need were you trying to meet when using a communication breaker? For example. Using praise to get someone to do what I want – I have a need for ease.

This is a post for me. I know I speak directly – often wishing I could be more “tactful” but not knowing how. I don’t want to water down my message and I don’t want the conversation to stop before it has even started. How do I share information that is going to be hard to hear? Where is the sweet spot between tactlessness and silence?

How do I tell a colleague at work that I am receiving feedback from other committee members that they speak over other people and “hog” the floor.

How do I tell a colleague they have bad breath?

How do I tell a staff member that their co-teachers say they are not pulling their weight on the program?

How do I tell a relative they are not being invited to a wedding?

Here’s how…

1. STATE your path.

Share your facts. Facts are the least controversial and they can be a point of agreement to start your conversations. Opinions tend to start conversations as a point of disagreement.

Tell your story. First check your facts again. Then check if you are going to tell a victim or villain or helpless story. Revisit your story. What is important for you? What values or needs are up here? For example, are you needing connection, autonomy, support, clarity, safety? As you share your story notice how the other person is responding. If they are withdrawing (looking away, looking down) or becoming defensive (folding arms, tapping, trying to interrupt) you may need to re-establish safety by contrasting.

Ask for others’ paths. How is this landing for them? Be curious about their story.

Talk tentatively. Try phrases like; I was wondering, perhaps, would you be willing, I’m starting to think, I’m starting to feel, I don’t think you are intending this but…,

Encourage testing. Invite other views – is there another way to see this that I haven’t suggested, how else could we think about this, what might be another reason?

2. DO NOT DRIVE UNTIL YOU ARE UNDER 0.05

Think of being triggered, angry, judgemental, suspicious as being over the limit. You are  now emotionally impaired – but only temporarily. Just as you wouldn’t take the risk of driving when you are over the legal alcohol limit and you would wait until you are sober – you can choose to wait until you are emotionally sober and your adrenaline is below 0.05 before you start your conversation.

3. FOCUS ON YOUR DESTINATION

Decide what you really want – not about the issue – but with the relationship. How do you want the relationship to be and then ask yourself ;

“How will I behave to get the relationship results I want?”

4. STAY FOCUSED ON  THE ROAD

Do not take side roads – such as other issues, other people, excuses etc. Keep your eye on the road and look out for road works which flag safety or respect are at risk. Slow down, manage safety and respect before continuing.

You can see Crucial Conversations on You Tube

Sometimes it seems like no matter how good the shared intentions are old patterns of communication come into the conflict resolution process.

Here are some insights into what may be going on within yourself or with the other person and how to find a way forward.