Your Childhood Is Sabotaging Your Relationship (And You Don’t Even Know It)

Why “Talking Things Out” Doesn’t Work (and What to Do Instead)

It’s time for Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz 009, in which host Mel Schwartz explains why “talking it out” usually makes things worse and what you can do to get on the same page. You’ll learn how to break the cycle of repeating arguments, the exact words to use the next time a conversation starts to spiral, and a new way to listen so your partner finally feels understood — and so do you. Do you ever feel like the more you try to explain yourself, the less your partner understands? Listen to this episode. Rather watch? Try the YouTube channel [https://urlgeni.us/youtube/UCSE09]! SUBSCRIBE TO UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ Don’t miss a single Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TI3RgRUVk0iQB74ayETly], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-sense-with-mel-schwartz/id1884396335], or anywhere you get your podcasts, or to the YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8n_ZQUSefmy6WVAF3FBBw]. You can also simply copy / paste the RSS link [https://www.melschwartz.com/category/podcasts/possibility-podcast/feed/] directly into the podcast app of your choice! Want e-mail updates every time an episode is posted, plus related and supplementary content? Subscribe to the newsletter for free [https://melschwartz.com/ucs-newsletter]! TRANSCRIPT OF UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ #009 What if I told you that talking to each other could ultimately become the worst thing in your relationship? I know that sounds crazy, but I know. You’ve been told your whole life to talk things out. That communication is essential, particularly in romantic relationships. And of course, that’s true. But here’s what happens in most relationships. We think that what we’re intending to convey is received by the other person in the way we intended with the same subtleties and nuances. And very often, our words are not landing in the way we intended. But what’s the greater problem? We don’t know it. After 30,000 hours of couples counseling, I see this problem time and time again. I’m Mel Schwartz, and this is Uncommon Sense. In this episode, I’m going to show you how you can communicate with great effectiveness, how your words can land and be taken in just the way you intended, so we can create a coherent communication between you and your partner. This is invaluable, so let’s get started. I was walking down the street recently with two friends of mine who were engaged in the conversation, and I was just quietly listening in. And after a few minutes, I realized that although they thought they were talking about the same thing, they weren’t. I was listening intently to their words and expressions and what they meant to each other, and I saw, I saw the departure from having a shared meaning and understanding what they were saying. They had no idea, and I see this and witness this all the time. Going to share with you a personal story which really illuminated this for me quite a few years ago. I used to live down near the beach in the town I lived in, and I’d get up in the morning and walk to a local coffee shop to pick up my morning coffee. Great way of getting up in the morning and feeling wonderful. I’d pass a restaurant along the way, and there was a parking attendant who would park cars there. His name was Jacques. And I’d walk by one particular morning and say, “Good morning, Jacques, how are you?” And he smiled at me and he said, “I can’t complain.” I continued on for my coffee, but I thought about his words. “I can’t complain.” And I thought, that could mean two different things. It could mean I have nothing to complain about or it could mean, literally, I won’t allow myself to complain. Well, being who I am, I was thinking, I want to know. I’m curious, what did this man mean? So on my way back, I stopped and I explained that to him. I said, “Jacques, which did it mean? You have nothing to complain about, everything’s great, or you can’t complain.” And he said to me that in the culture he grew up in, he was from Africa, that it was bad. It was bad form to complain. So he meant, literally, I won’t let myself complain. So I said to him, “Jacques, is it okay with you that when I ask you, how are you? It’s not a rhetorical question. I’d like you to really share with me how you’re doing. And I’ll do the same with you.” So we had a new understanding. That is what I mean by effective communication. We’re not just passing each other by, throwing words at each other, to fly by, that’s incoherent. And when we operate that way, there’s no verbal or emotional intimacy. We’re not opening ourselves up. We’re stuck in this transactional ping-pong match of words. The word “respect,” taken from the Latin, I think it’s respicera, means to look again. A respectful communication slows down. It’s curious, it isn’t punctuated. You know, when I hear people say, “love you,” is “love you” the same as “I love you?” Another way that we punctuate things is almost like we’re operating from text. Pass somebody by on the street and they say, “how are you?” You smile and say, “good, you?” “Great.” Is anyone telling each other the truth? When I’m in a restaurant and the wait person says to me, “how are you, I can be a bit of a wise guy and say, ‘pull up a chair and I’ll tell you.'” So we need to use words in a way that have meaning. Where we want answers to these questions, we have to use the words and choose the most correct words. Otherwise, we’re defaulting to what I think they meant or they think I meant. Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in the same old patterns? You’ve got the same old thoughts and beliefs. It feels like you’re just stuck inside and you can’t break out, no matter how much you want things to change. Maybe your relationships feel predictable and boring; your relationship with yourself and with others and you’ve tried to break free from low self-esteem or maybe anxiety. Maybe the wounds of your past have limited you but it feels like something just keeps pulling you back and makes you feel inert. Here’s what I’ve discovered. We’ve been taught to believe that we’re stuck and that change is hard and our past defines our future but it’s not correct. Quantum physics tells us an entirely different story. You see, reality is not fixed and inert but it’s in this perpetual state of flowing possibilities full of potential. I’ve developed a method for you to experience your life through that experience of possibility. That’s why I wrote The Possibility Principle, How Quantum Physics can Improve the Way You Think, Live and Love. In this book, I’ll show you how to apply the core insights of quantum physics, not the science, but just practical everyday messages for life. You’ll learn how to break free from your old thoughts and beliefs and hurts and wounds of the past that constrain you. You can live the life you long for. So if you’re ready to stop being imprisoned by your past and start actively creating the life you wish for, grab a copy of The Possibility Principle on Amazon. The link is in the description. Okay, back to the show. I was working with a couple some years ago. I’ll call them Dave and Karen. And in a very upset moment, Karen said to her husband, Dave, “I can’t do this anymore.” Dave’s face went white. His body got rigid. I said, “What are you feeling, Dave?” He said, “It sounds like Karen’s breaking up with me. She wants a divorce.” I turned to Karen and said, “When you said ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ what did you mean, Karen?” She said, “I can’t have these stupid silly arguments that go nowhere.” I understood what Karen was saying. And her husband of 15 years didn’t. How enlightening, how illuminating, how tragic is that? So a conversation becomes really two separate monologues being knocked back and forth to each other. Not a dialogue. A dialogue is an open-ended, present communication where we’re sharing. There’s a correspondence. Let’s talk about the word correspondence. What I mean by correspondence is kind of like if you strike a tuning fork, the tuning fork vibrates. It resonates. Both parts are resonating. They’re in sync with each other. A communication has correspondence as like the tuning fork. When I’m intending, when I’m in thinking I want you to know, you’re picking up just the way I intended. Now to do that, we have to be curious. We can’t punctuate. We can’t be short-sighted. We can’t abbreviate. This leads to emotional landslides and feeling misunderstood. Only nobody understands why. One of my great revelations about this is around the notion of shared meaning. Shared meaning about what does the word mean to you? What does it mean to me? So Jerry and Diane were in the therapy session with me and Diane said to Jerry, “You have no idea of how to be intimate.” Jerry was just appalled. He got rigid and angry. “I have no idea of intimacy. Are you kidding? It’s you that doesn’t.” I said, “Pause. Can you each share with each other what you mean by this word intimate?” What I suspected is exactly what was happening. Jerry, by the word intimate, was referring to sexual intimacy. This guy wanted to have sex all the time. He knew what he meant by intimate. Diane was talking about emotional and verbal intimacy, sharing feelings and understanding them. They’d go on and argue without a shared meaning about what they were even talking about. Here’s another way to look at it. So imagine you’re speaking with somebody and their native language is not English. They’ve just recently learned to speak English. If you used an idiomatic expression that they weren’t familiar with, hopefully you’d have awareness that it may not be making sense to them. You’d have to explain what that expression meant. So you’re both on the same page, having a coherent communication. The same thing happens when we all speak the same language. The words have different meanings to each of us. We may have heard the same word in our childhood, but one was heard from a loving and kind parent. The other one was heard from a very critical parent. Words have meaning that go beyond the objective meaning of the world. They’re very deeply subjective as well. Here’s what you have to do. Share your meaning around the word, the phrase and your intention, and slow down and confirm that the other person is hearing it and receiving it as you intended. But you cannot abbreviate this. You can’t punctuate it and make it short. This is so much of a problem in our communication today. Everything has to be so fast and abbreviated. It’s making this tendency far more worse. It’s exacerbated. Words only represent our thoughts and our feelings. We have to do more than just express them in punctuated words. Again, “I love you” is far different than ending a phone conversation with, “love you.” “Love you” became a substitute for “goodbye.” Does it mean I love you? And if it does, say “I love you.” That lands very differently in therapy. What the therapist is doing is just what I’m presenting. Slowing down, having curiosity, inquiring, “What did you mean by that? Tell me how that felt for you.” We need to slow down and check in and make sure that our words are landing the way we intended. Tune in the way a therapist would. You don’t need to be trained in therapy to do this. You just need to slow down and care like your relationship depended on it because your relationship does depend upon it. A solution, a pathway to achieving this, is curiosity. Let’s not assume that I know how they feel, how my words are impacting them. Do they understand my words the way I intended? Without curiosity and slowing down, we’re in a ping-pong match of words flying back and forth. And they don’t mean anything, to anyone. Curiosity is respectful and engaged. We need to do a deeper dive into this true engagement for coherent communication, coherent communicating is alive, engaged and stimulating. It is not transactional, it’s not stagnant. We’re here, we’re present. We need shared meaning. Shared meaning is emotionally alive and engaged. It’s respectful, tuning in. “This is what I heard. This is what I’m thinking. Does that make sense to you?” That is the core basis of emotional and verbal intimacy and that is the bedrock of thriving relationships. So here is your uncommon sense. Saying something or hearing something is not communicating, making sure you heard what was intended and that your words are taken in as you intended is a giant step forward toward a healthy, resilient relationship. Just as we work out physically and go to the gym for health and vanity, we need to put our focused energy into emotional and verbal intimacy. Try this: The next time you’re in a conversation with your partner, especially in a hard conversation, pause before you respond and instead of reacting to what you think they said, ask them, “What did you mean by what you just said? This is what I think I heard. Is this correct?” You might be surprised by the answer, and that answer, that’s the beginning of a real conversation. That’s a shared inquiry. Go for it. It’ll change your life. The post Why “Talking Things Out” Doesn’t Work (and What to Do Instead) [https://melschwartz.com/uncommon-sense-009/] first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW [https://melschwartz.com].

Your Childhood Is Sabotaging Your Relationship (And You Don’t Even Know It)

In Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz 008, host Mel Schwartz walks through how to recognize the coping mechanisms quietly impacting your relationship, how you can begin to shed them, and what becomes possible in your relationships when you do. Think back to a moment in childhood when something hurt, embarrassed, or scared you. In this episode, you’ll learn how these moments shaped you in ways you never realized — and why the coping mechanisms that once helped you are now hurting you. Rather watch? Try the YouTube channel [https://urlgeni.us/youtube/UCSE08]! SUBSCRIBE TO UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ Don’t miss a single Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TI3RgRUVk0iQB74ayETly], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-sense-with-mel-schwartz/id1884396335], or anywhere you get your podcasts, or to the YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8n_ZQUSefmy6WVAF3FBBw]. You can also simply copy / paste the RSS link [https://www.melschwartz.com/category/podcasts/possibility-podcast/feed/] directly into the podcast app of your choice! Want e-mail updates every time an episode is posted, plus related and supplementary content? Subscribe to the newsletter for free [https://melschwartz.com/ucs-newsletter]! TRANSCRIPT OF UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ #008 Something you learned in your childhood, something positive, may be quietly making your adult relationships harder, and you have no idea what it is or why it’s happening. It’s not traumatic, it’s not a scar, it’s actually something that helped you, a habit that you built as a kid to protect yourself. It was one that worked so well, you just never stopped doing it. But what once helped you is the very thing standing between you and the relationship you want, with your partner and with yourself. I’m Mel Schwartz, and this is Uncommon Sense. After 30 years as a marriage counselor, I’ve seen this show up in nearly every couple struggling to get through their impasses. In this episode, I’m going to show you how these old habits quietly shape your disagreements, your arguments, your blocks, the moments of disconnection, and how you can begin to see them and recognize them and release them. Let’s begin. What is individual to yourself has to leak into your relationship? What do I mean by that? Well, my individual personality, coping mechanisms, the history of who I am and the history of who you are, filters into our relationship with each other. It becomes our relationship. It’s kind of like saying it’s his issue, not my issue. That makes no sense. It becomes our issue. We’re not separate any longer. But let me describe what I mean now by the notion of a coping mechanism. Early in life, things happen to us which are imperfect or hurtful. They may wound us. And we start to shift our personality to adjust for that wound, that embarrassment, something that really humiliated us. For example, I was working with an individual some years ago who told me that they were very tentative about speaking up in public or volunteering their thoughts. And I asked them, where did that come from? They recalled that in third grade, they raised their hand to answer the teacher’s question. And they answered it in a way that made the whole class laugh at them. They felt humiliated. Wow, there was a coping mechanism that was formed by that third grader. She decided, I’m never going to raise my hand or volunteer my thoughts. I can’t risk asking a stupid question or making a stupid comment. Now, how is that going to impact her throughout her life? That coping mechanism for early in life became like a wall that encased her and she couldn’t break out of it. Another illustration that stands out in my mind that I’ll never forget is when parents say to a child, think before you speak. The coping mechanism for being told to think before you speak is that I’m not going to risk making myself uncomfortable or someone else uncomfortable. And so you stay stuck. That’s why change is hard. This blocks our authenticity, both individually and as a couple, because two people in a relationship have these personality masks where we’re stuck in the original coping mechanism. Now, coping mechanism early in life is functional and it helps us. But decades later, we need to ask ourselves, do I still need that coping mechanism? It becomes a barrier to my growth, to evolving, to becoming who I can become. It kind of is like a state of inertia and we start overcompensating. We struggle with it. We feel frustrated. A coping mechanism is an overcompensation, typically early in life, for something that embarrassed us, humiliated us, or we felt insecure about. But over time, it becomes rigid and hardened. Half a lifetime ago, I missed a step coming out of my house. I broke my foot. Sometime later, the pain from the broken foot wasn’t a problem. I compensated for the broken foot. It was broken on the outside of my foot. So I put all my weight on the inside of my foot. I overcompensated and in doing that, I caused more damage to the inside of the foot than where the bone was broken. That’s what I mean by overcompensation. Think to yourself, where is your personality stuck in that overcompensation or protecting of a vulnerability? I’ll share a coping mechanism with you that I overcame with a greater awareness. I was very shy as a child. Why? Well, I think my mother overprotected me. You know, we’d walk into a store, in those years we called it the candy store, and she would want me to go up to the counter and ask for that pack of bubble gum, but I insisted that she did it. And she would placate me and go along with that. So I didn’t learn to overcome my shyness and my introversion until it came time for senior prom in high school. I was a great Frank Sinatra fan, and I got up on stage and sang Strangers in the Night to the embarrassment and humiliation of all my friends, but it helped me getting on stage. In college, I was an anti-war activist. I could stand up in front of hundreds or thousands of people and give a talk. It helped me overcome my shyness. I had to use the stage as a platform. If you had an alcoholic parent, you may have developed a coping mechanism where you decided you had to be a peacemaker or so well-behaved that you wouldn’t get that alcoholic parent to get angry with you. Maybe you became a peacemaker, or you simply went through life deciding to avoid confrontation. Now, how does that impact your relationship? I was working with a couple where somebody had been raised in just that environment. They had a volatile alcoholic parent, and they were a peacemaker, and they were afraid to confront anything that might create some disruption or unrest. So what happened in his marriage is instead of addressing the real things that were troubling him and needed to be discussed in his marriage, what he did instead is he would nitpick. He’d argue about little inconsequential things. His wife couldn’t tolerate it. She said, you’re always carping and nitpicking on this or that. Why? Because he was still stuck in that childhood coping mechanism of not confronting. So given childhood coping mechanisms like that, you become hypervigilant, so as not to upset someone. Hypervigilance leads then to a personality mask. We’re not our authentic, genuine self, and arguably, who is? But in our lives, the goal is to evolve and grow. It makes life interesting and stimulating, and we don’t go there where we get stuck in the inertia of childhood coping mechanisms, which become like a suit of armor. We go around life clanking around with that armor. It doesn’t do anything for us. So a coping mechanism is at first adaptive, but decades later, it becomes maladaptive. It’s a burden we carry with us, and it impacts our relationships enormously. And think about how this also impacts us as parenting. The messages that we give to our kids, they’re not genuine and authentic in terms of being open and vulnerable. Very often, they’re the end product of our coping mechanisms. So let me provide some tips for you. Think to yourself, where do I feel out of balance? Where do I feel not genuine and authentic? Where’s the place that you go to an automatic default when you’re not feeling secure? It can be a thought like, I’m not smart enough, which leaves me to not share my opinion. And what happens? Does that cause you then to become a private person? So often, people will say, I’m a private person. What do they really mean? It means I’m sensitive to what you might think of me, so I’m not going to share much, and that’s why I’m saying I’m a private person. First thing to do, identify your coping mechanism or mechanisms, we have more than one. Then ask yourself, do I still need this? Does this really serve me? Is it time to shed it? There’s a concept called positive disintegration, which means flaying off old parts of ourselves that we don’t need anymore. That’s positive, that’s growth. We want to shed the old, worn out parts of ourselves that don’t serve us any longer. And do the same in your relationships. Two people committed to doing that can have a growing, emerging relationship. What gets in the way of doing what I’m saying? Certainty, we get locked into certainty and what’s familiar, even if it’s dysfunctional and maladaptive. Paradoxically, we need to welcome discomfort. Discomfort breaks us free from the known, from the certain. Think of it like this, would you rather be a human being or would you rather be a human becoming? Now that sounds odd, but think about it. A being is stuck and fixed. I’d rather shift from being to becoming. A human being, a human becoming. To do that and to free yourself of old coping mechanisms, which are rigid, you have to welcome uncertainty. You have to embrace possibilities. Instead of saying, who am I, who are we? Ask yourself, how would I like to experience my life? Do I choose to be predictable, certain, fixed, inert or flowing, open to change, to being present? Coping mechanisms grow old and they imprison us. So, here’s your uncommon sense. What was once positive and adaptive can become stuck. You no longer need it. You wore braces as a kid. Do you continue to wear them forever? When you learned how to ride a bicycle and had training wheels, isn’t it time to shed the training wheels? Well, it’s time to release the old coping mechanism and welcome in the birth of a new emerging quality. And by emerging or emergent, I mean, bubbling up. It’s full of vitality and growth and excitement. Embrace uncertainty. Let go of the old coping mechanism and see what rises in this place, which is brand new and can become passionate. Thanks. The post Your Childhood Is Sabotaging Your Relationship (And You Don’t Even Know It) [https://melschwartz.com/uncommon-sense-008/] first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW [https://melschwartz.com].

“Normal” Relationship Habits That Are Actually Emotional Violence

In Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz 007, Mel explains what drives common argumentative behaviors, why they hurt you just as much as the other person, and how to break the pattern the next time you feel like firing back. Do you ever give your partner the silent treatment when you’re mad? Use sarcasm instead of saying what’s actually bothering you? Raise your voice until they back down? These are just some of the common behaviors most people think are part of “normal” fights, but are actually emotional violence hiding in your relationship.  Rather watch? Try the YouTube channel [https://urlgeni.us/youtube/UCSE07]! SUBSCRIBE TO UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ Don’t miss a single Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TI3RgRUVk0iQB74ayETly], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-sense-with-mel-schwartz/id1884396335], or anywhere you get your podcasts, or to the YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8n_ZQUSefmy6WVAF3FBBw]. You can also simply copy / paste the RSS link [https://www.melschwartz.com/category/podcasts/possibility-podcast/feed/] directly into the podcast app of your choice! Want e-mail updates every time an episode is posted, plus related and supplementary content? Subscribe to the newsletter for free [https://melschwartz.com/ucs-newsletter]! TRANSCRIPT OF UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ #007 There’s a kind of violence that happens in our relationships that we don’t even recognize as violence. You know, if there was a physical assault, we would call it violent or physical abuse. It’s black or white. There could be signs, physical signs of violence. But when there’s emotional and verbal violence, that flies beneath the radar. We acclimate to it. We treat it as normal. And it’s horribly destructive. It’s insidious. You probably experience some form of emotional and verbal violence, either by perpetrating it yourself or receiving it, or it goes in both directions. But it’s mutually destructive. Today, I am going to illuminate what these dysfunctions look like. Why emotional and verbal violence are corrosive and how to overcome them. I’m Mel Schwartz, and this is Uncommon Sense. Let’s begin. Let’s take a look at the expression, do no harm. This is known as the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors should do no harm. That makes perfect sense. Why should this apply to relationship? Well, what should the purpose of relationship be? To enhance, to benefit us, to uplift us, to do no harm. I was listening to a podcast recently about Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, their policies of non-violent civil disobedience. But I had an insight. And my insight was that non-violence needs to go beyond the physical. We’ve created laws against physical violence, but why do we still accept verbal and emotional violence? I’m using the word violence as opposed to the word abuse. Commonly we would speak of emotional abuse or verbal abuse. But abuse is a word that gets overused. Like how we use the word he’s a narcissist today. I assure you, 90% of the times he’s not a narcissist, but the word’s being used. Or gaslighting, another one of my favorites. Gaslighting came from a movie I believe from the 1940s in which a husband is trying to gaslight his wife into thinking that she is crazy. Today we say gaslighting when really what we should be saying is lying. He lied to me, she lied to me. That’s not gaslighting, it’s lying. The same thing has happened with the word abuse. It’s become so overused. It’s lost its teeth. So instead of using the word abuse, I choose to use the word violence. Violence is less gray, it’s black and white. It speaks to a disruption of emotional harmony and safety. When someone is emotionally violent in a relationship, who actually gets harmed? Well, both people do. Think about this. How often have you told someone that you love them, but then turned around and acted unlovingly? Yelled at them, denigrated them, frozen them out. The word love becomes incongruous. If there is emotional and verbal violence, that is not loving. We need to make a distinction. We need to become true to our words. Again, authentic, a word I’m fond of using. Authenticity is that if I love you and I care about you, but I act emotionally or verbally violent toward you, that doesn’t play. It’s not correlating. We need to put our money where our mouth is. Emotional and verbal violence have no place in a loving relationship or a friendship. This may have been learned behavior from your childhood. Probably was, regrettably. One or both parents said I loved you, but they were emotionally or verbally violent, perhaps even physically. You need to choose to unlearn it. You need to choose to get clear. Now, let’s walk through the different forms of emotional violence that may be hiding in your relationship. Number one, angry verbal attacks. What does that look like in a relationship? What does it sound like? Well, it’s denigrating. It’s putting the other person down. It’s angry. It’s vindictive. It’s damaging. That’s the intention. It’s inconsistent with a loving relationship. You might ask yourself, if it’s you or your partner, what is the anger actually masking? What’s really underneath the anger? If you’re feeling angry or hurt, try to express the hurt, the vulnerability, not the anger. You might say to your partner, I’m feeling so unimportant to you or neglected. I don’t feel valued or I don’t feel loved. Express that vulnerable feeling instead of saying you’re a piece of shit. You don’t pay any attention to me. Which one is going to get you heard? What is the difference between responding and reacting? Responding takes two seconds. Tune into your feeling, think about what you’re feeling, and express it. That’s nonviolent. If you can notice an angry or hurt feeling, pause, acknowledge what you’re feeling, and then choose how to communicate it. It’s okay to say, I’m feeling so angry. I’m feeling unloved. I’m feeling devalued. Let me tell you why. That’s not acting angry. There is no verbal violence when you speak that way. Number two, sarcasm in tone. How is sarcasm a form of violence? How does the venom in your tone harm both of you? Sarcasm and venom are a put down. They are intended to denigrate the other person. That is violent. When you communicate that way, you are harming yourself along with the other person. Now, why do I say that? Because you’ve moved into that negative, disruptive energy. When you speak that way, not only do you guarantee that you’re not gonna be hurt, you are now engaged in fight or flight. You’re both in a ring, having at each other. Your cortisol levels rise. It’s unhealthy for you. Your blood pressure goes up. You’re damaging yourselves physically, emotionally, psychologically. It is not a love language. Pause and imagine looking in the mirror and thinking to yourself, breathe. Exhale. Slow down. Ask yourself, do you want to be heard? Or do you want your words to fall on deaf ears and ignite even more anger coming back at you? We’ll get back to the show in just a second, but real quick. If you’re finding value in these conversations, if you’re starting to see your relationships, your thinking, or your life in a new way, I’d love to stay connected with you beyond the podcast. I send out thoughts, insights, reflections, and practical tools straight to your inbox, things that can help you apply what we talk about here so your own life and relationships can prosper. So if you want to keep the conversation going, head to the link in the show notes and sign up for my email list. It’s free and I think you’ll find it genuinely useful. Okay, back to the show. Aggressive gestures. What do aggressive gestures look like in a relationship? We know. Pointing fingers at each other. Rigid, inflexible body language. When we default into aggressive gestures, angry, hostile feelings, body language, again, this may be a replication of what you experience as a child, with a parent or both parents, or with your parent’s relationship with each other. It’s learned behavior. Let’s be mindful. Let’s slow down and let’s reflect and think that kind of violence is inconsistent with love. What do I choose? Do I choose love? Do I choose validation? Do I want to be heard and appreciated? Or am I going to spiral into an unconscious, automatic reflex of anger? Where’s that going to get me? If the person I love is being put down and treated angrily and without respect by me, that’s going to come back and haunt me and mirror me. I don’t want to be pointing fingers, getting in each other’s face, but this is challenging. What we need to do is call time out, either to one another, be able to say to each other, hey, this is not going well. Let’s take a couple of minutes and let’s regroup. We have to learn a new way of approaching how we engage each other when we’re feeling challenged, when we’re feeling put down. One of us can choose differently. It’s not healthy, we have to be mindful. This just takes five seconds and you can actually foam the runway, which we talked about in the previous episode, by saying, I’m not going to head in this direction. Number four for emotional violence is what I call the silent treatment. Now, how is silent treatment actually a form of violence when it feels like the opposite? Well, silence can be used as punishment. It can be used in a punitive way. When one person is feeling angry or not getting their needs met, they may choose to be silent. This may go on for hours or days. That is punitive. That is emotionally violent. The purpose of relationship is to relate. Silence puts a wall around relating and communicating. It renders the other person impenetrable. That is punishing. That’s the opposite of relating. Now, what’s the difference between a silent treatment and taking a healthy break? Obvious. If things get heated and you say, I need five minutes, or I’m going to take a walk so I can calm down, let’s do this when I get back in 10 minutes, that’s healthy. That’s fine. Take a break. Do not use silence as punishment. Number five, verbal abuse. It’s denigrating. What is the point of denigrating your partner? You’re supposed to be in a relationship that enhances both of you. If you’re going to put them down and denigrate them, that’s denigrating you as well. It brings both of you into a mutual humiliation. If my partner is being emotionally violent toward me, what should I do? Do your best Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Choose passive resistance. Don’t be reactive. Say to them, I’m not going to go there with you. This energy is not going to get us anywhere. Let’s take 10 seconds and regroup. And if they want to express how they feel in an appropriate way, say, I’m all ears. But don’t be reactive. Breathe. How does being emotionally violent towards someone also damage you? Again, if you’re speaking angrily, your cortisol levels are through the roof. You’re causing yourself a denigration of your own wellbeing. It’s a malevolent energy and is toxic to both of you. The premise in all relationships should be do no harm. Do no harm could mean you choose not to be in the relationship, but it can also be that you will do no harm to yourself or to the other person by belittling, by denigrating, or by cursing as an expression of anger. Do no harm to yourself and do no harm to others. Now, this is a spiritual message. It’s a mindfulness message. It is a sensitive human attitude for all relationships. So here is your uncommon sense. The next time you feel angry with your partner, pause and ask yourself, what’s underneath the anger? It’s usually hurt or vulnerability. You can choose. You have the power and the ability to do no harm, to do no harm to them and to yourself. Now, it isn’t complex, but it is challenging. You simply need to say to yourself, I am not going to be reactive. It makes no sense for me to harm myself or harm a person that I say loves me. Choose differently and uncommon sense will free you from this harmful reaction of doing more and more harm to each other. Choose to be mindful and express yourself and your feelings and words that can actually be taken in. The post “Normal” Relationship Habits That Are Actually Emotional Violence [https://melschwartz.com/uncommon-sense-007/] first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW [https://melschwartz.com].

Why the Strongest People Have the Weakest Relationships

Presenting Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz 006, in which the marriage counselor, psychotherapist, and author breaks down why the “strongest” people have the weakest relationships, what happens when you finally drop the armor, and the first step to building real self-worth instead of the fake version most of us are chasing. You’ve been told your whole life to be strong, act tough, never show weakness. But that could be the exact reason your relationship is struggling. Let’s get into the reasons why in this episode of Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz! Rather watch? Try the YouTube channel [https://youtu.be/3Wt90v3GbTo?si=fpITjRWFa1lsasYs]! SUBSCRIBE TO UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ Don’t miss a single Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TI3RgRUVk0iQB74ayETly], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-sense-with-mel-schwartz/id1884396335], or anywhere you get your podcasts, or to the YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8n_ZQUSefmy6WVAF3FBBw]. You can also simply copy / paste the RSS link [https://www.melschwartz.com/category/podcasts/possibility-podcast/feed/] directly into the podcast app of your choice! Want e-mail updates every time an episode is posted, plus related and supplementary content? Subscribe to the newsletter for free [https://melschwartz.com/ucs-newsletter]! TRANSCRIPT OF UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ #006 We’ve all struggled in our committed relationships in one form or another, but when we do, we typically look at the fault line as being our partner’s fault. That may not be sufficiently self-reflective. In fact, it isn’t. We look at our relationship issues, the external relationship, our relationship with one another, but we typically pay little attention or no attention to our own inner relationship with our own self. That’s the nucleus of the relationship. In the 30 years of couples counseling that I have experienced, I can tell you with confidence that your relationship can only thrive if both of you have an inner relationship with your own selves that is healthy. Let me repeat that. You have to have two people who have a healthy relationship with each other to have a relationship that’s going to succeed between the two of you. And what often gets in the way of that relationship success is low self-esteem. We never talk about low self-esteem. In fact, in the DSM, the Bible of Diagnosis, there is no diagnosis for low self-esteem. This is the proverbial elephant in a room. Low self-worth is corrosive, but this can be improved upon and you can overcome low self-worth. What we call our relationship is a complex tapestry of each person’s own personal history and their own inner relationship. I’m going to show you how low self-esteem has a destructive ripple effect on both people in a relationship and how you can successfully overcome it, improving your individual self-worth and your relationship success. I’m Mel Schwartz and this is Uncommon Sense. What’s the most important relationship that you have or will ever have? That most important relationship is with your own self. That’s a relationship with your own thoughts, your own beliefs and feelings that will impact everything you experience in your life. Everything you see and engage with other people comes through the filter of your relationship with yourself. This is the ultimate source of what becomes your external relationship. So why do I make this point? It’s because we are not objective analytical robots. We are subjective, feeling human beings and our personal history and experience informs how we perceive, how we think and relate to each other. For example, let’s look at what happens when you take a drop of ink and drop the ink into a beaker of water. For a while you can follow the stream of ink, but after a while you can no longer discern where the ink started, where it’s going to. It migrates throughout. The same thing happens in our relationships with each other. We are the drop of ink in the water and the water becomes the relationship. My experience is that the greatest influence on our relationships is our own self-worth. This is the filter through which we see each other and ourselves. This constructs the relationship. I’m going to explain that more in detail but first let’s define the terribly misunderstood term self-esteem. This term self-esteem, I believe, is an absolute misnomer. Most people, in trying to derive self-esteem, are looking outside of themselves. Like if you’re a star athlete in school, you create a lot of self-worth for yourself, but it’s coming from your excellence on the ball field. If you’re getting straight A’s and you’re a valedictorian, that’s a wonderful thing. But what happens if you’re not successful academically? What happens if you’re not a star athlete? What happens if you have average looks and average intelligence and there’s nothing exceptional about you? Shouldn’t you still have good self-worth? Self-worth is about my relationship with me, but as a culture we are trained to develop what I call other esteem. For instance, if your parents ever said to you when you were a kid, think before you speak. Let’s take a look at what that means. What does that suggest? It means you need to be really thoughtful and concerned about what other people will think of what you said as opposed to developing your own authentic self-empowerment about what you want to express. Think before you speak means you are subjugated to the impressions that other people will have of you. When I’m working with people and they’ll sometimes share with me, I didn’t say this or I didn’t say that because I was concerned about what someone would think about me. So think about this juxtaposition. I have my relationship with me, but I’m going to set other people up as my judge. How is that going to work out? You know, I’m fond of saying no one can judge me unless I happen to be a defendant in a trial and in the courtroom the judge or the jury get to be my judge. Other people are just people who have opinions. If I elevate someone’s opinion to become my judgment, what I’m doing is I’m judging me. And when I judge me, then I’m subordinating me and setting you up. And by the way, as an aside, when people say they’re worried about what other people think of them, that’s not accurate. What they should be saying is I’m worried about what I think they think of me. You see the irony? And they’re probably doing the same thing. So low self-worth is absolutely rampant in our culture. It’s part of the problem we have, and this absolutely decimates authentic relationship with my own self and then my relationship with you. I’m going to tell you a story to underscore this point I’m making. Whenever I do tell you narratives about my clients, understand I’m always changing their name to protect confidentiality. Many years ago, I was working with a couple who came to me around this issue. He said he loved his wife very much. She insisted that he didn’t. As I explored further, I came to understand that she didn’t believe she was lovable. By the way, when I’m working with couples, I usually see them individually as well. Why? Because understanding an individual’s issues or challenges or self-esteem issues will inform me as to what’s going on in their relationship. So with Jill, I started to ask some questions. Like, have you always felt unlovable? She said yes. How come? Do you know why? What happened in your life to give you this belief that you aren’t worthy of love? The question really triggered her absolute core wound. She told me that when she was about seven years old, her mother shared with her that her pregnancy with Jill was an accident. She hadn’t planned to get pregnant. So Jill came to her own self-damaging conclusion that if I were an accident, I wasn’t wanted, I’m not loved, and I’m not lovable. She carried this core belief with her her whole life. Now, her low self-esteem, I’m not lovable, how did that impact her marriage? Profoundly. Our self-esteem, our values, our perceptions, our relationship with ourself, our childhood experiences are part and parcel of our external relationship. We need to slow down and look at, in this case, where the low self-worth came from and create an accountability as to her feeling I’m not lovable versus the objective statement, you don’t love me. Now, how does our culture make this worse? Well, that’s easy. Social media, likes, follows, chasing approval, looking for popularity, this is all derived for other esteem. We need to ask ourselves questions around our self-esteem about how did I come to this belief, this feeling about myself? Did it come from my childhood? Again, if my parents told me, think before you speak, we understand that. What did that actually teach me?Again, what if I’m an average student and not a gifted athlete, or I’m not particularly good looking? You see, our pursuit of other esteem is a fool’s mission because we can never attain it or succeed. It’s temporary. It has to be replaced moment by the moment. How did all of this cause me to start masking my own personality? When I say masking, I mean we all wear these personality masks, parts of ourselves that we aren’t quite authentic, but we feel some insecurity, we feel a lack of something, and we create a personality mask. Like if somebody says to me, I’m a private person, here’s my takeaway. They’re a private person because they don’t feel safe in being seen. If you’re seen, then they’re fear of other people’s judgment of them. So it’s not that they’re a private person, it’s that they don’t want to be seen. How’s that going to affect a relationship with others? Our authentic self, our genuine self, acknowledges our vulnerability, our insecurity, and doesn’t try to hide it. We’re not presenting our pretend self. What we’re trying to do is reach the place where nobody is going to be my judge. Again, this retreat to feeling judged sets up an impediment in our relationships for hearing each other and valuing each other. Low self-esteem on one person’s part or both people’s part decimates the authenticity of a relationship. How can I be authentic if I’m pursuing other’s esteem? I can’t. Authentic self has to be grounded in a healthy self-esteem. So in many cases, in the majority of cases, we’re all struggling with an authentic self. Now, if two people are not grounded in their authentic self, what do you think their relationship with each other is going to look like? A constant battle over dominance and right and wrong and insecurity and insecurity. It’s like being on a seesaw. Out of this lack of authenticity, people believe they need to act strong and show no weakness. Now, this is a theme that you hear me bringing up in many episodes. How does that actually make me weaker? Acting strong is like wearing a suit of armor, preparing for battle. Do you want to clank around through life wearing a suit of armor, acting strong? By the way, acting strong is acting. Acting is weak. What happens to whatever I’m feeling insecure about if I keep hiding it? It hardens. It becomes rigid, that insecurity. I can’t reveal it. I can’t move past it. It becomes fixed and you cannot release it. And so you stagnate. And when an individual stagnates, the relationship stagnates. Healthy relationships require two evolving, authentic people to thrive. But if one or two people are stagnating because they don’t want to reveal vulnerability, everything freezes. It gets stuck. What happens, though, if I do the opposite and actually share what I’m feeling vulnerable about? What changes? Everything. Vulnerability is lovable. Our culture teaches us to show no weakness and act strong, which is paradoxically profoundly insecure. I’m hiding myself from my partner. How is my relationship going to work out if I am being inauthentic and hiding something I’m afraid of my partner seeing? Or what if my partner is doing the same thing and it’s a double hit? Vulnerability is lovable. Falling in love is vulnerable. If we defend against our vulnerability, protect our insecurities, our insecurities only become more profound and more extreme. Open up. Share what you feel vulnerable about. The other person is likely listening. Bring your fears into the light. Bring your shame into the light. And those fears and shame retreat when you bring them into the light. Bringing it into the light kind of anesthetizes the problem. It eradicates the problem. You’re not hiding from it anymore. This also dovetails with another issue in relationships. When I’m working with a couple, on occasion he or she may say, Well, he has a problem. This is his problem. It’s his problem, not my problem. Nope, doesn’t work that way. You see, her problem or my problem are no longer separate because they impact me. So her problem, my problem actually become our problem. Remember, relationship is a complex tapestry. It’s a tapestry where we’re two individuals coming from different families with different values, different beliefs, different experiences of vast, beautiful, complex tapestry. When we reduce that tapestry to, It’s his issue. It’s my issue. The way we should put it is, I have an issue with this and this. It affects me. And of course, it affects my relationship. How could it not? How can my relationship thrive if both of us are wearing masks, blacking our authenticity and our vulnerability? Other esteem has us avoid vulnerability because our fear of what they may think of me. Vulnerability is a love language and it’s a feeling language. Hiding from vulnerability imprisons you. It cuts you off from the possibilities of growth and well-being. This prevailing life philosophy trains us to avoid vulnerability at all costs. And it denies us this core quality of what it means to be human. It’s rooted in fear. If your feelings and insecurities are hidden from other people, you’re selling yourself out. This game plan cannot possibly work. And it destroys and incapacitates love. The paradox is that by embracing vulnerability, you become strong and fearless. It’s an investment in your relationship with yourself and your partner. That is authenticity. Acting strong is impervious and it doesn’t allow other people to see you, to love you, and to value you for who you really are. It’s your being stuck in other’s esteem. If you want to be loved, reveal your vulnerability. Now let’s look at this word vulnerability. What does the dictionary actually say about vulnerable? There are two definitions. I find them really interesting. Two definitions for vulnerability go like this. The first says that by being vulnerable, you’re open to attack or criticism. Unless you’re living in a cave, you know there are going to be times when you’re going to be verbally or emotionally criticized as part of life. Not allowing yourself to be faulted or criticized means you’re wearing that suit of armor, protecting yourself. You become inaccessible to your partner. That is the essence of fear and it’s ruinous to relationships. It’s the opposite of love. The second definition is that vulnerability is about allowing your weakness and emotions to be seen by others. Wow, that’s just what I’m getting at. Our societal and cultural common sense message is show no vulnerability. Where do you go with that? Act strong, armor up. So the message really is that you should cover up and protect yourself from criticism. And if you are criticized, show no feelings and be impervious. So you argue instead of surrendering. We need to do just the opposite. So if you want to be loved and you want to be valued, you need to reveal your vulnerability. What’s my choice here? Cover up, act strong, defend myself, or be open and vulnerable. If I open to my vulnerability, my self-esteem, my authentic self-esteem will grow. You might say to yourself, but I’ve been this way my whole life. Can I actually change? The answer is yes. I’ll take this moment to pitch my book, The Possibility Principle, which explains how you can entirely reshape and reformat your identity through the process of growth. Think about what your thoughts are telling you. Notice how they’re sending other people up as your judge. Pause and rethink this. This belief that I need to act strong, perhaps lifelong belief, ask yourself, how is that serving you? Are you growing in confidence? Do you have reduced anxiety and stress? Is it working out for you? Think about acting as opposed to just being. So, here’s your uncommon sense. You can continue to follow the destructive societal dictates that destroy your self-worth, have you hide behind other’s esteem and armor up and protect your vulnerability, or you can move toward authentic self-worth by embracing vulnerability, which makes you actually stronger and more lovable. If this feels counterintuitive to you, lean into that. Counterintuitive is where new thinking and insights come from. If it’s feeling normal, you’re stuck in the rigidity of who you’ve always been, and so is your relationship. So embrace that counterintuitive feeling and realize that is where uncommon sense is bringing you to. The post Why the Strongest People Have the Weakest Relationships [https://melschwartz.com/uncommon-sense-006/] first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW [https://melschwartz.com].

Do This Right Before Having a Hard Conversation

In Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz 005, the marriage counselor, psychotherapist, and author shares a sixty-second technique employed before the beginning of any difficult conversation to dramatically improve the chance your partner will listen instead of shutting down. Every important conversation doesn’t have to turn into a fight, or stop before it even starts! Learn all about “foaming the runway,” the simple communication skill that helps you have real, productive conversations, in this episode of Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz! Rather watch? Try the YouTube channel [https://urlgeni.us/youtube/HardConversations]! SUBSCRIBE TO UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ Don’t miss a single Uncommon Sense with Mel Schwartz! Subscribe for free on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TI3RgRUVk0iQB74ayETly], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-sense-with-mel-schwartz/id1884396335], or anywhere you get your podcasts, or to the YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC8n_ZQUSefmy6WVAF3FBBw]. You can also simply copy / paste the RSS link [https://www.melschwartz.com/category/podcasts/possibility-podcast/feed/] directly into the podcast app of your choice! Want e-mail updates every time an episode is posted, plus related and supplementary content? Subscribe to the newsletter for free [https://melschwartz.com/ucs-newsletter]! TRANSCRIPT OF UNCOMMON SENSE WITH MEL SCHWARTZ #005 I’m sure you’ve experienced, just like the rest of us, having been in that awkward, frustrating position, when you’re thinking about sharing something with your partner, something that’s been troubling you, and you need for them to really hear. But you hesitate, because you know from past experience it’s probably not going to go well. But you begin to open up and talk, and before you’ve even finished your first sentence, you see it happening. Their face tightens up, their body tenses, and they are already preparing their rebuttal. They’re not curious about what you have to say or how you’re feeling. They’re actually not listening. They’re defending. Maybe they’re even counterattacking. But you may think to yourself, “so what’s the point?” And you either stop talking or you don’t bring it up. You even begin arguing with each other. I can tell you, this pattern, this cycle of attempting to share, being shut down, or just retreating into silence to begin with, or anger or frustration, this is destructive to harmony and feeling cared for. It ruins relationships. That’s why I developed a technique. It’s probably just a 60-second technique, and I created this out of my years of couples counseling and noticing what’s happening. This technique, which I call foaming the runway, changes everything, and it really increases the chances that your words won’t fall on deaf ears, that your partner will hear you instead of going on the defense. I’m Mel Schwartz, and this is Uncommon Sense. I’m going to give you examples of what you can say to your partner, which will greatly improve the chances that they’re open to actually hearing you. This is your best way in, so you might actually be able to be heard and validated. Let me tell you what brought me to this insight. It was a picture of what happens when an airplane is coming in hot, meaning they can’t get their landing gear down. They notify air traffic control that they’re having a problem, and air traffic control orders the people on the runway to foam the runway. Why are they applying foam? Obviously, so the friction won’t cause sparks and set the plane on fire. We can learn to do the same thing with our communication in troubling or challenging times in our relationship. So let’s go back to the impasse, that moment when you feel that they’re not really listening, and you say to yourself, |”What’s the point? They’re just going to blow up on me. Why go there?” We’ve all had this experience with our words falling on deaf ears, and so we choose not to talk. We don’t want to repeat this agonizing experience of feeling invalidated or worse. But before we jump to the solution, let’s look at the unintended consequences of bottling up your feelings. How can going silent, how can the consequence of going silent be just as impactful as the reaction that you’re trying to avoid? You see, we focus on the potential consequences of our actions and words. But we need to look at the consequences of our inactions, or the words that never leave our mouths. These are often far more impactful because we suppress them. What does this lead to? First, resentment. We resent the other person for shutting us down and having to stuff what’s so important. As a result, we may turn away from them. We start to develop an attitude. They don’t know what’s going on with us, so they look at our attitude and they stiffen up and we have a negative spiral down into anger. It can also feel depressing if you feel that you can’t share what you need to share and there’s a futility. You start to turn off to the energy of the relationship, what brought you together. Walls may go up. You become indifferent and uncaring to them. The relationship has a loss of vital energy and it feels like there’s no solution. So why are they, why are we, acting uncaringly or in anger? Well, maybe it has something to do with how we’re actually being spoken to. If I say to my partner, “you never,” or “you always” in a negative way, it’s going to assure their defensive reaction. We have set up being rejected. We’ve set up failure. This may be due to remnants of our childhood experiences of being scolded and it has little to do with you in the moment. It’s learned behavior. It’s instinctive and reflexive. In situations like this, the other person may instinctively be defending their territory and preparing their rebuttal while you’re still in mid-sentence. And so you feel silenced and invalidated or worse. So what can you do? Introduce what I call the preface. Just as air traffic control foams the runway, you can foam the verbal and relationship runway by prefacing. You can’t simply dive into the conversation. What is the preface? How does it work? How does devoting a few sentences as a preface really calm the turbulence? How does this improve the chance of being heard and reduce the knee-jerk reaction? Well, we need to set the stage so our words don’t fall on deaf ears and cause a reaction. This just takes a minute or two. Let’s talk about some examples of what the preface sounds like. You may say to the other person, “I’m struggling with something I want to share with you, but I’m afraid you’re going to be reactive.” That’s an excellent preface. It slows down the reactivity. They may say, “Sure, what’s the problem?” You can then say, “I have something to share with you. I’m feeling tentative about it. But I’m anticipating you’re going to shut me down or tell me I’m wrong, so I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to say this.” You’ve now enrolled them with this preface. There’s a far better chance that they’ll be less reactive and more present. Not to mention being sympathetic to how you’re feeling. You are literally foaming the runway. You’re providing a new way in so you can quiet the defensive reaction. What does it mean to enroll the other person? How are you slowing down the process by lessening their reaction, by avoiding right versus wrong issues? You might say, “I need your help with something,” instead of just launching into the attack. Of course, you don’t intend it as an attack, but they’re going to feel it’s an attack. So slow down. “I need your help with something. There’s something I’m struggling with.” You create a different energy. Why is the struggle to communicate actually more critical than the actual thing we’re trying to talk about? This derails our ability to converse with emotional intelligence. How does paying homage to the communication challenge first and initiating a peaceful form of communication set the table? Well, think about it. If I’m saying, “|’m having a problem. There’s something I’m struggling with saying. I want you to hear this. I’m afraid you’re not going to take it in,” we have reduced the temperature in the room. Pulses aren’t quickening. There’s no reactivity. Also, this technique boosts your own confidence and your own self-esteem because you’re actually authentically sharing what you’re feeling, what’s concerning you. This technique, this prefacing, helps you find your authentic voice. It’s informed by vulnerable feelings, not by anger, not by accusation. Now, let’s talk about getting beneath the anger. If you’re feeling hurt or misunderstood and you become angry, everything is lost. It’s very rare for anyone to be present and remain open to you if there’s a verbal assault. You both go down the drain. You might say, “you are,” “you always,” “you never.” If your words sound angry, if your words sound like an attack, they’re going to fall on deaf ears and they’re going to get you the same in return, a counterattack. Anger is a mask for fear. Anger is a mask for sadness or pain. Anger comes to the forefront because it’s far more accessible emotion than vulnerable feelings. Vulnerable feelings are hiding beneath the anger and the fury. What happens when you preface and share your hurt, share your insecurity in a thoughtful way instead of starting with anger? How does it increase the chance of being heard? Tremendously. If you’re vulnerable, you’re being listened to. We are actually modeling the behavior we want for them to mirror. If we speak vulnerably, openly, without attack, we’re likely going to be heard. It’s a different energy. Our proclamations are typically nullified because of the wrong energy. You see, acting strong is pointless. Embracing your vulnerability opens the communication. Remember, what you have to say may be compelling and really important to you and the future of your relationship. But if your words are lost to the other person’s defensiveness, what happened to the communication? It stalled out. It went nowhere. You’ve actually assured that they are going to invalidate you. So slow down your process. Think to yourself, how can prefacing open the door to my actually being heard, to a new dialogue or shared inquiry between us? Two people who are both looking to be understood and appreciate each other’s feelings avoid the right versus wrong impasse, which is ruinous. So here are the rules. Don’t begin your sentence with the word you. Begin in the first person, I. The other person might still be listening. Make it subjective. Make it about how you feel. “I feel.” “I think.” Share how you feel, as opposed to making an objective indictment of what they did or didn’t do. Here’s an example. “When I brought up that sensitive topic the other day to you, you kind of dismissed it or marginalized it, and I felt really uncared for. Can we go back to that conversation?” That’s an effective way to communicate. Remember, feelings aren’t right or wrong. If I express my feeling, I can’t be told I’m wrong. Stay away from making statements of fact that lead to argument, and they go nowhere. We all want to be heard and validated. We have to learn to get out of our own way to accomplish this. Our tendency to react rather than respond. When we foam the runway, it quiets and dampens reactivity. It provides an opportunity for a win-win rather than a lose-lose. So here is your uncommon sense: To be heard and to be validated, you need to foam the runway by preparing a soft landing so your words can actually be heard. They can be contemplated and taken in. This is an easily learned communication skill, but we were never taught it, so it feels counterintuitive. But always, always, growth lies in where we feel counterintuitive. It feels awkward. Wisdom should make us feel uncomfortable and illogical because you see, common sense, where we’re comfortable, is just plain dumb. So if we open up to something new, something that’s not in our familiar zone, that is where wisdom lies. Invite in the discomfort and open to wisdom. The post Do This Right Before Having a Hard Conversation [https://melschwartz.com/uncommon-sense-005/] first appeared on Mel Schwartz, LCSW [https://melschwartz.com].