"Ever Wonder Why it's so Hard to Talk Openly and Honestly to the People You Love...?

Or Why so Many of Your Attempts to Create Understanding and Goodwill End in Frustration, Confusion and Conflict?"

From: Paul Sterling Communication Coach
September 18, 2005 11:26 pm

Dear Friends,

This site is dedicated to discovering and talking about betters ways to connection and communicate.

Compassionate communication hasn't always come easy to me.
I grew up in a family with a dad who had a strong affection for alcohol and criticism (a great combination). One of his favorite expressions was, "The best defense is a strong offense."Well, this created an environment where sarcasm was common at the dinner table, and was used as a way to hide our pain; nobody risked being open, honest and vulnerable.

I didn't like it, but I got good at using mean wit, anger, blame, shame, guilt and punishment to get what I wanted.My big brother made things even harder; he didn't like his younger brother competing with him for attention, so he made sure I knew I was in second place, using both verbal and physical violence regularly.
From a very young age I knew,"There had to be a better way to communicate!"
For years after leaving home I paid the price for my limited communication skills, my reactive, defensive behavior and my tendency to take everything personally (I'm still working on this but I have greatly improved).A divorce… followed by two broken engagements… bouts with depression… several failed businesses… and many lost opportunities for connection and understanding where just part of the cost.
...Insanity is communicating the same way overand over again and expecting different results.
I was a slow learner. For years after leaving home I would make the annual journey back for Christmas and criticism, hoping that, "this year things would be different." I was hoping that my dad would somehow have changed…What kept me stuck was my belief that to change my relationship with my dad… I had to change my dad. Once I realized that-ain't-gonna-happen, I knew I needed to change the way I communicated with him.
With that in mind, I spent over 20 years searching for... A Better Way To Communicate
So I read the books, listened to the tapes, and took the classes and seminars looking for how to change the way I related to myself and others. And then I tried affirmations, meditations, hypnosis, counseling and couples therapy. I walked on fire, broke boards with my bare hands, sat in silence (I was never to good at that) and tried many other things I am too embarrassed to mention. If "it" was out there, I sought "it" out, learned "it" and I did what I could to make "it" part of my life.

Luck was on my side, though, and I did find some great teachers. Studying with them profoundly changed the quality and direction of my life and for that I am immensely grateful. And yet, something major was missing…When things got tough, the tools I had learned so far didn't work for me--rather than behaving in some enlightened, compassionate manner, I went back to my old, painful patterns of communication.

I had almost given up when I found out about: Nonviolent Communication (NVC)(created by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., an American clinical psychologist)

Finally… I had found a simple tool that brought together all the different concepts and pieces of the communication puzzle. It was like having struggled for years with a large, complex and confusing jigsaw puzzle and then at last being given the picture. Ahh, now I see how these parts fit together! Now I know why people react the way they do when I talk to them in a certain way!

When I applied the simple, four-step process of NVC, my father and I went from arguing about the proper separation and placement of tinsel on the Christmas tree, to talking about life's most important issues.

He was able to open up to me about his fears and doubts growing up and his challenges in facing the disease that eventually took his life.Over the past six years I have taught the Language of Peace (my understanding of NVC) to:
High school students and teachers
Church leaders and Buddhist practitioners
Maximum security inmates in jail and youth in lock-down detention centers
Therapists and counselors wanting to expand the tools they have for their clients
Couples wishing for better connection with each other, their children and parents
Employers and employees wishing to improve both internal & external relations

The one thing they all had in common, was a desire to improve their communication skills.What has amazed me is that the Language of Peace has worked as well for people with PhDs as it has for at-risk high school students. In every case, I have seen incredible breakthroughs and transformations where the tools give participants insights and relief in dealing with issues that have been bothering them for years…
The Language of Peace (LOP) is a new language, or at least a new way of using language… LOP is a simple, four-step process that can help you stay connected to the people you care about in the most difficult conversational situations--creating more compassion, understanding and intimacy.

Simple, but not always easy…

The concepts are pretty simple. Most people can learn them in about two hours, but they are not always easy to apply. Sometimes our old fears and patterns overwhelm us. Our old ways of communicating come up and rather than connect, we want to defend ourselves, attack others, build a case and make them wrong, or pull away.

The other problem is it can be scary, hard, uncomfortable and embarrassing revealing what is true for us in the moment. It is much easier to accuse our lover of being cold and distant then it is to be vulnerable and ask to be held and heard, especially if we have tried in the past and have been hurt.Important, impactful and meaningful conversation is not easy, even with the best tools and skills out there.

True intimacy, as romantic as it sounds, involves risk. Talking about what is alive, important and meaningful to you, your inner fears and doubts, along with your dreams and desires... is scary stuff and there is no guarantee of how the other person is going to react.

Putting together the pieces of the communication puzzle…

The purpose of this model is to help you translate hard-to-hear messages into the heart-felt, human needs that are truly being communicated. This tool will help you build connection, compassion and understanding in all of your relationships.

What follows is a picture of the model and a somewhat simplified example of a communication situation to give you an idea of the process, pieces and power of these tools. As you read through this demonstration I will be pointing out some of the key choices we have to make when communicating, along with the 2 sides, 4 steps, and 1 purpose of LOP.

An excited husband gets home early on his anniversary to cook a special surprise meal for his wife. With the food prepared, candles lit, table set, wine poured… he waits. His wife arrives home two hours later than normal. By this time the food is cold, the candles have burnt out, most of the wine is gone and the once happy husband is now rather upset.

He greets her tardy arrival with a rapid series of questions. "Where have you been? Why didn't you call? So what was so important at work that you missed our anniversary?" He continues without waiting for a response, "I can't believe you are so inconsiderate. You should apologize for screwing up our anniversary."

If we think we are being attacked we often react by defending ourselves or attacking back, thinking those are our only choices. The problem is we often make this choice unconsciously, without even realizing we are making one, or that there is even another way. Using the LOP model, our first choice is to decide do I want to build a connection with the other person or build a case against them?

From the way the husband communicated to his wife you can guess what his choice was: building a case. He spent two hours gathering evidence, evaluating and judging her behavior, thinking she had betrayed him, preparing his attack and planning his demand for an apology….

The case building type of communication with which all of us are familiar goes like this: gather evidence (they didn't do the dishes), then make an evaluation (they never help), let them know your judgments (I feel you are lazy), pick a strategy (fix them), and then make demands (you should change or else).

What is the most likely thing to happen in the anniversary example? The wife will take the husband's comments personally and decide that since he is building a case against her (letting her know what she did was wrong and why), she will build a case against him, too...

"You have some nerve to yell at me!!! This is the first anniversary you have even remembered in the past five years. Of course I didn't rush home. I didn't expect this year to any different."

When it comes to talking, most of us have heard the expression: It's not 'what you say,' it's 'how you say it' that is important. However, few of us have been taught the secrets of 'how to say it'…In the example, the husband 'said it' in a way that made it hard for his wife to hear and very easy for her to want to go into the protective mode--expressing her pain, anger and disappointment in the form of an attack.

How can she communicate differently, responding rather then reacting, to improve on the outcome? This question leads us to the other half of communication: listening.

Here is a very important concept most people have not heard. It's not 'what you hear, 'it's 'how you hear it' that will make all the difference in the world. When we listen, we must pay attention to the meaning we give what we've heard.Does the wife tell herself, "I am being attacked. I don't deserve this; he is being so unfair"? If she does, she is likely to defend or counter attack.

"You have some nerve to yell at me …"

This is a classic case of point/ counter point, case/ counter case: two losers, no winners and someone will be sleeping on the couch tonight.But the power of the LOP model is that the wife in this instance can totally change the direction of communication by choosing not to react. The wife can choose to build a connection with the person she loves even if he is building a case against her.

How else could she have translated the husband's message? One of the basic translation skills we teach is how to hear all emotional communication as either an "act of love" (wanting to give) or a "cry for help" (wanting to receive).

Watch what happens if she hears her husband's outburst as a cry for help. The person she loves is in pain. He is requesting understanding, empathy and clarity. He loves her and wanted to make up for forgetting their anniversary in the past by giving her the gift of a surprise dinner. He is feeling hurt and disappointed because she came home late and missed it.

Once the wife can hear his words as a cry for help, she can start to hear his outburst as a beautiful message of love, poorly delivered . . . If she can hear that message, she will respond quite differently than the way most people would.

In the example, the husband said, "Where were you?" Let's translate this and see what the message underneath might be. I am guessing the real questions were, "Aren't I still important to you?" "Do you still love me?" "Can you see how disappointed I am?" "Did you mean to hurt my feelings?"

Can you hear me now?

Ever notice that when people don't feel heard they get louder, angrier and more violent? What they want is to know that they were heard and understood. For that to happen they need feedback. So here are the four simple steps used to respond, to give them the feedback they need and de-escalate the situation in a way that builds connection…

to be continued...

more info at www.RelationshipRemodeling.com