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Zing! Here's one reason why you are struggling to communicate with your partner (or family or friends)
First of all, how are you? You’ve been in my thoughts.
I’ve been okay — I feel lucky that I and most people I know are healthy. But it feels like anxiety about our global situation which is in the air right now, and I didn’t want to just plunge straight into the newsletter, like usual. I’m pregnant — my husband and I are expecting twins, this June — and it feels strange to think about expecting new life and such a life transition, in the midst of such an uncertain moment.
I wanted to send you something that might be useful in this time; and above all, please know that I’m rooting for you — and for all of us — right now. Take care, everyone.
Here’s something that slapped me in the face recently, and that might be particularly relevant in our era spending-a-particularly-large-amount-of-time-at-home-with-people-we-love (aka COVID-19):
“If you don’t have a question, don’t ask a question. Never dress up an assertion as a question. Doing so creates confusion and resentment, because such questions are inevitably heard as sarcastic and sometimes mean-spirited.” (172, emphasis mine)
That’s from Difficult Conversations, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. Here’s a couple of examples they give, of questions that are actually just “dressed up” assertions:
“Are you going to leave the refrigerator door open like that?”
“Is it impossible for you focus on me just once?”
“Do you have to drive so fast?”
Stone, Patton, and Heen point out that all of these questions are actually disguised versions of feelings or requests. Here is how the same questions might be said, as assertions:
Instead of Is it impossible for you focus on me just once?: “I feel ignored” or “I’d like for you to pay more attention to me”
Instead of Are you going to leave the refrigerator door open like that?: “Please close the refrigerator door” or “I feel frustrated when you leave the refrigerator door open”
Instead of Do you have to drive so fast?: “I’m feeling nervous” or “It’s hard for me to relax when I’m not in control”
And (this is really the zinger) the authors point out that there is, in fact, a reason, why we didn’t just start with the more direct request or expression of feelings — because it makes us feel vulnerable. “Turning what we have to say into an attack — a sarcastic question — can feel safer,” they point out.
But there’s a serious downside of hiding our vulnerable requests or emotions as questions: the other person is likely to miss the underlying feeling or request.
Instead, all of their energy will be focused on the sarcasm and attack that they likely heard (or felt that they heard) within that question. “Instead of hearing that you feel lonely, they hear that you think they are thoughtless,” Stone, Patton, and Heen point out. The other person is so focused on defending themselves, that they often don’t attend to your needs.
Think about it. What are you more likely to respond with compassion and care to:
Do you think you’ll ever get around to fixing that broken lamp?
Or
I’m feeling kind of anxious and having our light fixed would really help me feel calmer.
So here’s Stone, Patton, and Heen’s advice, again, now that you know why they recommend it:
“If you don’t have a question, don’t ask a question. Never dress up an assertion as a question. Doing so creates confusion and resentment, because such questions are inevitably heard as sarcastic and sometimes mean-spirited.” (172)
To be honest, within hours of reading this advice, I noticed myself saying a question that was actually an assertion. Zing, indeed.
So that’s my question for you this weekend: Can you listen to your questions in the hours or days ahead? What questions could actually be phrased — more authentically, more vulnerably, more usefully — as assertions?
As always, you’ve got this. I’m rooting for you.
Katie
What to do when someone calls you “selfish.” (Or anything else.)
You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met.
How did you feel when you read that? How would you feel if someone you cared about said that to you?
Would you feel a clenching in your stomach?
Would you think, Oh god, what did I do? I’m so sorry!
Or, she has no right to say that!
Marshall Rosenberg, in his classic (and really fabulous) book Non-Violent Communication, points out that we have four potential responses whenever someone says something negative to us. We can:
Blame ourselves
Blame others
Sense into our own feelings and needs
Sense into other person’s feelings and needs
Which of these four we choose has a big effect on how messy and painful our arguments get. But many of us default to one or two of these responses — and not always the good ones.
Let’s say that someone you cared about made a painful accusation about you, something like “You’re an extremely selfish person.” You could respond in one of four ways:
1. Blame yourself: Oh man, I am such a selfish person! I am the worst! I immediately need to apologize for absolutely everything I did to this person!
I don’t know about you, but for much of my life, this was one of my go-to responses. Apologize, apologize, apologize. And there’s a certain good intention there — we want others to feel better, so we accept blame and responsibility.
But, as Rosenberg points out, in doing so we accept the other person’s (negative) judgments of ourselves – which may not always be true. And down the line, this can really mess up our self-esteem, and lead us to feeling chronically guilty, ashamed, and depressed.
2. Blame others: She has absolutely no business telling me that I’m self-centered! If anything, she’s the self-centered one!
This is also something that I’ve done. I mean, haven’t we all? The problem is that this response just generates anger, rather than helping to necessarily resolve the conflict.
If we just say that the other person “shouldn’t” feel that way, rather than having any empathy for how they are feeling, it’s hard to connect and truly resolve conflict.
3. Sense into your own feelings and needs: Wow, I feel really triggered right now. That accusation brought up all the self-judgment that I already have when I try to take care of myself instead of automatically doing what other people want.
Instead of assuming that the other person is right or getting mad at them, with this approach, you simply notice what’s happening for you.
You notice how this one accusation brought up other negative thoughts and self-judgments that already existed in your head. You notice how this particular statement triggered all kinds of other, deeper fears.
When you start from this place you’re not blaming anyone — either the other person or yourself. You’re just giving yourself the chance to notice all these feelings that are already happening, so you don’t get overwhelmed by them and react inappropriately.
4. Sense into the other person's feelings and needs: I guess that she was really wanting to feel supported by me, and because I attended to my own needs instead, she wasn’t able to get what she wanted. It seems like this was really painful for her.
With this approach, you try to assess what the other person was feeling or needing. Again, there’s not any judgment here — she’s not a “bad person” for wanting or needing something, or for having a particular reaction to not having her wants or needs met.
At the same time, you’re not blaming yourself. It’s not that you’re a bad person because you didn’t meet her needs, or because she had a particular emotional reaction.
You’re just noticing what seems to be happening for her.
…
Rosenberg points out that when our main reactions are #1 or #2, we tend to have more painful or messy conflicts with others. We either feel guilty and take on blame that we may not wholly deserve, or we get angry and blame the other person. Either way, we’re throwing a lot of blame around — and that tends to make things worse.
On the other hand, either #3 or #4 are awesome starting places. When we can have empathy and understanding for both ourselves and another person — again, just understanding how both of us are feeling without judgment — we can begin the conversation with kindness and are more likely to be able to diffuse the situation.
Even more powerfully, we all respond more positively when we feel heard and seen with empathy. For example, maybe you couldn’t have behaved differently. But when the other person knows that you hear their pain, and you would like to help them resolve their pain, they tend to relax.
On a personal note, it’s hard to overemphasize how much more kind, relaxed, and safe my arguments with loved ones feel when I can remember to start with #3 or #4. I can’t recommend them enough.
…
Over to you! Think of a recent conflict you’ve had: which of the four reactions did you have? Which of the four did you completely forget about?
As always, you’ve got this.
Katie
How do you handle conflict if you hate conflict?
I know there are some people who always say what they feel, who tell people exactly what they think of them and never put up with shit from anyone.
But those aren’t the people I tend to work with.
The people I work with tend to be extremely caring and thoughtful, are always aware of what others are feeling or thinking, and hate the idea of upsetting them or being rude.
They don’t want to tell a family member that their actions or words make them feel uncomfortable.
They don’t want to tell a friend that they are tired and would rather go home after an hour of hanging out.
They don’t want to tell a loved one that they aren’t hungry when they are over for dinner.
I’ll admit it: I’m one of those people, too.
In my family, for example, my brothers seem to have no problem being in conflict with my mom. I’m always amazed, and kind of jealous, how they will be having a mild disagreement about something random and suddenly blow up and speak sharply. And then, just a few minutes later, they talk it over and everyone feels totally fine.
I’ve never been that way. I’ve always hated conflict. But I’ve gradually learned how important it can be, so I wanted to write to you about it today.
First of all, let’s be clear: you don’t have to tell the truth all the time. Heck, there are tons of situations where it just isn’t appropriate to tell the truth, or when a white lie is a far better thing.
But, at the same time, sometimes you do have to tell the truth.
Sometimes the only way to move forward is to honor your own needs and desires, to ask for what you want, or tell another person how they are affecting you.
And sometimes, telling that truth will cause a conflict.
So in those times:
Prepare yourself for that achy, swirling, frantic feeling inside your chest.
Prepare yourself for your stomach to feel queasy.
Prepare yourself to have a head spinning with thoughts – Should I have said that? Was that totally crazy and unreasonable?
Prepare yourself for the rumble.
We can’t live a life without at least some conflict. But we can learn to recognize our own aversion to it and get better at sitting with those uncomfortable feelings when they are in the service of something greater.
So here is my advice for you: whenever you find yourself in that situation (either before or after you tell a truth that leads to conflict), try these two things:
1. Ask yourself: “Is a bit of conflict necessary to get me closer to my true needs and desires?”
Sometimes the only way to get something that you genuinely want or need is through coming into conflict with someone else. It’s just how it is. A friend, a loved one, or a colleague may want something different from what you want, and that’s okay.
2. Say to yourself: “I’m in a situation where only one of us gets to be happy. And I get to choose who that is.”
I know that might sound harsh, but it can be powerful. Sometimes people don’t want us to do what we definitely want to do (go home, feel good about ourselves, take that job). And they’ve put us in a situation where not everyone will be happy.
If you’re a nice, sweet, caring person (and I bet you are!), you might be tempted to always let the other person be happy. And that’s fine. But just notice that. Why shouldn’t you be the one who gets her way, at least sometimes?
3. Remind yourself: “It’s okay to feel a little jumbled up inside when I clash with someone. Nothing about this is wrong or unusual.”
I know it sounds kind of cheesy, but honestly, I repeat that to myself all the time when I am in conflict with someone I care about and it is making me feel a lot of feelings. To remind myself that conflict is a normal part of being alive, and just because I have a lot of feelings, it doesn’t mean that I did the wrong thing.
…
You can’t take away the conflict in your life, but you can remind yourself that it’s not at all unusual.
And then, of course, you can work to find a compromise.
I’d love to hear from you. Do you find you dread or avoid conflict with people you care about? How does it make you feel inside? What do you do to deal with conflict? Let me know in the comments, so I can tell you that you are not a crazy person.
And of course, I’m rooting for you.
Katie
On finding a deeper relationship
It was fall, and I was walking with a girlfriend between brownstones in New York as she told me about this guy that she was crazy about.
Smart, handsome, generous. He was the perfect guy.
“He’s just so much better than anyone I’ve ever dated,” she said as we weaved around a tree on the sidewalk. “And so I want to be really strategic about this. I just don’t want to come on too strong.”
I don’t know about you, but I can relate to that feeling.
I’ve been in a lot of relationships where I’ve held parts of myself back…
I let him call me
I ended conversations first
I let him initiate times for us to hang out
When I had big feelings, I didn’t like to really show them to him. I might show him a little bit of my sadness or anger or hurt, but I certainly wouldn’t let it all hang out, the way I would with my friends or my mom.
I wouldn’t bring up little things that he did that bothered me, because I didn’t want to seem whiny
I was sure that if I called him as much as I wanted to call him, if I talked for as long as I wanted to talk, or if I suggested that we hang out whenever I wanted to hang out, he would get tired of me.
If I really told him all the feelings I had, all day every day, he would realize how emotional and crazy and what a mess I am, and he wouldn’t want me anymore.
I also often felt like I couldn’t say no – to hanging out, to social events, to intimacy, or whatever – as much as I’d liked. Not that I was ever forced into anything, but I just sometimes didn’t quite feel like doing whatever it was, and didn’t feel like I could say so without causing a rift in the relationship.
In the end, it came down to: I was convinced that if I showed up authentically – if I said yes in as big a way as I wanted to say yes, and no in as big of a way as I wanted to say no, if I was emotional and volatile and moody in the way that I truly am emotional and volatile and moody, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. And our relationship couldn’t handle it.
And, let’s be clear, this wasn’t a terrible strategy. There were lots of guys in my life who couldn’t handle it.
The brilliant Med School/Ph.D. student who is going to be a wonderful neurosurgeon but couldn’t handle my feelings when I’d had a bad day, the sweet and generous Russian investor who just couldn’t handle the time alone that I needed. And there were the other relationships, where I never really tried to show up authentically with my strong and argumentative opinions or my existential thoughts because I could just sense that they couldn’t handle it.
So there were some relationships that were failures, and many more relationships that should have been failures, because I said “no” when I meant “yes” or “yes” when I meant “no.”
Eventually, I decided that I was exhausted by all this time not being myself, and needed to find a better way.
Ironically, at this time I met a guy who frightened me by how honest he was. On our first phone call, his first question to me was, “What’s important to you in life?” But I figured that I had nothing to lose by being honest in return.
That was the beginning of a nearly five-year relationship that has changed everything that I thought was possible about relationships.
When he’d ask me about my day, I was used to just saying “good.” But when I really thought about it, I realized that wasn’t true.
What was true was well, I had a nice morning but then work was stressful and I started doubting everything, but by the afternoon I took a walk outside and everything felt a lot better and I had pizza for dinner so that was definitely a highlight.
I feel comfortable being as messy and sad and angry and confused and happy and delighted with life as I truly am. And since he sees the “real” me, I feel more supported, heard, and loved than I’ve ever experienced before.
This isn’t a fairy tale. Our relationship is still very much a work in progress, and I don’t know how it will turn out. But it was the first time in my life that I made the decision to show up as I truly am, and it has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. We're getting married in March.
So at the end of the day, here’s what I know:
You get to make the choice, and some people don’t want a super “authentic” relationship. But it’s important to think about what you’re choosing when you hold some of yourself back. What happens when you choose not to expose who you truly are in a relationship because you don’t want to be “too much”?
It’s important to be clear about what you lose and what you gain, and to be okay with that.
And so, here’s what I said to my friend, who is warm, intuitive, generous, and accomplished, as we walked on that fall day in New York City:
“If you never let yourself be yourself with him, you’ll never really know if he can handle you.”
You’ll always kind of wonder if, yes, maybe you are just too much. And then you won’t see that the real problem is that he is not enough for you. A guy who can’t handle you – all of you – might be a great guy, but he probably isn’t the perfect guy for you.
And is that really the way you want to live?
On the other hand, if you show up as yourself – as big and overwhelming and too much as it is – you’ll know for sure. Some people won’t be able to take it, and yes, you might lose that relationship. But you’ll also know for sure when you’ve found a good one.
Over to you: Are you really showing up authentically in your romantic relationships? What would have to change in order for you to do so? I’d love to hear from you, and cheer you on.
I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie