It's Not About Communication! (eBook)

Why Everything You Know About Couples Therapy is Wrong

Dr. Bruce Chalmer (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
162 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-7194-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Frustrated in Your Relationship? This Book Will Give You Hope! How do you feel about your relationship? How's your intimate life, emotionally, sexually, or otherwise? Are you feeling stuck? Hurt? Angry? You're not alone-and you're not crazy! And there's hope-you can feel better. Written in a relatable and sometimes irreverent style, It's Not About Communication! will help you understand the problems you're having-and help you get on the path to solving them. Whether you're in couples therapy, thinking about it, or want to solve your problems on your own, this book will give you hope, calm you down, and point you in the right direction. And if you're a couples therapist yourself, this book will inspire you to work with your clients rather than on them--and help you regain that sense of dedication and purpose that led you to become a therapist in the first place.

Dr. Bruce Chalmer is a psychologist in Vermont who has been working with couples for over thirty years. Through his teaching, consulting, writing, podcast, and videos about relationships, his ideas have helped thousands of couples and their therapists. He has served in leadership positions in several Vermont Jewish communities, and is also a musician, composer, and choral director. He lives with his wife Judy Alexander in South Burlington. They have five adult children and six grandchildren. For more information visit his website: https://brucechalmer.com

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Frustrated in Your Relationship? This Book Will Give You Hope!How do you feel about your relationship? How's your intimate life, emotionally, sexually, or otherwise? Are you feeling stuck? Hurt? Angry?You're not alone and you're not crazy! And there's hope you can feel better. Written in a relatable and sometimes irreverent style, It's Not About Communication! will help you understand the problems you're having and help you get on the path to solving them. Whether you're in couples therapy, thinking about it, or want to solve your problems on your own, this book will give you hope, calm you down, and point you in the right direction. And if you're a couples therapist yourself, this book will inspire you to work with your clients rather than on them--and help you regain that sense of dedication and purpose that led you to become a therapist in the first place. Why You Should Read It's Not About Communication!:You don't have to feel stuck!You'll learn:Why practicing communication rules and techniques is wasting your timeHow a simple seven-word formula can guide you toward healing, growth, and passionate connectionWhy a mindset of faith not necessarily religious is the key to feeling better, getting unstuck, and finding hopeHow to decide if your couples therapy is helping and what to do if it isn'tWhy ideas open possibilities, and ideologies shut down possibilities and why that's important for couples therapyWhy your couples therapist's advice is probably useless and what you really need from your therapistWhy couples therapy is a lot like improv theaterWhether you're looking to improve your own relationship, or helping others improve theirs, It's Not About Communication! will guide and inspire you. Get your copy in paperback, eBook, or audiobook format today!

Textauszug

1

You’re Already Communicating Effectively

OMG – I Do Think She’s a Moron!

The main theme of this chapter is that you don’t need to learn to communicate effectively because you already know how and are doing it routinely. You’re probably very skilled at conveying how you feel, whether you know it or not. If you’re angry, or mistrustful, or contemptuous, you’re probably conveying those feelings clearly to your partner. Similarly, if you’re loving, or respectful, or admiring, you’re probably good at conveying that too.

Recognizing that the problem is what you’re communicating, not how you’re communicating, can be an uncomfortable insight.

Like so many couples, Polly and Cal told me in their first session that they need to learn to communicate better. Whenever Cal tried to help Polly by suggesting a better way to do something, she would either respond with anger or clam up completely, and they’d end up not speaking for hours or days. No matter how carefully Cal tried to word his suggestions, Polly still got upset, which in turn got Cal upset. Were there some tools they could use to communicate better, so Cal could offer his help and Polly could accept it?

After a few sessions, Polly and Cal came into the office smiling. In the interim since our previous session, Cal said, he had thought about that idea that the problem could be what he’s communicating, rather than how he’s communicating. He had even checked out our podcast on the subject. And he came to a painful conclusion:

“Oh my God—no wonder she’s responding as if I’m calling her a moron. It’s not how I’m saying it, or that she’s oversensitive. It’s that she’s right—I do think she’s a moron!”

Both Cal and Polly were smiling as he said this. He obviously didn’t mean he still thinks that Polly is a moron, or even that he actually thought so consciously. But what he recognized, Cal explained, was that his insisting on “helping” Polly was, more often than not, based on an arrogant assumption that he knew better than she did about pretty much anything. No amount of dressing up how he offered help would obscure that attitude. And he now saw that this attitude was not only disrespectful, but erroneous. His solution wasn’t to craft how he expressed his disrespect for Polly so it somehow sounded respectful; his solution was to actually respect her. How he spoke to her would follow from that. He hadn’t wanted to be disrespectful, and he would have vehemently denied thinking Polly was a moron had I asked him in earlier sessions. But through our work and his own courage, he was willing to look at his own attitude and could finally understand what he was conveying.

Polly then added, “I realized something too. I realized that I agreed with Cal—I think I’m a moron too!” She went on to describe how she often doubted her own intelligence, a tendency she acquired early in her life from her parents, who would frequently call her stupid. The obvious evidence that she was in fact successful in all sorts of ways that require substantial intelligence—for example, her high GPA in college and her highly regarded skill in her profession—somehow didn’t register with her. She would bristle at Cal’s condescension, but not quite know how to object, because she basically agreed with his premise that she was stupid. Of course, she was smiling now because she realized, along with Cal, that this premise was nonsense.

What was it in our work that helped Cal and Polly to come to these insights? We’ll talk about how we got there in Chapter 7. For now, let’s focus on the idea that you don’t need therapy to teach you how to communicate because you already know how.

You’re Already Communicating Effectively…Unless You’re Not

You already know how to communicate effectively, and training in communication techniques is unlikely to help you get along better with your partner…unless, as I mentioned in the Introduction, you’re one of the interesting exceptions that I do encounter occasionally. Sometimes couples are in fact having difficulty communicating: Perhaps one or both partners are unable to communicate how they feel, or they are not able to read what their partner is conveying. This can happen for several quite different reasons:

• Neurodivergence: If one or both partners have some forms of autism, for example, they may have difficulty understanding social cues even if they are otherwise skilled with language (this is a characteristic of what was formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome). Other types of neurodivergence can be the result of traumatic brain injury, tumors, or congenital conditions.
• Mental illness: Some mental illnesses can cause delusions or hallucinations that can interfere with perception and thinking so as to render effective communication very difficult.
• Cognitive impairment: If someone is limited in their ability to remember, concentrate, or follow the thread of a conversation, communication can be difficult.
• Hearing loss: If someone has developed hearing loss, they can find that their habitual ways of communicating no longer work, particularly in noisy environments. This can cause issues with a partner if the couple hasn’t learned to accommodate the issue.

Aside from these individual conditions that can impede communication, the couple itself might be dealing with some differences that interfere with accurate understanding. Couples who literally do not speak the same language, or share only limited language in common, are dealing with obvious communications issues.

In all of those cases, facilitating communication is about helping the individuals involved develop skills. People with autism can often learn how to consciously detect and understand cues they might have been missing, and their neurotypical partners can also learn skills to help them bridge the differences more effectively. Mental illness and cognitive impairment can be treated, to varying degrees depending on the individual situation. Couples who don’t speak the same language can and usually do get better at finding a common language (for example, if one of the partners has come from another country, they usually learn the language of their new country, and get better at it over time). And couples dealing with hearing loss for one or both parties can find technological help and learn the skills they need to accommodate their needs.

So these are situations in which, yes, it is about communication.

But even if you’re in one of those situations, the skills you need to develop aren’t the stuff of couples therapy; they’re the stuff of individual work, be it with therapists, medical professionals, or simply language instructors. I have occasionally worked with couples who are seeking that kind of help, but that’s rare in my practice, and in any case I’m not the one they need to work with for those skills.

What do couples who speak the same language, and aren’t neurodivergent, mentally ill, or cognitively impaired, really need when they say they want help communicating? What they often think they need is tools, techniques, and procedures—that is, rules to follow when things start to get difficult. So let’s look at some widely suggested communication rules, and (spoiler alert!) why they aren’t what you need.

Some Rules for Good Communication

Before I tear them to shreds, I want to put in a word for the rules! The examples I chose (from among a host of possibilities you can find by googling “rules for good communication”) are all good ideas. If you follow them, your communication is apt to feel effective (if occasionally a bit stilted). Let’s look at some examples.

From “Four Rules for Effective Communication in Marriage”:2

1. Be present with your partner and listen to your partner’s feelings.
2. Use mirroring to validate your partner’s feelings and to avoid misinterpretation in communication.
3. Express feelings instead of making assumptions or judgments.
4. Ask for what you need, and be specific about what that looks like.

From “10 Rules for Fighting Fair”:3

1. No name-calling
2. No interrupting
3. No blaming or accusations
4. No yelling
5. No sarcasm or contempt
6. No defensiveness
7. No generalizations or global criticism (you always, you never, you’re selfish)
8. No physical/emotional intimidating gestures/violence/threats
9. No walking out without naming a follow-up time
10. Use of, and respect for, the Time Out

From “4 Ways to Deepen Conversations in Your Relationship”:4

1. Listen to yourself.
2. Become a “safe” listener.
3. Listen with empathy.
4. Give appreciations as often as possible.

From “Communication Tools: Using ‘I-Statements’ When Making Requests in Relationships”:5

The 5-Step Formula for Making “I-Statements” Requests:

1. When you…
2. I feel…
3. The story I’m telling myself is…...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.1.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Partnerschaft / Sexualität
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-7194-3 / 1667871943
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-7194-3 / 9781667871943