Cliché #2 – “Communication is Key”

 

Hi there, I’m Maggie O’Connor at Breakthrough MFT, helping you reach your breakthrough moment.

Today we’re going to continue on our series of ‘It’s Cliché for a Reason’ with a big one: “Communication is Key.” Many couples come into therapy with communication issues as their major presenting problem, and it’s true that we often lose sight of each other as our lives become more complicated and more crazy. As we take on more stress we have fewer opportunities to catch up with each other at the end of the day other than, ‘…How was your day?’ ‘…Good…’

Obviously life is easier when we know where each other are day to day, but there’s a bigger reason to keep up with each other; which is that we’re just social animals so our experiences shape us into different people in small ways day to day so you can get to the point where you find yourself with a aspiring politician when you thought you married a stockbroker. 

As we move into the holiday season (actually we’re in the holiday season, we’re firmly in it!) I want to give you two tips for communication under stressful conditions. 

First is – clarifying. If you see a wall of words coming at you and you’re feeling like there’s no way I’m gonna get in a word edgewise, you kind of slow it down by saying, ‘…Wow, I can see this is really important to you,’ or ‘…This is really upsetting you…’ When your partner stops for a second you ask, ‘Is this something you would like help with, or is this a vent? If it’s a vent, you’re released from trying to fix it. If it’s something they want help with, it sets them up to think about this as a problem to be solved. Match your tone to theirs, and use minimal encourages like ‘uh-huh’  ‘mm-hm’ ‘oh my gosh!’ If they could start going too far with it, you can stop them and say, ‘…Hmm, how can I be helpful with this?…’

Another technique is called mirroring. This is a little more than repeating. I like to start with, ‘…oh I hear you saying…’ So it goes like this: your partner comes in and says “Oh my God, the traffic, Oh my gosh so crazy! I almost got into  three accidents!” and you reply, “Oh my gosh so crazy!” (mirroring words and affect) “I hear you saying you almost had three accidents – Wow!” and you just keep matching your tone with their tone. You match their words with your words; it keeps you attuned to them rather than formulating a response in your head.

This helps us from going far too long with misunderstanding our partner so that we don’t get into a huge argument, (because we know how it can go left when we misunderstand for too long!) 

If you can’t find your way into the loop with your partner, if you’re so far off of each other’s loop, therapy can be a really helpful tool to getting back on track with each other.

I’m Maggie O’Connor, hoping this helps you to break on through.