Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Today let’s take a look at the powerful consequences of blame.

In my opinion we have a very blaming culture, and I won’t go in to why that is right now–I’ll save that for a future article. For now, just focus on blame–Blame–we all do it. We blame others:

• For our problems
• For our behavior
• For what we feel

We all know what blame looks like, but what is the essence of blame? In my opinion, blame is the act of refusing to take responsibility for yourself.

What are the immediate consequences of blame? Blame leaves both you and your partner, or you and your kids, whomever the third party is, feeling helpless. Blaming also sends a direct message to your partner, spouse or child that you are not going to take responsibility for your emotional state and/or your behavior. Blaming says: “I am not in control of how I behave or feel, you are.” That’s a scary thought because if it were true, and it is NOT TRUE, it means we have little or no control over changing what we feel.

We do have the ability to change how we feel, but only if we stop wasting our precious psychic energy blaming others.

When somebody blames, everybody feels helpless, defensive, and probably angry, bad, or frustrated. The experience of helplessness then leads to fear. When fear takes over, the conflict is no longer about understanding each other, it is about reducing the fear. It is hard to be understood when you’re blaming or operating in fear reduction mode. Feeling helpless, afraid, angry and ragefull all lead to distance and disconnection. This dynamic undercuts trust, thereby damaging the relationship.

My guess is, there isn’t a parent out there who wants to teach their kids how to be emotionally helpless by exhibiting parental helplessness when managing conflict. So…what to do instead is this: Talk about your experience, and own it–make it your own.

It sounds like this…

Instead of saying “You MAKE me feel terrible!”, or, “how do you think that makes your mom and me, your dad and me feel?” you might say, “when I hear you tell me I’m stupid, I feel hurt and angry. If you disagree with me, just say so, and we can talk about where we differ. But please don’t call me ’stupid.’” Or, “when you throw your toys at your sister/brother/mother/father/ it’s scary. Instead of trowing your toys, just tell me your angry, we can talk about it.”

That is what is sounds like when you HAVE a feeling, EXPRESS the feeling, OWN the feeling. That is the essence of describing an experience versus blaming someone for it.

If blame is part of your relationship, you change that by creating a new foundation belief.

Think of the following: It’s like going to the doctor–who do you talk about? YOURSELF! Do the same thing when your talking to your partner, spouse or children. It is a simple law: You CANNOT, indeed WILL NOT, be understood if you are talking about someone else. The odds for being understood and trusted go way up, and the odds for feeling helpless and distrusted go way down when you eliminate blame, and talk about yourself.

Give it several repetitions–practice it–I believe you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.

©Copyright 2010 by Jim Hutt, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Joyce and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Do you find yourself feeling stuck in bad situations, and feel as if there’s no way out? Do you tend to give up before you even try in order to avoid the pain of self-perceived, inevitable failure? Do you tend to ‘blow off’ your successes, assuming that it was an accident that things went so well? If so you might have a well-known psychological condition known as learned helplessness. It causes emotional and/or physical pain every day for millions. The good news is that you are not stuck – help is available!

Learned helplessness oftentimes begins in childhood for those who suffered neglect and/or abuse, or who witnessed a parent showing signs of this condition. Perhaps as an infant, their cries for their mother were met with silence. Eventually they learned that there was no reason to cry, since their mother would not be coming to their aid. Maybe this child sought help from a parent to keep them away from an abuser, but the mother did nothing to help. In families with learned helplessness it’s not unusual for these mothers to respond either with silence, or to say there are no other options available and they just have to ‘live with it’. The mother allows the abuse to continue because she feels there’s no place to go, no money to support her children and herself. So she settles and the child is taught to do the same. When a child works hard in school, bringing home good grades yet continuing to receive nothing in the way of praise from their parents, they often give up in their efforts – realizing that it is a futile effort if they expect to gain love, praise, and attention from their parents. (Although if a good teacher is involved, sometimes this can help to keep the child motivated to keep trying and accomplishing their best).

When children do things to receive love and other signs of positive feedback from their parents and their needs are unmet, they often give up due to learned helplessness. Abusive parents sometimes punish their children for not doing well enough or for not doing enough. In reality, it’s not really about the child, but is instead about the parents’ own unresolved issues. Sometimes it is the parent who messes up, but blames it on the child. Either way, this teaches the child that no matter how hard they try, they can never do well enough. They sometimes give up, again due to this sense of learned helplessness about their situation in life. Persons who struggle with learned helplessness tend to blame themselves for everything. As a result, they struggle with low self esteem and depression. When a parent tells their child (literally or through unspoken words) that their life is as good as it’s going to get – that they cannot and should not expect their life to improve, the pattern then continues on to yet another generation. This is why we sometimes see families who become more and more unhealthy, generation after generation. They give up; assuming any efforts put forth on their part will be futile.

As this child becomes an adult, they tend to continue using this psychological approach in their adult efforts, with fear being the driving force behind these attempted efforts. These adults may fear that success is impossible, so they give up before they get started or they stop before they succeed. They may be fearful that others will judge them or worse yet, they may judge themselves harshly for not being ‘good enough’; this condition is called perfectionism. Adults in this situation either give up on attempting important milestones in their adult lives, or they give up before they can complete these milestones. These include dating, receiving higher education, choosing a mate, choosing a career, being a parent, etc. In most cases, these individuals end up settling, as they feel they will never achieve better, no matter how much they try or how hard they work. They feel they have no control over their situations and surroundings in life. Research has shown that learned helplessness inhibits ones emotional growth and development and can oftentimes leave a person struggling with feelings of depression, anxiety, and guilt. These individuals feel that they should be achieving more and feel stupid, lazy, worthless, and non-deserving of accomplishing more. In addition, any ‘failed’ attempts serve as reminders to the person that they really are stupid, lazy, worthless, and non-deserving of accomplishing more in life. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading many to finally give up altogether since the pain of not succeeding (in these individuals’ eyes) is just too painful to face.

If you find yourself feeling like a failure much of the time, suffering depression, anxiety, and guilt because you feel that you are avoiding risks and personal growth – that you are spinning your wheels, then you should consider speaking with a licensed therapist. Sometimes the hardest part is just realizing that this is an issue for you. You really can overcome this way of experiencing life; the past does not have to dictate your present or future. Children have no power or control in their lives, but adults do, even when they don’t yet realize it! With the help of a knowledgeable and compassionate therapist, you can explore where these feelings of learned helplessness originated from, you can overcome this unhealthy way of thinking – replacing the old beliefs with new and healthy beliefs, and you can finally learn to have understanding and compassion for yourself.

©Copyright 2010 by Joyce A. Thompson, MS, LMFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Joyce and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Mitchell and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

If I’ve witnessed it once I’ve witnessed it a few hundred times during my years counseling couples. One partner reacts as if his self worth has been decimated by words or actions originating from his partner. The curious and perplexing aspect of observing this process unfold, relates to specific instances when from my perspective evidence of anything that smacks of criticism or judgment is as detectable as an evaporated water spot on a shirt.

This brief article discusses the imperceptible shifts that can take place between partners that explain how one partner ceases to use and value his autonomous self to relate to and process his partner’s communications and then, blames the partner for feeling useless and worthless when an emotional crisis is precipitated. Such a crisis is borne of disappointed expectations shaped by lessons learned at the knee of caregivers that have curiously stood the test of time despite being invalid and unreliable. To illustrate this theme I offer a clinical illustration. The spouses are composites of patients I have worked with over the years.

Sheila had reached a crisis in our couples work with her husband Jim. She was in the estimation of both her husband and myself despite her denials to the contrary, re-living apprehensions that Jim would abandon her as did her father when he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, divorced Sheila’s mother and for all intents and purposes discarded his hats as husband and father in one fell swoop. Why were these apprehensions coming to the fore when they did, and why couldn’t Sheila see them for what they were? They shaped her ultimate vulnerabilities to feeling at the mercy of an alleged phantom attack at the hands of her husband.

Sheila’s father had, prior to his AA recovery activities, submitted to his wife’s wishes to dominate him in the same manner that Jim had permitted his wife to dominate him before and during a period of time in which he was unemployed and depressed. Now Jim was employed and growing in self respect for himself as a direct consequence of individual psychotherapy sessions with me. His burgeoning comfort with standing up to Sheila’s efforts to control his self expression had quickly stimulated unconscious associations to her father’s path out the door of her life. Sheila was in denial that her mind was trying to fit a round peg of the current circumstances into a round hole of her past recollections. She was most uncomfortable with not knowing what the future held for them, as trusting herself to adapt accordingly was more responsibility than she bargained for.

The most glaring symptom of devaluing her self was that Sheila had ceased to ask questions and actively clarify with Jim what he was saying and doing and what he intended by his words and actions. Anything incongruent with what she believed to be true based on her own internally generated perceptions were dismissed and discarded as inaccurate and/or disingenuous. Sheila had her husband all figured out and yet, it seemed pretty obvious to Jim and myself that whomever Sheila was relating to was not the Jim he understood himself to be, or I understood him to be. Sheila had lapsed into mind reading; however, the only mind she was reading and relating to were parts of her own inner world of internalized relationships now projected onto her husband and confused with the husband in the room.

Sheila’s unconscious mind increasingly took a stranglehold on how she perceived reality and constructed meaning. Jim grew in self assurance and increasingly presented himself as the master of his own ship and not to be controlled. Sheila became passive as if not to rock the boat and drive her husband out, as she feared her mother had done to her father once he was sober, had a support system, and no longer needed her mother to enable his alcoholism. It was as if Sheila progressively became passive as if to say “please don’t leave me with mom.” During Sheila’s childhood she and her father found in each other solace and comfort as both shared the experience of having been bullied by Sheila’s mother. Sheila had learned early in life that weakness and vulnerability invited exploitation, so the more she identified with the little girl who feared abandonment the more she denied her weaknesses and vulnerabilities that inhibited her self assertiveness. These recollections were not accessible for discussion as Sheila’s capacities to make space, observe herself, think about her feelings and reflect on them, had temporarily disappeared. During childhood her mother had not tolerated Sheila’s strivings toward autonomy. These strivings were considered to be disrespectful and an attack on her mother’s self worth. In Sheila’s confusion between the past and the present, she denied her anxieties around expectations that she might be manipulated by myself and her husband as she had been by her mother, and to a lesser degree by her father, who recruited Sheila to join him and covertly defy and oppose her mother through acts of omission.

Sheila’s defenses against anxiety became less mature as she regressed to defend against the specter of her husband leaving her. Adults behaving like children are less likely to be left by disgruntled spouses than adults behaving like adults. Such is the power of guilt. Sheila, with little if any awareness of her evolving emotional crisis, began to idealize what she had learned to expect as a little girl. To escape her terrifying weaknesses and vulnerabilities Sheila identified with the recollected mother of her inner world. This way Sheila could feel close to her mother, experience her support, forgive her transgressions, and invest herself with the authority she felt was slipping from her grasp, as the passivity reminiscent of a childhood organized around pleasing her parents took hold of her. This unconscious metamorphosis meant creating and exploiting an experience of being wronged to justify making demands of her husband. Cast in her mother’s perfect self image Sheila was to be the architect of her own victimization, deny responsibility for the consequences of her actions, blame the actors cast in her historical enactment, hold a grudge, and then, demand that justice be served. All that was needed was a pretext for this morality play to be repeated.

Sheila victimized herself at the hands of Jim’s brother, Tom, who was not to be trusted or relied upon to be respectful and considerate of himself or anyone else for that matter. Unfortunately, in this case neither Sheila nor Jim actively processed what might happen and how they might feel in doing business with Tom. However, Jim was able to accept responsibility for his decision and separate himself from his brother’s unjustified, disrespectful and inconsiderate actions. Sheila could and would not.

When Jim’s brother Tom tried to help them buy a kitchen appliance through his company but could not deliver the model Sheila desired, she bought it elsewhere with Jim’s blessings. Tom was at first accepting of this disappointment after doing what he could to help his sister-in-law and close a deal for himself. Later however, he disparaged his sister-in-law to the rest of his family as having selfishly used him. This was Tom being Tom. Sheila told Jim that until Tom apologized (which was unlikely to happen as Tom milked the role of victim as readily as Sheila did), she would not attend any of his family’s functions under any circumstances. Sheila’s self worth at this point was completely invested in the idealized wish that her husband would come to her rescue and choose her over his family unlike how her father had chosen his AA fellowship over his mother and herself. It was Sheila’s turn to turn the tables and step into the shoes of her mother whose sense of entitlement was entirely linked to real and/or imagined experiences of being treated unfairly and unjustly. The need to rely on such leverage was evidence of how undeserving Sheila felt in her own right to begin with. Sheila’s mother was not one to forgive and move on. Now Sheila, the self styled victim who under ordinary circumstances still felt like a hostage of her mother’s demands to be pleased at Sheila’s expense now felt empowered to collect her emotional debts with interest. Many of the unpaid debts I’m referring to were the unpaid debts for sacrificing herself at the hands of both parents that she never forgave, which had nothing to do with what Jim owed her under any circumstances.

Getting what Sheila demanded was unreasonable, unrealistic, disrespectful and inconsiderate of Jim and yet she pursued her agenda with a desperate vengeance. Jim was compassionate and empathetic towards his wife and validated her perception that his brother had done her wrong. However, she was putting him in the middle between herself and his entire family by asking him to choose. Sheila would not listen to reason and would not consider Jim’s desire to attend his brother Harvey’s birthday party at which Tom would be in attendance. She would not listen and process any proposals that respected and considered both of them including Jim putting his family on notice that if anything was said during the event that might potentially embarrass Sheila, they would leave immediately.

A life’s worth of accumulated rage, hatred, vengeance and anger was bubbling to the surface for Sheila and she was not inclined to look at, think about and try to understand what piece of history was being enacted here. Jim told Sheila that her position was not acceptable to him and Sheila looked as if Jim had just taken an ice pick to the heart of her worth as a human being. When I asked Sheila to take some deep breaths, step back and reflect on what she just heard that was so wounding to her, Sheila accused me of abandoning her and left in a huff. Jim wound up staying with me in individual psychotherapy and Sheila was supported to find another therapist for herself.

This vignette illustrates how unsubstantiated yet idealized expectations can precipitate an identity crisis, that when disappointed, can leave the author of such expectations with the experience of his self worth having collapsed like a house of cards. Nothing is left. When Sheila could not replay history with her wished-for “happy ending,” in a moment of gratifying vindication she gifted her husband and myself her feelings of worthlessness and uselessness and attempted to disconnect from both of us by walking out like her father had on her mother and herself. She temporarily rid herself of needing either of us. By not getting what she demanded, Sheila had nothing to show for her complete and utter sacrifice and devaluation of her self except to exact revenge.

Sheila desperately tried to get the outside world to conform to her internal expectations based on history. Necessity being the mother of invention, Sheila regressed to a stage of magical thinking, desperate to be all knowing and all powerful in the face of apprehensions that should her husband not dance to her tune, she would be left feeling as useless and worthless as the day her father left her. Her idealized expectations were all she had left to protect herself from what she imagined would be a fatal wound to her self worth. This bright and competent adult had become fearful of annihilation as if her valued identity was inextricably tied to enacting history with a different outcome. From the perspective of Sheila’s inner child, what she got or didn’t get is what she deserved and what she deserved put the final nail in the coffin condemning her to be punished as a bad little girl. Her badness was nothing more than the fear and dread of what her unconscious hostilities toward her parents had done and might continue to do to kill off love and concern for her as a separate person. She had never learned to own and use these feelings constructively, as her recollections were rich with lessons that her mother would attack her if she asserted herself and her father would behave as if he had been killed off.

This article discusses the mechanisms by which one spouse may experience another spouse as having the power and authority to attack and rob him of his self worth. The alleged victim is in truth, a victim of his own complete identification with idealized, unprocessed, archaic and illogical expectations which when they are not validated are experienced as an annihilation. These are cases of complete absence of malice on the part of the accused. Implicit in the disappearance of autonomous thought processes is the temporary disappearance of capacities to regulate self esteem. Thus the alleged victim who is emptied of self worth in obligatory self sacrifice to the falsely idealized partner, and whose value depends on controlling how the partner responds to himself, feels like nothing when his expectations are frustrated and disappointed. A false dichotomy is set up between being all knowing and all powerful, and being powerless, useless and worthless.

©Copyright 2009 by Mitchell Milch, LCSW. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Mitchell and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Jennifer and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Sue and her husband Dave were talking in the morning before leaving for work. Dave mentioned that he had made dinner plans with a friend later that week. Sue immediately bristled. “You never make plans with me, everyone else is always first”, she hissed. Dave sighed. “Here we go again,” he thought to himself. He tried to reason with his wife, but she was already upset and angry. Dave got quiet and pulled back rather than get into a fight. Sue got angrier as she felt more and more abandoned. Dave said that he had to go and left for work. Later that evening when they were both home, there was a chill in the air. Neither of them brought up the morning’s fight. Eventually things went back to normal again, and although the dinner with the friend came and went, this dynamic between them would come up over and over again, causing distrust, resentment and fear, and over time eroding the bond between them.

Victim hood is a self-concept, a way of seeing ourselves. It is not the same as being a victim of real circumstances such as a natural disaster or a crime. We all know people who are emotional victims. Emotional victims look at the world through a lens of past injustices without seeing the link in all of the situations: themselves. It just happened to them; life treats them badly. “You can’t trust a man” rather than “I’ve never been able to pick a trustworthy man”. Because they believe that they are not responsible for what is happening in their lives, they feel entitled to act inappropriately towards the perceived offender. Some people create victim roles for themselves. Other people are pulled into a victim role by being in a dysfunctional relationship. We’ve all had times when we’ve engaged with somebody who reacted on occasion as an emotional victim, or felt that way ourselves. Moving from being an emotional victim to self-empowerment involves looking at, and taking responsibility for, our own patterns in relationships, or circumstances.

What is the payback of not taking responsibility for oneself? Why would someone ever rationalize and embrace their disempowerment? The reason is that being an emotional victim allows an avoidance of painful feelings such as shame. Often emotional victims have had difficult childhoods and are sensitized to feeling criticized, wronged, or “bad”. They easily feel unimportant or mistreated. Nobody wants to feel as if they are “bad”, unimportant or mistreated. Deep down, there is a little child in them that really does believe that they are bad, or that others don’t care about them. Emotional victims develop a habit of “explaining” why events happen to them, rather looking at their own role in the events of their lives. In avoiding their imaginary “badness” and the feelings associated with it, they are not able to be honest with themselves about the responsibility they have for their lives and the wrong they actually inflict upon others. They are caught up in believing that people are bad, rather than knowing that it is the behavior that is bad, not the person. Driven by an underlying and often unconscious fear of being wrong, they blame others for their problems and defend themselves as guiltless and innocent at all costs. As a result, emotional victims take little responsibility for their own behavior and the events in their lives.

The cost of being an emotional victim is high. It is painful to feel powerless over the events of one’s life and to feel continually wronged. The ensuing despair and anger is also painful, as well as the strained relationships that result. The price is relationships that do not function well, where the other person walks on eggshells and does not open up to vulnerability and intimacy.

Do you have a relationship with somebody who does not take responsibility for his or her own behavior? How is this impacting you? What “survival” techniques have you developed? It might be time to change them.

Are there ways that you do not take responsibility for yourself? What feelings might you be trying to avoid? Can you allow yourself to be imperfect, make mistakes and apologize? Can you acknowledge that each of us has an enormous amount of power to change our lives and that looking at ourselves is the first step?

©Copyright 2009 by Jennifer Lehr, MA, MFT All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jennifer and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Yelling at Children

This is a topic that has meaning for everyone. All of us have raised our voices, probably more than once. No, I did not come from a home of screaming parents or siblings. However, I do see many families and couples who yell a lot at each other, and the short and long-term consequences of regular yelling/screaming are not pretty. Those of you who experience yelling know what I’m talking about.

Let’s start with the impact of yelling at children:

First, it teaches them how to yell, when to yell, and that yelling is an effective response to emotionally charged situations. By extension, it teaches them an ineffective way to process anger, as anger is usually associated with yelling.

Second, yelling scares most children—the younger the child, often the more fear they feel. In a state of fear it is next to impossible for a child to think about their mistake or misbehavior. If a child cannot think about their mistake, a child cannot learn from their mistake.

Third, regularly yelling at a child before the age of 3 or 4, or before they have an expansive developmental use of language, teaches them to replace useful language with yelling. In other words, a child will not learn useful, effective expression when yelling is their model. The short version is, ‘if mom and/or dad yell, then so can I.’ They are too young to know better.

Back to the fear induced by a yelling parent. Children are far less likely to learn the lesson you want them to learn when they are afraid. Instead of the lesson they might otherwise learn from natural, appropriate consequences associated with their mistake, they learn to be afraid. Fearful children often grow up to be fearful adults and parents. Sometimes they grow up to be yellers. No surprise.

Helplessness

Not only is yelling learned from our own parents in some cases, it also means a parent probably feels helpless. It is a sign that a parent does not know a more effective alternative at that moment. Helplessness is a very powerful feeling, and when the brain reads the ‘helpless signal,’ so to speak, it will do almost anything to reduce it. The antidote to helplessness begins with a four step process, which will aide in reducing/stopping yelling at the kids:

First, make a conscious, verbal decision to stop.

Second, make the commitment to learn the skills necessary for replacing yelling with effective responses. Go to The Love and Logic Institute, and invest in their parenting CD’s, books & DVD’s. From that material you can learn those skills (no, I do not get residuals for recommending their remarkable material, but I’d appreciate it if you would tell them I sent you!). All you need to know about replacing yelling, and learning how to really enjoy parenting is there. OK, now that’s your skills toolbox. But, now you have to reduce the reactivity that precedes your yelling–that’s the hard part. Parents who effectively manage their emotional reactivity do not tend to yell.

Third, if reactivity (which I will say more about below) and anger are problems for you, which frequently is the case with chronic yellers, professional counseling may be your best investment.

Fourth, try this new thought as a guide to changing your thinking about yelling as you consider making your decision to stop: There is nothing a child can do that calls for yelling at them—unless it will literally save their life.

By the way, in 29 years of practice, I’ve never met a parent who remarked: “Boy, do I regret not yelling a my kid, what a mistake that was.”

Yelling at your Spouse / Partner

Yelling at your spouse/partner induces fear, just as it does in a child. Brain research has shown that it is very difficult to think while in a state of fear. If you want your partner to think about what you say, the odds for that increase when you speak in a way that does not produce fear. When your partner hears yelling, the brain reads it as DANGER, and your partner experiences fear. It (the brain) immediately goes in to some degree of fight or flight mode—how much depends on the amount of perceived threat. The behavior from your partner at that point will probably range from yelling back/defensiveness (fight mode) to silence/withdrawal (flight mode). Neither will produce a satisfactory outcome.

Fight mode is sometimes referred to as “reactive.” In fight or reactive mode we tend to say things we regret or wish we could take back, which, of course calls for repair. Part of this pattern often includes your partner reacting defensively and/or critically when yelled at. That defensiveness triggers more frustration, anger and lashing out. Without knowing what to do, or how to respond differently, the cycle is repeated, and both partners suffer and struggle with a broken or unsatisfactory conflict management process. The next time an issue surfaces it will be anticipated with dread.

Flight mode is also referred to as silence/withdrawal. In flight mode, two common options arise: One, you either do not know what to say due shutting down with fear; or, two, you may know exactly what you want to say, but, you say nothing because a part of you believes that what you think and/feel is unimportant, so why bother. Either way you have no voice. In the end, both you and your partner are probably angry, hurt, disappointed and frustrated, and blaming the other for the “breakdown in communication.”

More accurately, there was no “breakdown in communication,” per se. In fact, there was plenty of communication, too much of it ineffective. More significant was the breakdown in reactivity management. All the good communication skills in the tool bag will be of little use in the face of unchecked or poorly managed reactivity. Why might professional counseling helpful at this point? Because chronic ineffectively managed reactivity almost always has some roots in our early history. A competent marital therapist can help connect early roots to current events, finish some old business, and help you develop reactivity management alternatives.

An Alternative to Yelling

I am aware that many of you prefer counseling as a last resort. If that’s the case, on your own, try the following:

1. Before you begin your discussion, each of you verbally acknowledge your willingness to break the pattern that is not working. It might sound like this: “The last time we discussed this, I did not react effectively. I am going to try some new behaviors.”

2. Next, each of you openly acknowledge to your partner how you aspire to be during the discussion. If you tend to be the yeller, acknowledge that you aspire to be calm, and what new behavior you plan to employ if you begin to feel activated. You might say, for example, “I’m starting to feel like I want to yell, my frustration is building, I would like to stop for a few minutes so that I can get calm again.” THAT WOULD BE NEW BEHAVIOR. If you begin to feel activated, take responsibility for it—do not blame your partner. What ever new behavior you decide to try, let it be known in advance of the discussion. No surprises, unless they’re pleasant ones.

3. Hold yourself to the healthy code of conduct to which you aspire; let your partner do the same for him/herself. How you aspire to be is all you have control over.

4. In advance, put a time limit on the length of the discussion. If you each feel comfortable continuing on, agree to another time limit. Repeat as necessary.

5. When either of you call for a time out, especially to lower your reactivity, decide on a time to resume. This reduces the chances of avoiding your way out of the discussion entirely.

6. After the discussion, and only if you both agree to, analyze YOUR own respective roles in how the discussion went. Talk about yourself, unless complimenting your partner. Determine where you might become more effective, and tell your partner. Focus on your behavior, not your partner’s.

Good luck in your attempts to break this difficult pattern. It’s not easy. The fact that you made an attempt builds trust and self confidence.

Wishing you a satisfying relationship, Jim

©Copyright 2008 by Jim Hutt, Ph.D., MFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile