[Terri Cole] How to Effectively Communicate During Conflict (Without Making it Worse!)

Well, hello there. And welcome to this episode of the Terri Cole Show that I wanna start with a question. When you're in the heat of a fight, do you have a tendency to either explode and say things that you don't mean or withdraw in anger and become silent? If you're nodding your head, this is a very common, common experience where people will choose these sort of communication blocking techniques, not on purpose. It's just more of a reaction. So in today's video, I'm actually going to be breaking down the top four communication blockers, what you can do instead, instead of withdrawing an anger or whatever you're doing. And I'm going to give you some scripts and sentence starters so that the next time you are in conflict, you can actually solve the conflict instead of having it sort of devolve into a complete and total brawl. So before we get into today's episode, if you are new to this channel, please introduce yourself in the comments below because we are really a friendly group of people. And I want to make sure that you subscribe.

So hit that bell icon so you can get notified every single time that we roll out a new video, which is every Tuesday Thursday to up level the quality of all of the relationships in your life. If you are new here, my name is Terri Cole. I'm a licensed psychotherapist, a relationship expert, and the author of Boundary Boss, which you can get at boundarybossbook.com. I also wanna say thank you so much for your questions and your comments. You leave so many. I read them all. I love it, love it, love it, and completely appreciate you. And I love to highlight your comments.

So Mahoidia says under the episode, How to Overcome Adversity with Doug Bobst. Thank you, Terry. Great interview with Doug Bobst. Congratulations, Doug, on your recovery. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I am truly inspired and amazed by your determination and drive. I now have the 3 A's in my pocket to utilize when needed. Best wishes to con to your continued success.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to write a comment. If you guys have not seen my interview with Doug Bobbs, go find it on my YouTube channel right here, because it is a good one. All right. Let's move into today's effective communication. Now this is something we hear a lot about. A lot of times, I don't even think we know what it actually means. This is difficult to do in regular times when life is normal. When we are in a conflict, it is especially challenging to effectively communicate.

That is one of the hardest parts of being in a relationship is either not blowing up the conflict or not sort of walking away from the conflict because we don't know how to deal with it. It is really crucial for you to understand yourself. How do you respond when you are feeling threatened, when you are activated, or when you are in a disagreement or a conflict with someone else. So I would say we're going to go over right now the 4 top conflict communication blockers. So I'm going to talk about the unhealthy action that many of us take. It's super duper common. And then what you can do instead. So the difficulty or the issue, the first one we're going to talk about is the inability to express your own needs.

Right? If in the heat of the moment, when you want to talk about what you want, but instead your mind, let's say goes blank and it can really like render you speechless, a lot of times for many folks, depending on your background, being in conflict with someone can really be threatening. It can kick up your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. Sometimes you feel like you can't talk, right? It's almost like you get frozen. So you've got to gain clarity yourself on why is it that however you're responding, why is that? Right? And we want to figure that out before we find ourselves in these heated conflicts. So it's sort of what is the unmet need when you are feeling angry, upset, hurt in your relationship, let's say, or any relationship. I want you to write it all out in your journal. Right? It might feel awkward at first to write it all down, how you're feeling, but it can be so effective so that once you approach the person, you've already written out what you're upset about. You are super clear about what need in you has gone unmet.

Because again, nobody has a crystal ball. People can't know how we're feeling or how we took something. And it's also okay. And this is, I strongly suggest that you actually do this. I do this with my therapy clients at times. If you're someone who gets flustered in the moment, you can write it all out. And in the guide that goes along with this episode, terricole.com/guide, you will see that I have written this all out for you. So here is an example of how you can share what you're feeling after you've written it down.

It's okay to say, Hey, I've written down a few things that I want to communicate to you. So can you please wait until I'm done sharing them with you before you respond? You know that asking for what I want is challenging for me, and I would really appreciate your patience and compassion while I work to get better at it. So what we're doing there is we are inviting our person in to our process, to be a part of our solution instead of a part of the problem. And in the beginning, my therapy clients would be like, that's so weird. And then I'm gonna read something out of my journal. I'm like, yeah. Because once you get the words out, you will feel so much more confident once you share it in a way that really feels like it's what you want to say. Half of your healing comes from that alone.

It's really not about, I mean, yes, within the relationship, it's about how the other person responds. Right? We hope if they're our person, they're gonna care about the way we feel and what we want. But your side of the street is learning how to identify what it is that you want, or why it is that your feelings are hurt, or what need is going unmet. And then to write that down if you have difficulty in the moment talking, and creating space with that script that I gave you to be able to read it to your person. And that is a win, however they respond, right? You just creating that boundary. You just sharing that truth is a win right there. And that does wonders for your self esteem, right? You can start to count on yourself. 2, tell the truth and really negotiate to get your needs met.

Alright. The second issue or block to communication when we're in conflict is listening to talk, right? Listening to respond. When you feel yourself, the person's talking, but you're just waiting until you can jump in to go back to the point you're trying to get across, you know, to prove your argument, to win, quote unquote, at all costs. This is something we have to look at more closely in ourselves because it can be so tempting to want to poke holes in the other person's theory or what they're saying, or saying that they got it wrong, but we need to create space. What you can do instead is learn to listen with the intention of actually understanding, not gathering evidence to make the other person wrong or to make that case. Right? Another way that we do this in healthy relationships is that we create regular dates to discuss openly whatever's going on. Right? I suggest people do a weekly or bimonthly, right? Twice a month. State of the union, I call it.

You don't have to tell your person. That's the name of it. Just see if they'll have breakfast with you twice a month where you can check-in. What are the things we're doing great? What are the things we can work on? How are you feeling? Is there anything that's upsetting to either one of us? The more we normalize problem solving, the less we find ourselves in this sort of reaching this stalemate because when we're in the conflict, but what we really want is to win, We can't have both of those things. We can't be loving and want to resolve it, but also want to like crush our opponent. Right? Those things don't go together. So moving into what can we do instead, right? Instead of trying to win, you can ask open ended questions. Is there more that you wanna say about that? I'm interested to hear what you think you should do, or I'm interested to hear what you think about this.

How do you feel about that? It's like any skill that you build, it's gonna take a minute for you to build it, but getting out of that polarization, right? So we're going from debating where there's a winner and a loser to actually discussing where both people, hopefully, the intention, the desire is to understand, to come to a deeper understanding of what the other person is experiencing. And of course we need that to go both ways within the relationship. But right now we're just focusing basically on what you can do, because it's also very easy for us to, you know, wanna blame the other person. You know, they're impossible, or they're the one who wants to win. And maybe that's accurate, but we have to only really look at our own side of the street because that's the only thing that we're responsible for keeping clean is our own side of the street. It's the only thing that's possible for us to keep clean. All right. The third big block or issue with communication during conflict is using the silent treatment or stonewalling to convey your displeasure.

But it's a really damaging form of passive aggressive anger. And it may not feel that way if you're the person who tends to do it. And trust me, I mastered the art of stonewalling when I was in my twenties because I didn't have any skills. You know, it took years in therapy to learn the skills to communicate what was really bothering me, what was on my heart. So stonewalling, if you don't know what it is, is when one person shuts down completely and is totally unresponsive during the conflict. It's a way of punishing the other person. They may act like, or you may act like the other person isn't even there. You may physically turn away or leave, or you can do a version of this, which is where you're giving minimal responses and reactions to the other person.

Like a one word answer, maybe just nodding your head, but not really engaging in the conversation. Or if they're doing it to you, they're not engaging in the conversation. I think what you can do here is you have to choose to use your words to name your feelings. And again, we're giving scripts. I've got other script starters in the guide. So terricole.com slash guide. I'm also giving you, you know, easy script starters. But for this, you can actually how I got out of doing this in my relationships is the healthier I got in therapy.

I started sort of telling on myself and saying, Hey, I'm upset right now. My first instinct is to ignore you and give you the silent treatment. I want to ignore the entire situation, but I want us to effectively problem solve more than I want to do that. So can you please give me a few minutes or insert whatever your desired amount of time is to cool off and think about how I feel? Then let's come back together and talk it out because I love you and I don't wanna fight or ignore you to make a point. That was really hard to say. I never said it as smoothly as I just read it off of that script right now that I wrote for you, but I was able to say it and that broke my sort of compulsion to act it out. I was able to also get my need met in the moment, which is that I needed time. I needed a minute.

I needed 20 minutes. I needed to walk around the block, whatever I needed. I needed to step away from this situation. Because once I would fall into that being withdrawn in anger as a technique, it was really hard to get out of. It was like I couldn't even make myself get out of it, even though I knew it was ineffective. Right. I was going to say stupid. I don't want to judge it.

Right. I knew it was ineffective and it wasn't gonna get me what I wanted. But once I sort of fell into that hole of silence, it was really hard to get myself out. When I started telling on myself with that script that I will share with you, it made it so much easier because it took me acting out the silent treatment off the table altogether, because I just sort of blew up my own spot. Instead of acting this out, I'm gonna talk it out. Even if I just say, I can't talk it out right now, but I can talk it out in half an hour from now. I feel like doing this, but I'm not going to do this. And, you know, sometimes depending on who I was talking to, the other person would be like, oh, you're doing me a big favor.

You're not gonna give me the silent treatment. Right? And it doesn't mean they're always going to respond the way that we want them to respond. But I actually usually got a positive reaction. At least the other person would agree to give me whatever timeframe I asked for, and then we could come back. And by then I was sort of back to my more normal, less activated or triggered self. And I was able to then really try to problem solve with the other person rather than blaming them. Speaking of which, the 4th biggest block to conflict communication is defensiveness and blame. And it's probably the most common, which is why I saved it for last.

When we get defensive in conflict, why is that? We feel threatened. Right? So we're trying to justify our behavior. We're trying to blame our partner. We feel victimized. Defensive behavior can be fueled by unresolved shame, right? Or an excessive feeling of being judged or criticized in a relationship. A lot of times this is from unhealed childhood stuff. So this, of course, what we don't wanna do is that, and we don't want someone doing it to us. And so having a conversation about defensiveness is really helpful.

Right? This is where your self work comes in though. Because if you had a very critical adult in your life, when you were growing up, you might be really sensitive to even a hint of the fact that someone might be saying you're doing something wrong. You might be very thin skinned when it comes to criticism, and it might be amplified because of unresolved childhood experiences. So this is where your own work comes in. If you notice a pattern of defensiveness when you're in conflict, you've got to work to understand your own reactions and not use blaming or shaming as a tool to win an argument. Especially if you were blamed and shamed in childhood, you've really got to get insight into your own behavior. And of course, when you think about it, you actually don't want to blame and shame your person to win a fight because it's damaging to the relationship as a whole. Right? So you doing your work is the way to go if you find yourself being super defensive.

Look, become an expert on defensiveness, Google it, learn. I have other episodes that you can watch about this and other downloadable things. It's really important though, because defensiveness, as one of my heroes, my psychological heroes, Doctor. Harriet Lerner would say, defensiveness is the archenemy of listening. And that is so true. If we are being defensive, what we're not doing for sure is listening. A couple of other tips for you to avoid blame and shame when you're in conflict is you're not allowed to like glom on, right? No kitchen sinking. So if you're talking about one issue, you need to stick to that issue.

It's not fair or effective to throw in something that happened in 1978 or the last ten things that you're, you've been pissed off about, AKA the kitchen sinking it right, at the other person. It also really guarantees if you are glomming on issues, that you're not gonna resolve any of them. You're just gonna hurt more feelings and create more bitterness and more resentment in the relationship. And then we all also have to look in and see, do we have the capacity to choose to be loving over being right in the moment? Because the reality is from a therapeutic standpoint, let's say, you can't prioritize both of those things. Really being loving hopefully is a thing that you prioritize. And don't misunderstand that statement to mean that you should put up with a lot of shit because that's not what I'm saying. Another idea to avoid blame and shame is be really clear that you are using I statements to communicate your own experience as opposed to pointing fingers. Right? Avoid blaming and judging, pointing out how bad, stupid, insensitive they were or are in whatever given situation.

That is so counterproductive. And it's not effective conflict resolution in any way, shape or form. Take a break, take a breath. And I want you to think about your 50% of that interaction. Right? What is going on? What, what was your part of how you guys came to this? Because that is very important. You're 50% of everything that goes on in your relationship. You're 50% of every relationship, because that's all you can ever be. So you can learn to do this.

I promise you to assert yourself in clear and healthy ways, to ask for what it is that you want. Even in conflict, you can absolutely learn because nobody wants to be stuck in that purgatory of being misunderstood. And that's exactly what happens when we cannot communicate during conflict, when we don't have those conflict resolution skills. In the guide, which you can get at terricole.com forward slash guide, I'm giving you just a bunch of sentence starters that can also be helpful when you're in conflict or not. I'd like to make a simple request you can use anytime, right? No matter what it is. I wanna bring something to your attention. You can use any time. I wanna revisit what happened yesterday.

You can use those at any time, but it's powerful to have them in one place where you kind of have them in your back pocket and you feel like you can then approach the other person. So I would love to know what you think about this episode. I hope so much that it added value to your life. Please go get the guide, terricole.com/guide, because I made it for you. Let me know what your thoughts are by dropping comments, by, tagging me on Instagram. I hope you have an amazing week and as always take care of you.