To Speak or Not to Speak – That Is the Question (When To Press Pause)

October 24, 2021 Mike MacConnell

“I try not to react, but one day I’m afraid I’m going to burst. Arguing just makes it worse.”

Every couple struggles at times to communicate. Some boil in silence; others snap back defensively. But lasting connection is built out of small, daily, often unnoticed efforts of patience and restraint that enable you to listen with respect and speak your mind clearly.

Instead of cold forbearance and withdrawal or hot counter-attack, try pivoting instead toward genuine curiosity about the other person’s feelings. Listening with deep sincerity is the first step toward an honest conversation. That’s when a couple can collaborate.

It’s hard to know how and when to speak, yet at some point, speak we must. The challenge to decide when to speak and when to let it pass requires an effort. Here are a few tips to make it easier.

If you tend to push at difficult topics:

Ask yourself about your intention. Are you trying to prove you’re right, explain yourself or push to a solution? If so, save your words for later.

If your goal is to work through a problem and to do so together, then the following tips help direct the conversation toward a deeper understanding:

· Inquire into their feelings and what matters to them right now

· Ask about what they would have liked, what they wish would have happened

· Name something specific you observed and ask what its impact was on them

· Summarize what you are hearing to check in if you are hearing correctly

If you tend to avoid difficult topics:

If silence is your fallback, try to keep in mind that all emotions are legitimate. They deserve to be heard. More than that, they offer a window into our deepest needs. Speaking about them will accelerate you and your partner’s awareness of what matters.

Negative emotions rise out of healthy needs that aren’t being met. They are worth exploring together to find more skilful ways to meet them. To get a healthy conversation going, the points above will help you to “get” what matters to the other. But chances are, you haven’t been heard. To help them “get” your viewpoint regarding the issue or conflict at hand:

· Begin with a positive quality of the other that is honest and relevant

· Identify the emotional impact, for you, of a specific thing that happened

· Identify the underlying need, belief or value that matters to you and caused the feeling to arise

· Ask the other person to summarize what they have heard you say

· Inquire about their comments or questions and viewpoint

Beware of concluding too quickly that because you’re struggling you must be with the wrong person. Struggle sparks change and motivates growth. Resenting or avoiding the hard conversations can cause you to miss the fact that those difficulties can take you to a deeper place of intimacy and understanding. We need to be tested to discover who we are capable of becoming.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike MacConnell, founder of Reflective Mediation, is an accredited family mediator, conflict coach, educator and author. He is the highest-ranked mediator on Google in the greater Toronto area, with over 180 5-star reviews. To book your free consultation click here.

In Search of Happiness? Then Sit First with Sadness

September 29, 2021 Mike MacConnell

My friend is trying to find happiness and worries he is failing. In the eyes of the world, he’s a success: a gifted young professional supported by a warm partner, family and friends. When he’s busy he feels fine. Yet in quiet moments of reflection those external markers of success only make him feel emptier. “What’s wrong with me?”, he often wonders, “Shouldn’t my accomplishments be enough?”

His solution has been to push harder, work longer hours, train harder at the gym, take extra courses and do volunteer work in his community. He hopes, by doing more, to drown out the doubts, to feel worthy and find peace.

He isn’t a client, but knows I’m a life coach whose work is to help others make desired changes. He came to me for advice. I listened first to understand the change he wanted and after a few meetings I was able to respond. The advice I offered went something like this.

“We live in a culture that embraces observable, external success, that encourages doing more, acquiring or accomplishing measurable things. It works for some people. For you, however, the journey for meaning is inward. You need to continue performing in the world. Keep doing that. Then give yourself a break. Make time to stop doing.

It takes courage to stand still in the mess, “to sit with discomfort without trying to fix it”. My friend has been trying to fill the void by doing more and more. That’s worthy, but it’s only half the story for those of us working to ward off low-level depression. He encouraged me to continue.

“Time to try doing les and face the negative emotions that arise when you slow down. Practise sitting still, facing the sadness, the fear, the uncertainty, before rushing to distract yourself with another task.

Even for just 5 minutes a day. It’s an exercise in emotional acceptance, a recognition that uncomfortable emotion is part of who we are. Study where the feeling lives in your body. Sit with it. Then watch as the emotion drifts away, unable to hurt you once you stop fearing it.”

My friend’s unhappiness arises in part from unrealistic demands he places on himself. He sees his distress as a failing, something that shouldn’t be there. I urged him to honour the sorrow without pushing it away.

A healthy identity encompasses the full palette of emotion. Sadness does NOT define who he is, but in its place it’s an honest, healthy part. Pushing it away won’t get rid of it, only lend it undue importance as though it is to be feared.

I wanted my final words to be encouraging. “Try connecting with the sadness. Listen to it, learn from it, comfort it, hold it. To paraphrase an eastern parable: “Instead of chasing after wellbeing, consider this: wellbeing might be behind you, struggling to catch up to you.”

My words didn’t fix anything. They weren’t intended to. But my friend told me recently that he feels more empowered now that he works less on controlling his difficult emotions and more on understanding and accepting them.

After we ended, I sent him the following quotation, which he now has posted on his wall.

“When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are the times that we connect with bodhichitta (awakened mind).”

From The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, page 9

by Pema Chödrön

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Managing Depression with Positive Psychology

August 25, 2021 Mike MacConnell

Depression is a scary word. Not long ago it sounded worse, like a crippling illness that came with a life sentence. For extreme cases that can still be how it is, but thanks to the revolution in mental health known as Positive Psychology, for most of us that time has passed. The fear is unfounded.

When I recognized I was living with depression I was shocked and horrified. I was functioning at home and work, only without vital energy or a glimmer of joy. I imagined recovery would require a regimen of medications along with years of complicated psycho-analysis, uncovering dark, subconscious truths that lay hidden beneath my awareness. Otherwise, there was no hope of recovery. Or so I imagined.

The path back to life was much easier than that. In fact, it was free of charge and relatively quick. With a little coaching, I was able to do it myself, without medication or psychiatry. First, I found hope in a bestseller on Positive Psychology called Feeling Good, in which Dr. David Burns presents the basic insight that, in the vast majority of cases, depression is the result of faulty thinking. Feeling Good link Negative thinking causes negative emotion. If your internal monologue is on a loop repeating “I am unworthy” and “the world is hopeless” then it’s likely you’re depressed.

To resolve depression, just change how you’re thinking. Challenge the toxic thoughts that cause the negative feelings. It isn’t complicated. No need to spend a decade (and a fortune) uncovering unconscious motives or childhood trauma. Instead, pay attention to the thoughts you are thinking, right here, right now. If they are persistently negative then challenge them, put them to the test, look for counter-arguments. “Can I be certain that I’m so unworthy? Is the tale of woe I’m telling myself necessarily true? Are there any counter-examples? Is there evidence that some world problems are getting better?”. Make an active practice of seeking evidence suggesting you and the world ARE worthwhile.

Next, activate yourself physically and socially. Burn’s insistence on overall well-being led me first to relaxation classes and then to a daily practice of yoga. I also began connecting with old friends I had been “too tired” or “too busy” to see. By deliberately moving my thoughts and body in new directions I was able to recover my life. It only took a few months. I haven’t looked back since.

Positive Psychology is interested in practical, common-sense approaches to what makes life most worth living. It’s most well-known application, the one that worked for me, is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT. As my personal story demonstrates, CBT has become popular for one single reason. It works. Research consistently shows that recovery from depression using CBT (especially in combination with mindfulness practice and physical activity) far surpasses earlier, more complex forms of psychotherapy. Positive Psychology link

Most empowering of all: you can do it on your own by moving your body and mind in more positive directions.

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When Misfortune Leaves You Paralyzed: The Dilemma of “Learned Helplessness”

January 26, 2021 Aleksandra Ania

Bridget is a single mother, suffering in the midst of the pandemic. She feels overwhelmed by the weight of homeschooling her children while working from home at half her former wages. In addition to the necessities of shopping, cooking, cleaning and caregiving, she can’t stop thinking of how she dropped out of college, about the great job she lost, and how her marriage fell apart. After a sleepless night, her life seems to her like a litany of failures with no way out of the gloom. She worries she’s reached the breaking point, yet can’t muster the motivation to call her mother or best friend for support. She imagines they’re tired of her complaints and will just offer unwanted advice. She emails her ex to pick up the kids and crawls back under the covers, trapped and alone.

Many of us have felt something akin to Bridget’s emotional paralysis. You may have experienced a sense of futility that temporarily sapped your motivation. Often it resolves on its own. However, for some, “learned helplessness” becomes a permanent frame of mind, often associated with PTSD and clinical depression. People stuck in a situation, unable to change tracks.

The Oxford dictionary defines “learned helplessness” as “a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed and becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters, even if they are escapable”. The term was coined by Martin Seligman in 1967 after observing the behavior of dogs who lacked the initiative to escape following repeated exposure to electrical shock, despite being offered the opportunity.

Some of my clients express feeling this way in their family or work life. These are intelligent, well-intentioned individuals who may have felt overwhelmed by divorce, health issues, job-loss or stress at work. They are unable to visualize steps to improve their situation. There is no issue of blame here. Given a world in which external forces impose relentless, unwanted pressures beyond their control, the temptation to believe their situation to be hopeless is entirely understandable. But the sense of hopelessness mires them deeper. It blinds them from seeing the one thing they can control, which is their response.

“Learned optimism” is the answer, and Seligman has emerged as a world expert in the field. Along with other positive psychologists such as Kelly McGonigal, (see her TED talk and book: The Upside of Stress) a powerful movement has emerged making a convincing case that learned helplessness can be overcome, and that an attitude of balanced, realistic optimism can, with effort, be acquired.

Bridget may not be able to transform the circumstances that gave rise to her distress, but she can energize and transform her response. By challenging her automatic thoughts, by expressing her needs in honest, vulnerable conversations and by connecting with others she can shift the lens through which she sees herself and her world.

In next month’s blog I’ll present a more detailed description of practical steps to overcome learned helplessness, and not only to survive, but to grow stronger in response to unwanted stress.

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