The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance.
Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.

I don't actually date a whole lot lately. Why not? Well, when I'm with a boy I like, it's hard for me to say anything cool or witty or at all. I can usually make a few vowel sounds, and I have to go away. It's not that bad. No, it is. I think boys are more interested in a girl who can talk, and that's from Buffy.

How do you handle the difficult conversations in your life? And there are all sorts of difficult conversations. Maybe, like Willow, you want to date, and you get tongue-tied when you go to speak. Maybe your best friend did something that upset you, and you want to talk about it, and you don't know where to begin. Or a spouse has not wanted intimacy, and you want to bring it up, but that's always been a problem. Or a boss is overloading you with work, and you resent the overloading and want them to know you have a life outside of work, and you don't know how to begin that conversation. Or maybe you want to tell your daughter you love her, but you're not used to expressing emotions.

How do you make difficult conversations easier for yourself? Joining me now to give us some tips is Jean Maroney. She is the president of Thinking Directions. Jean teaches professionals how to use great thinking skills to solve problems faster, make better decisions, and get projects finished. Welcome, Jean.

Thank you, Alan. Thank you for having me on.

Oh, it's always a pleasure. What makes having a difficult conversation so distressing, so emotionally upsetting?

Well, I think it's in the definition of a difficult conversation. It's the things that upset you that make it difficult. And the truth is that if there are big values at stake, and you're afraid that you're going to screw up, or you're afraid you're going to get hurt, or you're afraid that you're going to get too angry, then you get into an emotional state where it's actually very difficult to think your way out of a box, and that makes it hard to then deal with the real-time challenges of the conversation. So it's high stakes and emotional overload, so it's hard to figure out how to handle it.

So you're the problem, so you're really flooded with emotions, and it's like you have all of these what-ifs in the back of your mind. What if he rejects me if Willow asks for the date? Or what if my husband leaves me because of the intimacy problem? Or what if I get angry? Or what if I tell my daughter I love her and she doesn't respond, and I don't know how to deal with that? So it's all of these what-ifs that are bouncing through your mind. So how do you even begin to have a conversation? What is a conversation and what's not a conversation?

Well, can I step one step back? For sure. Because I think the important thing is don't start the conversation until you actually think you can have it. And so you do need to deal with these emotions, and you need to deal with them a little bit in advance by yourself, because in this case, you can't just do deep breathing to calm yourself down. Now, I'm an advocate of breathing to calm yourself down, but in this case, the content that you need to talk about is, in fact, the thing that upsets you. So unless you deal with that content and somehow become more calm about what you're then going to have to talk about, there's no way to make this conversation be a meeting of minds as opposed to an emotional outburst.

So it would be just a one-way, really upset at you. You're overloading me with work if you're talking to your boss, and all you're just, if that's the emotional outburst, a rant or an outburst or something like that, where you just spew your feelings on the other person. And that's not, you know, you ask, what's a conversation? Well, a conversation is a meeting of minds, and it's both people coming in with some kind of shared purpose to understand the situation better or maybe to solve a problem. And if you don't have that meeting of minds and that shared purpose, you don't actually have a dialogue. You don't have a conversation that, in fact, makes things better.

And I think this is one of the reasons people get so nervous about these kinds of conversations. They're afraid that they're actually going to make it worse by some kind of emotional outburst or mishandling of it. So their coping strategy is to avoid it; they just run away from the conversation. But it goes underground. You never, I mean, it's like the big—they talk about it as the elephant in the middle of the room. It's like, we haven't talked about this problem. Mom, you've never told me you love me. Or the boss, you know, just so irritated with the boss. You can see it on my face. You can see it in my actions, and yet, I put on that fake smile and say, “Oh, everything's okay.”

So what suggestions do you have? Even one or two tips, Jean, for making a difficult conversation just a tad less upsetting?

Hey, I gotta interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is—the Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at Amazon.com. Hmm. The Selfish Path to Romance, that is interesting.

So what suggestions do you have, even one or two tips, Jean, for making a difficult conversation just a tad less upsetting?

Sure. Well, I think the important thing is to prepare yourself emotionally for it in advance. And there are two things that you can do that can really help. And one of them, I really learned in part through your recommendations, Alan. It's the methods that the cognitive therapists have for introspection and for understanding what you feel and why you feel it. Because if you're that upset, it's always something important for you that's at stake. You know, any one of these topics with a different person, you would be calm. But with this person, it has some meaning. You need to know what that is, because if it's just something that's been unidentified, you don't have any way to deal with it directly. So one thing is to introspect. Why do you feel so strongly about this? Right? What is at stake for me? Where are these feelings coming from? What images come to mind?

And so you do that introspective piece. And I know there's a great book, I know you have a write-up on it on your website, thinkingdirections.com. It's Mind Over Mood. So that's one thing you can do, is to name the values at stake and deal with the emotions.

And is there another thing you wanted to add?

Yeah, the other thing that I was going to say is it makes a huge difference if you can think about what is the other person's perspective and to do that in a benevolent way. Now, when you're really upset, you can't do that until you calm yourself down a little bit. But then, if you can try to figure out, well, what could be a benevolent reason for what they're doing, that can give you a chance to be able to come talk to them without treating them like a villain. Because if you come in there, you know, slinging the sarcasm and the attacks, they're going to get defensive, and they're going to get emotionally upset. It's going to be very difficult to have any kind of meeting of minds. If you can even see some glimmer as to why they are doing what they're doing—something, you know, a rational element—the truth is that when people misbehave, they always have mixed motivation. You know, there's part of it that could be maybe they're trying to hurt you, but maybe there's part of it where they're trying to get maybe a valid recognition for something, or maybe they're trying to make something easier.

And if you can find the rational element of the motivation and acknowledge that, that does a tremendous amount to just reduce the tension, because you no longer see them as just out to get you, and they know that you aren't treating them as a villain, and that can really calm things down a lot.

Right? So even if you set up a question in your mind, what would be the best explanation for what they're doing? What did you know? Why are they doing what they're doing? Like the boss overloading me? Well, he just lost a coworker, and so he's really under the gun, and he's not doing this because he's mean. He's just really stressed out himself.

And then you can—right? And then you can approach him, and your mood will be different, and that's what you're suggesting. I know that this is only the tip of the iceberg of all the wonderful skills that you offer, Jean.

Jean, can you tell people how to get in touch with you? I think you are absolutely phenomenal, and I highly recommend people check out your website, which is thinkingdirections.com.

Thank you very much for that testimonial, Alan. Yes, my website is thinkingdirections.com—that's the word thinking and the word directions with an "s" dot com. And you can get a free email newsletter there. If you have a question, feel free to email me. My email is jm@thinkingdirections.com, and I offer, every other month, a free teleclass, so there's a lot of information up there and a lot of ways to stay in touch.

And thank you so much for joining us today, Jean.

Thanks for having me, Alan.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com, and please listen to this excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by Doctors Kenner and Locke.

We believe that many, if not most, "sex problems" are not, at root, sex problems, but rather relationship problems. Typically, couples who enter therapy with sexual "problems" soon discover that underlying the tension or breakdown in the sexual relationship are a multitude of unresolved and often unidentified conflicts or resentments. Also, partners rarely know how to develop a couple style of intimacy, a style of sexuality that is mutually satisfying. Partners develop a couple style when they have clearly communicated what is arousing and pleasing, and together, they come up with a variety of methods of sexual pleasure that integrate both partners' needs and are not off-putting to either one. As partners learn each other's intimacy preferences, they come up with their own style.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.