No More Holdbacks
Having Difficult Conversations Improves Health
Lauren H. Zander Handel Group Private Coaching
If you are like most people, every day you have something you wish
you could say to someone else. It might be that someone made an
offhand comment that hurt your feelings. Or it might be concern for a
friend or relative who appears to be in a troubled relationship or have
a problem with substance abuse. Or, you may simply want to check in
with your parents or children on the state of their finances to be sure
you are not needed to help support them. The problem is that it can be
uncomfortable to share your thoughts on these subjects, and so,
rather than risk hurting someone's feelings, you hold back your words
and push your emotions inside. Why risk offending, right? Then again,
all that consideration may be costing you your own health and
wellness.
Studies constantly remind us how stress negatively impacts health,
including the stress that comes from disharmony in our personal and
professional relationships. While your brain can ignore the issues and
pretend they don't exist, your body never forgets. Eventually, when
ignored for too long, emotional issues come back to haunt you in the
form of disease. How to nip the problem in the bud, and address the
issues right up front? Daily Health
News's personal development
expert, Lauren H. Zander, life coach and consultant, spoke with me
about why difficult conversations seem so tough... and how to make
them possible.
CREATING FALSE REALITIES IN YOUR MIND -- EASIER THAN DEALING WITH THE TRUTH
"I have something to discuss with you." Many people find this sevenword
sentence nearly impossible to utter, especially when the
"something" refers to them feeling hurt or embarrassed. People
excuse their reluctance by saying they aren't confrontational, but
Lauren observes that everyone is confrontational -- it is just that most
people's confrontations take place in their head instead of with another
person.
When stuff happens as it does in life, it's common to harbor bad
feelings and create a mental dialogue in which you imagine how the
other person would respond. Better not bring it up, you conclude,
because it is easier or safer that way. However, what you have
actually done is turn a dialogue that never happened into a personal
psychodrama, says Lauren.
Although you decide to keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself,
they don't go away, and ultimately your opinion of why the other
person did or said that and how that person would react becomes, in
your head, the Truth.
With your new "truth" in place in your head, you continue to avoid
interactions and communication believing, instead, in the truth that you
have created about the person or the original situation. The problem is
that without having the direct conversation, you never give the person
or yourself a chance to hear "the other side" and to clear away any
misperceptions. In the case of wanting to share concern for a loved
one, if you don't let him/her know your concerns, he won't know that
there is help available for him.
Recognizing that you are avoiding such a conversation is the first step
toward having it. The only way to resolve the issues is by having the
difficult conversation.
HOW TO HAVE THE CONVERSATION
The first step in having a difficult conversation is to free your mindset
to remember that the truth you have created in your mind is not the
truth but rather, your perception of the situation -- not more, not less.
Accepting this reality allows you to frame the conversation in such a
way that you won't hurt the other person's feelings or put him on the
defensive. You are not being accusatory or going on the attack.
Step 2, Lauren says, is to clarify your thinking before you introduce the
conversation, write out what happened and how you felt about it. Here
are the points to address...
- I am hiding from telling you my feeling about when you
________. - What happened is that it hurt me/made me angry that you
_______. - What it meant to me was __________________.
If the conversation you need to have is not about hurt feelings but is
merely a difficult conversation, such as asking parents about their
financial security or a friend about problems with substance abuse,
then revise the questions accordingly...
- I am hiding from asking you about ________.
- I am afraid that if I bring up this subject it will make you
think/feel __________. - What it means to me is __________________.
When the time has come to introduce the topic with the person, yes,
you will be nervous. Having these conversations becomes easier only
with experience, says Lauren. It will make it less difficult, though, if you
are upfront about being scared and not wanting to hurt feelings, but
that because you value your relationship, you need to talk.
Before you go further, ask permission to continue and if this is a good
time. You may find it helps you conduct a difficult conversation if you
first write everything out that you wish to say and actually read from it.
If the conversation is about a past disagreement, consider explaining
you accept that what you are saying isn't truth but it is how the
situation felt or appeared to you.
Lauren is reassuring about the responses to such conversations. She
finds that most people receive the information happily because it
shows you value the relationship... it is correctly framed and so it
doesn't put anyone on the defensive... in the case of a
misunderstanding, it is an opportunity to explain confusion... and in the
case of a sensitive subject, it is an opportunity to show someone you
love them and care about them.
Being brave enough to have a well-framed difficult conversation
merges a relationship into true intimacy, says Lauren, because you
have opened the way to compare your truth with the other person's.
You are both sharing a real part of yourselves that you have been
hiding until now. Hiding eats away, builds resentments and makes
people scared that the other might "find out" our innermost negative
thoughts about them. Consequently, opening up in this way also
contributes to self-esteem, she says, because you are willing to
believe in yourself enough to speak your truth.
Recognizing how we all build false truths in our heads about other
people can have benefits even with everyday "meaningless"
relationships. We might tell ourselves that the store clerk or bank teller
is "snippy" and so decide not to like her. But as Lauren says, by doing
this we have labeled the person and prevented any other truth from
emerging. Instead, we can monitor our thoughts to keep them from
fencing us off from what might become a pleasant pause in the
journey of life. Learn to shush the chatterbox within, she says, and
allow others to be who they are, not what our silent judgments turn
them into.
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reprinted from Daily Health News, May 30, 2006
URL: http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com/blpnet/article.html?article_id=38576
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