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Hi everybody, welcome to this podcast on how to heal your relationship.
If you haven’t tuned in to earlier episodes already, my name is Ayesha Walker and I am a relationship coach.
So I work with couples and individuals sharing tips, tools and techniques on how they can improve their relationship.
Non-Judgmental Listening
Now we’ve been talking a lot recently about something that I call non-judgmental listening.
It’s certainly one of the key ingredients that I find in healing many a relationship problem, this ability to be non-judgmental when you’re listening.
Non-Judgmental Sharing
But I thought this week what we might start to cover is non-judgmental sharing because of course communication isn’t just about listening to your partner.
At some time it’s obviously very very important for you to be able to share with them how you are feeling and what you would like, what’s working and what’s not working for you.
But how do you share those often very hot volatile potentially conflictual thoughts without them getting seriously triggered and the whole thing unravelling very very quickly?
Well again that word non-judgmental, how do you share in a non-judgmental way?
How do you share in a way that will not trigger your partner to go immediately into a defensive position?
As soon as they’re in a defensive mode they are not really going to be listening to you and your goal of course is to be listened to.
So everything that I’m going to be sharing today is for your benefit much much much much more than for your partner’s benefit.
This is really we could say on how you can get better listened to, right?
Not just about how you can share but how you can get better listened to because you are sharing more mindfully.
Share From The Perspective Of An Observer
So how do you do this? Well the very first thing you want to think about when you want to share in a non-judgmental way is to share from what I call the perspective or the position of the observer or an observer.
If you like your coming from a very neutral place.
So let’s think of a particular example that we could use to really bring this to life for you. Let’s say that your partner came home in what felt to you a really bad mood the other evening.
They were late, they were unfriendly, they were very abrupt, they came into the house in a very angry way and they were extremely unappreciative and they were very cut off from you.
And you yourself perhaps had also had quite a challenging day. So as I’ve said all of those particular descriptions on how your partner came into your house, that’s very much not from the position of an observer.
Noticing Judgements
Why? Because in all the ways that I have described how your partner came home, there’s actually an awful lot of judgments.
So let’s start at the beginning with some of the things that I was saying. First of all, they came home late. Well what is late?
Did you guys have a prior agreement around what was an ideal time to turn up? First you did and then late could be said that it’s later than you agreed. But even that little distinction is much more from the place of an observer.
You came home late, you’re late or you came home later than six o’clock or you came home later than we agreed which was six o’clock.
So there’s a difference there, I’m hoping you can hear that. One is just stating what happened and one is making a little bit of a judgement.
Perhaps one that is a more obvious judgement is you came home in a really bad mood.
So rather than tell somebody or even accuse them of being in a bad mood, a way that you’re going to engage them much more in what you have to say would be to share what actually happened rather than your analysis of what happened.
Because to say somebody was in a bad mood is a piece of analysis on your part by whose standards was that person in a bad mood.
They were probably doing, saying or moving in a way that indicated to you that they might be in a bad mood.
Now that would be more accurate but you don’t actually know what’s going on for them. It might not even have been a bad mood.
They may have had some terrible news and they’re in a really upset mood or a really frightened mood or a really anxious mood.
So you can imagine if they’re actually, if that’s where their mood is, maybe fearful, anxious, worried, depressed, being told they’re in a bad mood when that’s not what they were feeling could really, really trigger them.
So when you would be thinking how you would share just that little thing, you might want to be quite mindful and keep to what you observed, not what you analysed.
So maybe you observed that they weren’t looking happy. Even that’s got a little bit of analysis in but it’s far less judgmental that they might
be looking upset would perhaps be accurate. You don’t know what the upset is that allows for a whole host of things they might be
feeling.
It doesn’t tell them what they’re feeling, it leaves that open but it’s just an observation on your part that something was not sitting well with them.
Perhaps they shut the door very loudly when they came in.
Now we could even say they slammed the door but even there there’s a little bit of by whose standard did they slam the door.
Some people tend to move around more loudly or quickly than others perhaps.
But to say that they shut the door quite loudly would be more accurate. You are doing what I call describing what happened, not how it came across to you. When you describe the what happened, you’re far less likely to have your partner’s hackles up and in defence mode.
But if you’re just describing what happened without you colouring it or exaggerating it in any way, they are far less likely to resist you saying it because it’s just what happened.
You shut the door, you shut the door louder than usual, that’s the what happened. So you can see when you start thinking about those things much more from the perspective of an observer and not how it came across to you, then your partner is much less likely to be triggered.
The Spectrum Of Learning
Now I don’t say for one minute that is an easy thing to do because here’s the problem when your partner’s late, let’s say, when they’ve already arrived at a time that was later than you had agreed, if we’re being accurate, it’s quite possible that you are already triggered yourself.
And when you’re already triggered, you might find it quite hard to remember to come at things from the place of an observer, to come at talking to them about what’s going on from what you observed was going on rather than what you analysed or judged to be what
was going on.
So I don’t say it’s an easy thing to do.
However, if you were listening into last week’s episode when we were talking about the spectrum of learning, you will understand that repeated enough, you will eventually be able to get yourself into the habit of coming at things from a much more observational standpoint rather than from a judgmental analytical or critical standpoint.
So if you want to know a little bit more about the spectrum of learning, go back and listen to last week’s episode.
Don’t Generalise
So as well as not coming from a place of analysis, criticism or judgement when you are opening a conversation with your partner, a couple of other things you might want to consider are, don’t generalise.
You have a terrible habit often when we are angry with someone or upset with someone to generalise. So a good example of that might be is you’re always late, right? You always do that, you’re forever losing things.
So if you actually look at all of those examples that I’ve just given you, they’re all exaggerations and generalisations.
They don’t always do that thing that way, I bet it is a percentage of the time. They are not literally always late, but in your annoyance you exaggerate.
Unfortunately, if you want to get heard, exaggeration and generalising will absolutely get you the opposite because people’s hackles go up, don’t do it.
Be As Clear And Specific As You Can
Be as clear and specific as you can. Let’s take lateness as an example. Somebody came home at 6.30 when your agreement was 6 o’clock and they did it on Monday and Wednesday and Thursday.
If you actually describe that and not you’re always late, but I noticed that on Monday. Wednesday and Thursday you got home at 6.30 and I remember we’d agreed you’d be back at 6 in time for dinner is an observation.
It’s not an exaggeration and it’s not a judgement. I’m not saying they’ll be in the best mood to hear that information, but they’ll be a lot less defensive if you’re not generalising or exaggerating if you are being specific.
Just to summarise, analysing when you’re describing what happened, judging when you’re describing what happened, exaggerating when you’re describing what happened, will all generally, more often than not, put your partner in a place of shutting down their listening and that is exactly the opposite of what you are wanting.
As already mentioned, it’s not easy to remember all of those things.
It’s really quite hard because talking about the spectrum of learning we’ve already got a whole lifetime of doing things in a very different way when we are feeling upset about something and wanting to share that upset.
Practise
So, as always, be patient with yourself, understand that you are going to need to do this many, many times and also fail at doing it many, many times before you will really get it.
But if you can just take one little step on that path to being able to share from that place, that place of the observer, then you are moving forward and you are evolving and it’s just a matter of time before you get better and better and better at it.
Now, what we’ve shared today is just one part of how you can share in a way that will get you better listened to by your partner.
In next week’s episode, I want to talk about some other things that are part of sharing, that it’s really good to be conscious and aware of and use when you are wanting to communicate to your partner, something that’s very important where you might be wanting a change.
But in the meantime, I think just practising sharing from the position of the observer should keep you more than busy for the next seven days.
So until we speak again, have an amazing week and I hope you enjoy those opportunities that you will undoubtedly get this week of putting into practice the ability of sharing from the perspective of the observer. Until then, take care, bye bye.