Happy Talk: Keep Talking Happy Talk

Victor W. Harris, M.S.
Take the following communication quiz (originally designed to measure marital communication) to discover how skilled you are at communication. Click on the question number to learn more about how you responded:

Measurement of Communication


(Adapted from Millard Bienvenu, "Measure of Marital Communication," The Family Coordinator,Vol. 19, 1970, pp. 26-31, in Brent A. Barlow, What Wives Expect of Husbands, Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, pp. 7-8).   
1.    Does your partner have a tendency to say things which would be better left unsaid?               
2.    Do you find your partner's tone of voice irritating?               
3.    Does your partner complain that you don't understand him/her?               
4.    Does your partner insult you when he/she gets angry with you?               
5.    Do you fail to express disagreement with him/her because you're afraid he/she will get angry?               
6.     Does it upset you a great deal when your partner gets angry with you?               
7.    Do you hesitate to discuss things with your partner because you're afraid he/she might hurt your feelings?               
8.    Do you find it difficult to express your true feelings to him/her?               
9.    Is it easier to confide in a friend rather than your partner?               
10.    Does he/she seem to understand your feelings?               
11.    Do you help your partner to understand you by telling him/her how you think, feel, and believe?               
12.     Does your partner nag you?               
13.    Do you feel he/she says one thing but really means another?               
14.    Do you pretend you are listening to your partner when actually you are not really listening?               
15.    Does he/she try to lift your spirits when you're depressed or discouraged?               
16.    Does your partner accuse you of not listening to what he/ she says?               
17.    Do you and your partner engage in outside interests and activities together?               
18.    Are you and your partner able to disagree one with another without losing your tempers?               
19.    Do you and your partner ever sit down just to talk things over?

               
Blaming/Accusations: Accusations and blame are at the heart of ineffective communication. While the specific complaint of not listening to your partner may be a valid one, the presentation of the specific complaint through accusation and blame only leads to negativity and defensiveness (see "The General Pattern of Accusation, Blame, and Victimization" below). Additionally, according to C. Terry Warner, "Blame is the lie by which we convince ourselves that we are victims. It is the lie that robs us of our serenity, our generosity, our confidence, and our delight in life" (p. 204). "We lie with our emotions and attitudes (and often even with our moods) as well as with our words" (p. 28). "You will notice that these emotions and attitudes [below] have in common some element of accusation" (p. 28).

1. Self-pity 7. Touchiness 13. Envy
2. Crustiness 8. Arrogance 14. Contempt
3. Suspicion 9. Boredom 15. Resentment
4. Fear 10. Discouragement 16. Indifference
5. Impatience 11. Despondency 17. Hesitancy to take the initiative
6. Bitterness 12. Humiliation

The General Pattern of Accusation, Blame, and Victimization

  1. We adopt accusing and self-excusing attitudes and feelings.
  2. We think we can hide them, but we can't. Our real attitudes and feelings toward others come across to them.
  3. Feeling accused, others almost always take offense; they develop an accusing attitude and accusing feelings toward us.
  4. Perceiving their response, we feel just as offended by them as they do by us. In our minds, this gives us proof that we're fully justified in blaming them.
  5. Because we're so absorbed with our own feelings, we do not see what's going on. We do not see that instead of trying to hurt us, they feel mistreated and threatened. In their response to us they are only trying to deal with the judgmental person we have become. They are only responding to the kind of person we're giving them to respond to.

Adapted from C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming To Ourselves. Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2001, pp. 83-84).

Criticizing: Nagging and saying things that would be better left unsaid are considered criticism (see 9 Important Skills for Every Relationship). Constructive criticism is considered an oxymoron because it is never constructive. When we criticize another person, we attack their personality, rather than focussing on a specific behavior or issue that we would like to address, and condemn them through judgment, accusation, and blame.

Expressing Contempt: Communicating with contempt includes expressing negativity (e.g., criticism, judgment, accusation, and blame) in our tone of voice, mocking, insulting, name-calling, sneering, rolling the eyes, curling our upper lip, and various other expressions through our body language. Contempt breeds resentment and unresolved resentment leads to breakdowns in communication.

Playing the Victim: A hesitation to effectively communicate our thoughts and feelings with our partner because we are afraid our feelings might get hurt denotes our willingness to play the role of the victim in our relationship. According to C. Terry Warner, "There is a very big difference between portraying oneself as a victim... and actually being a victim" (p. 61). "We are responsible when we present ourselves as victims in order to excuse or justify ourselves" (p. 61). "My belief in my 'goodness' depends upon my belief of someone else's 'badness'" (p. 63). "We can't feel justified in withholding kindness from others unless we find, invent, some reason why they deserve it..." (p. 64). "Portraying ourselves as victims validates the lie we are living, which is that someone else is doing us harm and that our role is strictly passive" (p. 65). "Often we will do almost anything to hang on to our victimhood, even if it means destroying something we treasure" (p. 67). "Blaming oneself can work as an excuse just as well as blaming someone else" (p. 118). "If as guilty people we feel terrible enough, then we have paid for the right to keep wallowing in our problems; we do not have to accept responsibility for them" (p. 122). "I can't help what I'm doing because that's just the way I am... admitting we are unworthy is just one more strategy in our repertoire. It gives us just as good a justification for acting irresponsibly as the strategy of condemning others" (p. 120).

Becoming Defensive: According to John Gottman, "the essence of defensiveness is self-protection, a natural response to warding off a perceived attack...The fact that defensiveness is an understandable reaction to feeling besieged is one reason it is so destructive - the 'victim' doesn't see anything wrong with being defensive...If you are being defensive (even if you feel completely righteous in your stance), you are only adding to your troubles" (pp. 85, 89). Gottman cites the following as some of the ways we exhibit defensiveness:

  1. Denying Responsibility (e.g., "It wasn't my fault...").
  2. Making Excuses (e.g., "I couldn't help it." "I know I promised I'd get it done or be home when I said I would, but...").
  3. Rubber Man/Rubber Woman (e.g., "You don't listen to me." 'Well, you never listen to me!").
  4. Yes-Butting (e.g., "Did you arrive home late without contacting me or considering that I would be worried about you?" "Well, yes, but I'd had a hard day at work and the traffic was terrible, and...").
  5. Repeating-Yourself Syndrome (e.g., This occurs when we repeat our own stance on an issue over and over in an attempt to prove we are right rather than trying to take into account our partner's perceptions).
  6. Whining (e.g., "It's not fair!" "Why does this always have to happen to me?").
  7. Body Language (e.g., clenched fists, arms folded, turning our body away from our partner, etc.).

Attempting to Justify/Rationalize Our Expressions or Behaviors: Self-justification, according to C. Terry Warner, is an attempt to prove that our thoughts or actions are just, right, or reasonable and therefore, to become free from any guilt or blame therefrom. When we lose our temper in a disagreement, it is an attempt to justify or rationalize our expressions and behaviors as being just. Additionally, when we lose our temper, we slip into the role of acting like a child rather than the role of acting like an adult. Dr. Warner includes acting like an adult rather than acting childish as a style of self-justification and rationalization. Other styles of self-justification he mentions include the following:

  1. Conscientiousness vs. Perfectionism
  2. Forthrightness vs. Tactlessness or Insensitivity
  3. Humility vs. Self-Disparagement
  4. Standing Up For One's Rights vs. Contentiousness
  5. Self-Righteousness vs. Playing the Martyr

Dr. Warner concludes by stating that "for self-justification we are willing to pay almost any price" (p. 66). "Only people who are doing something that goes against their own sense of right and wrong have to spend time and energy spinning out a self-justifying story" (p. 37). When we cannot disagree without losing our temper, we spin out a self-justifying story that somehow legitimizes our anger and places us in the role of playing the victim.

Speaking Non-Defensively: To speak non-defensively is to communicate without putting another person on the defensive. The presentation of a complaint with a soft voice and the words "This is how I feel when..." are generally very effective in not leading another person down the road toward defensiveness and victimization. Similarly, being able to simply sit down and talk to your partner about everything and anything is a good sign that you and your partner have learned the skill of speaking non-defensively.

Active Listening: This kind of listening skill includes good eye contact with our partner and a total concentration on what he/she is saying. If we are focussed on something else when others are speaking to us, we will inevitably invalidate them and hurt their feelings. Active listening requires a conscious effort on our part to "put away" whatever we are thinking about or doing and to focus completely on another person.

Expressing Specific Complaints: Expressing specific complaints about an issue or a behavior, according to John Gottman, is one of the healthiest relationship activities we can engage in if the complaints are introduced non-defensively and with respect. Statements like, "This is how it feels when..." or, "When (state the specific issue or behavior) occurs, I feel...", can soften the introduction of the complaint and steer us away from the communication traps of criticism, accusation, contempt, defensiveness, playing the victim, and rationalization.

Empathy: Empathy is the capacity to experience what another person is feeling or thinking. This vicarious experiencing leads to sympathy and feelings of concern with a desire to help this person in any way possible. According to Eisenberg, Wentzel, and Harris (1998), our ability to respond sympathetically comes from our ability to take another person's perspective, our ability to draw upon our own experiences that relate to the issue another person is experiencing, and our ability to attain an empathic understanding through first understanding our own emotions. Although we may not understand our partner's feelings exactly, when we try to take their perspective, draw upon our own related experience, and listen to the emotions being expressed, then we can accurately convey understanding, empathy, and sympathy.

Validation: To validate another person, according to Gary Lundberg, we must:

  1. Listen by giving full attention.
  2. Listen to the emotions being expressed.
  3. Listen to the needs being expressed.
  4. Understand from the other person's point of view.

Spending time together enjoying common interests and activities is an excellent way to validate the ongoing friendship, love, and appreciation in your relationship.

Congruent Communication: When we speak congruently, we "say what we mean and mean what we say" while respecting the feelings and the perspectives of others. According to John Gray, "intimacy [closeness] thrives on the communication of the truth" (p. 32). When we won't state our true feelings or perspectives or we lie about them, trust and intimacy cannot develop or be maintained. C. Terry Warner further explains, "learning the truth about a problematic condition in our physical bodies enables us to take steps to find the remedy. But with emotions and relationships, the truth is the cure. He calls our failure to speak the truth and to act according to the truth self-betrayal. He continues, "self-betrayal occurs when we go against acknowledging the needs and feelings in others [or ourselves] when we do to another what we sense we should not do, or don't do what we sense we should" (p. 20). Similarly, Dr. Gray states, "when we communicate to intimidate, threaten, disapprove, hurt, fault-find, or make someone feel guilty, we are misusing communication. We may succeed in controlling, but inevitably we will create resentment" (p. 34).

Adapted from C. Terry Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming To Ourselves. Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2001, pp. 83-84); John M. Gottman, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. New York: Fireside, 1994; Jone Gray, Men, Women, and Relationships. New York: HarperCollins, 1993; Nancy Eisenberg, N. Michelle Wentzel, and Jerry D. Harris, "The role of emotionality and regulation in empathy-related responding. School Psychology Review, 1998, vol. 27(4), pp. 506-521.