Attachment Mama

Archive for the ‘Respectful Communication’ Category

Applying “Say What You See” to Adult Relationships

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Last night I was fortunate to experience a very insightful workshop called “Communication in Relationships” led by our friend Chris Douglas — all from the comfort of our couch. He offered practical wisdom on ways to engage more effectively with the primary adults in your life — your spouse, your friends, your co-workers, etc. And I was able to take in just about all of it in between jogs upstairs to tend to my perpetually restless baby. (Topic for another post….)

In the beginning of his presentation, Chris reminded us about about universal psychological and emotional human needs and how conflict arises when those needs are unmet. The top two needs on the list of many were: “to be accepted and loved” and “to be understood.”

It struck me having just finished reading Say What You See, that Chris may be teaching essentially the same concepts. Say What You See author, Sandra Blackard, coaches us to look for the unmet need of our children when they are behaving in a way that we don’t like, instead of judging or reacting in anger to their behavior.

In a very basic way, we’re no different than our little ones in feeling upset when our basic emotional needs are unmet. We’ve just been trained and socialized over the years to not fall on the floor, flail our bodies around, and scream or cry. We have each developed our own home-grown patterns for responding to our perception of being rejected or wronged in some way. In the case of our more intimate relationships, i.e. our spouses or partners, a common downward spiral challenge occurs when one person feels misjudged or misunderstood and cuts the other person off to defend himself or herself. (more…)