Words Can Change Your Brain (22 page)

He stood up from the bench and walked slowly to the meeting place, and as he strolled along, he immersed himself in the beauty of the flowers and the sounds of the breeze blowing through the leaves of the trees. He was practicing staying in the present moment.

Then he caught sight of Marcy, sitting at their rendezvous spot. He kept his gaze on her, because this distracted him from the worrisome thoughts that began to race through his mind. He greeted Marcy, and they began a pleasant conversation, but George felt conflicted, afraid that he was using his old dating games. He wanted to tell Marcy what he was struggling with inside, but he knew that it could be risky, especially on a first date. Still, George decided to take a chance.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” he reasoned to himself. “If she rejects me for sharing how I’m feeling, then I can move on and find someone who really wants to know who I am.”

“Marcy,” he began, “I’d like to try an experiment, if it’s okay with you.”

“What do you have in mind?” she cautiously replied.

“Would you be willing to talk for a few minutes using a technique I just learned in a workshop? The rules are simple: we’ll speak very slowly and briefly, and we’ll try to stay as relaxed as we can.”

“Okay,” said Marcy, but George noticed trepidation in her voice. This pleased him because in the past he never would have noticed such a subtle communication cue.

“I’ll begin,” said George. “I want to share with you how anxious I’m feeling. Normally I cover it up.”

George noticed a look of surprise in Marcy’s face, and he immediately felt more nervous. “This is a big mistake,” he thought. Marcy then said something he didn’t expect: “I know how you feel, but I’m pleased you told me that. Most of the men I’ve dated don’t share what they really feel.”

George felt a warm glow in his body and he smiled. For about twenty minutes, they talked about the difficulty of expressing emotions. Then George felt tears welling up in his eyes. “It’s scary for me to say this to you, but I’m going to say it anyway: I feel like I’ve never been so open and honest with a woman before.”

Marcy’s eyes were also moist. She reached out and touched George’s arm. “I know how you feel. My ex and I used to fight all the time, and I don’t think we ever had this kind of intimacy, except on rare occasions. And here we’re doing it on a first date!”

Marcy and George continued to talk slowly and intimately for the next three hours, and both agreed to use Compassionate Communication whenever a feeling of anxiety or anger cropped up.

And, yes, they eventually married.

The Last Date

Practicing Compassionate Communication does not guarantee that a relationship will blossom into love. In fact, when both people share how they really feel inside—when they explore each other’s values in an atmosphere of respect—they may come to realize that they are not the best match. But if they continue to apply the principles of Compassionate Communication, they can end their relationship on a note of friendship, something that very few people manage to do. Often this may require the assistance of a therapist or coach.

Trudy had been married to Bob for five years, and they were like night and day. She loved children and animals. He didn’t. She read spiritual self-help books and attended personal-development classes. He was critical of anything religious and preferred to unwind from his stressful work by watching TV. She liked to talk about everything, and he liked to complain. She tended to always look on the bright side of things, and he liked to preach doom and gloom. Even their political views were polar opposites.

Tensions built, he became depressed, and so she dragged him into couple’s therapy. But during the first hour all Bob did was grumble to the therapist about the controlling nature of his wife.

The therapist, who was trained in Compassionate Communication, interrupted him with the following question: “Bob, tell me what your deepest value is?”

The question took Bob by surprise. “Honesty, I suppose.”

“And your deepest relationship value?” asked the therapist.

Bob quickly responded, “Respect!”

The therapist said, “Bob, I know you’re being honest when you tell Trudy how controlling she is, but let me ask you this: are you being respectful of her when you complain?”

With embarrassment, Bob mumbled, “Uh, I guess not.”

The therapist then turned to Trudy. “What do you think of Bob’s values: honesty and respect?”

“They’re important, but I never feel that Bob treats me with respect,” Trudy said with a strong note of hostility in her voice.

“Trudy,” the therapist asked, “what are your deepest relationship values?”

“Kindness and intimacy,” she immediately said.

“Bob, what do you think of Trudy’s values?”

“I agree with those values,” Bob replied.

“So we’re all on board here,” said the therapist. “I want the two of you to talk to each other about your concerns. You can be fully honest, but you both have to talk with deep kindness and respect. Do you think you can both do that?”

Bob and Trudy agreed.

“Great!” said the therapist. “But first I’m going to guide you through some exercises that will sidestep the anger you have been feeling for a while. Agreed?”

They did, and the therapist took them through the beginning steps of Compassionate Communication. When they both had serene expressions on their faces, the therapist asked them to talk about their deepest values. “I don’t want either of you to bring up other issues today,” he said. “We’ll get to those later, when the two of you can speak to each other with kindness and respect.” Then he explained the other components of Compassionate Communication.

“Now I want you to begin by telling each other what you love and respect about the other person,” the therapist said.

Both Trudy and Bob struggled with this because it had been a long time since either had expressed kindness or gratitude to the other. Bob went first. “You’re my best friend. I can tell you anything about myself and you really seem to listen.”

Trudy was genuinely touched, but suspicious, so the therapist reminded her to take a deep breath and relax as she focused on personal memories of happiness.

“What I love about Bob is his honesty,” Trudy said, looking at the therapist. “I can trust him in ways I could never trust my previous husband.”

The therapist intervened. “Trudy, say that again but say it directly to Bob, as you gaze into each other’s eyes.” When she did, Bob smiled warmly, and an intimate dialogue quickly ensued. After several minutes Trudy reached over and touched Bob’s hand—a good sign! After twenty minutes the therapist asked them how they felt about their relationship now, and they both replied that they had hope. They made a commitment to talk to each other every day for twenty minutes and to honor each other’s values whenever they spoke.

Over the next eight weeks, Bob changed dramatically as he learned to interrupt his chronic negativity, and Trudy learned not to get caught up in her own critical inner voices. By observing her inner speech, she realized that she used criticism to distance herself from men, just as her mother had done. It was her way of running away and playing it safe. The relaxation exercises also helped Trudy to reduce her chronic anxiety.

At first the relationship seemed to flourish, but Trudy still felt a sense of emptiness inside. She began to think that her goals in life did not match her husband’s, but she was afraid to share these thoughts with Bob. After all, he seemed so in love with her. Thus she was very surprised when Bob asked her if she might be happier living alone. By practicing the facial recognition strategies of Compassionate Communication, Bob had learned how to accurately intuit what Trudy was feeling inside.

Bob had also made a commitment to his therapist to spend ten minutes a day writing in a diary as he reflected on his deeper feelings, desires, and goals. He was asked to have imaginary dialogues with his wife but to interrupt any irritation he felt. Bob wasn’t really an angry person; he had simply become so accustomed to it that he wasn’t aware of how pervasive it was. All he had to do was to ask himself if he was really unhappy, and his response was always no. As he learned to reframe his negativity by making positive statements about how he actually felt, his entire mood changed and his self-esteem began to grow.

When you practice Compassionate Communication, you learn how to observe your partner without judgment. This allows partners to see who the other person really is, not what they wish or hope them to be. Bob and Trudy came to realize that they were always trying to please each other without taking care of their own needs first.

Sadly, their relationship reached a stalemate. They realized that their political and religious values were so different that they interfered with their social lives. They began to spend more time apart, pursuing their individual interests, and their romantic intimacy faded away. They were still friends but nothing more. Using the communication strategies they’d learned, they filed for divorce and separated their assets with fairness and mutual respect.

The good news: they both found new partners quickly, and the two couples became friends. Trudy’s anxiety only returned on brief occasions, and Bob’s gloominess disappeared. For the first time in years, he looked forward to going to work, and he took up a variety of recreational activities for the first time in his life.

What Makes Relationships Thrive?

Trust is one of the most important elements in a relationship because it can determine whether a relationship will succeed or fail. If you trust your partner, your relationship will thrive; if not, it won’t.
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Lack of trust leads to conflict, and conflict leads to what psychologists call “attachment anxiety.”
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In other words, quarrels and emotional arguments make it difficult for people to feel emotionally safe.

Low self-esteem and fear of rejection will also undermine relationship stability and trust.
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In fact, the expression of any form of emotional anxiety and self-doubt acts as a signal to your loved ones or business associates that you are poorly handling interpersonal conflicts.
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How can the other person tell? By reading the negative facial expressions that are generated by neural dissonance in your frontal lobes.
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Relationships thrive when people are immersed in an environment of positivity, mutual respect, cooperation, and trust. There’s just no room for chronic negativity and self-doubt in business or in love.

Conflicts Damage Your Body and Your Brain

When marital conflicts occur, a common pattern is for one partner either to withdraw or immediately confront the other person. Both of these choices have a risk: an increase in cortisol,
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a chemical known to increase stress and damage the brain and cardiovascular system. As researchers at the University of Utah found, “Marital conflict evoked greater increases in blood pressure, cardiac output, and cardiac sympathetic activation than did collaboration.”
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Anger and hostility even interfere with the body’s healing processes. Researchers at Ohio State College of Medicine brought forty-two married couples into a hospital and created small blister wounds on their arms. They measured the rate of healing and discovered that it took almost twice as long in couples who consistently communicated hostility toward each other.
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Clearly, anger does not work well. However, positive communication between couples not only sped up the healing process of the wounds but also generated higher levels of oxytocin, the brain’s love-and-bonding chemical.
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Our suggestion: the moment you feel tension building up inside of you, do everything in your power to physically and emotionally relax. If you can’t, tell your partner that you need to take a time-out to unwind. This can be anywhere from ten minutes to a day or two, until the stress neurochemicals are eliminated from your body.

Having a mutual agreement to call time-outs provides a necessary safety valve when inner stress reaches the point that it spills into the conversation.

When conflicts are moderate or severe, a third party—a therapist, a friend, or in a work-related situation a neutral colleague—can be called in to mediate the conversation. The mediator points out subtle forms of negativity in the person’s speech or behavior, then asks that individual to reframe their words in a positive, supportive way. The mediator can also monitor the rate of speech and use a bell to signal when a person needs to pause.

As researchers at the University of Rochester found, the more skilled we become at regulating our emotions while we speak, the more quickly we resolve our conflicts and with the least amount of stress.
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The Imaginary Argument

Conflicts are unavoidable, but as we become more adept at noticing nonverbal cues in a person’s body, face, and vocal inflections, we can predict, with a great deal of accuracy, when a conflict is about to emerge. Furthermore, as we become more observant of our own inner speech and levels of tension, we can predict when we are most likely to get our buttons pushed.

This is where the power of imagination comes in, because if you have a fantasy conversation about a conflict that is starting to grow between you and another person, you can often identify what the best solution might be, before you engage in a dialogue.

Here’s an effective way to develop this useful skill. Set up two chairs as though you were going to practice the Compassionate Communication exercise. Sit in one chair and face the empty one, imagining that the person with whom you are in conflict is sitting there. Then have an imaginary argument and watch where the conversation ends up. If you don’t like the results, try another strategy. Communicate in a different way and play it out in your mind. Change the tone of your voice or try saying something complimentary to the imaginary person and see how they respond.