As couples therapists, my wife, Ellyn and I hear every kind of ineffective communication. Under stress, people do a lot of unpleasant or nasty things to their partner. Most ineffective reactions can be classified into one of five categories. Although we use all of them once in a while, most of us have favorites we use when feeling threatened, fearful, inadequate or some other kind of emotional pain.
These reactions are basically ineffective coping mechanisms developed to reduce emotional pain. But their ineffectiveness doesn’t stop us from reflexing to them when the stress gets high enough.
Being able to recognizing the five major categories can help to recognize your habitual patterns and start to break them.
Five Categories of Ineffective Communication
- Withdrawal – Stonewalling, becoming stoic, giving minimal responses, or exiting in the middle of a heated discussion.
- Blaming – Accusing, finger pointing, yelling, trying to dominate the discussion.
- Resentful compliance – Over-accommodating to your partner in order to avoid tension or potentially nasty discussions.
- Whining – Complaining, competing for the victim position, being very indirect about what you want.
- Confusion – Inability to think clearly, going blank.
To create a flourishing relationship, we have to resist using these ineffective coping reactions. If you can’t resist, the only other solution is to find a partner who doesn’t do any of these – even when they’re up to their neck in alligators!
Which one of these patterns do you commonly use when the stress gets too high? To post a comment, click the “comment” link at the top of the article, right under the title on the right hand side.
Next time we’ll talk about the two basic emotions that are the basis of these reactions.
Until then,
Pete
Dr. Ellyn Bader and Dr. Peter Pearson, Founders and Directors of The Couples Institute, have been helping couples resolve issues and create strong, loving relationships since 1984. They have been featured on over 50 radio and television programs including "The Today Show" and "CBS Early Morning News." For information on their convenient, affordable membership program to click here to improve your marriage or relationship.
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However most withdrawals become a cold shoulder response which shuts the partner out and/or a refusal to discuss the problem. This is the part of withdrawal that becomes toxic over time – both partners end up feeling lonely and very misunderstood.
In terms of the freeze response, it literally happens when sudden fear or threat seems immediate. To take a classic example, walking alone through forest at night and suddenly hearing an ominous sound, the person will freeze automatically to attempt to locate the direction and seriousness of the threat.
Animals will do the same freeze response. The equivalent of freeze in a rel. is to get flooded when threatened and then can’t think straight. The “frozen” person can’t seem to exit, defend or push back against the threatening person. So they often go into a resentful compliance as a way to get some kind of relief from the pain, threat or fear.
Yes, the challenge is to find ways of overcoming the natural self protective instincts which is what the big five are all about. Most couples therapy and personal growth is about creating better responses to the big five.
I don’t think anyone ever totally masters the avoidance of these human self protective reflexes. Then again these reflexes help make us all a little more interesting. Can you imagine any good movie or book where every person had totally mastered these reflexes.
if every book poem movie had every character being the master of these reflexes, our reading and viewing would be pretty boring. Books and movies would have all the excitement of endless episodes of Captain Kangaroo
Best
Pete