If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this statement, you know how uncomfortable it can be.
Even when the intention is genuine, this ominous preamble can create anxiety, defensiveness and emotional shutdown, the kind that makes the atmosphere between two people more contentious than collaborative. There are more constructive, neutral conversation openers that can go a long way toward meaningful conflict resolution.
Conversations deemed difficult are like a complex dance where every step holds the potential for misunderstanding, frustration, or growth. As a psychotherapist, I’ve often witnessed that the ways in which people attempt to talk about delicate matters often makes the original problem worse. The escalation or the resolution rests in HOW things get discussed. In this exploration, let’s dive into the nuances of navigating these tricky dialogues, understanding that they are not roadblocks but gateways to deeper connections.
Embrace the Discomfort
One of the paradoxes of human interaction is that the most uncomfortable conversations can lead to the most profound growth. It’s in these moments of discomfort that true understanding can emerge. Instead of avoiding these talks, embrace the discomfort as a signal that something important is at stake. Let the other person know you want to collaborate in finding a solution that feels right to both of you. Try saying, “I’d like for us to try to iron out our disagreement in a way that feels fair to both of us.”
The Power of Active Listening
In the realm of difficult conversations, active listening becomes a beacon of light. As a therapist, I’ve seen the profound impact of truly hearing someone, not just the words they say but the emotions they convey. Practice the art of listening without immediately formulating a response. It’s in the pauses that understanding often finds its voice.
Choose Your Words Thoughtfully
Words have immense power. In the crucible of a challenging conversation, your choice of words can either escalate tensions or create bridges. Think about the impact your words might have on the other person. Consider using “I” statements to express your feelings and concerns, fostering an environment of shared responsibility. Sarcasm, defensiveness, cross attacking, and the silent treatment are all conversation busters.
Cultivate Empathy
Empathy is the secret sauce in any conversation, especially the difficult ones. Strive to understand the other person’s perspective, acknowledging their emotions and experiences. This doesn’t mean you have to agree, but understanding lays the groundwork for meaningful dialogue.
Navigate, Don’t Dictate
Avoid the temptation to control the conversation. Instead, think of it as a shared exploration. It’s not about proving a point but finding common ground. The goal is mutual understanding, not necessarily agreement. The key here is to be more curious than right.
Recognize Patterns of Communication
As a therapist, I often work with individuals to identify patterns in their communication. Be mindful of recurring themes or behaviors in your difficult conversations. Are you prone to putting up a wall? Does overall avoidance take the lead? Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward changing them.
It’s Okay to Press Pause
Difficult conversations can be emotionally charged. If you feel the conversation spiraling, it’s okay to press pause. Sometimes, a temporary break can prevent further escalation, allowing both parties to regroup emotionally before continuing. “Why don’t we come back to this when we’ve both taken some time to reflect?”
In the intricate dance of difficult conversations, remember that it’s not about avoiding conflict but navigating it with intention and skill. As a psychotherapist, I encourage you to see these conversations not as obstacles but as opportunities for personal and relational growth. Embrace the discomfort, lean into empathy, and let the dance unfold—one step at a time.
7 simple steps to calm your fears and let the real you shine!
Fear of rejection comes in many forms. Whether you feel it going on a first date, turning in reports to your boss, speaking in public, facing up to peer pressure, or going to social events, fear of rejection can be paralyzing.
Your hands sweat or tremble. Waves of stomach-churning nausea hit. Your throat goes dry and it’s hard to swallow. A headache starts to drum at your temples or behind your eyes. You start searching for a way out. You just want to run and do anything – ANYTHING – except the task before you.
Fear of rejection can make you avoid situations, and that can cause even more problems in your life. You know that if you could just get passed that overwhelming reaction, that dread, then your life would be different.
Maybe you’ve already tried a few things. Perhaps you’ve dressed for success, followed someone else’s routine for getting through fearful episodes, read ‘how to’ blogs, or even considered therapy. But that same fear keeps dogging you. You avoid your triggers every chance you get.
It feels like your fear of rejection is holding you back from the life you really want.
But fear not.
You don’t need to suffer in silence or white-knuckle your way through anymore. And you don’t have to avoid your trigger situation for the rest of your life or spend years in therapy to find relief, either.
There is a science-based method of reducing, and even eliminating, your fear of rejection that you can learn to apply whenever you need it.
I will walk you through the science and the method, and leave you with the skills to develop your own sense of mastery over your fear of rejection. You can free yourself and let the real you shine!
Let 2020 be the start of a new decade and a new you! I’ll show you how, and give you examples to get your started.
Here is a Table of Contents for the post so you can see what’s ahead:
What Causes the Fear of Rejection? Your Brain on Fear The Roots of Rejection You Could See A Therapist What’s the alternative to therapy for fear of rejection? What is EFT or “Tapping”? How Does EFT Work? The 7 Steps of EFT An Example EFT “Script” for Fear of Rejection Tapping to Release Your Fears
Harry Chapin’s life began in NYC, was lived making other peoples’ lives better, and came to an end on the Long Island Expressway 40 years ago today when the Volkswagen Rabbit he was driving was hit from behind by a tractor-trailer. He was 38.
I’m remembering him today as I so often do.
Sometime before that July 16th afternoon in 1981, I had the occasion to sit in his car while I watched him comb through its assorted contents: music equipment, clothes, coffee cups, and spare change. Lots of spare change. He was searching for a pair of jeans, other than the ones he was wearing. He would later auction them off from the stage. On the worn denim pant leg he would write the opening lyrics of “Taxi.”
The jeans ultimately ended up in the lucky hands of the highest bidder, a drummer named Susie, for $75. By today’s standards, it doesn’t sound like much. But It was the 1970s, after all, and that was a sizable amount of money for a student.
He had come to the small, all women’s college I attended to perform for free. All the money earned from the show – $3,500 it turned out, plus Susie’s $75 – would be donated to World Hunger Year, an organization he started to fight poverty and food insufficiency. It felt like a million dollars to us and he accepted it as graciously as if it were.
Like a lot of people, I loved Harry Chapin’s music. I would get lost in his stories. And, like a lot of people, I wanted to meet him. When the yearbook committee that I headed up wanted to include never-before color photographs in that year’s edition and funds were nil, I saw my chance. “I know,” I thought. “I’ll call Harry. I’ll see if we could get him to perform at our small college. If we sold out, I figured we could pay him about one thousand dollars and still have enough of a profit to upgrade the yearbook. I was certain he’d be as excited about my idea as I was. I’ll simply get in touch with him.
But how? How do you call a Grammy-nominated artist? Well, you start by calling his agent who won’t take your call. Then you look in the phone book (yes, I said phone book) and you phone everyone named Chapin in the NY Metro area. Then you get lucky and get his sister on the phone. Shocked, you tell her about your obsession: the yearbook. She gives you the number to Harry’s house. Your stomach drops. You call.
“Hello. May I speak with Mr. Chapin, please?” “Which one?,” asked the older man on the other end. “Harry, please.” “Hold on.” (Hand over receiver), “Harrry …telephone!”
“Hello!”
“Mr. Chapin, my name is Cathy Duca, hello. I’m the editor of the yearbook at my college and we’d really like to have color pictures this year, and …”
“First of all, don’t call me Mr. Chapin. That’s my father. Call me Harry.”
“Okay, Mr. Chapin, thank you. Anyway, the yearbook …” I tell him about paying him the thousand dollars. He laughs.
“I normally get twenty-five thousand dollars for a show.”
I gulp. “Well … well … “
“Thanks, Cathy. Sorry. I wish you good luck. Bye now.”
Before I heard the click of the phone, I said emphatically (urgently), “Mr. Chapin, I mean Harry, it’s not just about the yearbook. We’re an all-women’s college and … and … we believe in the same things you believe in, helping one another, giving to one another . That’s the kind of school we are. Maybe if we split the thousand, and give five hundred to an organization?”
“Okay, tell you what. Come up with something. I’ll be there on October 18th at 8:00. That all right?”
We never spoke again until he and his band walked onto the campus at 8:00, as promised. He pulled up in his blue VW Rabbit. He felt like a big brother. He performed to a standing room only crowd of about one thousand people. Every single ticket was sold by word-of-mouth, no advertising, no budget, just a couple of months of handing out flyers and telling everyone we knew what we were doing. Each person there knew the cause – the larger one – and seemed excited to be a part of it. A personal highlight was when Harry shared with the audience the story of our phone conversation. I think he referred to me as “fast-talking” Cathy Duca and then invited me on stage to sing the prelude to “Cats in the Cradle” with him. I’ll never forget it, ever.
Two days later, another student from the college was on the local bus, returning to campus from her student teaching job. As the bus neared the campus, she overheard a man ask the driver if the upcoming stop was the correct one to get onto campus. He told the driver that he did a show there two nights earlier and his car wouldn’t start. It was apparently towed to a nearby service station. Exactly how he got back to Long Island after the concert I’ll never know. But clearly, he took public transportation to get back to NJ to retrieve his car. There was a trace neither of a limousine nor a huge ego.
Harry Chapin used his celebrity as a platform to bring attention and dollars to social causes. When he performed, he did more than entertain. He inspired. He aroused. He made you feel as though your worth was exactly what the world needed, and he made you feel as if you suddenly had more of it.
He is buried in a cemetery in Huntington, New York, his epitaph taken from his 1978 song “I Wonder What Would Happen to This World”:
Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man’s life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world
Harry Chapin traveled an arc from storyteller to activist. I suppose his last day on this plane completed his journey as he was headed to do one more benefit concert in East Meadows, NY. He closed his life’s circle having left a legacy of service, of love and compassion in both what he said and what he did. I think of him as a rugged and gentle troubadour. Anyone who knew him or knew of him was familiar with his mantra, “When in doubt, do something.” His philosophy was as simple and as potent as that.
You also knew that storytelling was his love language and touching hearts his currency. He deeply and forever touched mine.
Somewhere inside of me still lives that college student. She’s wrapped in a 60-something body and outlook now, with nary the innocence and idealism. Yet, as I reflect on the passion and goodness of one man, I can feel it scaling some of the jadedness and pessimism that has built up of late, like plaque around my heart. Legacy is a curious thing. It can, when focused upon, reignite a flame once thought gone.
In some way, to me, Harry Chapin will always be 38 and I will always be 18.
While I and others were off to find things like footlights, he was off to find the sky.
We may not realize it, but our day consists of a series of moments. Each moment brings with it a decision that either brings us nearer to or further from our desires.
If our mind is preoccupied, rushing, deflecting, avoiding, foggy, distracted or otherwise not in sync with the present moment, we can be left entirely disconnected from a grounding compass with which to navigate life. The result? Quite possibly a frenetic feeling, an unfocused approach to life, a chaotic or disorganized living environment, a gnawing sense that something is wrong.
One solution? To take the time and make the small effort to participate in a brief guided meditation. If you meditate regularly, you know how it goes. If you’re new to the idea of “sitting and doing nothing,” you are in for a very interesting experience. And probably a surprising one in that meditating is far from doing nothing.
Sure, there’s the mat or seat cushion that many people use when meditating. Me? I do my most valuable and practical meditation while I’m putting on mascara. Unconventional, yes. But it’s a time to collect my thoughts, tune into my body and let my mind drift until it lands not a problem, but on a peacefulness in my body. It is from this place of peacefulness that I then take myself into sessions with the clients I admire and respect so much. To be a holding container for each person, I must first clear out any emotional debris that I may be carrying. In many instances, I simply tell myself I’ll get to it later.
Even that has taken practice. I often have a lot of “Yeah,but’s …”, you see.
Today, though, I’m so glad that you’ll be joining me in a 5-minute meditation that is mascara-free. It is a “lite” meditation that is meant to set you up for your day. It is what I say to myself before leaving the house in the morning – or for the last number of months – heading to the Zoom screen. It’s how I get myself centered, clear-headed, and in the right vibration for my day. By vibration, I mean in the right mindset. When my physical state is aligned with my mental/emotional state, life is easier, more gratifying, and more productive. More productive, by the way, not because I necessarily do more, but because I bring more of myself effortlessly into each situation.
My only suggestion for the next five minutes is to get comfortable, drop down into your body, meaning feel your body at all the points where it meets up with whatever is supporting it, the chair, floor, wall, etc, and just breathe through your nose as easily as you can. Your eyes can be open or closed, as you prefer. That’s it. The rest will come naturally as you listen to the recording and just notice your own breathing. It’s that simple. See what happens. Notice what you notice. For the next five minutes.
My mom was a nurse and high-ranking officer in the Army and my dad, a private, owned and ran the family flooring business.
I grew up watching my parents solve problems together, stretch a dollar, have huge financial setbacks and somehow manage to give my brother and me all they could. The 2-bedroom apartment that was home meant that my brother and I took turns sleeping on the sofa while the other had a stint in a real bedroom. We’d swap every year or so.
Our manner of operating as a family was to fix things, chase goals, get better and do more.
On to the next task, project or destination.
Same with you?
Technology in this modern era lends itself to always being on the go. It has us do-ing rather than be-ing. Who hasn’t stood in line at CVS while pruning their inbox or purchased a pet cam while waiting for the movie to begin? Queuing up anywhere has become a reason to jump on email, Instagram, FB or Bumble.
When was the last time you stood still? Took in your surroundings? Noticed what is was like to live in your own skin?
It had been a while for me, too.
I recently came across a study which gave scientific credence to the fact that many people are uncomfortable with their own company and will do almost anything to avoid being alone with their thoughts, including receive a minor electric shock. In the study, feeling the shock was preferable to sitting idle with too much time to think.
Not joking.
What Should I Do?
A question I get all the time is “What do I need to do? Can’t you give me a homework to do?
I understand. Doing something … anything, gives us a sense of control.
Yet, the capacity to know ourselves – to be self-aware – rests with our ability to be present with ourselves. Growth is less about “What do I need to do?” and more about “What do I need to understand?” Experiencing our experiences is key to solving our problems and growing. To make an emotionally intelligent decision about what we need in order to get unstuck, we must first accept the fact that we are where we are.
I know what you’re thinking.
“That’s dumb. Backwards. I’ll feel even worse if I accept my stuckness.” Let me explain.
Have you ever tried to untangle a snarled and braided mass of chain, perhaps necklaces that have all but mated in the back of a drawer? Or try to uncoil a long garden hose whose ends have mysteriously folded in on themselves to form a snaky, knotted mess? Anytime I’ve come at this sort of project with a histrionic desperation, the knots won. In fact, they got worse, tighter and tighter. What to do? I’ve learned with experience to tell myself to settle down, to look at the bundle before me with the eye of a detached observer rather than the mindset of a sputtering electrical wire, popping and sizzling my way through. To use the best approach, I had to let myself be comfortable with the stuckness of it all and not let my frustrations overtake me.
I decided to let my gaze follow the twists and tucks of the intertwined mess with a tiny bit of objectivity. Doing this for a moment or two allowed me to feel that I was bigger than the clump instead of the other way around. I could then coax one chain out, yes, painstakingly, find where it intersected with the next and after some time, thread my way free.
As humans, we face instances of stuckness on a much grander scale.
For instance, one moment we feel excited about the prospect of opening up to new love. The next moment we talk ourselves out of it, our mind fleeing from scary possibilities – the potential that we may feel rejected or the inevitability of disappointment inherent in every human relationship. Or, we take on an exciting work project, one that could quite possibly bring us more visibility, get us noticed by the right people. Suddenly and without conscious reasoning, we derail our enthusiasm. We get distracted, delayed, deflated. We decide to let someone else have the opportunity to be praised. Or criticized. Or judged. We’re not about to take the gamble, so we forfeit our turn.
Stuckness doesn’t feel comfortable. It’s no wonder we find ways to escape it. We reach into the fridge when we’re not hungry, make purchases when we don’t need anything, watch hours and hours of even good television just to numb our own discomfort.
But escaping usually compounds our problems.
I recently learned how Navy Seals “drown-proof themselves” in a blog written by one of my most favorite blog writers, Henneke Duistermaat of Enchanting Marketing, who teaches bloggers how they can become more enchanting with their writing. You may think that what Navy Seals go through is unrelated to anything the rest of us could possibly experience. You’d be wrong.
In her piece, Ms. Duistermaat describes how the Seals deal with getting stuck, how they have to be able to think things through and not panic, especially if something goes wrong in the water. To train for this, the Seals are dropped into a 9-foot deep pool with their hands and feel bound. They have 20 minutes to complete a series of death-defying maneuvers. They must pass all the underwater events, or they are considered a failure and removed from training.
The key to their survival? Is it strength? Endurance? Stamina? Surprisingly, no. The number one factor that this exemplary group of people rely on for survival is their ability to refrain from “do-ing” and simply give into the reality of their situation. They must allow themselves to sink to the bottom without wiggling or thrashing. Once there, they bend their knees and push up, allowing the momentum to propel them to the surface. They can then get a quick breath of air and repeat the process for almost 20 minutes until the final event which is flipping themselves upside down to retrieve a small object from the pool’s floor with their teeth.
Along the way, the Navy Seal candidate will either relax in the water or fail. In essence, survival lies in the willingness to surrender to the difficult and dangerous situation. Surrender in this case doesn’t mean to give up. It means to resist the urge to fight so that every bit of the candidate’s resources can then be harnessed. Our human tendency is to expend our energy fighting, to rip the ropes off, to pull at the tangles, to do something. But there are times when it’s better to do nothing. When you think about it, choosing to do nothing but surrender is doing something. It is deciding, which is perhaps the singularly most survival-inducing thing we can do. Try it.
The next time you feel stuck, instead of thrashing about in an unwieldy panic, scrambling to find a solution or get something done or say “yes” to someone’s request right away, sit with your discomfort a bit. Give yourself a little room to catch your breath. Think of those Navy Seals. Picture them bobbing, floating, flipping, allowing their maneuvers to take their cues from a calm mind. Picture them surviving and surviving strong.
When we resist the urge to fight and instead, use our mind to accept where we are, we can find an unexpected sense of calm. We can anchor ourselves in the knowledge that self-acceptance is a strategy, one worth choosing. By acknowledging the reality of things, rather than running from it, we can decide how we wish to get through challenging experiences without requiring the experiences to conform to our wishes. They seldom do. Even during chaos and turbulence, awareness of who we are at our core becomes the stake in the ground that keeps us from getting swept away – swept away by other peoples’ expectations, opinions, unresolved hurts – and our tendency to be defined by them.
So, go ahead and DO something. Decide. Choose. Acknowledge. Remind yourself of who you are at your essence.
