Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!
Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny
Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.
We’re at a pivotal point in this series. We’ve spent a lot of time getting ready and developing our skills to have safe-ask style conversations. We’ve been easing into safe-ask culture by getting control of our monkey brains, learning how to give and receive a “no”, practicing having and respecting boundaries, and recognizing that not everyone we talk is good for us. We’re experimenting and we’re getting good at these things.
On the horizon is going to be more involved and deeper conversations about getting our needs met, negotiating, finding ways to get everyone’s needs met and making agreements with people to improve our interdependence. Before we start jumping into more difficult conversations with the people in our lives that matter the most to us, we need to get clear on who has proven to us that they are worthy of the time and energy of talking our through differences. When communication starts working for us, it’s surprisingly easy to talk through things and get “back to good” with someone. If we find ourselves falling into a pattern of putting in extra effort to repeatedly bridge the communication gap to keep someone in our lives, we may need to check-in with ourselves. Are we honoring ourselves and our boundaries or are we making exceptions to keep someone around?
As part of understanding boundaries, we made a distinction between good people with healthy communication skills, good people with unhealthy communication skills, and manipulative people with unhealthy communication skills. With these distinctions, we set the distance between us and the other person. This was our invisible sword analogy. Before we move on, I’d like to get clear on what “good people” and “manipulative” people are as it relates to conversations that build or heal relationships and whether or not a relationship is going to support or sabotage our own happiness. Using the tools ahead can truly set us free, but if we are not careful, they can also put us in a cage of our own making. Learning to patiently listen and talk through a difficult topic with a difficult person is an amazing skill that builds stronger relationships. Let’s not build stronger relationships with the wrong people. Let’s not sabotage our future happiness by repeatedly using these tools to allow a toxic person to remain too close to us just because we believe in them or there are family.
Maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “more communication is always better,” or “the key to a healthy relationship is more communication.” I strongly disagree. If the style of communication in a relationship is manipulation, ultimatums, and yelling, is more of that type of communication going to make things better? On the other hand, if we use safe-ask culture to get through conversations that allow a manipulative person to stay in our lives and keep manipulating us, again, more communication is not better. No amount of healthy communication is ever going to change a manipulator’s go-to styles of manipulation or the intentions that keep using those manipulative behaviors. No amount of healthy communication is ever going to make up for the fact that we don’t make the other person’s decisions. The other person needs to decide for themselves that they want to be a good person with healthy communication skills. Don’t fall into that trap.
Being the person who always makes the communication work with “bad” people is a trap. Trying to change, heal, or save people who seem like good people underneath all their punish-ask culture, childhood trauma, poor communication, and manipulation is another trap. Strive to only be in serious relationships with people who have already proven that they have good intentions and strive to be healthy communicators. Don’t try to change people. Don’t fall in love with potential. Don’t try to love the red flags out of people. Do not use the tools in this series to do any of that, that is not what they are for. All of those things are toxic-empath traits. That is, attempting to manipulate people we love and empathize with into being, what we personally believe is, a good person. That idea alone says that other person is not a good person. That’s making them into a “victim” so we can “save” them. That’s toxic-empath “rescuer” behavior. Focusing on the other person’s shortcomings and healing is a distraction that allows us to not work on our own healing and boundaries. They don’t need to change and grow, we do. We need to work on our boundaries and our communication.
I’ve personally spent years of my life learning communication tools to try to get through to manipulative loved ones who had so much “potential”. The problem is, when we spend enough time, energy, and patience, using these tools with someone, the tools often work. That’s not a good thing. We can get back to a calm understanding place with a manipulative or abusive loved one. We can “clear the air,” and make it okay to be around each other again. Doing this once or twice and moving forward with new understanding, boundaries, and agreements that improve everyone’s lives is ideal. However, if it’s a pattern of pretending to move forward or mouthing the words to agreements that will never be honored, that’s the trap.
If our intention is to read this series and finally get through to our loved one and finally get back on good terms again, we are signing up to be blamed the day our cup is empty and we can’t make the communication with this person work. The pattern is pretty simple, something comes between us and the other person. We have a misunderstanding or disagreement, and it turns into an issue. At some point we are able to use all our safe-ask and healthy conversation tools to get back to a good place with this person. Then, inevitably, we have another misunderstanding with them. Only this time it’s slightly bigger so it takes slightly more time to calm it all down and get back to good again with this person. This pattern continues. The misunderstanding or disagreement will slowly get bigger. The “bad behavior” that comes out will slowly get bigger. The time it takes to recover will slowly get bigger. Talking them down takes more and more energy, until one day, we just don’t have the skills or the spoons to do it and the relationship explodes forever and the bridge is burned. This pattern is the driving force behind what’s called, “the cycle of abuse.”[1]
[1] Theory developed in 1979 by Lenore E. Walker to explain patterns of behavior in an abusive relationship. For more see wikipedia.org: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_abuse
The cycle of abuse has four phases. 1. Tension builds between an abuser or manipulator and the person who chooses to stay in the abusive situation. 2. An incident occurs that is an explosion of unregulated emotion from the abuser. 3. Eventually, there is a reconciliation between the two as the abuser tries to win back the person they are abusing. 4. There is a calm period, a “honeymoon period,” where everything is great again. Soon, tension starts building once more and we are back to phase 1.
I’m calling out our responsibility in every step of the cycle of abuse with anyone, not just manipulators and abusers. If we don’t communicate healthy boundaries, tension (phase 1) can build. Lack of health boundaries will enable the manipulator’s behavior. One day, when the manipulator is not getting their way, an incident of emotion dysregulation occurs (phase 2). If we try to use our communication tools to talk the other person down during an incident, we teach them they don’t have to regulate their behavior because we will do it for them. We will be extra understanding when they are having a meltdown. We enable them to have outburst of unregulated emotion because we teach them that we can take it. That is 100% not the point of this series. Deciding “we can take it,” because we have all these communication tools means we are signing up for their future manipulation. We feel good about it too. We sign up under the banner of, “I’m just a good communicator getting through another rough spot with my friend or loved one who is still learning healthy communication.” That’s a trap. Instead, we should be calling a timeout and making it very clear, “I don’t interact with emotionally unregulated people and I’m not regulating your emotions for you.”
By not calling a time out, the incident (phase 2) will get progressively worse each time. The person will keep doubling down on the manipulative behavior until it either works, or we finally get through to them and talk them down. Either way, without an early “timeout”, we enable them to take this approach again in the future. In the future, they will do it bigger and bigger because they don’t want to be calmed down, the want to get their way. Emotional dysregulation is how they get their way. What’s going through their mind is, “I’m not going to let them talk me out of getting my away this time. I’m not letting them manipulate me and gaslight me.” They’re unregulated emotions will let them think whatever they need to that will allow them to behave badly and hurt others. They will find ways to justify their abusive behavior and, in their mind, they are being righteous.
In phase 3, reconciling, we will naturally use all our amazing healthy communication tools and a safe-ask philosophy to really understand them. In doing so, we will be aiding the manipulative person through a conversation where they want to reconcile and get back to a good spot between us. They want this for selfish reasons. They want this so we don’t leave them, and they can continue to manipulate us with ease. Whatever they normally get out from us in this relationship, then need everything to be calm again so they can start getting it again. We will be using our “healthy” communication tools against ourselves and to their benefit.
In phase 4 of the cycle, the calm period, if we don’t create distance with this person, we are enabling them to remain close enough to start the cycle over with us again.
If we let it, this cycle naturally builds and spiral out of control. The majority of the relationship becomes the tension and fear of the next incident and the incidents become more alarming and dangerous. At the same time, the reconciliation and the honeymoon period become smaller and smaller until the honeymoon period is just gone.
This cycle spirals out of control and ends one of two ways, either there is an incident that ruins the relationship forever, or the abused person “gets away” and goes “no contact”. In both cases, these two people probably won’t be able to be in the same room at the same time ever again.
An alternate approach is to refuse to participate in the cycle the moment we realize it’s present. We set a distance that keeps the relationship just far enough away from us to not be a danger to us. This looks more like acquaintances that might say hello at events but simply don’t interact much.
What I’m trying to say with all this is, “with great power comes great responsibility.” These new-found communication skills can very easily build strong relationships with “bad” people. Let’s be aware of that. As we move forward and spend energy on being a safe space for others, let choose the right people to let into our lives.
Here are some tips to breakout of, avoid, and stay out of the cycle abuse. In phase 1, tension building, we don’t let things go unspoken. We engage with, “is now a good time to talk?” We use timeouts and healthy safe space boundaries to keep the conversation safe. Then we create a safe distance. In phase 2, the incident, we call a timeout when anyone is above a 2 out of 10 with their emotions. We make our safe space boundaries clear. We do not engage with this type of behavior and they will have to schedule a time to talk to us when they are in control of their emotions and actions again. They are responsible for self-regulating their emotions, not us. In phase 3, reconciliation, hold our safe space boundaries. Then we create new boundaries that we share and are committed to enforcing. We are clear about consequences of boundary violations in the future. We don’t tell them what to do, we tell them what we will do based on the behavior they display. Then we create a safe distance. In phase 4, the calm, we are very intentional about the distance we keep from this person and enforcing the boundaries we created when we reconciled with them.
Every step of the way, a timeout & check-in followed by a safe space boundary is our superpower. It’s not only our best defense against being sucked into manipulation or enabling someone’s manipulation, but it’s also our best defense against ourselves, and whatever stories our monkey brains made up to make it okay to let this person act this way and let our boundaries slide.
In the next article, I’m going to make a clearer distinction between “good” and “bad” people. Both of those words are too open to interpretation. We’ve clearly defined what unhealthy and health communication is by saying, healthy communication builds relationships and unhealthy communication destroys them. I want to get clear on what are “good intentions” and what are “bad intentions” when it comes to a conversation. Not just the other person’s intentions, but also our own intentions. We are about to set another safe space boundary; we don’t have conversations with someone who is not interested in solutions that benefit everyone.
Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny
Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!
What next?
Next article in this series: Com101 – Identifying Who We’re Talking To
Previous article in this series: Com101 – Experimenting With Boundaries
Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.
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