Whether it’s doom-mongering, backbiting or verbal attacks – once we get stuck in a delicate dialogue, it can be difficult to find a way out. Therapist and attorney Bill Eddy recommends following these two steps in such situations.
Conversations and social interactions can become completely unexpected and unpleasant in a flash: a harmless anecdote about an undelivered package causes the other person to vent about the decline of the world and despair about the politics and disorder in our country that never existed before would have given. A reunion after a long time can be seen by one side as the perfect opportunity to immediately accuse the other of all the accusations that have accumulated in their minds over the months. Or our conversation partner takes it for granted that we are interested in their opinion about supposedly incompetent colleagues, superiors or someone else. Perceptions can be very different and so we often find ourselves in social situations in which we feel uncomfortable with the behavior that others consider to be right and appropriate. If we had a standard strategy for responding to situations like this, it could relieve us considerably and possibly save us from one or two arguments or embarrassments.
Uncomfortable conversation? Expert recommends two simple steps
Bill Eddy is a lawyer and therapist who works as a mediator at the National Conflict Resolution Center in San Diego – and he has a strategy like this. In an article for the online magazine “Psychology Today” he recommends taking the following two steps (which actually seem far too simple) if a conversation is going in a negative, depressing direction and we cannot redirect it or influence it constructively.
Issue a warning
According to Bill Eddy, we can get into the habit of warning the other person that we are uncomfortable with the conversation and are not ready to continue it that way. For example, we could say, “Mom, if you want to keep complaining about the whole world and how terrible everything is, I’m going to get up and leave right now, I don’t have time for that.” Or: “If you only want to talk to me to attack me, I will end the conversation and our meeting at this point.”
In some cases, we achieve nothing with such a warning alone, and the other person may even spontaneously feel insulted or misunderstood as a result, but at least we react to our own perception and feelings. We give ourselves relief and do ourselves justice – and ultimately it is fair for our interlocutor to tell them our point of view. And him: preparing them for our next step.
End the conversation
If the other person doesn’t change course after our explicit warning, it’s time to make it happen. Bill Eddy recommends an accompanying sentence like: “I see you’ve decided that I should end the conversation. Get in touch if you’d like to continue it in a civil manner.” We can follow these words with a farewell and leave or hang up.
The next time we have contact with the person in question, it is not absolutely necessary to address or discuss the last breakup; instead, it is important that we make an effort to approach them openly and unbiasedly and to give them a new chance. If she gets back on a similar path to last time, another warning is in order – which, based on Bill Eddy’s experience, often has a much stronger effect once we have previously ended a conversation with this person.
What are the advantages of this approach?
Applying these two steps recommended by Bill Eddy in uncomfortable conversations seems so obvious and simple that it is already absurd and many people would hardly think of it on their own – neither in the middle of a situation nor when we are thinking about our theoretical options. That’s why it can be helpful and useful to make ourselves aware that this possibility, this approach, even exists.
We tend to expect ourselves to be able to calm people down when they’re upset, or to offer them a healthier perspective when they’re being gloomy, or to get along and make peace with them when they attack us. But we don’t always succeed in this, firstly, very few of us are mediators and secondly, we generally cannot reliably influence or control the behavior of others. In this respect, the option of removing ourselves from a conversation is legitimate and can sometimes be our wisest option. We don’t hurt anyone, avoid escalations and clearly show our limits. For some, it may be difficult to behave like this: issuing a warning and then radically breaking off a conversation does not necessarily correspond to the habits and roles that we maintain in everyday life and with which we are comfortable. Occasionally, however, it is worth breaking out of our well-rehearsed roles – especially if they keep leading us into a dead end.
Sources used: psychologytoday.com