Feeling good together th.., p.1
Feeling Good Together: The Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work, page 1
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Contents
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Title Page
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Chapter 1 What the Experts Say
Chapter 2 The Dark Side of Human Nature
Chapter 3 Why We Secretly Love to Hate
Chapter 4 Three Ideas That Can Change Your Life
Part Two: Diagnosing Your Relationship
Chapter 5 How Good Is Your Relationship? The Relationship Satisfaction Test
Chapter 6 What Do You REALLY Want?
Chapter 7 The Price of Intimacy
Chapter 8 The Relationship Journal
Chapter 9 Good Communication vs. Bad Communication
Chapter 10 How We Control Other People
Chapter 11 Three Troubled Couples
Part Three: How to Develop Loving Relationships with the People You Care About
Chapter 12 The Five Secrets of Effective Communication
Chapter 13 The Disarming Technique.
Chapter 14 Thought and Feeling Empathy
Chapter 15 Inquiry: “Did I Get That Right?”
Chapter 16 “I Feel” Statements
Chapter 17 Stroking: “I—It” vs. “I—Thou” Relationships
Chapter 18 Putting It All Together: Solutions to Common Relationship Problems.
Part Four: Making the Five Secrets Work for You
Chapter 19 Mastering the Five Secrets.
Chapter 20 Using the Five Secrets in Real Time: The Intimacy Exercise.
Chapter 21 Intimacy Training for Couples: The One-Minute Drill.
Part Five: Common Traps—and How to Avoid Them
Chapter 22 “Help! The Five Secrets Didn’t Work!”
Chapter 23 Helping and Problem Solving
Chapter 24 Hiding Your Head in the Sand: Conflict Phobia and Anger Phobia
Chapter 25 Apologizing: “Can’t I Just Say, ‘I’m Sorry’?”
Chapter 26 Submissiveness: “I Must Please You”
Chapter 27 Resistance Revisited: “Why Should I Have to Do All the Work?”
Part Six: Advanced Techniques
Chapter 28 Changing the Focus: Is There an Elephant in the Room?.
Chapter 29 Positive Reframing: Opening the Door to Intimacy—and Success
Chapter 30 Multiple-Choice Empathy: How to Talk to Someone Who Refuses to Talk to You
Appendix: Your Intimacy Toolkit
About the Author
Also by David D. Burns, MD
Copyright
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Acknowledgments
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I would like to thank my daughter, Signe Burns, who was my editor in chief for this book. Signe’s contributions were brilliant and extensive. Working with my daughter on this project has been absolutely wonderful!
Several other editors have also helped me tremendously along the way, including Amy Hertz, Marc Haeringer, and Sarah Manges. I am deeply indebted to all of them. Finally, I would like to thank my editor at Broadway Books, Rebecca Cole. Wow! Your contributions were awesome!
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Introduction
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Troubled relationships hurt. Most of us base our feelings of self-worth, at least in part, on our relationships with other people. It’s no fun to argue or fight with someone you care about. Even a feud with someone you don’t care about can eat away at you and rob you of energy and joy.
If you’re not getting along with someone, I’ve got some good news for you: I can show you how to develop a far more rewarding relationship with that person. It makes no difference whether the person you’ve been battling is your spouse, sibling, parent, neighbor, or friend, or even a complete stranger. No matter who it is, I can show you how to transform feelings of frustration and resentment into warmth and trust, and it can happen much faster than you think. In fact, sometimes it only takes a few minutes.
However, it will require some hard work on your part, and you may have to look at some things about yourself that you didn’t want to see. The path to intimacy is nearly always painful. If you can muster up some courage and humility, and you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and do the work, I can show you something truly amazing—something that will change your life.
David D. Burns, MD
Adjunct Clinical Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine
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Chapter 1
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What the Experts Say
We all want friendly, rewarding relationships with other people, but we often end up with the exact opposite—hostility, bitterness, and distrust. Why is this? Why can’t we all just get along?
There are two competing theories. Most experts endorse the deficit theory. According to this theory, we can’t get along because we don’t know how. In other words, we fight because we lack the skills we need to solve the problems in our relationships. When we were growing up, we learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, but there weren’t any classes on how to communicate or solve relationship problems.
Other experts believe that we can’t get along because we don’t really want to. This is called the motivational theory. In other words, we fight because we lack the motivation to get close to the people we’re at odds with. We end up embroiled in hostility and conflict because the battle is rewarding.
The Deficit Theory
Most mental health professionals, including clinicians and researchers, endorse the deficit theory. They’re convinced that we wage war simply because we don’t know how to make love. We desperately want loving, satisfying relationships but lack the skills we need to develop them.
Of course, different experts have different ideas about what the most important interpersonal skill deficits are. Behavior therapists, for example, believe that our problems with getting along result from a lack of communication and problem-solving skills. So when someone criticizes us, we may get defensive when we should be listening. We may pout and put the other person down instead of sharing our feelings openly, or we may resort to nagging and coercion in order to get our way. We don’t use systematic negotiation or problem-solving skills, so the tensions escalate.
A related theory attributes relationship conflict to the idea that men and women are inherently different. This theory was popularized by Deborah Tannen in her best selling book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation and by John Gray in his bestselling book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. These authors argue that men and women can’t get along because they use language so differently. The idea is that women use language to express feelings, whereas men use language to solve problems. So when a woman tells her husband that she’s upset, he may automatically try to help her with the problem that’s bugging her because that’s how his brain is wired. But she simply wants him to listen and acknowledge how she feels, so she gets more upset when he tries to “help” her. They both end up feeling frustrated and misunderstood. You may have observed this pattern in yourself and someone you’re not getting along with, such as your spouse.
Cognitive therapists have a different idea about the deficits that lead to relationship problems. They emphasize that all of our feelings result from our thoughts and attitudes, or cognitions. In other words, the things other people do—like being critical or rudely cutting in front of us in traffic—don’t actually upset us. Instead, we get upset because of the way we think about these events.
This theory may resonate with your personal experience. When you’re mad at someone, you may have noticed that your mind is flooded with negative thoughts. You tell yourself, “He’s such a jerk! He only cares about himself. He shouldn’t be like that. What a loser!” When you feel upset, these negative thoughts seem over-whelmingly valid, but they actually contain a variety of thinking errors, or cognitive distortions, listed on Chapter 1.
One of the most interesting things about the cognitive theory is the idea that anger and interpersonal conflict ultimately result from a mental con. In other words, you’re telling yourself things that aren’t entirely true when you’re fighting with someone. However, you don’t notice that you’re fooling yourself because the distorted thoughts act as self-fulfilling prophecies, so they seem completely valid. For example, if you tell yourself that the person you’re annoyed with is a jerk, you’ll treat him like a jerk. As a result, he’ll get angry and start acting like a jerk. Then you’ll tell yourself that you were right all along and that he really is a jerk.
Cognitive therapy is based on the idea that when you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel and behave. In other words, if we can learn to think about other people in a more positive and realistic way, it will be far easier to resolve conflicts and develop rewarding personal and professional relationships.
This theory sounds great on paper, but it’s not that easy to change the thinking patterns that trigger anger and conflict. That’s because there’s a side of us that clings to these distortions. It can feel good to look down on someone we’re angry or annoyed with. It gives us a feeling of moral superiority. We just don’t want to see that we’re distorting our view of that person.
Some experts claim that the most important deficit that leads to relationship problems i
Other experts believe that relationship distress results from a different kind of deficit called relationship burnout. You may have noticed that when you aren’t getting along with someone, the negativity nearly always escalates over time. You and your spouse may criticize each other more and more and stop doing all the fun things you did when you first met and began to date. Pretty soon, your marriage becomes a source of constant stress, frustration, and loneliness, and all the joy and caring you once experienced has disappeared. At this point, separation and divorce begin to seem like highly desirable alternatives.
The Ten Distortions That Trigger Conflict
Distortion
Description
Example
1. All-or-Nothing Thinking
You look at the conflict, or the person you’re not getting along with, in absolute, black-and-white categories. Shades of gray do not exist.
You tell yourself that the person you’re mad at is a complete zero with no redeeming features. Or if your relationship breaks up, you may think that it was a total failure.
2. Overgeneralization
You view the current problem as a never-ending pattern of frustration, conflict, and defeat.
You tell yourself, “She’ll always be like that.”
3. Mental Filter
You catalog the other person’s faults, dwell on all the negative things he or she has ever done or said to you, and filter out or ignore all the other person’s good qualities.
You tell your spouse, “This is the tenth time I’ve told you to carry out the trash.” Or, “How many times do I have to remind you not to leave your dirty socks on the floor!?”
4. Discounting the Positive
You insist that the other person’s good qualities or actions don’t count.
If someone you’re fighting with does something positive, you tell yourself that she’s trying to manipulate you.
5. Jumping to Conclusions
You jump to conclusions that may not be warranted by the facts. There are three common patterns:
Mind-Reading. You assume that you know how the other person thinks and feels about you.
You tell yourself that a friend is totally self-centered and only wants to use you.
Reverse Mind-Reading. You tell yourself that the other person should know what you want and how you feel without your having to tell him or her.
You tell your spouse, “You should have known how I was feeling!”
Fortune-Telling. You tell yourself that the situation is hopeless and that the other person will continue to treat you in a shabby way, no matter what.
You tell yourself that the person you’re not getting along with will never change.
6. Magnification and Minimization
You blow the other person’s faults way out of proportion and shrink the importance of his or her positive qualities.
During an argument, you may blurt out, “I can’t believe how stupid you are!”
7. Emotional Reasoning
You reason from how you feel, or assume that your feelings reflect the way things really are.
You feel like the other person is a loser and conclude that he really is a loser.
8. Should Statements
You criticize yourself or other people with shoulds, shouldn’ts, oughts, musts, and have tos. There are two common patterns:
Other-Directed Shoulds. You tell yourself that other people shouldn’t feel and act the way they do, and that they should be the way you expect them to be.
“You’ve got no right to feel that way!” Or, “You shouldn’t say that. It’s unfair!”
Self-Directed Shoulds. You tell yourself that you shouldn’t have made that mistake or shouldn’t feel the way you do.
9. Labeling
You label the other person as a “jerk” or worse. You see his or her entire essence as negative, with no redeeming features.
“She’s such a bitch!” Or, “He’s an asshole!”
10. Blame
Instead of pinpointing the cause of a problem, you assign blame. There are two patterns:
Other-Blame. You blame the other person and deny your own role in the problem.
You tell your spouse, “It’s all your fault!” Then you get angry, frustrated, and resentful.
Self-Blame. You feel guilty and worthless because you blame yourself for the problem, even if it isn’t entirely your fault.
You tell yourself, “It’s all my fault!” Then you use all your energy beating up on yourself instead of finding out how the other person is feeling and trying to solve the problem.
Therapists who endorse the burnout theory will encourage you and your partner to accentuate the positive. For example, you could schedule more fun, rewarding activities together so you can begin to enjoy each other’s company again. You might also do several loving, thoughtful things for each other every day, such as calling your partner from work just to say hello, or bringing your partner a cup of coffee in the morning to show you really care.
Many therapists believe that relationship problems ultimately result from a lack of trust and the fear of vulnerability. Let’s say that you’re ticked off because of something that a colleague or family member said to you. On the surface, you’re angry, but underneath the anger, you feel hurt and put down. You’re reluctant to let the other person know that you feel hurt because you’re afraid of looking weak or foolish. Instead, you lash out, get defensive, and try to put the other person down. Although the tension escalates, your anger protects you because you don’t have to make yourself vulnerable or risk rejection. In other words, the basic deficit is a lack of trust—we fight because of our fears of intimacy. Therapists who endorse this theory will encourage you to accept and share the hurt and tender feelings that are hiding underneath all the anger, hostility, and tension.
Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapists believe that all of these interpersonal deficits and problems with loving each other ultimately stem from painful experiences and wounds we endured when we were growing up. The idea is that if you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you may subconsciously re-create the same painful patterns over and over as an adult. For example, if your father constantly criticized you and put you down, you may have felt like you were never quite good enough to earn his love. As an adult, you may be attracted to men who are equally critical of you because you feel like your role in a loving relationship is to be put down by someone who’s powerful and judgmental, and you may still be desperately trying to get the love you never got from your father.
When I first began treating people with relationship problems, I believed all of these deficit theories, so I naturally tried to help my patients correct the deficits that were causing their conflicts. I enthusiastically taught troubled couples how to communicate more skillfully, how to solve their problems more systematically, and how to treat each other in a more loving way. I also taught them how to boost their self-esteem and modify the distorted thoughts and self-defeating behavior patterns that triggered all the anger and resentment. Sometimes we analyzed the past to try to trace the origins of these patterns.
