Dr. David Lieberman: Transforming Relationships Part 1

and welcome to the inaugural talk on the series for improving transforming our relationships i'd like to share with you in this series some very practical things that we can do to help improve the quality of relationships particularly with people who are difficult because relationships are difficult it is a few and far between probably the rare rare rare exception that is effortless and even those take effort so they'll require work but that doesn't mean that they can't be rewarding and it doesn't mean that you can't do things that can drastically improve the quality of the relationship and your life because here's the thing and more than two going on three decades of doing this kind of work i found that a person's emotional health and the quality of the relationships are inextricably linked right if you think about the people in your life who are generally emotionally healthier they have good relationships and if you think about those people who have less good relationships their emotional health is not so ideal now of course it's a chicken in the egg if you have poor relationships then it's likely you're not going to be feeling great about yourself and doing great uh and doing great things and really maximizing your potential at the same time if you're not feeling good about yourself then it makes it much more difficult for you to be around other people uh you may be much more different difficult it may make it hard for you to connect that may it does and we're going to go ahead and flesh out the psychology and there's so many areas we're going to explore we can talk about how to deal with criticism particularly with somebody who's very very sensitive we're talking about the role of guilt not a good idea by the way when you're talking certainly about showing bias improving on married relationships i think one of the biggest areas where we get the most bang for a buck is with children because in parenting at any age regardless of how old our children are there are still things that we can do to affect the quality of the relationship and believe it or not their emotional health it's just very exciting and i want to give a big shout out and a thank you to hazak for helping to organize all of this tour any time for their extraordinary work chickens for shabbos who literally save people's lives every single day so some great organizations behind this and i'm very excited to go ahead and share some ideas in transforming relationships so with that i've done with that introduction to mind i'm just by the way since it's the first one i'm working out some kinks and i'm noticing the the bookshelf behind me by other speakers that filled with nice farm and some pictures and it looks like mine is the kids section of barnes and noble but okay be that as it may um let's begin with the following a guy walks into a bar orders a shot of whiskey takes a shot of whiskey takes the glass throws it through the plate glass window shatters it completely the bartender says come on what are you doing the guy says i'm so sorry i don't know what came over me i feel so awful i feel so guilty i feel so ashamed i don't know what happened barton says okay it's all right it happens next day the guy walks into the bar asks for a drink or as a shot of whiskey the bartender is looking at him really askew and hoping it doesn't happen again but guy takes the drink puts the glass down bartender breathes a sigh of relief then the guy picks up the glass throws it through the window again shatters it completely comes back in the third day once again it's got all this blue tape up for whatever reason people who fix things use blue tape and he's got a brand new mirror so he goes and orders his shot of whiskey again bartender says let's make sure this doesn't repeat itself the guy said no problem guy sits down takes a drink puts it down takes a glass throws it through shatters it again bartenders that's it you're done you're not coming back in here until you get help go see lieberman go talk to somebody until you are cured i do not want you coming back in here the guy holds his head down says fine he walks out completely embarrassed one full year later he walks into the bar a new man head held high orders a shot of whiskey bartender gives them a knowing glance the guy orders a shot of whiskey takes the drink puts the glass down then he picks it up and he throws it and shatters the window again the bartender said come on enough what happened i told you i did not want you in here until you went and got yourself some help the guy said but i did get help i went to therapy for a full year the bartender says yeah but you're still throwing glasses through my window the guy says yeah but now i don't feel guilty about it anymore the goal of a good therapist the goal of a good friend the good rabbi or rabbitson somebody close to us is not to make us feel differently it's to act differently in other words to do what's wrong and simply not feel bad about it doesn't move a person forward at the same time as sconcing ourselves as guilt and shame and wrapping ourselves up in this blanket of self-pity it says i'm so lousy i'm so awful i'm so terrible i don't deserve anything better doesn't move us forward either i want to share with you we're going to share with you a a number of number one secrets so this is one of a series of number one didn't do well in math number one is this you do not move people forward by laying on the guilt guilting someone into doing something never works in the short term you may get some mild cooperation but the objective is not so here's the thing let's take a child for instance you want a child to do something and they're not listening to you hypothetically it doesn't happen in my house but maybe in yours it does charles not listening and you tell us what you're doing is wrong okay three things are happening here all bad number one is the child begins to get more angry with you dislikes you because you are causing him pain you are causing him to feel less good about himself call it toxic shame call it guilt we're going to go ahead and unwind what the definitions are another time but whatever it is you're bringing out a behavior in me that's bad makes me feel less makes me feel less worthy of connection makes me feel less lovable so now i'm mad at you and i feel less about me and the entire time i'm sitting there coming up with all the rationalizations justifications reasons as to why it is i'm right and you're wrong see human beings are going to justify our behavior we've got this thing called cognitive dissonance where there's two distant and different ideas i want to see myself as a good person you know i'm doing something that's wrong in order to bridge that gap if i don't do true i don't do what's right i'm going to have to unleash a number of defense mechanisms we've got rationalization we've got justification we've got blame minimization it's a whole range of them and we'll get into them another time but for now what i'm going to do or that child is going to do is they're now going to explain away their behavior so by making somebody feel bad for what they've been doing they're mad at you they're mad at themselves and they're justifying their behavior so very nice you're thinking very good i can never criticize i can never go ahead and tell anyone that they're doing something wrong no for those of you thinking that we've got a whole conversation for you you're extrapolating a generality from something specific but in this case there are definitive ways that you can go ahead and help to move the person forward and we're going to cover them by the way right now but before we do we'll cover them in a few minutes believe neter is that when a person does something that's wrong particularly a child or a spouse here is the biggest mistake that we do you make them feel worse for doing it forget about an actual behavior you want to correct this is a no-brainer you could have gone ahead and done uh and did what i asked you you me you missed a mitzvah you could have gone you taken out the garbage or listened to someone's life you missed out an opportunity what are you thinking nobody wants to think of themselves as bad nobody wants to think of themselves as deficient broken defective telling somebody that they've just done something that's wrong in that way by making them feel worse about it doesn't move them forward take yourself for example how do you move yourself forward when you you know whether you're on a diet and you wanted to and you had that extra piece of chocolate cake you wanted to get up early to exercise do you move forward by saying i'm such a fool i'm such an idiot i'm so worthless i'm nothing i can't believe or by saying you know what okay i'm a human being i fell down i have my goal let me get back up dust myself off and come up with a plan to move myself forward so here's the thing we don't realize by the way sometimes how we speak to ourselves the tone of voice we use when we talk to ourselves is mean it's belligerent bombastic use enough big words people think you're smart because this bookcase isn't going to convince anyone when you talk to yourself be nice we don't realize the language the tone of voice and it's the reason why we bring it up now because the same thing as we speak to somebody else telling ourselves we're awful allows you for doing something doesn't move us forward and doesn't improve the relationship how about the next time for a practical takeaway that you speak to somebody else you speak to yourself note two things the message and the tone of voice make the message positive we'll talk about that and make the tone of voice gentle kind the research finds by the way that how a conversation begins it's how it ends it is john gottman who actually did the research on this and he found that 94 percent of conversations will end the way that they begin meaning if you bring it up in a soft loving compassionate tone whether you're talking to yourself or somebody else it's likely to be a more productive conversation but sometimes we think that the more angry we are than our voice the tone of our voice has to be commensurate with that people don't listen other people don't listen children don't listen we don't listen to ourselves when we scream the brain just shuts down be focused on the message and speak in a kind and gentle voice okay now in the next week we're going to talk about what that message looks like if you can't criticize if you can't critique if you can't say something negative how on earth do you ever move someone else's behavior forward now we know piling on the guilt and shame is useless it doesn't work with ourselves it doesn't work with our kids the more the spouse doesn't work with anybody so what then is the mechanism in order to allow this person to be able to hear the message regardless of how sensitive they are even in respect of sometimes the relationship and to be able to hear it in a way that they can accept without being mad at you without being mad at themselves and without compounding the guilt and we'll do that next time have a beautiful week and thanks for watching