Couples Therapist | 10 Tips For Good Communication!

hi guys welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome to my channel my name is stephanie sanyabuila stephania for short and i'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in today's video i'm going to be talking all about effective communication if you're curious stay tuned [Music] before we get into this video i ask that you like this video i normally say that at the end but i know not all of you make it to the end so please like this video and subscribe to my channel while you're here okay so when i see couples

or families for that matter one of the biggest things the top thing they'll always say they're struggling with is communication often communication is covering up a plethora of other issues that are bringing a couple into therapy but today if you are struggling with communication i want to share with you some simple tips that will help your conversations be more productive and so i'm going to talk a little bit about active listening which is really really important and we're going to talk all about actual practical techniques in conversation that can make it so that you and

the other person or people that you're speaking with walk away with a better understanding of each person's perspective because that's the goal of good communication right it's not to prove your point it's not to win the argument it's to walk away with a better understanding of the opposing person's point of view and for them to walk away with the better understanding of yours so keeping that goal in mind let's jump into the tips so the first thing i have to talk about is active listening or reflective listening and what that is is a very slow

way of communicating whenever i introduce this to my couples it is always met with a bit of resistance because it's much slower than we are accustomed to communicating what you do is let's say we have the first person who is person a in the relationship let's name a angela and we've got person b in the relationship let's name b brenda so angela is going to be the first person that has a grievance or something that they'd like to discuss so angela shares her point of view with brenda brenda then repeats back to angela what she

heard her say angela then confirms or denies what brenda has repeated back to her basically saying yes that's exactly what i was saying or being like no you're missing the point right and by the way when brenda repeats this back it's not with irritation or sarcasm you are really trying to mimic the tone candor and point of view of the person who is speaking to you now if brenda gets it right what angela said then brenda is able to respond to angela that angela repeats back to brenda what she heard brenda confirms or refutes if

angela has accurately summarized what she said and if she has then angela can respond so you can see this is a very very slow way of communicating but it is the only way to ensure that you all are talking about the same thing so often the main issue when i'm working with couples is that one person says something and the other person hears something completely different than what they intended to hear so the next tips i'm going to share with you are tips that will make it so that it's easier for that other person to

fully digest and understand what it is that you are saying so the first tip to help ensure that the person you're speaking with can fully digest and understand what you're saying make sure it's clear what the intention of the conversation is i always encourage my couples to set the intentions at the beginning of the conversation i would say i have one thing i really want to talk to you about and i know there's some other things we might need to address later but today i was hoping we could talk specifically about what happened at your

grandmother's house do what you can to make the environment conducive to a smooth and comfortable conversation i know of couples who will maybe once a month talk and what they'll do is they will create like ideal scenarios so they might go on a getaway to have these conversations or something as simple as running a hot bath with candles i have couples where they will only talk about finances over a glass of wine because it can be very stressful for them and they want to be able to relax some couples may pray together before they engage

in conversations that could be really stressful or frustrating speak slowly take your time expressing what you want to express but also keep it concise so speaking slowly doesn't mean taking a long time it simply means that you are thinking through what you're saying you always want to be keeping in the back of your mind would you be able to repeat back what you're saying basically that keeps you from running on a long tangent that's going to be impossible for another person to reflect back to you and a way to make sure your conversation is concise

is to use proper words you want to avoid using words where the person you're speaking with may not be familiar with the language that you're using so you want to be aware of your audience know who your audience is if you've been with this person for even a short period of time then you probably know if you're overdoing it you know sometimes in conversations we try to intellectualize and intellectualizing is actually a defense mechanism if you're in a conversation and you feel like you need to use all of these big words and refer to all

of these concepts in terms of the lay person or average person would not be familiar with then you might be trying to win the argument by sounding smarter so focus on using language and maybe even stories that makes it easier for you to communicate with your partner with your child with your family member just making it so that it is easy for them to digest understand and most importantly make it easy on them to reflect it back to you another very important key is to watch your body language one of the main things that i'm

looking for when i meet a couple for the first time for the fifth time if we've been working together for years is what is their body language telling me that they are not so if their partner says something and i see them rolling their eyes or shaking their head or turning off to the side getting on their phone all of those things communicate i disagree with you where i don't respect your opinion i don't care to be here if you can watch your body language good body language looks like facing toward the person you're speaking

with making eye contact okay these tips are really for being in person right some of them you can use when you're on the phone maybe even someone like facetime or a virtual platform like zoom but in person you know you want if possible if if this is not beyond the norm for your relationship maybe grab their hands look in their eyes try to let them know you are connecting you are focusing on what they're trying to tell you and reflect that back to them again without sarcasm don't let it be clear from you reflecting it

back to them that you don't agree you want to say what i'm hearing you say is x y z and if they say yes absolutely that's what you heard then you say now from my perspective i feel x y z another thing is what i just demonstrated there which is speaking from the eye position you'd never want to speak for your partner right a lot of times when i'm seeing couples they're talking to me about oh and then they thought that i did such and such and they felt and they get mad you know one

thing about them they're always going to get mad so you're mind reading you're telling them how they feel how about we focus on the one thing you know for sure which is how you feel so you take the time to reflect on your feelings about something and you can say what was the trigger for that feeling the best script for that uh gottman talks about this which i do have other videos where i mentioned gottman he is a founding theorist and couples therapy he's got a very well-known approach to couples therapy and understanding research that

supports the likelihood of a couple getting a divorce i do have other videos on that that i will put in the cards but what you want to think about script-wise is i feel blank when you do blank you want to say a specific behavior right you don't want to say i feel blank when you ignore me you want to say i feel ignored when you get on your phone when i'm talking to you that is a specific behavior and in the future i would like you to blank give them some sort of guide to what

to do going forward we often try to trap our partners by saying oh you should know what to do right we want them to read our minds and sometimes it doesn't feel sexy to tell somebody exactly what you need and that's okay it doesn't always have to be sexy but sometimes it can be by just letting them know exactly what you want you're setting your partner up for success another important key is to stay on topic you do not want to shift back and forth between a lot of different topics because then it's very hard

for your partner and for you to keep up and at the end of the conversation how will you measure success like we talked about five different things and i'm no clearer on any of these things than i was before we started talking you know making it clear that you have one specific thing you're wanting to talk about and really avoid trying to shift blame in a way where you might be trying to match their grievance with your own grievance that is definitely something you want to avoid doing that in a form is gaslighting right when

a person is coming to you about something that bothered them and you say oh that bothered you well this bothered me something totally separate well if that bothered you then you have an opportunity to bring that up as well but in this moment we're talking about this one thing now things you want to keep in mind some barriers to good communication would be like loud noise so if you're in a noisy area if you're in an airport or a loud restaurant and you're wanting to bring up this very important topic consider the fact that if

you're talking especially about sensitive things your partner's like huh what i can't hear you are you going to get triggered in that moment because you're pouring out your heart and it's really loud and they can't hear you you should probably wait for a time where it's going to be nice and quiet and another barrier to communication is stress so keep in mind when people are in a stressful situation if they've got something going on in work you might have some family issues going on outside of the relationship all of these things can impact a person's

perception of the conversation if you know you're already very stressed out maybe focus on winding yourself down calming down checking in with your partner to see how they're doing before bringing up a topic that could potentially exacerbate your stress sometimes it's unavoidable and the thing stressing you out is the conversation that needs to be had and in that case you work on your breathing techniques or whatever you typically do hot bath you know you want to pay attention to your stress levels your partner's stress levels the environment and atmosphere that you are in and make

it so that this conversation is productive and you walk away with a better understanding of your partner's perspective and they walk away with a better understanding of yours i hope that you guys found this helpful and if you want more videos like this let me know your specific questions if you're in a relationship or not if you just are looking for some good communication tips that you found this useful let me know your best tips for communication below as well again my name is stephanie it's i'm building stephania for short i ask that you subscribe

to my channel please click the bell notification so that you know every time that i upload like this video and share it with a friend or with your partner if maybe you guys are working on better communication habits and i appreciate you for watching all wait until the end of the video that really really helps me so thank you thank you thank you [Music] am [Music]