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Transcript
60 min read · 12,185 words- 0:00 – 2:35
Laura Heck’s background and what the talk will cover
- SPSpeaker
Hello. I am delighted to have Laura Heck here with us today. Laura is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice. She recently served in a leadership role at the Gottman Institute as the Director of Professional Development. Together with the Gottman Institute Clinical Director, Laura co-developed the Gottman Seven Principles Program, and is also the author of The Seven Principles Companion Workbook, a tool for couples to use in conjunction with The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work book by Dr. John Gottman. Laura's a Master Trainer for the program, which has trained thousands of people to offer The Seven Principles program in their communities across six continents. Laura resides in Salt Lake City with her beloved and very patient husband, and they have a one-year-old son. Welcome, Laura.
- LHLaura Heck
Thank you.
- SPSpeaker
[clapping]
- LHLaura Heck
So what Allison didn't say is that I'm also the godmother to her child, so we know each other very well.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Uh, she is my BFF. Um, so I, I'm here, I, I've given sort of about an hour, and what I'd really like to do is just share with you the CliffsNotes version of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. I'm just curious, by kind of a show of hands or a nod or a wink, um, how many of you have either heard of Dr. John Gottman or are familiar with this Seven Principles book? Okay. How many of you have actually seen him live, seen him present live? Okay. I am not going to be as charismatic or funny or, um, brilliant as John Gottman, but I will certainly try to give you as much information in as short a period of time as possible. So, um, as Allison had mentioned, the reason why I'm here and speaking on The Seven Principles is that I have had the pleasure of co-developing The Seven Principles program, which is really a training program for training, uh, professionals all around the world to work with couples using this as their main criteria, their main curriculum. Um, and so I know the seven principles inside and out, and I just taught the class yesterday here in Seattle, Washington, and I think the next place I go is Chicago, um, and then it just kinda continues on from there. Um, as far as questions, I think maybe what would be helpful is if you have a question about something that we're covering, um, if I notice, just as far as time goes, that I have some time to take some questions, I'll ask for you to come up to the mic and I might be able to take a few.
- 2:35 – 4:08
Why the Seven Principles matter: book reach and relationship applicability
- LHLaura Heck
And if I don't get to it, hold onto your questions. Hopefully, you can remember it, and then I'm hoping that we can cover all of them. Okay? Okay. So, um, this book has actually been in, uh, it has been in print since 1999 and it just recently rolled over the $1 million mark. So, um, not million dollars, but 100 or 1 million copies sold and there was a rewrite that was done on this just, uh, one year ago, and it has been translated into 20 different languages. The reason why this book is so important is that Dr. Gottman has been studying couples for 40 years. He's studied over 3,000 couples, and over those 40 years, he has been able to distill down as much information as possible into seven principles, which I'm hoping I'm able to get through all seven for you so that you can go home in whatever relationship you have and you can begin to apply some of these principles for making relationships work. Um, the nice part about Dr. Gottman's principles is that it's not just about intimate relationships, although those are the ones that he was studying. You can directly apply a lot of these principles to coworker relationships, to the relationships with your children, to the relationships with your parents, any relationship that you have, because it's really about how to communicate in a way that is truly hearing your partner. It's about, uh, being able to work through problem-solving and how to have a meaningful connection with another person. Okay. So, [clears throat]
- 4:08 – 11:43
Gottman’s research origins: lab studies, the Love Lab, and predicting divorce
- LHLaura Heck
what I'd like to start out by doing is to just give you a brief synopsis of far, as far as Dr. Gottman's research and how he came to come about all of this information. So Dr. Gottman originally started out as a mathematics major at MIT, and he was actually young when he started. But he had a roommate, and this roommate was studying psychology. And I don't know how many of you enjoy psychology, but John was looking at his math books and had decided that whatever his roommate was studying was more fun than what he was studying, which I don't blame. Uh, so he promptly finished up his mathematics degree and then went in to become a psychologist. So not only does he have this firm foundation in numbers, um, he became a researcher, but he also has this firm foundation in psychology. So we have this amazing combination and this math wizard that was interested in relationships but could also study really, really well and definitively defining what it is that relationships, m- makes them work. So Dr. Gottman went from MIT and then he went over to the University of Indiana and he started working with his best friend, Bob Levinson. Um, so Dr. Gottman says at the time that his relationships were not going so hot at the time, and Bob Levinson and him were interested in, uh, good relationships with women. But at the time Bob said, "We can either research good relationships or we can have them, and right now we're researchers." So the two of them set out to discover in, um, I think he would say somewhat of a selfish way, what is it that makes good relationships work. And they wanted to study relationships in a way that had never been done before. It's very difficult to predict behavior in one person, but Dr. Gottman wanted to predict behavior with two people. So they would bring couples into a laboratory setting and- Within eight hours of the couple being apart, he would have the two of them sit side by side and they would hook them up to, uh, monitors that would study how fast their hearts were beating at the time. They would see how much they were sweating by testing the palms of their hands. Um, they had monitors underneath the chairs that would measure how much they would fidget. They were called jiggleometers. Um, and then he would just ask for these couples, "I simply want for you to just catch up. Tell me about your day. What have you been doing?" So couples would turn to one another and they would start talking about sort of the mundane things about their day. Meanwhile, researchers were coding their facial expressions. They had cameras that were recording them, and back in the day, in the '70s, how large was the computer back in the '70s, right? Size of a refrigerator. All that computer was intended to do was to take the physiological data that was going on with these couples and time code it. And then he would ask for couples to switch over. "I want you to just choose a topic, something that the two of you haven't been able to agree upon. I just want you to try to solve the problem. Have this conflict conversation while we are watching you." So couples start to pick a problem. Maybe they're talking about the mother-in-law. Maybe they're talking about laundry. What are things that get underneath your skin? And they recorded the data. So they had these two snippets of time. Happy conversation, not so happy conversation. Then they sent the couples away. All they were looking for were patterns. They really didn't have a hypothesis at the time of what they were looking for. But they were looking for patterns a lot like early day astronomers that were looking at the stars, simply f- looking for something to stick out to them. So that was about thirty-five years ago. Twenty-five years ago, he goes from the University of Indiana, now he's at the University of Washington, and he opens up what he calls the Love Lab. The BBC had sort of called it the Love Lab. But what he wanted to do was he wanted to see if couples were in a natural environment for twenty-four hours, what would I see? What would stick out? What patterns would arise? So he made this one-bedroom studio apartment as, as comfortable as possible on the University of Washington's campus. It overlooked the Montlake Cut, so you could see the boats floating by. It was a beautiful setting. And he would say, "From Sunday at eight o'clock in the morning until Monday morning at eight o'clock in the morning, I want you to just come and hang out. We will not prompt you. We're not going to give you anything to do. We just simply wanna watch and observe you. But we want this to be, like, really comfortable for you. We want you to feel as if you're in a bed and breakfast. We want this to be as natural as possible." So couples would bring their creature comforts. They would bring groceries. They would bring newspapers. Um, they would bring puzzles and games, anything they could do for twenty-four hours. So in this bed and breakfast-like setting, couples would hang out. Again, they're wearing the monitor so that they could see how, how, how fast their heart was beating. Couples were, um, any time that they urinated, they would took urine samples. Um, they had a one-way mirror where researchers would be back behind coding their facial expressions. And when everything was said and done, they would go right next door and they would have their blood drawn. But Dr. Gottman assures us that it was very relaxing for couples [laughing] and it was, uh, a lot like a bed and breakfast. So then he would send these couples home, but it was a longitudinal study. So meanwhile, he's collecting all of this data, and he's starting to look for patterns. The only way that you can look for patterns is if you have this longitudinal data. Where do these couples end up? What do we know about these couples? So he had a hundred and forty-seven newlywed couples, and then he checked back in with those newlywed couples. Of those newlywed couples, seventeen of them ended up divorcing. What were the patterns? How do we know? What is distinct and different about the hundred and thirty couples that stayed together, and what is distinct and different about the seventeen couples that ended up divorcing? So remember when I said that he was very interested in being able to predict behavior. So it's hard to predict behavior for two people, even more difficult than one person. He was able to predict fifteen out of seventeen of those couples. So he said those, those, those, those, those, those, those, and when he checked back in with the couples, fifteen out of seventeen. So with ninety percent and above accuracy that those couples would end up divorcing. And he repeated this study seven times and still was able to predict with ninety percent accuracy. So we know with pretty good certainty what those behaviors are. Are you interested in knowing what it is that those couples were doing? Either the ones that weren't doing so hot and the ones that were doing well? Okay. So that is the foundation of this book. And John jokes that he's really just a researcher. He wasn't very interested in helping couples. He was making a fine living at watching these couples' relationships deteriorate. It wasn't without the bleeding heart of his beautiful, wonderful wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, that really got him interested in taking this data and turning it into something that real couples could hold onto. So that is how The Seven Principles book came to be, is they started working with couples and applying the concepts that he had learned and says, "Don't do this, but do this." And that's how The Seven Principles book came to be. So without further ado, I'm really not good at slideshows. This is really just because my husband told me to do a slideshow. So if I stay on one s- I listen. I listen. I took his, took his advice. So what is it that we learned about these couples? Well, Dr. Gottman was able to notice that the couples who'd ended up divorcing, there were four
- 11:43 – 14:15
The Four Horsemen (part 1): criticism and defensiveness (and their antidotes)
- LHLaura Heck
patterns that were specifically and incredibly destructive to relationships. So if you'll take a look up here, you notice that criticism is the first one. Criticism is incredibly common in relationships. It's incredibly common. I'm sure you're probably thinking, "Oh, yeah, I know what criticism feels like. I, I definitely have somebody that criticizes me. It's my mom. It's my wife, I criticize my partner, whatever it might be but criticism comes up in relationships all the time. Um, it looks like when you have a complaint about something, whatever it might be. The thing that I complain most about are the clothes that are left next to the bed. So my husband has this habit of undressing before bed and then there's this pile, and at the end of the week, the pile is as tall as the bed. Do you know what I'm talking about? So I could either criticize my partner and I could say something like, "You're such a slob. You treat this home like a frat house." Or I could be gentle. So the antidotes are in the blue, and I could complain rather than criticize. Criticism looks like a globalizing, uh, criticism of your partner's deficiencies. So you may say to your partner, "You're a slob." That's criticism. But if you really wanna do what the masters are doing, you would complain without blaming. You would say, "You know, I'm not so hot on all of these clothes next to the bed. I would really appreciate if you were to take the clothes and put them in the hamper." So that's what the masters are doing. I'm not telling you not to complain in your relationship, I'm just asking that you don't criticize. Okay? Second one is defensiveness. So criticism and defensiveness go hand in hand. Defensiveness is warding off a perceived attack. So if your partner is a master criticizer, you are going to become a master defender, and criticism can look like, "Well, I don't do that, but did you see this over here?" And you're sort of like counterattacking. Defensiveness can also look like whining. "Oh, why do you always pick on me?" So the masters, instead of defending themselves, they're noticing what it is that their partner is criticizing or complaining about and instead they're taking a small piece of that and taking responsibility. So my husband, if I'm gonna criticize him and say, "You're such a slob," he might say, "Yeah. You know what? Those clothes have been there for a week and I haven't picked them up." He's taking some small responsibility of it. You
- 14:15 – 20:20
The Four Horsemen (part 2): contempt and stonewalling, plus flooding and breaks
- LHLaura Heck
do not have to take the blame, but if you can find a piece of that to take responsibility for, it easily diffuses the situation. Contempt. Contempt is what Dr. Gottman refers to as sulfuric acid on the relationship. It is the most potent of all four of the horsemen. Contempt is something that comes later on in the relationship. We see it happening much later, as well as stonewalling. But contempt is when you believe, you truly believe that you are better than your partner. It looks like this: I'm smarter, I'm cleaner, I'm wiser, I'm better looking than my partner. And it comes across in statements that, um, are really, really hurtful. In fact, Dr. Gottman found that if I'm contemptuous to my partner, in the next four years, he is more likely to have communicable diseases. It takes an effect on your immune system. It actually starts to work and chip away at the immune system. So if you wanna hurt your partner, if you want them to be out sick a lot, then just be contemptuous. What are the masters doing rather than being contemptuous? The masters are scanning their environment for what it is that their partner is doing right. If you find that you are starting to slip into contempt, if you find that you are starting to think of your partner in contemptuous ways, you can change your brain by starting to recognize what is it that I truly love and appreciate about my partner. My partner may not be the smartest, but my partner is an incredibly hard worker. My partner may not be the sexiest, but my partner is an incredible father. So you can start to train your brain to be looking at your partner in fond ways and thinking of, what are the things that I really appreciate about them? Stonewalling. This is an interesting one. So Dr. Gottman found that something was happening. So let's go back to the Love Lab. He's looking at husband and wife and he notices husband is starting to escalate. His heart rate's starting to go up, and then all of a sudden he disengages from the conversation. His eyes are cast to the floor and he's no longer paying attention to his partner. Then he went back and he asked these guys, he said, "Hey, what, what's going on? What are you doing? I noticed that in this part of the conversation your heart rate started to go up. What was going on?" He found that people were starting to psychologically soothe, and in order to psychologically soothe when they were starting to feel flooded in these contemptuous conversations, these really tough conversations, they would completely disengage. They're physically still present, but they're emotionally disengaged and they are cognitively disengaging from the conversation. 80% of the time it's happening with men. Doesn't mean that women don't stonewall, it just simply means that it's more common for men. So what is it that the masters are doing instead of disengaging from that conversation? They're doing psychological self-soothing. This would mean that they might indicate, "Hey, you know what? I can't have this conversation right now. I am, I just, I need to take a break." Or they start to breathe. Whatever it might be, they're taking a break and they're not allowing themselves to disengage from the conversation because that will only escalate the partner further. Okay. Before I go on, I just wanna ask, does anybody have questions about the four horsemen? These are the four behaviors that have come up. Yes.
- SPSpeaker
I'm confused in that you described stonewalling as disengaging and psychological self-soothing, but then what you should do is also disengage in psychological self-soothing.
- LHLaura Heck
Right. Exactly. So Mike Oh, repeat the question. Okay. So she's confused about, uh, the psychological self-soothing. So what's happening is that there's this feeling of feeling emotionally flooded that comes up when you are in an argument, um, or you're having a conflict conversation. And so as you start to feel emotionally flooded, we know that that's happening physiologically 'cause the heart is starting to beat faster. When it reaches up and over 100 beats per minute, and for people who are incredibly fit, like Allison, uh, it may be more like 95, right? So once it reaches up and over 100 beats per minute, your body is starting to release chemicals that tell you fight or flight. And in order to do that, people shut down and they curl down, and they become disengaged from the conversation. What the masters are doing instead, when they start to feel the flooding come up, is they're taking a break, and they're stopping that conversation because what stonewalling looks like is this. And what a partner sees is you don't care enough to have a conversation with me right now. They escalate, so the conversation continues to go round and round. The more I raise my voice, the more you shut down. If you're not paying attention to me, now I'm going to really start to throw some fireballs at you, verbal fireballs. Any other questions? Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
But your slide says physiological self-soothing.
- LHLaura Heck
Physiological self-soothing, to start to take a break. Um, so what we teach couples is, if you feel like you're starting to feel flooded, emotionally flooded, then let's take a 20-minute break. It'll take about 20 minutes for women, about 25 minutes for w- men. Go for a walk. Maybe, um, clean. That would be what I would do. Take a bath, pet the dog, whatever it might be, and then you start to decrease. Okay. So now I wanna start talking about, we've talked about the four destructive patterns that Dr. Gottman discovered. What is it that the, uh, disasters of relationships are doing? What will cause, if left un- unattended to, what will cause a divorce? What will cause a relationship demise? I do wanna say that you probably, if you are, like, a med student, and you're going through all of the diseases, and you're starting to recognize symptoms of these diseases in yourself, it's a lot like the Four Horsemen. You can still have a healthy relationship with the Four Horsemen. But you also have
- 20:20 – 22:54
Principle 1: build ‘love maps’ to know your partner’s inner world
- LHLaura Heck
to look at some of the ways in which you can change and transform those. So if those are one of the, one of the difficulties that couples are having, what are the things that Dr. Gottman found will increase and make your relationship better? So we'll go through the principles. So principle number one has to do with having a strong marital foundation. It's called the friendship. I know it sounds kinda funny that if you're married to this person, of course you're going to be friends. But imagine being with somebody for 40 years. I know with my own personal life, sometimes I would ask, "Are my grandparents even friends? Doesn't even seem like they like each other anymore." So Dr. Gottman found that in order to have a strong relationship, it has to be a foundation of friendship. In order to increase your friendship, you have to know your partner's inner world in and out. You have to know everything about them. When you start a relationship, when you start to fall in love with someone, you're trying to decide, is this my forever? So you might ask questions like, "Well, what is your grandmother's maiden name, and what, what kind of is your favorite animal? What's your favorite color and what's your favorite holiday? What do you wanna be when you grow up?" You ask all of these questions to get to know them, and soon enough you decide, "Okay, I'm gonna settle in with you. You are my forever." But then 25 years goes by. This person has changed, but you haven't asked those questions. You have no idea who this person is any, any longer. Love maps is this metaphorical idea that you have a map of your partner's internal world. The goal is to make this map as detailed and up to date as possible. How do you do that? So I'm gonna be giving tips. You can start to use this every day in your life. You ask your partner open-ended questions. These are not questions that they can answer with a simple yes or no, or one-word answer. You're asking your partner questions that really starts to chip away at who this person is. Maybe you ask them about their hopes and dreams. "What do you wanna do in the next five years? What is one thing that you have, a goal that you have yet to realize?" Or, "How do you feel about this Republican Party right now? I mean, what do you think?" [laughs] Or, um, it might be a question like, "You know, you really, really wanted to be a mother, and we haven't had children. How do you feel about not having children right now?" These are open-ended questions. So for those of you who have an iPhone, you can actually download an app. It's $1.99. If you shake it, it gives you a new open-ended question. So-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- 22:54 – 25:55
Principle 2: nurture fondness and admiration through daily attention to positives
- LHLaura Heck
... no matter where you are, you will always have an open-ended question. You don't have to come up with them yourself. Okay, so we're still talking about that foundation of friendship. Number two is nurturing the fondness and admiration. Simply put, is that you are choosing on a daily basis to scan your environment for the positives of what your partner is doing versus the negatives. Okay? So we're going back to the bed. I wake up in the morning, I look over at my husband, he has drool coming out of his mouth.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Okay, he has his, like, retainer in so that he's not chewing on his tongue or doing whatever people do with retainers in. Um, uh, I look, I see, I notice that the clothes are on the floor. I have to, like, step over the clothes. So instantly I'm starting to think and create this world in which my husband has done all of these wrong things. Or I can wake up in the morning, and I can look over at my husband and I think- Boy, he sure looks sexy over there. He's been working out. I see some biceps coming in. And maybe I, I look a little bit more and I notice that he's curled around our one-year-old that he pulled into bed in the middle of the night, and I didn't even notice. Like, wow, what a great dad. Thank you. I enjoyed eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. So I step over that pile of clothes, I don't even notice them this time because I'm scanning my environment for the positives. What is it that my husband is doing right versus what he's doing wrong? You can use this with your children as well. If you are waiting to correct your child for every wrong thing that they do, do you really think that they're going to be looking for you when they achieve something wonderful and great? Or are you gonna wait to applaud your child when they're doing something right and really make that a big point? "That is awesome. Thank you so much for putting that back. That is fantastic." Also, with your relationships with maybe the people that you're managing, if you are rewarding people and scanning for the things that they're doing right, they're more able to do those things correctly. So fondness and admiration is really about thinking about your partner on a daily basis, about the things that they are doing correctly and that you really love about them. It's about training your brain. One thing that you can do is make it a habit every single day. And if you can't remember, do this. Set an alarm on your phone to send a text to your partner and I want you every single day to say, "Thank you so much for..." "I really appreciated it when you did this." "You're so sexy. I saw you walk out the door today and that skirt looked amazing on you." Whatever it might be. But even though you have an alarm on your phone and your partner's like, "Why does this always come in at 2:00 in the afternoon?" [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
It doesn't matter because they're going to appreciate that you're sending it at all. So if you're gonna do that, do that now.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
[laughs]
- 25:55 – 31:55
Principle 3: ‘turn toward’ bids—small things, often (and avoid digital distraction)
- LHLaura Heck
Little pro tip. So we're still talking about friendship and nurturing this friendship foundation. The third principle is turning toward. The motto is small things often. With everything that Dr. Gottman does, it is a motto of small things often. You can change the trajectory of your relationship simply by doing small things every day consistently. You do not... I will tell you this, Valentine's Day, gentlemen and ladies, you do not have to buy that $5,000 ring or that $50,000 car or take them on that $10,000 vacation. That means nothing. But if you're sending those appreciations every single day at 2:00 for 365 days, boom, free.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
So we're looking for ways to turn toward our partner. So here's the deal. Our partners on a daily basis are turning towards us, and the key is being able to recognize when they're turning toward. Because what turning toward really is, is it's a small, subtle way of saying, "I have a want, a need, a desire. Are you there for me?" So here's what turning toward looks like. Maybe I'm standing at the sink doing dishes and I notice that it's starting to snow, which it did in Salt Lake City yesterday. It's 80 degrees here. Salt Lake City, it's snowing. And I say, "Are you kidding me? It's... [sighs] Is that snow?" And my husband's in the other room. How is he gonna turn towards me? He's gonna go, "Yep." That's it. That's all you have to do. Because why am I talking out loud? You're going to say, "You're just talking to yourself." Your partner is not talking to themselves. They're talking to you. They want you to respond, and you don't have to make it a grand response. All you have to do is go, "Uh-huh," just recognizing that they're speaking to you. Bids can be overt and they can be covert. So that would be a bit of a covert bid, right? Overt bid would be that you sit next to your partner on the couch and you pull them over and you put your arm around them and you go, [tongue clicks] .
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
That right there is a bid. Now, how does the person respond? You have three choices to respond to a bid. You can turn toward them, which would be like saying, "Uh-huh," or you go, "Oh, yeah? Let's go upstairs." Or you can turn away from your partner, which would mean missing their bid or ignoring their bid. How do we ignore bids? I'll tell you. Digital distraction. That's number one way right now that people are ignoring bids. Whether you recognize it or not, if you are face down on a computer or a game or your phone, you're going to miss bids from your partner. So you can also turn against your partner. If my husband's rushing out the door and as he's rushing out the door, I say, "Oh, oh, oh, before you go, I'm gonna go grocery shopping. Is there anything special that you'd like for dinner tonight?" That's really sweet of me to ask, right? He's gonna turn against me. Here's what he says. "You know that Monday nights I go out with the guys after work. Why do you always manipulate me into staying in on these nights?" That's turning against. Okay? So you always have three options. The nice part is that with turning toward, all you have to do is just recognize when your partner is making bids and remember that you can turn toward them in very small ways every single day. If you imagine that your relationship is a lot like an emotional bank account, every time you turn towards your partner, you're putting a deposit in. This is important because when something external to the relationship really causes some pain, when something happens, when you have a fight, when the car breaks down, when one of the kids is being obnoxious and the two of you are super stressed out, you have enough of those emotional deposits in that bank account to buffer so that when you take a withdrawal, you're not overdrawn. Does that make sense? Okay. So here's the interesting part. Remember that newlywed study that was in the apartment lab? And then all of those newlyweds of those 17 newlyweds that ended up divorcing they went back and they said, "What do we know about turning toward?" And they counted. They figured out that 86% of the time the couples that are still together, they were turning toward each other's bids. But those that divorced missed them. They were only turning toward 33% of the time. You can see how important it is to recognize those bids in your relationship, the times when your partner is m- trying to reach out to you, has a want, a need, a desire, and how important it is that you're recognizing it and you're choosing to turn toward rather than away or against them. So before I move on, does anybody have questions about maybe the first three principles? So we have the love map principle, we have fondness and admiration, and we have the turning toward. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So the, I didn't get the two positives. So, so if somebody makes a bid you can decline no, you can say yes. And what's the third one? I didn't get the difference here.
- LHLaura Heck
So the difference is that you can turn toward your partner, which is basically any response that's positive to- towards your partner's bid. You can turn away from them, which looks a lot like ignoring a bid. And you can turn against them, which would mean kinda lashing back at them. Any other questions? Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Um, so in your example of, uh, your husband kind of going against, what would be a better response for him knowing that, you know-
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... if he still wants to hang out with his buddies or whatever?
- LHLaura Heck
That's a great question. So what would be a better response? If my husband was rushing out the door and I said, "Honey, what would you like for dinner tonight? I'm gonna go to the store." And rather than being rude and lashing back, he could turn around and he could say, "Oh, well, that is so nice of you to offer, but actually Monday nights is the night that I'm going out with the guys, so I won't be home tonight." So it doesn't mean that he has to change or say, "Yes, dear," or do what I want, but responding back to me with, if you, if I could sum it up, respect
- 31:55 – 36:16
Principle 4: let your partner influence you—power sharing and negotiation
- LHLaura Heck
and honor. By responding back with respect and honor, then he could still turn toward me. Okay, I'm gonna move on to the next question. Anybody else have a question? All right. So principle number four, this is moving away from the friendship foundation. We've covered the friendship foundation, and now we're starting to get into what Dr. Gottman noticed with couples, which is letting your partner influence you. He noticed that there was a vast majority of couples where most of the time they allow their partner to influence them. I have taken this to heart. Um, when it came time to buy a vehicle... How many of you have had, like, a struggle buying vehicles in your relationship? 'Cause one of you wants, like, the smart car or whatever it might be, and you want, like, the big Yukon, and you have to find something in between that fits both. So this has been an exercise in my own relationship of letting my partner influence me. And really, what it comes down to is when your partner says, "I want this," your first response is, "Okay, yes. Let's make this happen." If your partner says, "I have a dream to go back to school," that your first thought is, "Whatever you want, let's make it happen, and let's find excuses why it won't work later." But oftentimes what happens instead is that you become a roadblock, whatever it might be. Have you ever noticed that sometimes there's couples or there might be that one person that it's like, "No matter what I want, if I wanna buy this orange juice for $3.50 at the grocery store, you don't want that. You wanna buy the orange juice that's $2.99." That extra 51 cents is gonna be an argument right now. So letting your partner influence you, being able to negotiate, being able to say, "Why is this so important? Tell me more," rather than immediately saying no. That's a big deal. So you can see there's a statistic up here, 81% divorce rate when men are not willing to share power. Eventually, what ended up happening is that Dr. Gottman found that when men were saying no, when they weren't even willing to entertain negotiation with their partner, when it was a power struggle, 81% of those times they ended up divorcing. It's powerful. Being able to say, "Why is this important to you? Let's just have a conversation." It's not, "Yes, dear." I have to say that part. It's not, "Yes, husband." It's, "Why is this important? If it's important to you, let's at least entertain the idea and let's talk." Any questions? Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Which year was the study made? Because, like, I read pretty much the reverse statistics.
- LHLaura Heck
The reverse statistics?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. [laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
So what would the reverse statistic be?
- SPSpeaker
No, I mean, I read about the Gen X, for instance, about the men versus women and the way in US in particular, because of the high divorce rate and the kids staying with, uh, with their moms. What happens with the Gen Xers that now that they're growing, the male actually are insecure and searching all their life or the other way around, the women. And I'm not Gen X, I'm Gen Y. [laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
I'm not grown up here. My parents aren't divorced, everything.
- LHLaura Heck
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
So I was wondering if this is coming from the '80s, from the '90s, et cetera.
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah. So it is. The, uh, most of Dr. Gottman's research, especially with the research lab, is coming from, uh, I think the '90s, actually. So, uh, but I would be interested to know what it is. Are you saying that the, the, the inverse of it is that women are unwilling to yield power?
- SPSpeaker
No, no, nothing like that. What I'm saying is that the, this stro- strong kind of macho culture has gone away for the years.
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah. Okay, now I know where you're going with that. Yeah. Um, so yes, to answer your question, the research does go back quite a bit because he did the majority of his research over the last 40 years. So a lot of it is not, um, going to cite things that are happening now and moving forward. Yeah Any other questions about yielding power, saying yes? Okay. So of the complaints that come in, so I, I had mentioned I'm a couples therapist. Number
- 36:16 – 40:44
Conflict basics: solvable vs perpetual problems (and why most never disappear)
- LHLaura Heck
one thing, couples come and they say, "We're having trouble communicating. We have conflict all the time." Dr. Gottman really wanted to figure out what is it that the masters are doing to solve their conflict. So what I will start talking about now is what is it that they're doing when it comes to conflict. You can have two types of conflict. It's either solvable or it's perpetual. Fundamental difference between solvable problems and perpetual problems. How many, what percentage, I'm just curious, what percentage do you think of happy couples do you think they would be able to solve their problems? Happy masters of relationships, what percentage are able to solve their problems? Or what percentage of problems are they able to solve? That's probably a better way to put it. What do you think? 50%. 80. Anybody else? What's that? 30%. It's low. Bar is low for you, huh?
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Okay. Okay. So truth be told, Dr. Gottman found that of all conflict with couples that were thriving, that were happy, they were only able to solve 31% of those problems. Yeah, so is that encouraging for you? Or is that discouraging?
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Like, that you're gonna have 69% of these problems that are just gonna stick around for the rest of your life. There was one researcher, and I like this, that he said, "When you stand up on that altar, really what you're doing is you are agreeing to the 50 years of problems that the two of you are going to have."
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
For the next 50 years, we are signing up for this conflict. What Dr. Gottman found is that he was doing these longitudinal studies. He would have these couples come in, he'd hook them up to their little jigglometers, and he would say, "Nice to see you again. Your clothes have changed, your hair has changed. It's nice to see you after four years. I want you guys to just choose a conflict and just kinda sort it out. Something that the two of you can't agree on." What happened? He said that he could put the tape of them rolling four years prior to the tape of them now, a few more gray hairs, their clothes are a little more in style, maybe a few more pounds. Same conflict. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Same conflict. So that means that these couples, 69% of them, they're perpetual problems. Why are they perpetual? It's because we are unique, wonderful human beings. And m- what makes me up, my value system, my likes, my dislikes, is different from my partner's value system, likes, and dislikes. It's the fundamental things that make me who I am. So if I'm an introvert, which I am, believe me.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
And my husband is an extrovert, when Friday night comes around, what do I wanna do?
- SPSpeaker
Stay in.
- LHLaura Heck
I wanna watch Netflix. I wanna eat ice cream. I wanna sit on the th- the couch, and I just wanna veg. What does my husband wanna do? He wants to go out every Friday night. Is this a conflict? Absolutely. So other differences. Am I neat? Yes, I'm neat. Is my husband not so neat? Absolutely. These are things about the two of us that are a little different, and so these are the perpetual problems. The problem is that when you don't know the difference between perpetual and solvable, is that you end up getting gridlocked, and you think there has to be a way to solve this. But unfortunately, it's not about solving your perpetual problems, it's about learning how to communicate through those perpetual problems in a different way that's still honoring and respecting your partner. So how are the masters talking through those solvable problems, the 31% of those solvable problems? What are the solvable problems? These are things like, how are we gonna use our tax refund? We're obviously gonna buy a hot tub, guys.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Or whose house are we going to go to for Memorial Day? My mom's house? Your house? What are we going to do? How are we gonna celebrate? These are solvable problems. They often tend to be short-term in nature. So a solvable problem would probably be something similar like, if my... If we can't figure out what to do for childcare, it goes away after 18 years, right? Eventually, you don't have that as a problem any longer.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
You hope it's on YouTube.
- LHLaura Heck
And then they bring their munchkin, and then you're the childcare for their munchkin.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- 40:44 – 50:37
Principle 5 (skills for solvable conflict): gentle startup, repair attempts, and self-soothing
- LHLaura Heck
So the masters are doing some really amazing things. When they have a conflict conversation, if you can take these skills home, this would be fantastic. Number one, the skill that the masters are doing is that they're bringing up a complaint, which is okay. To criticize is not okay. They're bringing it up in a really gentle way. They're incredibly skillful. So if you can be, think of it as like putting on the art of manipulation. How can I bring this complaint up in a way in which my partner is going to hear me and is going to be willing to work with me on this? And if it's a surefire way to blow it, you can bring it up by saying, "You always," or, "You never." Right? How many times does you always and you never end right? How many times do you actually get your partner to say, "You know what? You're absolutely right. I am always a slob. I am always doing this." So if you wanna blow it, start it like that. But if you don't, you bring your complaint up by using I statements, and you're describing what's going on in a non-judgmental way. "You know, honey, I, I notice that there's clothes next to the bed again. And I would really appreciate it if you could undress next to the hamper rather than undressing next to the bed. Do you think maybe you could do that?" It's pretty gentle. You think he'd be willing to give it a shot, at least that night? Yeah. [laughs] Poor guy, he gets thrown under the bus so much. [laughs] Um, what is something else that the masters are doing? So here's an interesting statistic. Dr. Gottman can tell how a conversation is going to end by how it starts. So he watches the first three minutes of a conflict conversation and he says, "Oh yeah, I know how that's gonna end." You know how? 96% of the time if it starts off gentle and kind, it will end gentle and kind. If you want to get what you want, ask for it in a nice way. I mean, it, it's kind of a no-brainer, right? But that's not always what happens. Here's another thing about the first skill. Who do you think's most often going to bring up conflict in a relationship, the man or the woman? The woman. It's the woman, yeah. You were like... [laughs] Yes, it is the woman. Most of the time the female is going to complain, and that's absolutely true. Okay, skill number two. People who are starting a conflict conversation, they are making repairs all the time. So you may start off by with a, "You always," or, "You never," but that doesn't mean that you have to be doomed. You can make a repair and you can turn that conversation around. So if you imagine being a truck driver, have you ever seen those ramps where the trucks when they lose their brakes they have to go up the ramp? That's sort of like what a repair attempt is. It's using that ramp to stop the trajectory and the speed and the momentum of the conversation. So you're using a repair attempt and you're saying, "You know what? I, I really think we're going off track here. I, I, I think I need to start over." Or, "You know what? I'm really sorry. I used a blaming statement there. I'd like to turn this around." So there is an entire sheet of repair attempts, and it feels a little weird at first. And when I say entire sheet, there's an entire page of repair attempts in here that you can use when you start to notice that the conversation is getting derailed. What makes the repair attempt so powerful is whether or not you have that foundation of friendship. So you can use a repair attempt, but your partner won't hear that unless you have a strong foundation of a friendship, which is why Dr. Gottman said it's so important. So if you're using a repair attempt, I use this an ex- as an example. Um, two of my friends are driving in a car. I'm in the backseat. They bicker back and forth. They're going, going, going. I'm not paying any attention. I'm probably on Facebook on my phone. And all of a sudden the car gets silent, and I look up and I notice that the driver is staring straight ahead, passenger is staring out the window. And me as a couples therapist, I'm like, "Ooh." [laughs] This is juicy. What's gonna happen? So about 30 seconds go by and the tension is really high. And then all of a sudden passenger turns around and licks the driver from her jaw, his jaw up to his ear. It's disgusting, right? [laughs] But do you know what that was? That was a repair attempt- [laughs] ... believe it or not. So a repair attempt is anything that you do to take something that's getting derailed, a conversation, an interaction, and change it. Did he accept the repair attempt? [laughs] Absolutely. How could you not? How could you ignore a lick on the face? [laughs] Anyway, I digress. [laughs] You can make repair attempts, but what makes it most potent is whether or not you have that friendship foundation and whether or not your partner accepts your repair. Okay, so we talked about flooding a little bit when we were talking about stonewalling, what ends up happening when you're getting emotionally flooded. So being emotionally flooded can feel a lot of different ways for different people. You can get a tightness in your chest. So imagine that you're having a conflict conversation with your partner and it's really, really going bad. In your head you're thinking, "Oh, no. Not this again." And maybe your partner just thinks, "If I just raise my voice he'll hear me eventually," right? Or, "Maybe I should just, uh, throw a few things to get his attention." So you might start to feel physiologically aroused, so your heart starts beating. Your face might feel flushed. You might start sweating a lot, or maybe you start to get tunnel vision. Have you ever had road rage so bad where you literally didn't... I mean, it's Seattle, so I'm sure all of us have had road rage at some point, but where you've almost feel as if like you lose vision, or you can't hear any longer, or your heart is just pounding out of your chest. That's what it feels like to be flooded. But the masters are recognizing before they get flooded, that they need to do some psychological and physiological self-soothing, which means that they're stopping the conversation. Now, this feels a little weird for some people. "Well, if we stop the conversation, we'll never get back to it." The rule of thumb is, if we stop the conversation, we're coming back to it in 20 minutes. So one of you indicates, "I'm feeling, I'm feeling flooded. We need to take a break," and they go their separate ways. In order to take a break where your body is going to be able to self-soothe and relax and come back down, you have to leave your partner's sight. So it's not the two of you sitting in silence staring at each other. [laughs] You have to change the course of where your mind is going, so you have to think about something that's pleasing. This is not an opportunity to formulate your rebuttal. So you're gonna start thinking about ponies and rainbows and all of those wonderful things. Um, so I'm just curious for you guys, what do you do to calm down? What do you do to soothe? You go for a walk. Walk the dog. Walk the dog. Facebook. I know. I do it, too. Clean, take a shower, work out. Work- Cook. What's that? Cook. Cook? Awesome. Come to my house. We'll all cook together. Yeah. So you're going to do something that is soothing for 20 minutes and then you're going to come back to the conversation and by that point, here's the interesting part, why is it that we're taking a break? What is it about flooding that you have to take a break? It's because you're no longer using your prefrontal cortex. You literally flip your lid. Your body says, "I'm in fight or flight, I can't use my prefrontal cortex, I need to use my reptilian brain now because this is going to save me." So now you're using the back of your brain and you're not able to have a conversation that is logical with your partner. What ends up happening and why people get hurt so badly in conversations where they are flooded, is that they keep trying to have the conversation but they're no longer using logic or reason. Has anybody seen that YouTube clip, it's these two one-year-old babies, they're twin boys, they're in the kitchen, they're both in diapers, and they're talking to each other in baby babble and one's going, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then the other one, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." That's what it looks like when two adults are physiologically flooded, is there's nothing going on up here. It's just babble at that point. So any questions about self-soothing or flooding?
- SPSpeaker
In such situations, sometimes when you want to come back and continue the conversation, the spouse is not ready for it. Uh, it happens more often than not-
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... I think. And they're like, "I don't want to discuss it anymore." What do you do then?
- LHLaura Heck
So what do you do when you come back from your break and your partner doesn't want to discuss it anymore? It has to be an agreement. There has to be an agreement that if you're going to have this conversation and one of you is feeling flooded and needs to take a break, that it has to be an agreement to come back to it. Because if it's a conflict, if it's important to you to solve the problem, it's important to both of you. So it needs to be a conversation. But sometimes your partner may say, "I'm still flooded," or, "I'm, I'm really hurt." And at that point, maybe you need to do some repairing in order to get back to the point where you want to have that conversation again. I think one of the common misconceptions is the idea of don't go to bed angry. This is actually really harmful because if you are so worked up and you're trying to solve the problem and you're no longer using your prefrontal cortex, now you're in your reptilian brain, but all you want to have to do is solve the problem because we have to go to bed, you end up exhausted the next day, you haven't solved the problem, and now you don't like your partner anymore. So go to bed, take, take a
- 50:37 – 54:56
A practical compromise tool: ‘inflexible’ vs ‘flexible’ circles to find common ground
- LHLaura Heck
nap, do what you need to do so that you come back to it. Not all arguments or conflicts will be solved in the moment. It might take a couple of days to work through a conflict. But being able to respect when your partner is flooded is number one, and recognize that they need to self-soothe. Okay. So what do you do if you do have a solvable problem? 31% of those solvable problems. How do you actually go through to solve them? This is something that we recommend, is that you draw these circles on a piece of paper and the circle in the inside is your inflexible area. So let's just pick a solvable problem. What are we gonna solve? Car. So my husband wants to get... What's that?
- SPSpeaker
What movie to see.
- LHLaura Heck
What movie to see? I need something that's a little juicier.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Something that's gonna actually... I'm gonna go with car, just because it sort of has some value systems around money. So let's say that my husband wants to get the, um, new Tesla that just came out and I want to buy the used minivan for $5,000.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
So [laughs] you're giggling, but that happened.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
Um, [laughs] so what's happening is the two of us need a new vehicle and he wants to get the Tesla. Let's just, I don't even know how much Teslas run, but they're expensive, right? So he wants to get the new Tesla, I want to get the minivan. It's all sort of grounded in money. We kind of have money issues. I'm the saver, he's the spender. That's a perpetual problem that comes up a lot in relationships. But we need to actually solve it because we need a vehicle. So my areas of inflexibility are going to be the areas that if I was to compromise on these issues, it would feel as if I was breaking the bones of my own body because it was so tied to my value system, so tied to my worldview, so tied to who I am as a human being, that if I was to compromise, I would have the same argument with him two months from now. So I'm gonna write in the center circle that I think it is incredibly important that we only pay cash for cars. That's just a value system. Dave Ramsey taught me that. So he's gonna put in his inner circle that his core need, his core desire, is tied to... What would be my husband's core need for this? I was gonna say to look cool, but maybe his core need is that he's worked really, really hard to become a VP, and now that he's there, he needs a car that also represents that he's a VP. So maybe that's his core need, is like this feeling of status or this feeling of needing to reward himself for his hard work. So now that we have our core areas of inflexibility, now we're gonna talk about what the areas of flexibility are. So my area of flexibility is, you know what, I'm flexible on the color of the car, I'm flexible on, uh, you know, whether or not it's four-wheel-drive, I'm flexible whether or not, we don't get a minivan, it doesn't have to do with the sliding door. But maybe my area of inflexibility might be that I don't want to spend any more than $30,000 on a car. So then he's like, "Oh, boy, that Tesla's not happening anytime soon." Um, so this is how you find common ground. The most important piece about this exercise is that the two of you are putting down the pieces that are most important to you and those are sort of like the we're not willing to yield on these. Being willing to yield is important, but the inner circle, it's small for a reason. You don't wanna have too many areas of inflexibility. The goal is wanting to compromise with your partner. But if you indicate what areas it is that if you were to yield on it, it would feel as if you're breaking your own bones, why would you wanna compromise your partner's values in order to get what you want? Any steps about this area? Okay. So now we're at principle six. We've gone through some of the friendship foundation. We've
- 54:56 – 57:59
Principle 6: overcoming gridlock in perpetual problems through empathy and perspective-taking
- LHLaura Heck
talked a little bit about, um, yielding to your partner. Now we're overcoming gridlock. So there's perpetual problems in the relationship and there are solvable problems in the relationship. But sometimes you get really gridlocked. You know that you're feeling gridlocked on an issue because every time it comes up, all of a sudden you feel like, "Oh, not this again." Or you go from zero to 60 within, like, two seconds of talking about that topic. Or you feel even more polarized. Like, you started off pretty close, you were almost willing to negotiate, but now that you're gridlocked, you guys are dif- on total opposite ends. You lose your sense of humor. You're no longer willing to negotiate with your partner. What do you do? The masters figured out that in order to overcome gridlock in relationships, you have to suspend the desire to solve that problem and see from your partner's perspective. We call this empathy. So one of the things that couples can do is that you can sit on opposite ides- sides of the couch, and you can say, "I, I understand that we're pretty gridlocked on this issue, and I'm willing to hear your perspective." In every argument and disagreement, there are two perspectives. Both of them are correct. Both of them are right. You feel so strongly about this side, and he feels so strongly about this side, that you have to be willing to understand what is it, why are you so, why are you so focused on this? Why is this so important? And if you're willing to hear your partner and they're willing to hear you, suddenly you have much more respect for where your partner's perspective is coming from. So what we ask for couples to do is they take turns. One couple will start off and, and you'll ask questions like, "Tell me why this is so important to you. Tell me why you are so focused on this one thing. I'm really curious." You're suspending judgment, you're suspending the desire to solve the problem, and all you're doing is listening. It's incredible when you see people who are fighting, if you give them the opportunity to just state their perspective in full without being someone interjecting or poking holes in them, how amazing that starts to deescalate everything. So one partner takes turns, maybe it's 10 minutes, and all you do is just listen. Tell me your perspective. From your perspective, why is this important? And when they're done, you state back and you say, "So this is what I think is your perspective. This is what I hear you saying." And then you swap, and the other person gets to share their perspective. Did you solve the problem? Not at all. All you did was had the opportunity to share why it was so important to you. This is the last and final principle, and then you all can leave me for the day. So once you have learned to master a friendship in your relationship, and you have
- 57:59 – 1:08:09
Principle 7: creating shared meaning—rituals, roles, goals, and symbols (plus closing Q&A)
- LHLaura Heck
learned to master how to solve conflict in a, in a healthy way, the final way is to create meaning in your relationship. So couples come in and they say, "Is this all that there is? Is this... Are we just procreate, we have babies, we see family and friends on the weekends, and is this really all there is? I go to work, I come home. Like, it feels like we're roommates. There's nothing really substantial to our relationship that's creating meaning." And Dr. Gottman found that for healthy, happy, thriving couples, they're creating meaning in a lot of different ways. They're moving from I or me to we, and the way that you create we in your relationship is to look at these four pillars. Number one is rituals. You can create rituals in your relationship that create beautiful meaning, but more importantly, it creates an opportunity to connect on a really reliable time and space. So a ritual in our household is in the morning when my baby wakes up, husband hears the baby and me waking up, and he brings me up a cup of coffee, and we play in the big family bed for 10 minutes. It's wonderful. I look forward to it, he looks forward to it. I feel cared for, and we have connected first thing in the morning. Another ritual that I really like is one partner, I had a couple come to me and they started every evening once the kids went to bed, he would put the teakettle on the stove, and by the time it was done and whistling, the wife would come in and they would sit on opposite id- sides of the couch, and they would sip on their tea, and they would massage each other's feet and catch up about the day, right? How many of you would like that? So that's a ritual that they are looking forward to. It's something that's unique and special to their relationship, but it's also something that they have as a time that they can connect every single day. Roles. How do you make roles unique and special in the family within this relationship? You can ask one another, "What do you want your role as husband to be? Like, what did you envision as a husband? Did you envision being, um, the emotional person in the relationship, or did you envision providing for the family? And if that's what you envision, how can we make this happen?" Or a role in the family might be that you're the caretaker, so every time somebody gets sick, and this is true in my family, um, I'm not the caretaker, by the way Uh, but I have a stepmom, and she's incredible. She's the caretaker for the entire block. But that was something that is unique and special for her, and everybody embraces that. So she takes care of everybody. When somebody gets sick, they are pampered. They have the special blankie. They have the neti pot. They have, like, feet warmers. I mean, she goes above and beyond, but that's a role that is really special to her that has created meaning in their relationship. Common goals. Do you know where John and Julie Gottman are right now? They're hiking. They're actually backpacking. Um, for those of you that don't know, John is in his 70s now, and Julie loves to hike, and that's something that she does. And John likes to say that he's not willing to go anywhere unless there's room service. But John's hiking, which is pretty incredible. So they have this common goal, and he's joining Julie on this goal that she has of hiking. Even more is that when John and Julie met each other, Julie had this goal, "I want to help as many couples as possible." John had the research. Julie had the know-how. They came together, and they created a special goal and meaning around their relationship that they are going to touch as many lives as possible, and look at them now. So the final pillar is symbols, and this would be things that have shared meaning in your relationship. It might be a cross. It might be a family portrait, but it's a tangible item that has meaning of the we within the relationship. So Dr. Gottman says that this is really like the top of the house, that once you have built this foundation and the pillars of this relationship, creating shared meaning is really like the top of the house, and thus there are the seven principles for making your marriage work. So I will entertain... I n- recognize that we're four minutes over 1:00. Um, I have about 10 minutes that I can answer questions if you have any questions about the seven principles, and I'll stick around.
- SPSpeaker
We work for Google. All of us-
- LHLaura Heck
Yes
- SPSpeaker
... these are Googlers. How can we help? I mean, what can a company like Google with our technologies, with our power do to help people?
- LHLaura Heck
Um, what can you do at Google? How can your skill set help touch people's lives?
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- LHLaura Heck
Um, well, you have a very broad audience, and-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- LHLaura Heck
... you have people who have done incredible research and are really just looking for that research-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- LHLaura Heck
... to be sort of distilled down, so as much as we can get that information out. So what we're finding is that John and Julie Gottman, they hold these couples workshops, and people fly in from all around the world. And they have 250 couples attend these workshops.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- LHLaura Heck
And they're training as many therapists as they can to get this information out. But what's really going to broaden the audience is being able to use technology to get it out there, getting videos to people, getting talks like this to the masses. That's what I would say.
- SPSpeaker
So YouTube.
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] Thanks.
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah. You bet.
- SPSpeaker
So perhaps except for the licking part, uh, is there, are there any of those tips or principles or guidelines not applicable to workplace relationships?
- LHLaura Heck
Okay, so are any of these principles not applicable to workplace relationships? Um, nope, not a single one. Um, they are all directly applicable. Here's what I'll say about workplace relationships, and, um, I will say this specifically between males and females, that if you have a partner at home, you wanna be comfortable or careful about your boundaries. So the information that you're sharing with your partner is going to be different with the information that you're sharing with- in the workplace. This is if you have, like, male/female workplace coworkers. But all of these are directly applicable, so knowing, um, your coworker, asking them open-ended questions. It's really incredible what can change with the dynamic of someone that you're working with. Let's just say that you only are coming together and all you have is shop talk, just trying to solve problems related to your work description. But if you happen to know that this person really enjoys golf on the weekends and you ask them like, "Hey, did you happen to go golfing this weekend?" And, "How are the kids?" Or, "I know that your birthday's coming up." Knowing the inner pieces, um, having a love map for the people that you work with is important. The other part is have you ever noticed this is the repair part? Maybe you said something that might have been, uh, misconstrued or perhaps made your coworker upset in some way. You can use a repair to get you back on track. So all of these are directly applicable. Yeah. There isn't research that's been done yet by Dr. Gottman on that relationship, only on intimate relationships, but there is a program that's being developed for coworkers in a professional setting. Any other questions? Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Sure. Maybe you have advice. The, um, how to complain without criticism-
- LHLaura Heck
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... I think is the way you phrase it. Um, how do you complain? I see how it's better to describe how you're feeling-
- LHLaura Heck
Right
- SPSpeaker
... and how, what's, what bothers you instead of just saying, "You always do this."
- LHLaura Heck
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Um, but even that can sound passive aggressive and whiny. If you just use the, the words the other way, it can still come across as an attack. So how do you actually practice, uh, communicating instead of just attacking passive aggressively?
- LHLaura Heck
Okay. Um, so if you're using, like, an I statement. So, um, passive aggressive, so part of the passive aggressive piece is when people don't take ownership for something, and what you're, what we're really asking is that you're taking ownership of what's bothering you. And that's okay because when things store up, they sort of are like a volcano. They bubble to the surface. So we're asking that people take some ownership of something that's bothering them and use the I statement. So, um, "I'm upset about this. I'm frustrated. I'm hurt. I'm sad. I'm lonely." And when you take ownership of that, it loses the passive aggressive piece 'cause you're really not doing passive. You're taking ownership. You're being more assertive in your relationship. Um, so, "I'm lonely. I haven't seen you for the last three nights." That's true, right? So you're describing what's going on in a nonjudgmental way. You're simply stating what's going on. "I haven't seen you for the last three nights. I'm lonely. I'd really like it if we could schedule a date night sometime this week so that we can reconnect." Or, "I was really hurt when you didn't introduce me to your boss this afternoon. I really would love to get to know the people in your life that you're spending most of your day with. Do you mind if maybe we could go out for dinner with him and his wife sometime next week?" Whatever it might be. I don't know if I answered your question, but part of the, part of the piece about complaining is that I'm not saying that it's not going to... Nobody likes to complain, right? You don't like to complain. You don't like to hear complaints. But what we're trying to do is that we're trying to change the complaints so that the criticism, so that they're not criticizing your partner in a global way. You're certainly going to complain about this one thing right here, and you're not going to store it up rather than globalizing it and criticizing your partner altogether. Any other questions? No? Okay, I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your workday. [audience applauding] Yeah. Thank you.
Episode duration: 1:08:11
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Transcript of episode 5rqBAUbVFKQ
