How to Talk with Anyone about Anything, page 1
Copyright
How to Talk with Anyone about Anything
Copyright © 2024 Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt
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ISBN 978-1-4003-3750-7 (audiobook)
ISBN 978-1-400-33749-1 (ePub)
ISBN 978-1-4003-4520-5 (ITPE)
ISBN 978-1-4003-3747-7 (HC)
Epub Edition JULY 2024 9781400337491
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023945442
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In 2010 in Abiquiu, New Mexico, we met with a group
of our colleagues who were relationship scientists,
therapists, and advocates. The group discussed
ways to make relationship education available to
the public so people would have access to learnable
skills before they had relationships in crisis.
This book is dedicated to this group, who named
themselves Relationships First and adopted the
vision of moving dialogue skills out of the clinic
and into the culture. This vision evolved into an
organization that became Quantum Connections,
which trains people to teach our Safe Conversations
Dialogue Skills in communities everywhere.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
Part 1 Chapter One: The Problem
Chapter Two: The Solution
Part 2 Chapter Three: A Structured Dialogue
Chapter Four: Empathy with Everyone
Chapter Five: Practice Zero Negativity
Chapter Six: The Practice of Affirmations
Part 3 Chapter Seven: The Space-Between
Chapter Eight: Safe Conversations Work in Every Aspect of Life
Chapter Nine: The Power of Safe Conversations in Groups
Chapter Ten: Safe Conversations at Work
Part 4 Chapter Eleven: Healthy Brains
Chapter Twelve: Healthy Relationships
Conclusion
Additional Resources
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Authors
Foreword
We are honored to be invited by Helen and Harville to offer a foreword for their wonderful and practical guide to creating collaborative connections through a methodology they’ve developed over many years, Safe Conversations. We have both personally as a couple and professionally in our roles, including as a psychiatrist, attorney, educator, and mediator, found this method to be profoundly helpful in approaching challenging conflicts with a compassionate and effective way of moving from tension to more ease, disconnection to connection, and polarization to understanding.
In this comprehensive book you’ll find fundamental principles, illuminating examples, practical tips, and relational wisdom cultivated by two heroes in the field of interpersonal well-being. Beyond their initial contributions to couples’ resilience, How to Talk with Anyone about Anything takes us on a journey to explore how we can make relationships in families, schools, companies, communities, and governments more productive. If you’re interested in learning to communicate in a way that goes beyond differences—while allowing people with differing opinions and views to stay connected—then this book is for you.
In many ways, you as a reader may find these pages filled with moments of insight into your own creative applications of Safe Conversations that help you to expand on their fundamental building blocks of reaching out for time to connect, presenting an issue from a non-blaming “I experience” stance. Then the other, receiving person reflects back what was heard and offers statements about how this new understanding can bring empathic connection to the two in dialogue.
As Helen and Harville point out, disconnection results from speaking in monologues, not dialogues. A dialogue that mirrors, validates, and empathizes is the “royal road” to mutuality. Their emphasis is on how we speak with each other, as only then can we feel seen, heard, valued, and safe, both physically and emotionally. At a time when local, national, and global events are dividing families, friends, neighbors, classmates, and coworkers, we need the wisdom of relationship skills now more than ever to promote and restore connection.
Our human brains are built on millions of years of evolution, our mammalian heritage making us social from the very beginning. This two-hundred-million-year history of highlighting the life-affirming nature of our social connections means that we evolved to be in deep relationship with one another for optimal well-being. Yet when disconnection arises and we don’t experience closeness or care, connection or belonging, our physical and mental health suffer. The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.
On a global scale, what this means is that the polycrisis we find ourselves facing—polarization in opinion, disconnection as loneliness and despair, racism and social injustice, and even the destruction of our natural environment—may be seen as arising from the individualistic nature of modern culture. When our human identity is defined as only our skin-encased bodies, when we equate the “self” only as the solo-self of the “individual,” then little focus is placed on the importance of relational connections. Instead, when we see the human mind as both fully embodied and fully relational, we can see that this is a case of mistaken identity that leaves us with a sense of hopelessness and isolation. As US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has emphasized, we are in a crisis of isolation and loneliness with serious medical consequences, both physically and mentally.
Safe Conversations, so powerfully created and here relayed to us as fortunate recipients, gives us a way forward. By teaching us how to reach out to others and reach in to our own inner worlds, the structure of these invitations for connection by its fundamental nature is to create integration—the honoring of differences and the cultivation of compassionate linkages. Across a wide review of a vast array of sciences, clinical disciplines, Indigenous teachings, and contemplative practices, integration can be seen as the common ground of resilience and well-being. Whether Safe Conversations are practiced for the closeness of a romantic couple or the broader settings of companies and countries, learning to integrate our relationships with people and the planet is the pathway we need to bring a sense of wholeness back into our often-fractured lives.
Thank you, Helen and Harville, for creating and sharing this important contribution to our personal, professional, and planetary well-being. Those of us who read this book and apply its wisdom out in the world will be harnessing the “pervasive leadership” role in which each of us is capable—in whatever ways our skills and capacities allow—of bringing more integrative well-being into the world. Take in the wisdom of this shared mission and try out its practical suggestions. We’re excited for how you will apply these practical and purposeful steps of connection in your own life journey. May we all find connection in the Safe Conversations ahead, and may we enjoy the journey to create a more collaborative and compassionate world.
Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.
Caroline S. Welch, J.D.
Introduction
Have you ever . . .
. . . been upset, surprised, or shocked that a person you care about is on the opposing side of an important issue?
. . . experienced judgment or chastisement for expressing your opinion?
. . . been trolled or canceled online for speaking your truth?
. . . left a conversation feeling victimized and/or exhausted?
. . . wondered why a simple discussion escalated into an all-out war of words?
. . . lost a job, friend, or intimate partner over a difference of opinion?
. . . offended someone without meaning to?
. . . felt like someone was talking at you, rather than with you?
. . . found yourself
. . . felt like you were sticking your neck out every time you mentioned your political or religious views?
If so, you are not alone. As you have no doubt noticed, we are living and working in contentious times. Offering an opinion these days can seem like lighting a fuse.
If you hesitate to speak out for fear of triggering an argument or provoking criticism, you have a lot of company. Civil conversation has become increasingly rare, as has productive communication.
Look around a restaurant, party, or park, and often it seems that most people are more focused on their phones than on interacting with one another or the world around them. When we do talk to one another, whether face-to-face, on social media, or via texts and emails, it seems that conversations can take an ugly turn in a split second.
More than ever, verbal clashes seem to arise in family gatherings and during conversations at work, in social settings, and within organizations and groups.
Whatever happened to welcoming other viewpoints, or listening with empathy and understanding? Let’s face it: most of us are great talkers but lousy listeners. Is this because we are afraid of what we might hear?
Pandemics, warfare, natural disasters, and political upheaval have driven us apart, isolated us, and sent us fleeing for shelter. Far too often these days, you may find yourself feeling stressed out, burned out, and checked out.
Clearly, we need a way to restore safety and civility to our daily interactions so we can talk to one another without triggering arguments or violence. Our method for doing this is to replace one-way monologue conversations with two-way dialogues that put you on a path to safer and more productive interactions and relationships.
That is why we have written this book: to offer you dialogue skills that will help you have Safe Conversations that connect you with others in ways that enhance mutual respect and understanding, and lead to productive solutions.
We developed these skills while spending decades as therapists and therapist trainers. Previously, our successful practice focused on helping client couples have more successful relationships by teaching them how to improve their conversations through dialogue. Now we want to expand that work by teaching Safe Conversations Dialogue to a wider audience with the goal of connecting individuals, groups, and organizations across society and around the world. Yes, we are so enthusiastic about our methods that we have targeted the whole of humanity.
The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. In these stressful times, many relationships have suffered because this information has not been widely distributed. We want to help change that.
Most people want mutually supportive, productive relationships in all areas of their lives, but many have not figured out how to build them. Until now.
Our Safe Conversations Dialogue process is time-tested and proven in therapy offices around the world with thousands of couples and in countless workshops with couples, individuals, and families. It has also been tested in educational institutions, religious organizations, corporations, unions, and international conflict situations with consistent positive results.
Our approach is so simple that there are only a few things you need to learn to transform your own conversations and interactions, even with those who may disagree with you. Our goal is not simply to help you connect to others so you can communicate calmly and without rancor; we want to improve the quality of all relationships across all divides.
Our History
We began developing the skills that led to creating Safe Conversations Dialogue in Helen’s living room in 1977, when we first began dating. We had both gone through painful divorces, and we were eager to make our relationship work despite our differences.
One day, we were having an intense conversation that became heated. During the fight, Helen shouted, “Stop!” She then suggested, “Let’s take turns. One of us talks, and the other listens.”
Since this calmed us down, noticeably, it seemed like a good idea. So we settled down, taking turns speaking and listening to each other. This proved to be highly effective and much more pleasant than our own version of The War of the Roses.
The calm we felt was instructive. From the first time we tried this approach, we noticed that our emotions took a back seat to our intellects. This is a phenomenon called “regulating” in psychology. Self-regulating, or controlling your feelings in conversations, is generally deemed to be a good thing, even a sign of maturity.
In this instance, we coregulated each other, and the outcome was more profound and lasting than self-regulation. We paid more attention to each other’s words and the emotions behind them. Rather than judging each other, we tried to learn from each other, embracing curiosity rather than anger or frustration. It was a subtle shift, but the impact was profound. We discovered the magic of slowing down to take turns talking, listening, and seeking to understand each other at a deeper level. From our earliest days of dating, we shared a mutual curiosity about why our previous marriages had failed. We wanted to avoid making the same mistakes. We shared an emotional and intellectual interest about what it takes to create a healthy relationship since we both have degrees in psychology and therapy, and we understood a lot about human behavior.
In our discussions about our personal situations, we came to realize that while we were creative and accomplished people, we also were vulnerable and defensive. Even though we cared about each other, we had conflicts similar to those in our previous marriages—and our conflicts were similar to those we each had in our childhoods with our caretakers. That was a shocking discovery.
As therapists, we’d thought initially that the answer to helping two people connect was to teach them how to practice conflict resolution by problem-solving, which was the main methodology of the marital therapy profession at that time. Later, we realized that the baggage we carry from our pasts can interfere with how we connect in our adult relationships.
Then we made two important discoveries: First, the problem behind tension and conflict is that everyone seems to “object to difference.” All too often, when we try to talk with others about things on which we differ, we struggle because of how we talk to each other, not what we talk about.
Second, the tension and conflict caused by our objection to differences produces polarization and disconnection. Since this seems to be the human condition, and not unique to us, it’s probably true for you and most others.
We have built our lives around sharing these discoveries through our Imago Relationship Therapy clinical practice, our couples’ workshops, and in our training of other professionals.
Our work served as the foundation for our bestselling book Getting the Love You Want, which was first published in 1988. Oprah Winfrey became a big fan of the book and featured it seventeen times on her show. It became a New York Times bestseller eleven times and has sold more than four million copies to date. We’ve written ten more books and workbooks, including two more New York Times bestsellers.
Oprah told her millions of viewers that our book helped change her view of relationships from a romantic pursuit to a spiritual partnership that’s meant to change how you see yourself and the world.1
We felt even more validated when recording artist Alanis Morissette joined Oprah to share the impact our book and therapy methods had on her life too. Both characterized Getting the Love You Want as the best relationship book in the world—ever.
With this book, we are expanding our outreach beyond couples to a larger audience by offering guidance on how to improve relationships in all areas of your life. In the pages that follow, you will learn a skill called Safe Conversations (SC) Dialogue that will help you talk with anyone about anything.
This skill will help you create safety so you can connect and have conversations without feeling like you are lighting a fuse. We will provide ways to feel safe even during serious disagreements.
You will learn how to discuss contentious topics without fear of conflict. We will teach you a simple set of practices that will help you connect with family, friends, coworkers, and everyone with whom you interact. The goal is to help you communicate with them without polarization or conflict.
