Psych Bytes with CCS is a weekly podcast hosted by Student Life Counseling and Consultation Service. This show is dedicated to discussing a wide range of topics pertaining to mental health commonly experienced in the college setting. It is important to note that this podcast is not a substitute for therapy. All of the topics on this show, while discussed by professionals are strictly psycho educational, and meant to inform listeners on available resources, skills and support. Topics on the show can be sensitive in nature. And should you find yourself needing additional support or resources, please visit ccs.osu.edu or call us at 614-292-5766. With that in mind, enjoy the show. What is up everybody, and welcome to Psych Bytes. My name is Josh and today we are joined by Dr. I-Shan Yang, an independently licensed marriage and family therapist, and also a senior staff therapist here with us at Counseling and Consultation Service. Welcome, I-Shan. How are you?
I-Shan Yang:I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.
Josh Bailey:Very excited to have you here, because today we are going to talk about how to be a better partner.
I-Shan Yang:Yeah.
Josh Bailey:Who doesn't want to be a better partner? Whether it be in platonic or romantic relationships, I want to be a good friend, I want to be a good partner, I want to be a good boyfriend, husband, spouse, whatever. Right? So I think this is gonna be really exciting to talk about. So I guess maybe somewhere to start off, we've got a couple of different talking points that you've listed out. And I think the first one that we will do is the basics of communication.
I-Shan Yang:Yeah.
Josh Bailey:What are the basics?
I-Shan Yang:So in terms of the basic communication, we are looking at three different levels. First one is the report level, which is the content of what we talk about. For example, between two friends or two individuals, you can be talking about, what are we going to eat, right? That's the content level? So are we going to this A restaurant, B restaurant? Or hey, are we going to get takeout or we're going to eat at home? You know, all that stuff. That is the content— Sorry, that's the report, which is the content level of communication. Then we have the comment level of communication, which is the relationship between two people. And that can completely turn the content itself completely differently. For example, if I have a very close relationship with who I'm communicating with, I may say very simple things, or I have an inside joke, the other person completely gets it. But if I don't have a certain level of depth in my relationship with the other person, I say exactly the same thing, that person might feel offended, or "What are you talking about? I don't really understand." So that's the comment level, meaning that the relationship between two communicators. And the number three is meta communication, which is the pattern of how people communicate. And as a therapist, a lot of time we see families or couples, they communicate, they focus a lot on the content level, right? What I said and what you said, but meta communication takes us to the pattern of how people talk. For example, if I tend to be a little bit more aggressive in my communication— I ask for a lot of clarification, I want to know what do you mean by x, y and z? And my partner might be someone who, you know, more reserved with their response, they might give me a very short answer. There might be a pattern going on, you— in a conversation, if I just dissect a three minute conversation, you will probably hear me talk a lot more than my partner do. Because I am talking, you know, I'm asking that clarification. Tell me what it— what do you mean by that? Or tell me what, you know, what, what are you thinking?
Josh Bailey:So if these areas— report, you know, commend, and meta communication— if they are in sync, we're going to feel good about our relationships.
I-Shan Yang:Yeah. Usually, if people are aware of, you know, those little bits of communication, they tend to be able to dissect the relationship, or like dissect the communication, a little bit more effectively, and pick up where do we go wrong? Right? It's the the pattern that we talk to each other. And that's where usually in couples therapy, or family therapy, we work on the meta communication level, in terms of what— how we talk to each other.
Josh Bailey:So how does one become more effective at communicating then? So what do I need to do to make sure that I am not either misinterpreting what my partner is saying to me, or taking things wildly out of context and either using an aggressive stance that might put them off or taking a more passive stance, which shuts down communication? How do we become more effective?
I-Shan Yang:Yeah, I think one of the things that I always tell my students, or clients, is that ask questions, right? Because at the beginning, there is no relationship, when you're meeting another person. We tend to make a lot of assumptions about what the other person meant, because we don't clarify it. Right? That's where the relationship starts to get a little bit, you know, if you think about the comment part, it's, that part gets a little bit tricky, right? If we already built on a very rocky comment, that means that to communicate, it doesn't really have a very solid relationship, then I can interpret what you said in a very different way than what you really meant. But if I just simply come out and ask you, "So tell me a little bit more? What do you mean by, you know, you don't like this?"
Josh Bailey:Okay.
I-Shan Yang:"Which part do you not like about this?" Then I might get a completely different feedback. So when I get that feedback, I can correct my assumption. And we can kind of repair that comment part. And also be more aware of how we communicate on an individual level. Like, for example, I am aware that I tend to ask a lot of questions, I'm more aggressive in nature, compared to my partner. And that's how, you know, if I have that level of awareness, I might be more reserved, or tend to pause a little bit and remind myself, okay, you need to let, hear the other person out.
Josh Bailey:I see. So this is a good way to maybe stop the mind reading aspect of relationships, right? To ask the question, right to get out of my own head, to get out of my own way, instead of just assuming that,"Oh, you must have meant this," based on your tone or how you said something out. And so I react to that assumption, which I presume that would create conflict or discord within the relationship. What else, then, would I need to be aware of when trying to become a more effective communicator?
I-Shan Yang:I think that, you know, like I said, asking question is the first one. And second one is, I think one of the things that people tend to make mistake is, they have an agenda in mind when they are in communication with the other person, whether that being a friend or a partner. Their assumption, usually, and a lot of times I hear from students— well, not to be like, exclusive, but I think a male student tend to, or male individual, tend to falls into this mindset more than female— is the problem solving. So that being said, one of the partner has an agenda. I want to solve your problem, when you are sharing something with me, I want— that means that you want my input, or you want my solution, right? So let's brainstorm a solution together, which, unfortunately, a lot of times missed the mark. And that's why I tell people a lot of times, I would like you to postpone your agenda, and really hear the other person now.
Josh Bailey:I see. So I absolutely can, you know, claim being guilty of this and my own relationship. Oftentimes, if my wife and I communicate with each other, you know, oftentimes she may want to just kind of process something going on. And I'm like, Well, let's think about this solution. How can I help you? What do I need to do here? How do I fix this? And that has definitely been something that we have worked on in our own communication strategies, of me being more of just a listener, which is funny coming from me, a therapist, wanting to be a fixer in my relationship versus just a listener, or a collaborator in that context. Is there anything else when it comes to being an effective communicator that we might want to touch on or pay attention to?
I-Shan Yang:I think another aspect of that is to be more direct, because a lot of people try to beat around the bush, they wanted to drop out, drop that subtle hint. "Oh, you get it right?" No, now, usually, the other part is not picking up on what you said. Because again, going back to that, my reading, fits off. And even though two people can be together for a very long time, I usually use this example. You know, you, if you have siblings, you grew up in the same household by the, by the same parent, in a very similar environment. Did your sibling automatically 100% guess or predict your move, or understand what you're trying to say? Most of the people response to that question is no, I don't think my siblings guess 100% of what I said. So how can you expect a stranger that was raised and grew up in a completely different household, different culture, different community? Just because you get together, this person automatically know what you are thinking? That's some part of that mess of, "So you know, I'm dropping the hint, you should pick up their hint." And that's a lot of time where things go wrong.
Josh Bailey:Gotcha. So a lot of assumption within my own agenda coming into that conversation. So the old adage, "You know what I mean?" No, I do not know what you mean. Yeah, please walk that back and explain it.
I-Shan Yang:Yeah. And be a little bit more transparent usually helps. This is what I want. This is one. I mean, this is, I want to hear from you.
Josh Bailey:Yeah. So I want to shift a little bit.
I-Shan Yang:Yeah.
Josh Bailey:You know, we focus a lot here on effective communication. I'm curious, let's talk about ineffective communication. So what is problematic? What is ineffective?
I-Shan Yang:Yeah, ineffective communication, which we
Josh Bailey:Okay. experience probably more than not. There are obviously different schools of thoughts about what is ineffective
I-Shan Yang:With a 90% accuracy. communication, but I would like to use one that is more popularly known, maybe in a therapist world, is Dr. John Gottman's research on the four horsemen. So they talk about there's four styles of communication, basically, from his research that can pretty much predict the demise of the relationship.
Josh Bailey:So 90% accuracy that a relationship is doomed to fail, if these four horsemen are showing up.
I-Shan Yang:Or show up very frequently. I think I— that's one thing I clarify with a lot of people is, we make the mistake, even as a therapist, I can catch myself making one of those mistakes when I talk to someone, and more so than not that, you know, it's unaware. But if I am more aware of what I'm saying, and I make, maybe make a repair, or make any kind of apology after, following after that, then most of the time, you will probably be okay. But going back to the Four Horsemen. The first one is, it's something that we all do, is a criticism. We're all guilty of that, because we say certain things to people that we are very familiar with, you know, in our in our attempt to get them to change, right? But like Dr. Gottman has shared in one of his talks, he said, well, nobody ever gets excited by criticism, or by, you know, someone pointed out my shortcoming and said,"Well, you know what, that's fantastic. I will really love to change that. How about we have a lunch over this, and you can give me a list of what are things that I do wrong?" That never happened to anybody. Yeah. So again, you know, the criticism, a lot of time is the attempt to get the behavior that, or the action that we wanted, but usually it backfires, because that leads to the second horseman, which is defensive. Right? When I feel attacked, I will defend myself, if my partner said, You never take out the trash, or you never pick up after yourself. Maybe I really didn't, but I will probably more likely be like, what do you mean by "never"? Yesterday I did. Or the day before I did. You are the person who said, you know, you let less dirty clothes and on the floor or dirty socks, you know, in the living room or something like that. You trigger a defense mechanism, these two kind of go hand in hand. So people get caught in those cycles a lot. When one person starting out, like making the complaint in the form of criticism. "Why are you so lazy?" The other person is like, :"What do you mean, I'm lazy, I'm busy, not lazy." So you trigger that defensiveness and none of that go any further. Right? And the third one, which is we consider a more severe form of criticism, which is called contempt. What that is, is basically one person assumes a higher ground in terms of moral or ethical standard, meaning that I'm better than you. An example of contempt will be,"Why you like this? I don't know anybody who is as lazy as you. And you never do anything around the house." Or, "Why did you not want to do, you know, do certain things because you know, XYZ?" So there is a lot of those are higher, like "I'm better than you." Or you know, "I don't do this. Why would you do that?" And when these first three was pretty rampant running in your conversation, you trigger the number four: the very last horseman, which is something that they see— when they see a lot of that happen in relationship, they can pretty much tell you this is probably the end of it, which is stonewalling. And stonewalling is, you know, think about the natural fight or flight response. And this is basically shutting down. Right? You can think about like the classic TV drama or theme that you see like the very standard heterosexual couple where the wife is naggy and the husband just like tuned into ESPN, or whatever is on TV, completely tuned the wife out. Or someone just walk away from a conversation, right? Because I had enough, I and you know, I'm not be able to— I'm not able to take all this criticism or contempt of yours, I'm leaving a conversation. So when people have this kind of pattern going on in their relationship, they generally, pretty much, it's done. You know, they might hang on to the relationship itself, and this I hear a lot in the clinical samples. They don't, they don't communicate anymore, because one person has input, the other person shut down. One person has input, the other person shut down. Eventually that person that continue to have input got cold feet, and they start to pull away, too. So you got into this withdrawal and withdrawal situation, nobody talks. And on the surface level is like, we don't fight. We have no fighting. But in reality is you don't talk.
Josh Bailey:I see. So we're in the same room. But we're miles apart.
I-Shan Yang:Yeah. So I hear, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard married couples or couples have been long together, living together and said, we're pretty much like roommates. Not what you want, right? Not in a romantic relationship.
Josh Bailey:Right. But transitioning from that, you have something written down here called "the magical ratio of five to one."
I-Shan Yang:Yeah.
Josh Bailey:I have no idea what that is. So please.
I-Shan Yang:So you know, we talked about as a four horsemen. So think about those things as the negative impact on your relationship. So Dr. John Gottman also studied couples that, early in the 90s, that he had to try to find out, like what couples— what type of couples that survive, and what couples don't. So what they what he observed in all his clinical, sorry, case samples, is that the ones that has a certain ratio in their communication tend to survive better than the ones that end up in divorce in five to seven years down the road. So the five to one ratio is thinking about, I like to talk about it as, like, a bank deposit. So every one negative interaction, you have a withdrawal from your bank, right? If I say something hurtful to my partner, that's a withdrawal, it has to be balanced out with five positive things to make it even. So from his recording, he looked at couples that have just day to day compensation in the lab. So the ones that really were successful, down the road, or, or what he called "the masters", were the ones that tend to have more positive in the conversation. Even though they might be having just a very regular compensation, day to day stuff, they have more positive than negative. And the ratio is standing about five to one, so five positives to one negative. And the ones that he call disasters are the ones that ratio is one to .8. So, one negative to .8 positive. So the ratio definitely has a lot of indicator, but I like to use this in an applicable way is to say, because we don't know how much withdrawal that we are going to have, right? So your bank account, you don't know when you would need our money.
Josh Bailey:Right.
I-Shan Yang:So the idea has always been, "Let's put a little bit more deposit in, because we don't know when we're going to withdrawal large sum amount of money," when that conflicts gonna happen.
Josh Bailey:Right.
I-Shan Yang:And which is something I observe in a lot of people is day to day, they don't do this deposit work. But they do big withdrawals from time to time. And they sit there and wonder, "Why is it is now working out of sudden? We were fine before." Yes, because you have a large sum amount at the beginning, right? You keep withdrawing without putting money in. And now you're looking at an ad negative bank account, you get like penalty and all that stuff.
Josh Bailey:I see. I really liked that. So I've never heard it presented that way. And I mean, this really tracks with me, this is making a lot of sense. And I like that it's a good analogy. And I think I'm going to use it moving forward when I work with individuals, and maybe even apply it to my own relationships. Is there anything that you would like to close on anything that you feel would be a pertinent takeaway or something that maybe we haven't touched on enough or you'd like to kind of introduce here before we wrap it up?
I-Shan Yang:So you know, it says it's talking about being a better partner? I think one of the big piece I have always talked about with couples is that respect another person, right? When you are in communication, or when you are in relationship or friendship with someone, start it out with that respect. And what the respect really translates into is, "I admire you as a person," right? If I don't have— I don't know you, or I don't know your intent. I'll ask a question, because I respect you as a person. I don't already automatically jump into that assumption that, no, you mean ill or you— you have, you know, your intention or bad, you know, intention and hurting me, right? I don't have that. I'm more likely to be like, "hey, what do you mean by that? Tell me a little bit more. So tell me a story about why this is so important to you?" I think that communicates admiration and respect to a person, as you would to a stranger. If you can do that to a stranger. Why can you do that to a friend or a partner, just because you know each other longer? I think at that fundamental core of a respect and admiration for the other person— I know that's usually when people get together, they have that, right? And it's slowly wear out. And that's where, you know, again, going back to that five to one ratio, the more deposit you put in, you will continue maintaining that respect and admiration for the other person. And you continue to improve your relationship, relationship is work, just don't— because you get together doesn't mean that you don't have to work anymore. Right? I say that to a lot of people and people will shock. So I hope I leave that out there, relationship is work
Josh Bailey:relationship is work. Words to live by. Dr. I-Shan Yang, thank you very much for joining us today. Really appreciate the time. And to all of our listeners: Thank you for taking the time to join us and listen in. Until next time, keep your eyes peeled for our next episode. Take care of yourselves. And once again, my name is Josh and this has been Psych Bytes with CCS