Stop Pointing Fingers And Start Listening: The Art of Emotional Reflection

Want fewer circular fights and more honest connection? We dig into why so many conversations slip into blame and counter-blame, and how a small shift—pausing, getting curious, and validating impact—can transform the tone of a relationship in minutes. We share real stories from our own marriage and practice, from a shoes-in-the-closet blowup to the moment a straight-talking mentor said, “You’re no prize either,” and why that wake-up line still helps us today.

We unpack the psychology behind deflection: how feedback threatens identity, activates old beliefs, and pushes us to protect the self instead of the bond. Then we map a practical route to reflection. You’ll hear simple scripts that lower defenses and raise trust: “Thank you for telling me,” “Can you help me understand what made you feel that way?” and “I hear that landed as distance.” These phrases don’t concede guilt; they acknowledge impact. That distinction keeps conversations safe, grounded, and productive. We also bring in Gottman’s research on turning toward, insights from Gabor Maté on perception, and the power of both-and thinking to replace the winner-loser trap.

Along the way, we talk boundaries and friendship drift—how chronic finger pointing can signal relationships that no longer fit, and why compassion sometimes means stepping away. Reflection isn’t about being perfect. It’s about catching yourself mid-defend, lowering your hand, and choosing connection over the quick hit of being right. If you’ve ever walked away from a “talk” feeling unheard, you’ll leave with tools to change that pattern—tonight.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with someone who needs less blame and more repair, and leave a review with the phrase you’re going to try next. Your words help others find us and keep the conversation going.

Please email us at Gettoknowthedevil@gmail.com

Transcript

30 Second Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Cleveland.

SPEAKER_01 0:01

And this is Lindsay.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

And this is another episode of The Devil Weather Now. Lindsay, what are we gonna be talking about today?

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Stop pointing. Start listening. The art of emotional reflection.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Oh my god, how much of communication, even with us, even with you, me. Go uh go wrong because we're not listening to each other, but instead are defending ourselves against each other. It's a lot of communication. Right.

Main

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yeah. Remember when we were away, and you know, what I mean my favorite place. We just booked our next trip, by the way. And um remember when we were away and I had my meditation training, and one of the women said that right before the class, somebody in her family kind of unloaded on her a whole barrage of complaints and criticism and feedback. And she said, yes, it was upsetting, but part of that was that she had to realize that okay, maybe that is that person's reality about me, and that's their experience. And so maybe I do have to sit with that and you know. So I think that uh, you know, in what you're saying, one of the big things that I learned in my training with Gabor Mate was that we don't react to a situation, we react to our perception of the situation. We always choose a bad perception. And so when someone tells us something, we have to kind of sit there and look at it and say, like, wow, how am I perceiving this and what am I making it mean about myself?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Right. One of my favorite stories uh that I do like to tell about myself. Uh, and there was a time early on in our relationship where I used to do uh what um uh Terrence Real calls Henny Youngman, Henny Youngman you, which is making fun of your partner, making fun of your wife, where Henny Youngman was a famous comedian from the 30s and 40s and 50s that used to say, take my wife, please, uh, which is something that a lot of men do where they, you know, uh try to make themselves look big or you know, by using their wife as the butt of their jokes or complaining about the wife or calling the wife ball and chain. Uh I this was before we were married. Uh there was uh I was volunteering um at a at a at a thrift store in Queens. Um, well, I should say doing community service, but that's a story for another day. But what they they volunteer they'd like to be nice to us and they called us volunteers.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

My dad listens to this. You don't want him to know about your criminal community.

30 Second Outro

SPEAKER_00 2:18

About my community service. Well, we were I was doing community service, aka volunteering. Um, and the young lady who ran the place, Sylvia, God bless her soul, um, older Italian woman, loved her, loved her to death, still love her to pieces, even though I haven't seen her for many years. I was talking really bad about Lindsay. I was complaining, I don't know what it was. And and I don't even remember, but Sylvia stops me dead in my tracks and says, Cleveland, I hate to tell you this, but you're no prize either. And that made me laugh so hard. And I realized, you know what? I'm no prize either. Jason Pargin um in one of his TikTok videos says that if you were to see yourself the way other people see you, you would probably think you were a monster. And because and and and it that is just I would love to know what you were complaining about.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

I don't even know what it was.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

It was so many, it was like 12 years ago. It was before we were married. So it was like 12, 13 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Remember the time? Can I go on a segue for? Yeah, you can go to big. Remember the time that you I asked you to put the shoes in the closet and you threw them all in, but I had asked you to put them in nicely. This is one the other house before we lived together, before we bought the house. And so I'd asked you to put the shoes in the closet in a nice way because I had to get up in the morning and walk the dogs, and you just threw everything in the closet and I couldn't find them, and the dog peed on the floor.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Oh, that wasn't my fault at all. Deflection.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

And then you went to therapy and you told your therapist you were gonna break up with me because I I told you that I I was very upset and felt disrespected. I felt like you didn't respect me because you just threw all the shoes in there and then the dog peed on the floor, and then you left for work and left me with the mess, and I couldn't find the snow boots or whatever it was. And your therapist was like, Oh, okay, so she she hit you? And you were like, No. Oh, she yelled at you? No. And he said, Oh, you mean so she communicated how she felt when you did something that you told her you would do, but you didn't do it in the way that made sense? And you were like, Yeah, and he goes, Oh, that's a great idea. Then you should definitely go and break up with her for communicating with you.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

But that's what deflection does, right? Deflection stops us from seeing our part in the story. But before we get into this, I I I I do want to segue uh for a minute. And even though this is a family show, I'm gonna swear for a second. Yeah, you've been doing that lately. God damn it, this snow. Oh my god. Me too. What is going on?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I don't know, but let's just talk for a minute about this weird ass backwards thing that you and I have where we go away for a week in the winter, but go away for a month in the summer. I mean, what is that?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

I I think we need to do it differently.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I think next year we need to do the month in February and miss all the snow. And then in the summer we do a week or two.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

But did it stop? It looked like it stopped for a second.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

I think it keeps stopping, but it keeps coming back.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

I think we have a reprieve, but I know it's not it didn't stop.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

I see it.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

I can't believe, you know, uh I this is my favorite line. I know you've been getting on me, but they lied to us about global warming. I will take some global warming about right now. Um, this has been I'll just take a house in the Caribbean for a few months there. That too. I believe in climate chaos, right? And I do believe in climate change. I think climate change is a natural part of human of the of the planet's cycle. I mean, there are deserts that have uh there are Arctic ocean, there are like places in the Arctic that have tropical, you know, fossils and stuff, and there is also like you know, signs of uh of ocean life and deserts. So I think the earth goes through these major upheavals of weather of weather patterns. I think we're in the phase of one right now because this is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Right. And but you know what? We did just book our next vacation for the summer, and um, yeah, we're gonna be gone for a few weeks. It's gonna be good. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. We're gonna, well, we're you know, in Nevis in April, our big uh kind of emptiness trip at the fancy boutique hotel.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Yeah, yeah. Hotel Montpellier.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

And then the um, it's like the plantation inn or something. Yeah, and then we're gonna go to St. John for the first time. So we're gonna do two weeks in my favorite place, Tortolo. Kenny Chesney, I'm coming. I know maybe Kenny will let us stay at his house. I'm sure he doesn't use it in the summer. Listen, I'll sing. It strikes me as the kind of person who's there in the winter.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I remember I did uh Oh, you and tequila. You and tequila. Yes, and then the girl saw me in the restaurant a couple of days later and was like, Sir, you were amazing. Your singing was beautiful. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

And I had no idea who she was.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yes, and I didn't know who she was looking at because Hector.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Oh, no, no, that's not nice.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

It was Hector was really funny. Hector was like, by the way, she was talking to me. And I was like, You got jokes. But Hector was a good dude. But look, but I feel bad for people that have a stuck eye. Yeah, but let's get into it. Let's talk about deflection, right? And you know, in this episode, we're gonna talk about deflection. And it's and deflection is exactly what Lindsay said I did in that instance, and thank God I had a good therapist who helped me, who called me out, and Sylvia who called me out on my nonsense, is because deflection is when someone tells us we hurt that we that we've hurt them, and our instinct is to go instead of listening to what they're saying, is to immediately go and protect ourselves instead of understanding them. Um, in Gottman's book, The Seven Principles of Making Your Marriage Work, Gottman talks about how this is very destructive to your marriage, right? And oftentimes in a marriage, we turn away from each other when we should be turning toward. And so when you have that inclination to deflect, to deflect, to deflect, and not really receive what your partner's saying to you, you are invariably destroying your relationship. Nobody likes to look at their own shit. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Nobody.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Yep. It's really uncomfortable. And we talked about it in an in in another episode. I'm not sure the order that I'm gonna post these. I'll probably I might do this one first and the other one later. Uh but we've talked about in another episode where we recently had a whole situation happen to us where uh a group of friends, but one friend in particular, was were deflecting their part in in something like in an embarrassing situation that happened.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, and you know, when you communicate with someone, all you're really looking at, um looking for is kind of some understanding.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Right. And and you shouldn't have to come out of it trying to defend why you feel a certain way.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Exactly. So in today's episode, we're gonna talk about why deflection becomes feels automatic. Uh, we're gonna talk about what it actually takes to communicate with another person, how reflection builds emotional safety, and also give you three practical phrases that can transform your conversation. Um, let's get started uh in in this, which is uh pause and practice, right? So I used to have this lawyer and great guy, um, David Wims. If you ever need uh uh I I I do commercials for people all the time, so if you're ever in the New York area, if you're ever in the Brooklyn area, you need an employment lawyer, you can go to David Wims.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Or you could just carry on with the episode.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So I am carrying on with the episode, but what what what what was great about David, and I read a book on communication, is David was the type of person that if you asked him a question, he would answer like this Lindsay, ask me a question, any question.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

You love me?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

I love you very much. What did I do there? What did I do when I asked that question? When I answered your question, paused. Paused, right? David, no matter what you asked him, what color shirt is that? He would pause. Why do you suppose he paused before he gives an answer to a question?

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Well, I you know, I mean it would really depend on the question. I mean, the question like that I just asked you, the the answer was known. I mean, I hope you love me. Yeah, I do love you very much. But when you you know, you pause because you know, sometimes you have to take a moment to kind of process and and then reflect. Right. Right, self-reflect in most cases, and then give an answer. That that it makes sense or is appropriate, right? With without the impulsivity attached to it.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

I I read a uh a great book on communication, I think it was uh um Relationships 101 by John C. Maxwell, um, and who's a who's a master of active listening. And he was like a person who does not answer a question right away is usually a sign of intelligence because they are actually digesting what it is that you ask them, right? Deflection is like a knee-jerk reaction where it's like, I'm gonna slap away what it is you're saying. Whereas reflection is I'm pausing, I'm absorbing what you just asked me, I'm gonna chew on it for a second, and then I'm going to actually give you back the answer that you are looking for, not the answer that I think you're looking for, or not the answer that I want to give you. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Um I think I want you, I want if you're in the audience, I want you to think about a recent conflict. I want you to think about what the person said to you, and then instead of deflecting what the person said to you, reflect on it, right? One thing that you could say is what would that conversation have sounded like if you would have approached the person with curiosity and not defending yourself? You know, that is that is that is that is what I'm talking about. Um what do you think about what do you think about that idea about being reflective in responding to people? So I'll I'll repeat myself really quickly because what I what the question that I had asked you is what would conversations look like if you approach the person with curiosity instead of choosing to automatically defend yourself? What do you think most conversations would look like?

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Oh, I think that they would flow in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

It goes back to uh the idea of Gottman where he says, seek to understand so that you could be understood.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Well, you have to understand that when someone says something to you, that that's actually their experience with you.

unknown 12:16

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

So you do have to sit there and have that reflection of, wow, okay, so maybe I am being perceived in this way, right? Maybe that is the person's experience with me before you respond.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

I think when folks have conversations that start in a deflection and not reflection, have you ever tried to tell someone that your feelings were hurt only to walk away? And I think once again, that was a recent thing that happened with you, only to walk away from the conversation, feeling confused, feeling frustrated, and like you were the one that did something wrong.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah, well, I didn't feel like I did something wrong. Um, and I wasn't really frustrated. I I just or confused, really. I'm for me, it gave me clarity, but I also have done a lot of work on myself and on communicating and on, you know, how I interact with other people and kind of looking at how I perceive things and what comes up in me when something happens. And so for me, I walked away from it saying, okay, I guess that, you know, the reality of this situation is that it's not solvable right now. Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Right, right. And I think specifically what we're talking about is when you muster up the courage to really tell somebody how you feel, only for them to just to not even absorb it, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Well, to point the finger at somebody else too. And and it does, I guess, I guess frustrating is definitely a a term that can be used because it's you know, nobody wants to not be heard. Right. Right. The perception is for me, is you know, I I feel a certain way. I want to be heard. And I don't believe that I'm being heard if the person just points the finger. They don't sit. And you know, and the thing is with the reflection, is the reflection and the sitting with the pause has to go both ways.

unknown 14:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

You know, the the problem with and I I want to move on and I want to talk about the anatomy of deflection, right? And and how it's the opposite of reflection. Um let's just start off by being honest, right? Uh it is something that I still struggle with, is this idea that I have to explain myself, right? When we took our respect in the workplace uh in my corporate office job, one of the things that we learned very quickly is if you have to explain something you said, what does that mean about what you probably shouldn't have said it. Probably shouldn't have said it.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Right. I tell my kids all the time that if you don't want someone to bring something up to you that you did, or you don't are embarrassed about other people knowing about it, then you probably shouldn't have done it in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

So the reason why we deflect is because deflection feels good in the moment. Um, and it is a defense mechanism. Uh when someone says, You hurt me, right? Or you did something that that that I did not like, it automatically makes you feel like you're the bad person. And most people don't want to be the bad guy. So what is the what is the reaction that most people do?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Well, they point the finger, right? They they react of you know, they have to come back and find something that the other person did that they probably didn't communicate at the time it was done, right? Or they try to blame the other person, right? That it was their fault that they did it. Or they just, you know, they act as though that they're not being understood.

unknown 15:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

One of the things that you talked about, if if you don't mind me sharing, even in your first marriage, is that one of the things that made couples counseling intolerable for you is that you would spend entire sessions with the other person explaining why they did the things they did and not listening to why it hurts your feelings.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

I right. I don't like the I did it because I did it because when someone says something to me, right? And I don't think I've ever said that to you, and I don't think you've ever said that to me. Right. I mean, I may not always be happy to hear I've done something that upsets you, and I think vice versa, right? You don't always like to hear it either, but I've never once said to you, I did it because, right? And yeah, that's absolutely what happened when we went to couples counseling in my first marriage, was that I would say, This is this is how I'm feeling, this is what's coming up for me. And then it was just I did it because I did it because I did it because, and then I left there. And I I think that you should never leave somewhere that you go to communicate feeling worse than when you went.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

So so statements that are deflecting statements are, well, you did that too. Well, I only did this to me because you were being so I only did that because you were being so sensitive, or the classic, you just don't understand me. Right. And even in our recent, even in a I understand the recent situation very well. Right. That's what we're gonna say. Even in a recent situation where you tried to talk to somebody about their behavior, they knew exactly what you were talking about because without you even mentioning it, they were like, Oh, you're talking about the prostitute next door or the creep downstairs.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Oh, and even about the bartender. And I said, And you know, the funniest thing to me, I didn't say anything back because I don't rehash things like that. But I sat there and in my head I said, Well, that's interesting. I actually didn't mention any of those people. But okay. I mean, clearly when you know who the other person's talking about, there's some kind of guilt on your behalf.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Right, right, right. Clearly, when you are, but here's the thing is that that person ever once absorb why is deflection terrible? Because what did they never once do?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Never looked at it and said, Wow, okay, my behavior made Lindsay feel this way. And if that my behavior was impacting a whole variety of people here, right.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

And if that person continues to live their life like that, right, what is that person probably gonna do with their friendships?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Or or well, that person I know has lost a lot of friendships lately and has said that to me. And so, you know, seeing that behavior, I'm really not surprised. So, you know, what what it does is it makes people not want to hang around with you.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

And and and and what it is when you're deflecting is we are saying that your comfort or my comfort is more important of the than the way that you view reality, right? And and once again, when we talked about the this and respect in the workplace, if you say a joke that offends someone, even if it's a funny joke, even if Chris Rock said it, even if Dave Chappelle said it, but if that person's offended, for you just trying to say, oh, it was just a joke, or I was just trying to have fun, oh you you're too sensitive, you are not respecting that person's what.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

You don't respect them. Right. Period. Seriously. Not anything about them, you don't respect them. Right. Right. And and and that's what I always say. And and that's also a perception of not being respected, not being heard, not, you know, it's not a feeling, it's an actual perception of how you s perceive the situation. When you tell someone how you feel and then they point it back at you, okay, like you do not respect how I feel.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Right. You know, you know, Terence Real in his book Us talks about this idea of just owning it when your partner or your friend or just whatever, when you do something to disappoint them, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Right, just like the woman in my meditation class. Just own it. I just have to say, yes, that really hurt my feelings, but that was her experience with me.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Yeah. I want to move on to the finger pointing and why we finger point. Um, here's a scenario. Let's imagine a couple of I call the finger pointing like the shame and blame game. Okay, the shame and blame game.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

That's what I talk about with my clients.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

So give me an example with your what is the shame and the blame game.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Oh, like recently a friend of mine said, Oh, you know, she struggles in a relationship with her mother-in-law. And she wrote her a letter because her mother-in-law wouldn't listen to her, take phone calls or whatever. And in the letter, she said, You, you do this, you make me feel bad about this, you make fun of me here, you, you, you, you, you. That's the finger pointing. Right. And then she said, you know, I haven't heard from her since I wrote the letter. I was like, Well, because you sat there and you pointed a finger at her. And and in reality, it's okay. Maybe, yes, maybe she does do those things, but the proper way to communicate that is this is how I perceived it. When you said, and give a specific example to me, when you said something about this, it made me feel bad. Right. It made me feel insecure. Right. It embarrassed me in front of a group of people, right? Instead of, you know, instead of saying you, you, you, you, you, you, you. Because you know what? When if somebody came at me and said you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, I probably wouldn't want to talk to them either.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Right, right. There's nothing to talk about. You've made it clear that what I have to say is not important to you. And that no matter what I say, you're not going to absorb it, right? Even if you don't agree with it, you're not even absorbing it. So even in the scenario that you're talking about where you're saying I'll probably never talk to this person again, because no matter what you said to this person, this person was just like, was just deflecting everything away, you know, was just deflecting everything away. And that's not how communication works. You know, here's a good example.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

And also, you are the company you keep.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

And we can talk about that in another episode, but you are the company you keep. And so if you hang around with people that do that, then people, even if you don't do it, people are going to associate you with the behavior.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Right. And here's another example of the finger pointing. Like, let's say uh this is an example of a married couple, uh, Alex and Jordan. Alex comes home from work, um, and her husband Jordan says, Hey, you know, I've really been feeling lonely today. You've been distant all week, and it hurts my feelings. Now, Alex has a choice. Alex can can be like, Hey, you know what? Tell me what's going wrong with you. Or Alex can do this, which is the deflection response, and it's distant. I'm not distant, I've been slammed at work. You know that. You've always reading into things, you're always overlooking into things, and actually, you've been the one that's been distant. So, and you've been in your phone all week. So, if anyone is distant, it's you. What went wrong in this scenario here, Linz?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Well, I mean, it just shut it down. I mean, talk about trying to make the other people. The other person feel insecure, right? What and then it shuts down the whole communication.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

And what did Alex do wrong? If if remember I said that the that reflection is about curiosity and deflection is about defending yourself. If Alex was approaching this in a way that Alex was really trying to genuinely communicate with her partner, what would Alex have done? Alex would have addressed what? The loneliness. Alex would have asked the question. Instead of going immediately to defend themselves, like, why would you say you're lonely? Tell me more about that, right? When you have a problem with me, do you attack me or do you ask me what's going wrong? How's your day? What's the stake?

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Right. Your mental health is, what's going on. Right. You know, but that's you know, it's communication is hard. We have to learn how to communicate with each other.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yeah. What what Alex did wrong here, instead of trying to find out with curiosity what was going on with Jordan, immediately deflected, and deflecting is going on the attack. Alex attacked, Alex threw accusations out, and it went from being a conversation to a competition. That's what deflection does. Right?

SPEAKER_01 23:13

When we look at Well, it does if if both people feel the need to keep going back and forth with each other. You know, in the case of my situation, I just stopped. Right. Because I'm not going to have a back and forth.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

But how about look at our country and and how we communicate in our country? Our country's become about deflection, right? And when you have this back and forth where you have who wins? Nobody. Nobody wins at the end of the day, right? Nobody wins. You know, because what you learn from sharing your feelings is Jordan was trying to share his feelings. All you learn is that sharing your feelings gets you attacked.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Right. And then, and then you, and that's what I'm saying. And then you feel this insecurity, you push things down, and you don't want to express yourself.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

So, how do you shift from deflection to reflection?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Well, I always say you need to take a moment to sit and process what someone tells you. You have to sit there and say, This is the reality for them. This is how they see me. And and then sometimes you have to actually sit there and say, Maybe I am that way. Right. And, you know, and I do that, right? When you've said things to me, I tell you, yeah, it hurts, but sometimes there's a part of me that has to say, wow, well, you know, maybe maybe I'm actually like that. Yeah. And, you know, and and maybe that's how, you know, if I act a certain way, maybe that is, you know, what my behavior seems like to you.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah. I don't like hearing that I talk too much, right? But sometimes I need to hear it because sometimes I'm talking too much. Um, yeah. You know, reflection doesn't mean that you agree, right? It goes back to what Wendy said about even forgiveness. What does reflection mean if you if you're using it, if you're using it correctly?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Like you just have an opportunity for personal growth.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

It's an opportunity to say, wow, okay, maybe that is the way I'm perceived. Maybe I need to deliver the message in a different way next time. Maybe I need to do something differently.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Right, right. So reflection doesn't mean that you're even admitting wrongdoing. It doesn't mean that you're accepting your part as the villain. Um, and it's nothing wrong with being the villain in somebody's story if that's how they look at you, but it simply means that you are validating their experience. I worked with somebody not too long ago who had a miscommunication with their partner and they felt that they did nothing wrong and owed them no apology, right? But here's the crazy thing is this person works in retail. This person has a great job in retail. And I said, and I asked them, I was like, if a customer were to come in your store and a customer were to have a problem with a product or something that you knew that the customer probably was wrong or the customer didn't really apply it in the right way, what would you, as somebody who wanted to maintain that business, what would they what would you do? Customer's always right. Customer's always right. Right?

SPEAKER_01 25:58

It's like in your marriage, right? Your partner's always right.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

So, so you don't want to lose that customer. So you would validate, would you automatically go in there? Like, have you ever been in a business where the business defends themselves? Like, which I feel like we went to a restaurant recently, uh, and we said, well, hell, we'll never go there again, where it was something wrong, and the girl got like defensive about it. But if you go to a business that the business gets defensive about their poor customer service or makes excuses, oh, it was in the um, it was when we went to the Virgin in in Nashville, and it was the cup of wine that was on the table for like three days. And and instead of just, I just instead of just saying, I say, hey, there's been a cup of wine up there for a day or so, the girl immediately popped at me and got defensive. Well, they're very busy, sir. Too busy to pick up a glass that's been in the lobby for two days.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

That's people's job.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

That's their job, right? And so, you know, it was a great experience, other than that. But if you don't, if you don't expect a customer service rep to get defensive, imagine you call the phone company about their crappy service, so you call the cable company and they get defensive with you. Would you use that company again?

SPEAKER_01 27:03

No.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

So but why we don't, which is exactly why we don't have cable vision. Um but would you, but why do we do that in our relationships? And why do we think it's okay to do that in our relationships?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

I know. People do that all the time. And it's not okay. But I think I think it I think that people do that because it's a way for them to feel better about themselves.

unknown 27:27

Right?

SPEAKER_01 27:27

When you deflect, then you're kind of absolving yourself of any responsibility for it.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Right. And so let's go back to the case of Alex and Jordan, right? Alex, when Jordan said that to her, she could have said, she could have taken a minute, paused, and done what my lawyer David used to do, pause. This person just said, my partner just said they were lonely. Alex could have said, wait, you feel lonely? That breaks my heart. Tell me more about that. What did Alex do in talking to her husband in that moment when she's like, wait, you feel lonely. Tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Well, that's just allowing the conversation to flow, right? It's accepting that the person feels that way and and saying, like, what you know, what can we do to make you maybe feel a little bit differently?

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Yeah, yeah. Or another response could have been, hey, I hear that, you know, I hear that you're saying that my distance is weak has been hurtful. I can see why you feel that way. It goes back to reflect, it goes back to validate what that person's saying. When someone is sharing a feeling with you, they're telling you their truth. Lindsay, how should you accept, even if you don't agree with it, how should you interact with someone else's truth?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Well, you have to accept that that's their truth, right? And you have to sit with it. And again, it comes back to reflecting and saying, okay, that is actually the person's experience. And what can I do to make you feel differently? Right. Right. And you know, maybe there's a way that I can bring something else to the table so that you don't feel that way.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Right. One of the greatest things that I love about, and I learned a lot in corporate, um, never going back again, but learned a lot is never going back. Never going back is, but here's something. When someone shares a feeling with you, they are telling you their truth, right? And one of the things that we learned in respect.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

People's feelings are valid. I want to say that. The situation, the experience that happened in the past is no longer valid. It's not in the present moment, right? But the emotions and the feelings that people experience are very, very valid. They're valid all the time. Even if you don't agree with them, they are valid. They're valid to that person, and you need to accept that they're valid.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Boom. And that's what I was giving to say. One thing that we learned in the respect in the workplace workshops is we don't get to decide if other people's feelings are valid. That is not our choice. No. And if you offend somebody, even if you think it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Because even if it doesn't feel valid to you, it could be valid to the other person.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Yes. The only thing that we get to do is we get to decide if we care enough to try to understand that person.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yeah, I just wanted to segue for a minute. I don't something you said earlier uh reminded me of an argument that we had sometime. And um it was, I think it was like when you didn't you, when we had someone do some work at the house and you didn't want to call them to come back. Do you remember this? And you were like, Well, I'll just do it myself. And I was like, No, we already paid for it. And you and you were like, No, I'll just do it myself. No, this painting, I think. It was not like the big renovations, but it was so funny because I remember we were on the front porch and I was like, No, you just such a people pleaser, and you you have to people please, and you just whatever. And then I then I said, You come from a whole family of codependent enablers. And then I said, And mine's critical and abusive.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

But it's but it was even in that moment you understood.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Right. But I was saying, like, I understood where your behavior came from. And then when I and I threw the insult at you of like the co, you know, the codependent enabling family. And then I was like, and then I was like, well, wait a minute, I actually have to look at mine because I can't understand that perceptive that perception and that perspective, but like I can understand that my family is critical and abusive. So like in that moment, I was doing that to you. I was being critical. And and I remember like that was like one of the funniest things. And I tell my clients about that all the time, how we have these kind of funny arguments as therapists where where we take like the familial patterns and the person's behavior patterns and kind of throw them at each other in an argument. And and it's amusing, right? But in that moment, I remember saying, like, oh yeah, okay, well, that's why he's behaving that way. And now look at me doing exactly the pattern that I learned.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Right, right. And he I I I want to moving on to our to our next top, uh, um, segueing into our next topic, the psychology behind deflection. It's most behavioralists uh think that we deflect or know that we deflect is because we confuse behavior with identity, right? When somebody says that you're distant or you misunderstood me or you talk too much, you know, you're you fight back or you deflect because you're trying to protect the identity of yourself, what you have in your head.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Right. When people say things to us, we internalize it, right? And we we make it mean something about ourselves. And often it brings up a core belief that we have. And it actually comes from long before, right? If we look at the psychology of things and we look at therapy and how the brain works, when someone says something to us, right, if we have really great self-confidence and had this wonderful upbringing with zero trauma, which nobody in the world has, then you know what, we wouldn't be upset about it. We wouldn't identify it with it and we wouldn't internalize it, right? And so a perfect example of that is that when we went on this trip and we had that interaction and then coming home and everything that happened, the reason that I'm not upset about it is because like I don't identify with that. Right. Like the things that were said to me and the finger pointing and all that stuff, I'm like, well, okay, well, I I know that it, you know what, like I came at it from a place of integrity. So like I have no problem. I can go to sleep at night and I'm not gonna be, you know, I'm not gonna be tossing and turning and thinking about this because I'm okay with it and I don't identify with it. But, you know, and and and the reason that people do that deflection is because they, when something is said to them about how someone feels, they automatically internalize it and they make it mean something about themselves. And this is a higher level concept. So I bet you that this individual actually wouldn't even understand that, right? Right. And would not look at it in that way and say, hey, oh wow, wow, maybe I am this way.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Because we're making it about ourselves when the person is trying to tell them about themselves, right? And they're just trying to tell you the about how you are making them feel. But because we are like selfish and self-centered people uh by default, we automatically we make it about ourselves. And so when you're doing when you deflect and not reflect, you are actually losing the argument, right? When you reflect, you aren't losing an argument, but you're building a bridge, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:46

When you deflect, not only are you-opening the lines of communication, exactly. You're saying, okay, I'm willing to, I'm willing to, you know, find some middle ground here, or I'm willing to accept X, Y, and Z in order to move forward here and try to repair what's happened.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Right. And when you reflect, you are at least saying, I care about what I did, I care about the impact that I have on you, even if the impact wasn't what I intended.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Right. And when you do reflect, you're not losing an argument, you're not giving in. You're just saying, I care. Right. I'm willing to look at it, I'm willing to listen, I'm willing to try and understand.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Okay. So we talked about all this good stuff. Let's like, let's start closing up on how to pivot, right? Or what can we say in the heat of the moment. So, one of the things that I started doing, and one of the things that we constantly fight over, is in the car. And I had to do this in Barbados, where you're constantly Cleveland, you get ready to say, Cleveland, this is and what did I just start doing? I just started saying, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Well, I just like to clarify my point of view on driving in Barbados. Right. It is terrifying. Right. It's not terrifying for you.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

It's not. And I understand it's not terrifying for you. And it's not even your driving. It is not your driving that is terrifying for me. It is the fact that you're on a tropical island and they have these like three to four foot deep rain gullies on the side of the road with no grate over them. And so if you are the passenger, because you drive on the left and the steering wheel is on the other side. So, myself as the passenger, I am sitting next to the curb looking at a three to four foot deep hole that literally runs along the curb. And it is terrifying to me.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Okay. It is terrifying. So it has nothing, I will say it has nothing to do with your driving and everything to do with my fear of falling in that stupid ditch.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

And everybody at our hotel, you don't remember that guy, I can't remember his name, that they took, they had to go on the trip that day or they came in the taxi. And what did he say?

SPEAKER_00 36:03

He said he was terrified that you weren't alone and that every and whenever you talk about driving in Barbados, everyone looks at me like I'm a lunatic.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Well, because you're driving. Yes. These people are looking out at this gully. I'm telling you, when you are looking out at the gully, it is absolutely the one of the worst things ever. I mean, I literally, the only way I can go in the car in Barbados with you and not be having a panic attack the entire time is if you just get me croced.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Every every American that I've met says that they agree with you, like, wow, you do. And even the Brits. Yeah, like they were like, You're not scared to drive on the air. And I'm absolutely not scared. But here's the thing, and why I said thank you so much, and it goes back to everything that we talked about is the first thing that somebody does when they bring something to your attention instead of getting defensive, you should say thank you.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

Thanks to you for letting me know.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Thank you for letting me know. And that I that probably wasn't easy to say. Thank you for letting me know that. Why is that important instead of automatically going back on the ta of the attack? What does it do to the other person?

SPEAKER_01 37:03

It shows that you are like appreciative of the communication. It shows that you are willing to accept what was said.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Right, right. The second thing that you can do is once again, and it goes back to Gottman, and this is not just in your marriage, but this is in all your relationships and friendships, is curiosity over defense. When someone says something to you about yourself that you do not agree with, the first thing you can ask is, can you help me understand what made you feel that way? Why is that question important?

SPEAKER_01 37:32

So that you don't do it again, right? Or so that you reflect on it and you maybe change the way that you interact. Wow, by the way, just as a segue, there's a lot of snow coming down. It's really bad.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Oh, let me go. I gotta go do uh uh another coding. Now I'm gonna do the coding uh the salt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

So we'll we'll get to wrapping up in a minute. But but you know, the aside from the curiosity over defense, the other, you know, tool that we can use is the the both and mindset, right? Right. So it's you know, deflection relies on the either or thinking, right? It's one way or another. Either I'm a good person or the other person is right. But reflection uses both and both, like right. I I, for example, I I wasn't feeling well and something happened to me and I took it out on you. Right. And and it's just being able to take a responsibility and accept that yes, I did do this. Here's maybe the reason I did it, and it wasn't the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Right. I I think um as we as we move into our close, here's the truth we all and we're professionals, and we still catch ourselves deflecting and defending ourselves. And so it's just a human reflex. It's a human reflex that if you want to be in human relationships and be friends with people and maintain relationships that you have to let go of because it's going to actually distance yourself from from from other people. But the goal isn't to be perfect, the goal is to catch yourself in the act, right? So the next time someone tells you that you hurt them, instead of going immediately to attack or defend yourself or say, well, that's the creeper downstairs, or that was the prostitute next door, because that's a total deflection of what was being said, uh is notice that you your hand wanting to rise and the finger wanting to point back, right? Lower your hand, open your ears, and just reflect. Because behind every complaint, every complaint is a wish. And the wish is I need you to see me because you hurt me. But when you go to deflect, you're still not seeing the person and you're not taking the message what they want to say. Because if somebody's got time to beef with you about something or let you know that they're upset about something, it's because they want to repair the relationship with you.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Right. Well, and that was the perspective that I came in from, right? I I want to, the friendship means something to me. I want to be able to talk about it, but there was no talking.

unknown 40:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Right. I never at one time pointed a finger. Right. And and that's how that was when I knew in that moment, right? There is absolutely no conversation. There's no reflection. Right. You know, there's no reflection brings more self-awareness and it brings more accountability. Right. And you can't have a relationship where one person is willing to say, hey, I'd like to talk about this. I'd like to understand it more. I'd like to kind of mend fences, and the other person is too busy pointing the finger. Right. I mean, who who says when you point one finger at someone else, there's a whole bunch pointing back at you? Back at you, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:43

That's how it goes. That's how it goes. Um that's really just it for me. Yeah, I want to reflect on this episode some more. Um, because I do still have well, I don't think I have a tendency to deflect as much, and I try to really own uh my part in the story. I I believe that so much of the drama, so much of the hurt, so much of the pain that we have in the world today is because people only think about their part in the story. I mean, there's somebody who woke up one morning.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Well, look at the world we live in. Yeah. Right? I mean, what is everybody doing in this world? They're all, they all have their own point of view and their own opinion and their own beliefs, and they don't make room for everyone else's.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

There's somebody who woke up one morning, a couple of three weeks ago, and said, I'm gonna kidnap Nancy Guthrie, right? Who does that? What what what what was that person? What kind of what was that person thinking? You know, when you go out and commit crimes and you go out and to say, I'm gonna take somebody else's life or liberty away because I want to be a millionaire, that is the ultimate not accepting of uh of your actions as a human being. And that is the ultimate deflection. And then to send ransom note after ransom note, like nobody's taking me seriously, and I'm upset, like, yo, bro, you took somebody's mom. Yeah. Are you crazy? Mm-hmm. But I'm talking about that on a big scale, but it it it takes, trust me, that that person in their life probably is an asshole.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Probably. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, we have to look at it also as people, you know, you know, risk like respond and react from their own trauma. Right. And and I say that about everybody in their lives, right? You have to, you know, we don't ever know what it's like to be in someone else's head. Right. And and it's the mind that's constantly swirling. Right. Right. The mind is what's telling us everything, and and we have to stop sometimes and learn to disconnect from that and get into the body more. And when we can do that and we can see what's coming up for us, that's the clue into saying, hey, you know what? I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna reflect. And and and that's a practice I tell all my clients to do is to just sit and be quiet. And when I say sit and be quiet with yourself, I don't mean scroll. I don't mean watch a TV or read a book or listen to music. I literally mean sit and do absolutely nothing. Put your devices away, sit with yourself. Most people cannot stand to sit with themselves. They cannot stand to sit with themselves. And it's a real skill to be able to sit and to reflect. And when you do that, you really do learn. And I had a conversation with one of the women from my meditation class a couple weeks ago, right after vacation. She and I had a quick Zoom call to just kind of have a chat with each other. She lives in Canada. And, you know, um, one of the things that I've struggled with, and I've talked to you about this, and I've talked to my own therapist about it, and I've talked about it in meditation training. And she and I were talking about it, is that she was saying that one of the struggles that she has on this path as she works on herself and as her practice, you know, becomes better and better, she struggles with the relationships in her life and with her friendships, and that she feels um, not really feels, but like her perception is that she's talking to people and they're not really present. They're like doing other things and they're not present. And she's starting to kind of really question a lot of the relationships. Has and that's something that I've experienced and I've talked to you about, and I've also talked to my own therapist about that. And you know, there's this thing with compassion, right? And and having self-compassion, and and compassion starts with yourself, and and so you know, one thing that we have to realize is that you know, we have to have compassion for other people, but you know, having compassion for ourselves also means maybe this person doesn't really align with me, right? And it doesn't mean that I have any negative feelings towards them, it just means that they don't really fit in my life anymore. Right. Right. And I think, and I don't know, I think I said it to you, and I don't know if I have um I I we talked about it in my class, and I don't know if you if I had written it down, but I wanted to see if I had it here. Right. So one of the um folks in my class, I think he's from South America, Argentina, I believe. His name is Javier, and he said, when we were talking about this, and I brought this up in the group this week, he said, when you work on yourself and you evolve, there's costumes that don't fit you anymore. And and that was really a powerful thing for me because we have to realize that, you know, when we have someone that's constantly deflecting and not reflecting, and they want to keep pointing and pointing and blaming everyone else, you know, maybe they're that costume that doesn't fit you anymore. And in this sense of this friendship, I just don't think that this person fits in my life because I can't, I I really do believe that you are the company you keep. I like to have integrity and I like to do things a certain way, and I, you know, I really, I really only want to spend time, right? My time is precious and my time is valuable, and I really only want to surround myself by people who add value to my life. And you don't add value to my life if my feelings aren't valid to you, and you don't add value to my life if I can't communicate with you in a mature and adult-like way. And you know, and and that's okay with me, right? But I thought that was a very powerful thing to say that when you work on yourself and you evolve, there are costumes that don't fit you anymore. And we have to realize that not everybody has a place in our life. Right. And we do outgrow certain relationships.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Especially when that person has shown to you that they don't want to reflect, that they don't want to build bridges, but they want to continue to win the conversation, they want to continue to deflect, and they want to continue they would rather you give in to what the group wants than what is good for you.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Right, and life is too short to spend time with people who don't get you.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

And on that note, this has been another episode of the Devil You Don't Know. This has been Cleveland, and Lindsay, and we'll see you next time.