How to Talk to Someone Who’s Emotional Without Making It Worse (Communication Skills 1)

Most of us mess up difficult or emotional conversations because we try to fix the wrong thing. Someone’s upset, and we hand them a fact, a logical explanation, a different perspective, and then we wonder why they get more frustrated or just shut down. (I’m guilty of doing this too.)

In this episode I’m sharing my STEW framework (See, Think, Emotion, Words) and a really simple tool for handling someone who’s stuck in their emotions. It’s something I learned the painfully hard way after pissing off a lot of people, and it’s the difference between a conversation that actually goes somewhere and one where you both walk away annoyed.
In this episode:

• The mom moment that made me realize I was treating emotional pain like it was a logic problem
• My STEW framework and how to figure out where someone is actually stuck
• The dead giveaway that tells you someone doesn’t need more information, they need something else
• Why people prefer feeling angry over feeling sad, and what that means for how you respond
• The one tool that calms people down faster than almost anything else
• The mistake I see men make with women constantly that backfires every time

This is Part 1 of 3 on how to handle someone stuck in their emotions. The next episode covers how to handle someone who’s stuck in their thinking.

Transcript

So I just got back from Alabama where I spent eight days with my parents, and Lord help me, as much as I always tell myself not to snap, usually around day five, I turn into Miss Snippy Snappy. I’m not proud of it, but I do like to say I have mitigating circumstances, because my mom is pretty overbearing and super pushy. She’s the person who if you ask her to stop doing something, she’ll stop for like 5 minutes but then she’ll be right back at it. It’s why I love her, but also I kind of go nuts.

It also doesn’t help that she’s a major bleeping extrovert, and I’m so not. Like I’m as introverted as they come - I remember the very first time I took one of those unofficial Myers Briggs tests, I scored a 100 on introversion. True story. This is probably why most of my life whenever my mom and I tried to talk to each other, it’s been constant miscommunication, like ships passing in the night.

Anyway, there were several moments I clocked during this trip that I thought would be fun to do a 3-part communication mini series around. If you’ve ever felt like you get into these weird or awkward moments with people and you’re not quite sure why, and you end up telling yourself, “Ok, I’m just not going to speak anymore.” Or, “I hate people,” well, don’t worry, I got you. I’ve been there, pissed off a lot of people because heeeey, I’m autistic. 

I didn’t have the awareness, and I’m still pretty socially awkward. It’s taken me a long time to get to the place that I’m at today. But I am happy to say that I’ve learned certain things about people in general, which is how I’ve created approaches that work really well for me. Today is part one of communicating in tricky situations, and we’re covering how to handle someone who’s being emotional. I’m going to share my learnings, the overall framework, and one simple but powerful tool.

You’re listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I’m your host, Jule Kim. Let’s dive in.

So it’s day 6 of my visit and my mom and I are alone together in the living room when she turns to me and says, “Don’t be too close to your brother.” 

And I’m like, “Uh, what?” 

She goes, “Your brother, he didn’t call me for my birthday, and he didn’t call your dad for his birthday last year. He’s really something.” 

I say, “Mom, I think he’s autistic.” 

She keeps talking like I didn’t even say anything. 

She goes, “He doesn’t care about us. Keep your distance from him.” 

So I tell her again, “Mom, he’s probably autistic; that’s just how he is.”

She says, “Whatever.”

Obviously she’s not convinced, and that’s when I realize there are a couple of things going on here. 

She’s not happy about him not calling, right? She was sitting in her emotions, but I treated it like a moment where she doesn’t have the facts in front of her, which I’ll admit…I’m guilty of doing this, like all the time. This tends to be a recurring problem for me especially when I’m talking to other women.

What I’ve learned the extra long and painfully hard way after having so many people get mad at me for doing this, is that most people will go through a certain cycle in how they react to something happening in front of them, and you need to meet them where they are in the cycle.

In my mom’s case, what she saw was that my brother didn’t call for my dad’s birthday, and then she saw again that he didn’t call for her birthday. Now she’s thinking he doesn’t give a shit about them. And knowing her, she’s probably feeling a mix of hurt, disappointed, neglected, sad. 

And the thing about her, is that her pattern is it almost always triggers a rebound into anger. And that’s true for most people; people in general prefer to feel anger over sadness. People don’t like feeling like a victim, because it feels powerless, so they would rather be angry and lash out. And that’s her to a T, which is why she’s telling me this.

She’s bringing this into my world by venting, but then tries to tell me to keep my distance from him. I don’t like this because I’m like, that’s not her role. I’m a freaking grown-ass woman; she doesn’t get to tell me who I can or can’t talk to or be friends with. 

BUT this also isn’t the hill to die on in this moment, right? 

Anyway, this is when I realize telling her that he’s autistic didn’t work, and it’s probably because in Korea the awareness around autism isn’t that high because anything mental or mental health related is very stigmatized in Korea. 

In fact, I remember back around 2022 or so there was a show that came out on Netflix called “The Extraordinary Attorney Woo.” It made a huge splash because it features the main character as someone who’s a high-functioning autistic. She’s a lawyer, but she has many noticeable tics, like where she has to say and do things in a very particular way, like she always eats the same exact breakfast, she keeps repeating certain words or phrases. Her character isn’t good at masking at all; and she’s very visibly autistic in the show.

I watched this show with my parents, but I forgot that they don’t really understand autism and how autistics like *yours truly* often have trouble reading and signaling social cues appropriately. 

So me bringing up autism to my mom doesn’t work because I’m not meeting her where she’s at. She doesn’t have the information to really connect the dots there, and she’s even more confused on why I’m saying this.

This brings us to my framework STEW: which stands for see, think, emotion, and words. People see something happen, they think about it, they experience an emotion, which then leads them to the words they say. And how I think about this is, it’s kinda like playing doctor. You want to make sure you’re addressing where it really hurts, instead of where you think it hurts.

Where I think most of us go wrong is that we mainly focus on the words we’re gonna say to someone else, without adequately considering what that person sees, thinks, or feels. It’s kind of like treating a fever without catching the infection. And we often miss very obvious cues because we’re so centered in our own experience of what we ourselves are seeing, thinking, and feeling. 

And for me this is the cool part of having this awareness, is knowing that every person is constantly running through their STEW framework, and if we take like even 5 seconds to peek over at their side, it’s not that hard to know how to handle the situation.

So with my mom I thought she needed to see this thing about autism, but when I stepped back what she really needed the emotion component addressed, because that’s where she was hung up. And here’s a quick tip here: you’ll know someone is stuck on emotion when they’re using emotionally charged language, like how she said, “he doesn’t care about us, he’s really something.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t register that so I led with this other thing she wasn’t ready to receive, which is why she refused to budge on her opinion. 

Now maybe you’re thinking, “Oh well, that’s just because she doesn’t understand autism.”

I’m sure that’s some of it, but I promise you that’s not all this is. We’ve had other conversations, like many, many other conversations, where I present her with new facts or information, and her opinion doesn’t move at all because of the intensity of what she’s feeling from her emotions. And this is a pretty common experience with people. We often make the mistake of thinking we just need to give them more information, but the other person doesn’t change their mind.

It’s funny because I see men especially doing what I did with my mom all the time, where they talk to women all like, “Oh, here’s this fact that you don’t know that you should know.” And then they’re surprised that the woman gets upset, while on her side she’s feeling trivialized or dismissed, like no one’s listening, which is why she gets more upset or she just shuts down.

So whenever you see someone who’s acting like this where they refuse to acknowledge another perspective or they’re like superglued to their viewpoint, that’s a dead giveaway that you’re not addressing where it actually hurts. It’s like someone told you they sprained their ankle and instead of giving them a crutch you gave them a neck brace. They’re probably gonna throw the neck brace at your face and tell you to get the hell out.

With my mom, I should have addressed her emotion, and one of the best ways I could have done that is to just acknowledge and validate her - something like, “oh that’s so disappointing, Mom. You just wanted to know that he cares enough to call.” 

Had I said that, she would have been more receptive to hearing about the autism, that him not calling wasn’t personal.

Now this is something I had to learn through my coaching work. But it’s interesting when I watch people, some people just seem to naturally know this. Like my husband, he comes from almost like a TV sitcom happy family, and one of those small moments that I’ve observed with his sister and her kids is whenever her kids would fall or hurt themselves or they would get really upset at something, she handled it so differently from my family. My parents were always like, “Stop crying, this isn’t that big of a deal, wipe that look off your face.” 

But what my sister- and mother-in-law say instead is, “Oh, that hurts, huh, that really hurts, poor baby.” And then a little later, they’ll say, “I think you’ll be ok.” That has always stayed with me, because I was like, “Wow, they’re so different.” But now I understand that what they’re doing in those moments is a really simple form of acknowledging and validating the kid. They don’t try to make the kid just shut up.

So if we go back to my STEW framework, when someone is really stuck in E, their emotions, acknowledging and validating them is one of the most powerful ways to help their emotions settle down. It gives people a sense of being understood, like they’re not alone, and it’s ok to feel this way, which eases the hold the emotion has on them. 

Some examples of how to acknowledge someone include: 
“So what you’re saying is…,” 
“I’m hearing you say…,”
“Let me see if I understand this…,”

Validating someone looks like:
“Anyone in your shoes would feel the same way.”
“Given what happened, no wonder you feel that way.”
“That’s totally a natural reaction.”

I bet you’ve heard some of these, right? But maybe you were like me and didn’t understand that those words actually served a purpose.

And really quick, one small note here for people, because I always get this in workshops - acknowledging and validating someone isn’t necessarily agreeing with them or telling them that they’re right. So if that’s what you’re worried about, that’s not what this is. Acknowledging and validating are tools that help people feel better with their emotions. It’s essentially saying, I see what you’re going through, and it’s normal to feel that way. There’s no reason to be ashamed or feel like you’re not normal.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Obviously I don’t always get it right given the situation with my mom I just described to you, but here we are. It was a good reminder for me to use my own bloody frameworks myself, and I usually do, but sometimes, just like everybody else, I need a reminder. 

The good news is that with most people, if you miss the mark, you’ll see the issue just keep coming back around. It’s like the patient who keeps getting the fever, and eventually you start asking, ok what’s really going on here? 

I see it in my coaching clients all the time and in my family, so if you don’t get it on the first try, you get to try again and that’s totally ok.

The next time you see yourself arguing with someone who is in their emotions, try acknowledging and validating them, and let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you, so text the link in the description - and don’t worry I can’t see your phone number, only your message, or drop me a DM on LinkedIn.

In the next episode I’m covering how to address someone who’s more stuck at T, their thinking, so if you’re curious on how to do that, make sure you come back for that one.

As always, thank you so much for listening. And remember, I believe in you. See you next time.