Stop, Go, Let's Talk

The Stop, Go and Let's Talk episode discusses a number of things that individuals and families need to stop doing right away, start doing by being intentional, and areas of compromise and communication.
Links and Resources:   "Why Marriages Succeed or Fail"    John Gottman
                                      Albert Ellis   Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
                                      Reality Therapy   William Glasser
                 "Love and Respect"   Emmerison Eggerichs       www.loveandrespect.com
                  "The 5 Love Languages"  Gary Chapman          5lovelanguages.com
               
 
Always seek the advice of your medical provider or physician and any other licensed mental health providers for guidance and professional resources.   

Restoration Family is a recovery and healing educational podcast for individuals and families that have a loved one that struggles with mental health and/or substance use disorders combined. Restoration family teaches Biblical principles, recovery steps, counseling and marriage and family interventions. I am a Licensed Mental Health therapist, a Psy. D. in Counseling, a Master level addiction professional and a trained pastor and chaplain.

Transcript

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today on Restoration Family. We're going to go over a topic that I defined and called when I was working as a therapist. With families. It's called Stop, Go on, Let's talk So a big part of this is resolving problems and conflict in marriages. One of the most renowned scientist and study experts in the field of marriage and family systems is John Gottman, and he said that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict a failing marriage, and these four horsemen include the emotional states of criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt in the worst. One of these is contempt. Today on Restoration Family. We're gonna talk about some of the things we need to stop doing in our family system as parents and also as individuals and people that love and care about the people that were with. Also, we're going to go over some things that we really need to start doing that it will benefit greatly in our marriage and our family system and some of the things that we're probably gonna just need to talk about work out together. Today's lesson today and study topic is going to be stopped. Go and let's talk and I learned this lesson through some trial and error, working as a psychotherapist with families for about 10 years, and they send a lot of families to me that we're having trouble in the court system and it was actually a judge involved. Or they might want the court and the judge to not be involved so they would have a prevention case, and this was designed to keep the family out of the court system. But then it was also the dependency court system which a judge was involved in. So we saw a lot of the same type of problems and families that ended up in the court system, or what, once again was referred to us a dependency court. A lot of times there were things similar or equal to domestic violence. There were a lot of problems with money and finances. There were problems with drugs and alcohol and oftentimes mental health disorders, which I saw a lot of, and a lot of these disorders, some common ones that we ran into were the bipolar disorder also depression and anxiety. But there are some things that you saw that tended to happen over and over again. in these families, and a lot of these families had a lot of conflict. And there are a lot of arguments and demonstrations of anger and aggressive behavior that were being taught to the Children and also reinforcing the family system. I learned the stop going Let's talk from one of the families that I was working with. I went into the family and there was a four year old boy and he was screaming obscenities at his mother. So I knew that he had learned this in the family system. And I knew that as a counselor and a therapist that things were not gonna change in this family. And most likely, the child was starting to demonstrate this behavior to other people. Maybe if he went to kindergarten or two other kids who was playing with or to other people, he ran into and he was learning it inside the family system. So I asked the parents, Are are you yelling and screaming at each other? And they said Yes, yes, we do that. Do you curse at each other? What? Yeah, we do that and at each of us do that and there's a lot of anger and fights going on in the family system. So I knew this child was learning this behavior because almost all of our behavior, except for the autonomic responses, are different types of learned behavior. So I sat down and talked to this family and started to discuss this issue with them. One of the things we came up with was there were some certain things that they needed to stop doing. Now I could meet with them as a counselor and therapist, and or you could go to a counselor and a therapist or do whatever you want to do. But there's certain things in the family system that don't work and their what is referred to as a deal breaker or it's just gonna cause Maur problems, conflicts, fights, aggression, anger, depression on and on and on, and people need to stop doing certain things. Some of the things we came up with on her list was we needed to stop yelling at each other and stop yelling at the Children, particularly if the Children are in the room when we're having this conflict. So you can send a time for disagreements or conflict, and it could be a more opportune time. Maybe at the end of the day after you've had dinner, people have calmed down a lot of time. Some of our problems tend to go away if we don't just react in the moment. Another thing these parents were doing is they were cursing at each other while they were yelling. And of course, the Children were picking this up and learning the behavior because it was normalized to them in the family system. And they were starting to act that out in front of other people and also the relationships they ran to throughout their day. Another thing that I discussed with the family Are you physically aggressive with each other? I you like hitting each other or slapping each other, and they said that they had been doing that. Also, we look at problems with drugs and alcohol. Domestic violence. Ah, lot of times there's an awful lot of conflict and families because the family system is not managing the money and the resource is very well, and this is causing a tremendous amount of stress, particularly on the parents, but also on the family system. So there's a lot of conflict going on in the family for a lot of reasons. So what I suggested is once they sat down and talked about this and got on the same page, his parents that they would make a list of some of the things that they just really, really needed to stop doing because things were not going to get better. And I told him that you're wasting my time as a therapist. I'm wasting your time as, ah, counselor constantly or as a client or patient. If you wanted to look at that, because if you don't stop doing these things, it's not going to get better. One of the ethical standards that we have as professional psychotherapist and recovery counselors is if you're providing service is to a family and often time, they're being charged or some system is being charged for this therapy. If the therapy is not working, it's not effective and they're not getting better. And they're not doing the work ethically. We're not supposed to continue. Service is one of the psychotherapist. I like a lot who covers a lot of these areas is William Glasser. He was the founder of reality therapy and choice therapy, and when people come to counseling, he would say in his office. Well, what brings you to my office today? And he'd ask that question. But during his writings and some of his course work, he said, already knew what brought the people in today into my office. They were having trouble in their relationships. That's what often causes. The most problems with people in life is they're struggling with their relationships that are important and high value. But there's a lot of stress and anger and conflict and acting out that needs to stop. William Glasser also said that there were basic needs above survival and safety that people had, and one of the needs that they had or the four needs that he listed were belonging a sense of belonging. Oftentimes in a family power, people want to have authority and power in life, particularly as they get older and then they want to have freedom and also fun. And these were some of the basic core needs that William Glasser defined for people. If they want to have a healthy balance in life, we see that there's a bunch of things we can do to try to make things better for the people in our family. One of the things I learned as a therapist from a youth center that I work with, and it was in Florida and there were abandoned, abused and neglected teenagers or adolescence. But they had three basic rules. I call them the three R's, and it was defined as Respect yourself, respect other people and respect your environment or your home. And so I like those rules a lot because weaken really, really remember them easily. And if you think about it, I think we can even follow those rules. Some of the things that happened in the families that I work with, if they were having a conflict or a problem like, say, they were screaming at each other, fighting over money or they didn't take care of each other's things in the home of their possessions or the car or ate the food, someone else's dinner, whatever I'd ask him. Did you break any of those three rules? Because when you ask people, the three respect rules say, Do you believe that we should respect ourselves? They're going to say yes. I think that's a good idea. How about if we respect other people. Yeah, that's a good idea to because it's mutual. It's a give and take its do unto others as we would have them do unto us. People agree with that, and then they want to respect their home or their car. Their environment could be respect your school. There's a lot of things that this helps balance out. So I would ask them, Did you break one of the rules when you had that conflict and often times they'd say, Yeah, I I really wasn't respecting my husband or my wife or you're my child, even. And how about yourself? Well, that's apparent. When I act like that, I'm really not respecting myself and then the environment. It's all stressed out. This is a really good way to really look at some things you want to start doing, but also looking at some of the areas you want to stop doing. And I'm very, very well convinced that if we stop doing some of the things we need to stop doing and we start doing a number of things that we ought to be doing, and they will really make a big difference in our family and then the other areas that are gray areas or compromise areas or things we have to work out. We sit down and talk about him and compromise and look for what's called a win win. I think our families and our mental health and even our stress level and our behaviors are going to get way, way, way better. Another theory or concept that I learned that I think is very good is when you have a conflict or a problem. You want to focus on the problem, not focus on the person as far as trying to change them or make them listen to you or make them come to your point of view. And many people tend to develop what I would call blaming techniques and fault finding and the should of water Could is, and you all have done this and they do another behavior, which Albert Ellis calls catastrophe izing. They're making a problem much, much bigger than it needs to be. When you have a problem, you want to focus on solving the problem together, and then that puts you on the same team rather than at odds with each other and being adversarial. Another thing that happens with this concept. If you work together as a team and look for a win win, you start to get really, really good at looking for solutions that work for everyone. And they really make the family healthy. Now one of the books I also read to study conflict resolution and family system, anger management and also just coming up with something that's gonna work well for a family was the seven habits off Holly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And one of the things he talked about or the concepts he talked about was going for a win win. Now, if you look for a win win, you you sit down and you study your options and you really look and consider what's going on here and try to look for a win win for everybody. And a lot of times you can come up with a really good solution. He also looked at some of the other sides of this. If I have a win lose because maybe on the most intimidating or powerful person in the family system, I might be able to force people into my camp or to look at my point of view. But if I win what I want to do and say my wife or my Children or someone else loses, what have I really gained? My wife and my Children and my family are gonna probably feel they've been pressured or manipulated. Or even sometimes these things can move into some heavy, heavy control, and it starts to look quite a bit like domestic violence. And when you study domestic violence systems, ah, lot of the old Duluth model domestic violence system talks about the power and control wheel, so we don't want to be using power and control to get our way in life. We want to start using serving one another in love, maybe being patient, looking for a win win and trying to help everybody else. The Bible also talks about this type of mentality as serving one another in love and not seeking to always get your own way. Those scriptures that I'm talking about in the Bible that refer to similar understandings that this is Matthew 7 12 where you would say, do wantto others that you would have them do unto you. And in Galatians 5 13 they talk about serving one another in love and these air good principles to follow. And I think the three respects fit very well and to do unto others as you would have them due on to you. We also see that sometimes the greatest people in life are those who serve other people and give. And that's a big principle that we want to follow when we're in. The healing and recovery stage is that we're giving to other people were serving them, And it's not just about ourselves. When you look at people that are just focused mostly on theirselves, and they're very needy and they're almost empty and they have to be served repeatedly, they have to be given to repeatedly instead of this life joy, peace and the fruits of the Holy Spirit flowing out of us. Two other people serve another people in love. There's this neediness and it's all centered about me and centered about my needs and centered around what I want. And that's a very good picture off. The addiction theory is there's almost like an empty pit or ah hole in the person, and it can never be satisfy or filled or what they refer to as satiated. So there's this ongoing emptiness that is really, really unable to be filled when people are healthy and they're full of joy and peace and the other fruits of the spirit, their life is flowing out of them, and they're demonstrating these fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Now we all struggle in many of these areas, particularly for myself being patient. But as I've gotten older, I've learned that being impatient is not very good for me, because I'm way more stressed out again, and it pushes my brother blood pressure up. And then I'm anxious and easily to react in a bad way. If I'm patient, I think things through better, and I allow God's word in his truth to move in my mind in my heart, my spirit, where I can live those principles out rather than what I'm just reacting to in the moment. Some of the other principles I've learned as a therapist and just as a believer is one of the things we want to do is catch other people doing things right, and particularly with Children and other people that are struggling a little bit with their self concept of their sense of self. Many times you'll find that people have gift ings and abilities, and we're actually promised in the Bible teaches us that we're all given gifts and abilities for serving one another. We want to look at the people in our life and be looking for something that they're good at. Our catch them doing things right. Once again, when you look at John Gottman, he says that many of the family systems they're really, really need to have a positive interaction scale of about 5 to 1, and then the system is way healthy and it gets better and better, and people want to forgive each other. They don't develop these resentments, like stonewalling and contempt and defensiveness because they're learning to look at each other with the best in people, and particularly with Children, because they're developing what's called skills acquisition. They don't know is no one understand. We have to be patient with them and some of the therapist that have worked with Children and are experts in this field. They'll talk about having maybe 10 positive interactions with your Children before you have one correction for them. and they tend to learn better that way because they're really encouraged to to make you happy and do what you want them to do because our Children really, really look up to us and and where the center point of their life and they just want to be accepted and loved by us. So they're looking for ways to please us, and they will do that if we can find ways to reinforce their sense of cell by catching them, doing things right and knowing that they have the right heart in the right intentions as young Children, because they've been blessed by us and there are a blessing to us. One of the therapists I mentioned earlier was Albert Ellis, and he did rational, emotive behaviour therapy, he said. A lot of people, they tend to get very upset about conflict and anger, so they're trying to get other people to do what they want, and I think their way and so they'll use a lot of these statements where you should have done this should've would've could've so you ought to and they'll often times do what's called catastrophe izing, which means they're making a problem way way bigger than it needs to be. So one of the things that Albert Ellis talked about in rational, emotive behaviour therapy is don't get so upset about these things because people make mistakes and they have problems and they do things wrong and they don't know how to do things correctly sometime. But a lot of times we tend to get way too upset. And then we do what's called Attach a lot of blaming techniques and fault finding two people and that blaming techniques and fault finding do not work very well with people. Almost no one wants to be controlled through blame and fault finding, and they will resist on some way or another, either passive aggressively or just, maybe aggressively, or they might suppress stuff. But these air, not good techniques. So what Albert Ellis talked a lot about? That I, like is said, I really would prefer for this to happen and asked for a solution and work out with the person that you're involved with to get something resolved and once again, that fits in with the wind wind and also treating other people with respect and doing unto others. So if you're looking at your relationships with people, and you see that there's a lot of fault finding criticism, particularly blaming techniques. Those are some other things that you really should stop doing. And I just used the should've would've could've, like should stop doing there some of the things that you're gonna want to stop doing because they're not effective and people don't like it. Including yourself. Finally, another set of tools that I like a lot is one of the resource is by Gary Chapman called The Love Languages. And this is a lot to do with serving one of the another in love and catching people, doing things and just being really good at doing the right thing for people. So with the love languages, thes air, things we want to do and one of the languages, it's called words of affirmation. So we speak words that lift and encourage. Another one is acts of service. You might go out of your way to do something really good for someone in your family, like your wife or Philip the car with gas. Clean it. She might make a nice dinner for you. Do something for your Children, go to their games, spend time with him, have fun and play with them. Also, there's physical touch. A lot of people that's one of their language. They like to be touched a lot. Sometime you might want to give your wife or husband a back rub or on their shoulders if they got a lot of stress. Sometimes people even massages others back or their feet. These are things that they're kind of a blessing to one another. Another Love languages gifts. If you bring home a nice present or a gift some time for, like your child or something, they'd say, Mommy and Daddy were really thinking about me today. They really love me. My son is very good at picking out just the right gift for people, and he is a scientist type engineer. But he's very vory good at thinking about giving the right thing. But what's a lot of thought and effort into? It means a lot to us and also ah, final gift or ability or love languages called Time. A lot of people really, really want our time, so sometimes in a marriage people will get angry because you have a nice big house, a beautiful car and a lot of money. But the husband may not be spending any time with his wife and Children, and she's feeling cheated or robbed from the love language that she really needs the most. I will be listing the links, and the resource is to all these different books and resource is and authors and writers also to end up with this teaching. Today you'll see them down in the show notes for all the resource is and links. But the last area that I did want to mention is sometime. We have to talk about things because we have to work things out. And when you're looking at family systems, you will find out that people often have to sit down and really work out a plan and a compromise for money management. They also will have to spend some time on parenting skills and how they want to raise their Children in their belief systems and what they do with their spare, time spare resource is, and also the holidays can be a big deal. So there's a lot of things and family systems that we have to sit down and really talk about, but this is once again where you go for the win win, so I will have those family Resource is in the show description and the show notes, and maybe you can take some time to look at these Resource is and start implementing them in your life and in your family with the people you love and care about. Remember, it's really important if you stop doing some of the things that you really, really need to stop doing. That's gonna make a huge difference and you know what they are. And you can also study some of these. Resource is I talked today about healthy interactions with people we love and care for in our family and even our friends also listening to people really listening to them and understanding That's another technique by Stephen Colletti says. We have to listen to understand first before other people listen to us. But take the time, which is another gift or love language, to really listen to people because that sends a message to them that they're valuable and of great worth and and interest to us, particularly our Children and our loved ones. But I'll look at those resource is put him in there for you. So stop doing some of the things that you really need to stop doing. And you can even ask your wife, your husband, What's one thing, honey that would make me about her husband. And if she focuses on just one thing at a time, not a laundry list of everything that isn't right. But one thing. Ask that question. Be interactive and positive, upfront and intentional. What's one thing I could do to make me a better husband? And she can ask the question, What's one thing that I can do to make me a better wife? People often rephrase that also and say through the love and respect mindset, what's one thing I can do as a husband to make you know that I love you more because that's from the love and respect process. And then also the wife can ask, What's one thing I can do that will show you respect more as a loving wife and that's it for today I'll have the resource is at the bottom and email me if you need something and we'll be moving on to our next topics down the road, usually once every two weeks, I will be posting thank you from restoration family. And I hope things were getting better. And your family and you are a blessing one to another.