Hi there, you're listening to Take Out Therapy, short weekly lessons about all things mental health that you can take into your life and use. No topic will go unturned. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter.
My day job is a therapist, and we don't really just tell people what to do. We listen a lot and validate and help people reach their goals. But in the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations.
Yeah, I am going to teach you about how to have a higher level and more functional, happy life. While I'm a therapist, I'm not your therapist. If you need a therapist, go get one, friend.
But listen in as I open the door to my office in an exploration of things we all struggle with. And if you have little people in the room, you might want to throw on some headphones unless they already know all the swear words. I'm grateful you're here.
Thanks for showing up. This episode is called A Difficult Conversation. So a lot of times people come into therapy because they're having problems of one kind or another in their relationships.
Yeah, so because relationships are really hard. And many, many times I've heard sort of this theme of, should I have this difficult conversation? So sometimes it's like, should I talk with my husband about, you know, like this work that I'm doing or this trigger I have or how because he doesn't wipe the counters, I'm going crazy, things like that. Or it's like my mom is like, you know, pushing my boundaries.
I've asked her not to come over to my house without calling and she does it anyway and I don't know what to do about it. And so a lot of times we're sort of sitting in the therapy office trying to solve a problem without having a conversation with one of the people that's involved in the problem. And so this is where I say, should you have a difficult conversation in your relationships if something comes up and it needs to be talked about but you don't want to talk about it because it's introducing conflict or it's just a toughie? I would say give some thought to why that might be a good idea to just have the difficult conversation, right? It's very hard to remain in relationships in which we are not empowered to get our needs met.
So what I mean by that is, you know, say your sister, we'll just go back to that example of like stopping over your house without asking. And maybe there's a lot of reasons why you really want her to call ahead. And maybe those reasons aren't really her business.
But what is her business is the fact that you've asked her not to stop over without calling first. And so, yes, you need to have the conversation because you're not getting your needs met, meaning your sister isn't listening to you. She's not sort of doing her part in the relationship to keep things copacetic.
She doesn't see you. She doesn't hear you. She doesn't understand how important this is, maybe.
Right. And so you could have a conversation with her and then she would be able to be better in the relationship. Right.
She's going to be able to like know you better, know what you need, which will make your relationship stronger. Right. So there's a lot of reasons why having that difficult conversation, whatever it might be, is a good idea.
You know, sometimes people are very afraid of having the conversation because they're afraid of losing their relationships. And so what I would say to that is a relationship in which you cannot have difficult conversations is not a healthy relationship. So that has to get worked on by both people.
And the way you work on that is to introduce it as a topic. Hey, so, you know, I've noticed that we can't have difficult conversations without having a big hullabaloo. And then just like figure out if the other person wants to work on it or not.
Right. And see like, hello, that in and of itself is a difficult conversation. So that conversation alone could help two people in a relationship be able to learn to communicate with each other differently, which would help you know each other better, which would help you get your needs met and strengthen the relationship.
Right. So if you don't have difficult conversations with people, then relationships kind of go away because what happens is that then you don't get to kind of say how you need the relationship to be for it to be healthier and more functional for you. So the relationship gets really shallow.
And I don't know about you, but shallow relationships are ones that people generally move on from unless they like are shallow or they like to stay on the surface or they don't want to dig any deeper in their relationships. And then those relationships are fine. But generally, if you can't have a difficult conversation, then the relationship can only go so far.
Right. Because you don't get to really like be yourself. As a matter of fact, you don't even get to listen to yourself about whether or not you could have the conversation, because if they're off the table and you need to have things be differently, then you're just kind of ignoring yourself, which is a really important thing to notice and pay attention to because that's not healthy either.
Right. And so, yeah, conflict is super hard. And sometimes having a difficult conversation feels like bringing up conflict.
And so there's a couple of I guess I'll give you a couple of pointers about kind of like how to deal with that situation. And what I would say is never just walk into a room and start conversing about something difficult with somebody that you care about. If my husband, John, were to walk in the room and say, I want to talk to you about money, I would be out of this house so fast.
Nobody would even know I was here. I mean, I can't. I need warning.
So like if you're going to have a difficult conversation, you know, that's coming up. Just let the other person know like, hey, so I would like to sit down later and have a difficult conversation. You could even just say that I would like to sit down with you.
I would like to sit down later and talk with you about our budget. And so I just wanted to let you know. Right.
And then maybe the person could say, oh, I don't want to do that today. Can we do it tomorrow? Definitely like get a time and a place where that's going to happen if you get put off. Yeah.
We don't want to be stonewalled. So but yeah, make an arrangement to have the conversation. And then you can also just put some boundaries on the conversation.
Right. So sometimes difficult conversations need to happen in sets. Right.
So maybe not all at once, maybe just a little bit here and a little bit later and a little bit more the next day. Right. And so you can you can kind of put boundaries.
So just depending on what kind of person you are, maybe you just need to say what you need to say. And then give everybody time, give you and the other person just time to marinate on it. Maybe you're not looking, maybe you are open to feedback.
And so you can say, I really want to have this difficult conversation and I just want to let you know I'm open to feedback. Or you can say, I just sort of need to vent and then maybe we could get together tomorrow and talk about this again when we both can give it some thought. So you can put some boundaries on the conversation.
And that's a great idea because it just gives people a little bit of warning and then they kind of know what to expect. And people don't like to be hit over the head with things. Right.
That's not how we are. We don't care for that. And so, yeah, just kind of taking the time to just really think about the conversation in advance, maybe even write a couple of little things down to just, you know, like prepare.
Right. Because when we get into hard conversations, sometimes our adrenal system, sometimes our body system to oversimplify this, it kind of goes into fight or flight mode. Right.
And so we can get really amplified. And when we get really amplified, we can't think straight or talk straight. And so like, have you ever tried to have a difficult conversation with somebody you just like was super defensive and wouldn't even like listen and was just planning their next response? Like that's a fight or flight response.
And so a good idea in those situations is just take a little break. Right. And see if you can figure out how to have the conversation in a functional way.
And then if you can't, like, go find somebody to help you. And there's plenty of people doing amazing work out there, like helping us learn to relate to each other, helping us learn to converse about hard things. So never, never, I would say.
Don't be hesitant to ask for help. Yeah, we need to do that more. So anyway, hopefully this was a helpful little topic about the difficult conversation.
So, yes, we all should be having difficult conversations, whether we want to or we don't want to, because it helps grow our relationships and it helps other people know us really well. And it helps us just like be in a good relationship with ourself. And I think that is probably the most important part of the whole darn thing.
So having a good relationship with ourself means that we listen to ourself. When something's off in a relationship, like take care of that shit, you know, because you deserve to be in healthy, functional relationships. So, lock on, go have those hard conversations and let me know how they go.
Or let me know if you have other questions about that. OK, thanks. Thanks so much for listening.
This podcast is meant to be helpful, to help you learn some stuff and grow as a person, and to help me fulfill my mission of opening the doors to the therapy office a little bit wider so we can get rid of some of this stigma. Life is challenging and we all need all the help we can get. This podcast is in no way meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I recommend therapy or coaching, regardless of whether you're struggling or not.
It can be a great way to learn about yourself so you can navigate a bit easier. I'll see you next time.
