There’s a wonderful book “How to talk so kids will listen & listen so kids will talk”, which teaches that if you want your crying&shouting child to actually solve some problem/change behavior/listen to your advice at all, you must realize that there are actually two different personas in them (say: the reptile part of the brain and the neocortex) and you have to first address the first one before you can even start talking with the other: so for example when a child is having a tantrum, what you see is perhaps more like a frightened lizard, than a reasonable person you can persuade, so first you have to calm it down. And the trick to disarm this emotional alert is to actually acknowledge the message it tries to send you—usually by paraphrasing the emotional content (“Oh, I see you have a terrible day, you are angry that we have to finish playing...”) [which is even more important in case of children which don’t know how to verbalize the emotional state as they lack the words/introspection skills]. There are subtleties to it, like for example: you don’t have to copy/inhabit the same emotional state (you don’t have to be angry that the play is over yourself) but you need to match the tone and choice of words to the emotion you talk about so that the child believes you are really treating it seriously, not just impassionately describe/condescending/mocking it. So “I see you are angry” delivered in too robotic tone and poker face can backfire and restart the tantrum, but said with harsher tone and grim face can work much better—obviously this is much easier if you simply truly mean it and honestly try to convey that you accept the feelings of your child. It’s much more difficult when you are yourself struggling to learn empathy/figure out how to talk about emotions/etc. So I guess it’s more natural for some people than others.
Crucially, only when you calm down this part of the brain which was overwhelmed by emotions, you can move forward to reason with the child and explain anything/exchange arguments/plan solution etc. And often this second stage is not even needed, as the child will be able to fix the problem themselves once they’re calmed down. OTOH if you start to reason with the child too early, while it’s still nervous, it will not lead anywhere except escalating the conflict. In some sense: there’s no one to answer your call, until you answer theirs.
I’m saying all this, because I’ve found these techniques surprisingly helpful in other contexts, like talking to my grown up family members. In some sense an analogue of this is useful in the Internet debates too: you first should be able to paraphrase the stance of your opponent and demonstrate you understand where they’re coming from, before you say even a word of critique or argumentation—otherwise they’ll immediately label you as outsider who doesn’t know a shit and is not worth listening to.
And your post made me realize, that the technique from the book you describe is somewhat like this, if you look through “subagents model of the brain” perspective: there is a part of you which is having emotional crisis, and it’s terrified by some problem it needs to solve, but this part is not ready to listen for solution/change, as long as it’s in the busy loop waiting for an ACK packet confirming someone got the S.O.S. signal. So you first need to emphatically talk with this part, describe what it feels, acknowledge its good intentions etc. and only then you can move on to actually persuade/negotiate/change anything. This also reminds me a bit the Focusing technique—where the analogue to the child which doesn’t know how to name their own emotions, so is stuck in demonstrating them until you guess the keyword for them seems even better. This all starts to look to me as communication problems, not unlike communication problems between people, but within various parts of the brain.
I do like the “How To Talk” book and definitely use those techniques on my kids (“Oh, you’re very upset, you’re sad that we ran out of red peppers...”—me 20 minutes ago) though I haven’t successfully started the habit of using it on adults. (Last time I tried I was accused of being condescending, guess I haven’t quite gotten it down yet.) “Nonviolent Communication” and other sources hit that theme too.
…But I don’t think that’s quite it. That would be “positive reframing” without “magic dial”. It’s not just about acknowledging that the negative thought exists to address certain needs, it’s about making sure that those needs continue to be addressed. “Magic dial” is one easy way to do so—if the negative thought addresses a set of needs, then fine, keep thinking the negative thought, and think it often enough to address those needs, and no more often than that. But the other part is, by calling out the needs to awareness, and thinking about how they can be addressed, you might come up with other solutions that don’t involve thinking the negative thought.
I also have difficulties in applying this techniques on adults, of the “Me mad?No shit Sherlock!” kind. I’m not fluent with it yet, but what I’ve observed is that the more sincere I am, and the more my tone matches the tone of the other person, the better the results. I think this explains big chunk of “don’t use that tone of voice on me!” responses I’ve got in my life, which I used to find strange [as I personally pay much more attention to the content of the text/speech, not the tone/style/form], but recently I’ve realized that this can be quite a rational response from someone who reads the cues from both content AND form, and seeing a mismatch, decides which of the two is easier to forge, and which one is the “real” message [perhaps based on their experience, in which controlling emotions is more difficult].
Also, I agree that the “paraphrase the emotions” only maps to the “positive reframing” part. In my eyes the analogy extended also beyond this single step into the pattern of using this discharge step as a necessary step to use some other rationally obvious thing, which you really think should work on its own in theory (like the “Classic CBT”-ish self-talk), but in practice you need to prepare the ground for it.
Indeed there seems to be no analog of “Magical dial” in the “How to talk..” approach. There are some fragments of the book though which teach how to extract the goals/needs/fears of the child and then help them construct a solution which achieves those goals/needs, but this is more like a part of the analog of “classic CPT-ish self talk”-step I think. (In particular I don’t recall the book saying things like “do the same stuff just less intensively”, so yeah, this part is new and interesting). For example today I told my son, that “So you get mad each time we come to pick you up from your friend right in the moment when you’ve finally figured out some cool way to play with each other, and this is mega-frustrating, I know. Sure, one way to handle this would be to find yet another way to express anger which doesn’t hurt mommy, say punch a pillow, stump, or tear paper, BUT I think that your feeling of being mad is actually trying to tell you something important: that you like your friend very much, like spending time with him, like playing, and hate to be surprised by abruptly having to stop. I don’t think we should expect you to feel this each time over and over again each day we pick you up, and try to somehow manage this—how about instead we give you a handwatch, teach you how time works, and let you know in advance when we gonna pick you up? That should eliminate the root cause, not just the effect.”.
Thanks to whoever upvoted my comment recently bringing it again to my attention via notification system—rereading my comment after 2 years, I feel really sorry for myself that despite writing the sentence
And your post made me realize, that the technique from the book you describe is somewhat like this, if you look through “subagents model of the brain” perspective: there is a part of you which is having emotional crisis, and it’s terrified by some problem it needs to solve, but this part is not ready to listen for solution/change, as long as it’s in the busy loop waiting for an ACK packet confirming someone got the S.O.S. signal.
I did not really understand what it means and how to implement it and how huge impact on my life it will have once finally executed. Only recently I took part in a Lowen’s therapy, in which by performing some body movements typical for aggression I’ve finally established connection between the part which was angry and the part which could listen about it.
There’s a wonderful book “How to talk so kids will listen & listen so kids will talk”, which teaches that if you want your crying&shouting child to actually solve some problem/change behavior/listen to your advice at all, you must realize that there are actually two different personas in them (say: the reptile part of the brain and the neocortex) and you have to first address the first one before you can even start talking with the other: so for example when a child is having a tantrum, what you see is perhaps more like a frightened lizard, than a reasonable person you can persuade, so first you have to calm it down. And the trick to disarm this emotional alert is to actually acknowledge the message it tries to send you—usually by paraphrasing the emotional content (“Oh, I see you have a terrible day, you are angry that we have to finish playing...”) [which is even more important in case of children which don’t know how to verbalize the emotional state as they lack the words/introspection skills]. There are subtleties to it, like for example: you don’t have to copy/inhabit the same emotional state (you don’t have to be angry that the play is over yourself) but you need to match the tone and choice of words to the emotion you talk about so that the child believes you are really treating it seriously, not just impassionately describe/condescending/mocking it. So “I see you are angry” delivered in too robotic tone and poker face can backfire and restart the tantrum, but said with harsher tone and grim face can work much better—obviously this is much easier if you simply truly mean it and honestly try to convey that you accept the feelings of your child. It’s much more difficult when you are yourself struggling to learn empathy/figure out how to talk about emotions/etc. So I guess it’s more natural for some people than others.
Crucially, only when you calm down this part of the brain which was overwhelmed by emotions, you can move forward to reason with the child and explain anything/exchange arguments/plan solution etc. And often this second stage is not even needed, as the child will be able to fix the problem themselves once they’re calmed down. OTOH if you start to reason with the child too early, while it’s still nervous, it will not lead anywhere except escalating the conflict. In some sense: there’s no one to answer your call, until you answer theirs.
I’m saying all this, because I’ve found these techniques surprisingly helpful in other contexts, like talking to my grown up family members. In some sense an analogue of this is useful in the Internet debates too: you first should be able to paraphrase the stance of your opponent and demonstrate you understand where they’re coming from, before you say even a word of critique or argumentation—otherwise they’ll immediately label you as outsider who doesn’t know a shit and is not worth listening to.
And your post made me realize, that the technique from the book you describe is somewhat like this, if you look through “subagents model of the brain” perspective: there is a part of you which is having emotional crisis, and it’s terrified by some problem it needs to solve, but this part is not ready to listen for solution/change, as long as it’s in the busy loop waiting for an ACK packet confirming someone got the S.O.S. signal. So you first need to emphatically talk with this part, describe what it feels, acknowledge its good intentions etc. and only then you can move on to actually persuade/negotiate/change anything. This also reminds me a bit the Focusing technique—where the analogue to the child which doesn’t know how to name their own emotions, so is stuck in demonstrating them until you guess the keyword for them seems even better. This all starts to look to me as communication problems, not unlike communication problems between people, but within various parts of the brain.
I do like the “How To Talk” book and definitely use those techniques on my kids (“Oh, you’re very upset, you’re sad that we ran out of red peppers...”—me 20 minutes ago) though I haven’t successfully started the habit of using it on adults. (Last time I tried I was accused of being condescending, guess I haven’t quite gotten it down yet.) “Nonviolent Communication” and other sources hit that theme too.
…But I don’t think that’s quite it. That would be “positive reframing” without “magic dial”. It’s not just about acknowledging that the negative thought exists to address certain needs, it’s about making sure that those needs continue to be addressed. “Magic dial” is one easy way to do so—if the negative thought addresses a set of needs, then fine, keep thinking the negative thought, and think it often enough to address those needs, and no more often than that. But the other part is, by calling out the needs to awareness, and thinking about how they can be addressed, you might come up with other solutions that don’t involve thinking the negative thought.
I also have difficulties in applying this techniques on adults, of the “Me mad?No shit Sherlock!” kind. I’m not fluent with it yet, but what I’ve observed is that the more sincere I am, and the more my tone matches the tone of the other person, the better the results. I think this explains big chunk of “don’t use that tone of voice on me!” responses I’ve got in my life, which I used to find strange [as I personally pay much more attention to the content of the text/speech, not the tone/style/form], but recently I’ve realized that this can be quite a rational response from someone who reads the cues from both content AND form, and seeing a mismatch, decides which of the two is easier to forge, and which one is the “real” message [perhaps based on their experience, in which controlling emotions is more difficult].
Also, I agree that the “paraphrase the emotions” only maps to the “positive reframing” part. In my eyes the analogy extended also beyond this single step into the pattern of using this discharge step as a necessary step to use some other rationally obvious thing, which you really think should work on its own in theory (like the “Classic CBT”-ish self-talk), but in practice you need to prepare the ground for it.
Indeed there seems to be no analog of “Magical dial” in the “How to talk..” approach. There are some fragments of the book though which teach how to extract the goals/needs/fears of the child and then help them construct a solution which achieves those goals/needs, but this is more like a part of the analog of “classic CPT-ish self talk”-step I think. (In particular I don’t recall the book saying things like “do the same stuff just less intensively”, so yeah, this part is new and interesting). For example today I told my son, that “So you get mad each time we come to pick you up from your friend right in the moment when you’ve finally figured out some cool way to play with each other, and this is mega-frustrating, I know. Sure, one way to handle this would be to find yet another way to express anger which doesn’t hurt mommy, say punch a pillow, stump, or tear paper, BUT I think that your feeling of being mad is actually trying to tell you something important: that you like your friend very much, like spending time with him, like playing, and hate to be surprised by abruptly having to stop. I don’t think we should expect you to feel this each time over and over again each day we pick you up, and try to somehow manage this—how about instead we give you a handwatch, teach you how time works, and let you know in advance when we gonna pick you up? That should eliminate the root cause, not just the effect.”.
Thanks to whoever upvoted my comment recently bringing it again to my attention via notification system—rereading my comment after 2 years, I feel really sorry for myself that despite writing the sentence
I did not really understand what it means and how to implement it and how huge impact on my life it will have once finally executed. Only recently I took part in a Lowen’s therapy, in which by performing some body movements typical for aggression I’ve finally established connection between the part which was angry and the part which could listen about it.