Cognitive and Emotional Conversations…
He immediately looked at me and said, “My grandmother said she don’t love me.” Look at the 12 year old grandson, what happens to his Fear, Stress and Trauma levels now that he FEELS as though his grandmother doesn’t love him? Ultimately, what happens to his behaviors? Hopefully by now we have learned that as Fear, Stress, and Trauma levels increase there is a reciprocating spike in maladaptive behaviors. If you want change and lasting change in your relationships, don’t have cognitive conversations with emotional people.Rather than the “you” message let’s try saying something that would cause them to become cognitive from the beginning. What if you asked questions rather than make statements? Stephen Covey in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People made this statement as an effective habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” How would you seek to understand a person if not by asking questions? Example, parent / Child, the child made an error in judgment at school. If life lessons repeat until we learn; what have you learned? What is the lesson that you learned from this experience? How can we fix this so that it won’t happen again? How can I better support you as we work on this problem together? I must be doing something wrong, tell me what I need to do differently so that we can avoid this from happening? Can I tell you what I learned from this experience that I don’t want to repeat? The emphasis here is on learning, or understanding the other person; Teaching values and standards by first hearing where the other person is in their understanding. The cognitive communications is perceived as shaming and blaming although it may not be the intent.
Stephen Covey in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People made this statement as an effective habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” How would you seek to understand a person if not by asking questions? Example, parent / Child, the child made an error in judgment at school. If life lessons repeat until we learn; what have you learned? What is the lesson that you learned from this experience? How can we fix this so that it won’t happen again? How can I better support you as we work on this problem together? I must be doing something wrong, tell me what I need to do differently so that we can avoid this from happening? Can I tell you what I learned from this experience that I don’t want to repeat? The emphasis here is on learning, or understanding the other person; Teaching values and standards by first hearing where the other person is in their understanding. The cognitive communications is perceived as shaming and blaming although it may not be the intent. The unfortunate part of this conversation, she was
not just talking to other adults. The 12 year old
grandson was sitting on the steps and heard
everything she said. As he and I walked out of the door to leave, I asked him, “What did you hear your grandmother say?”