Becoming Eden

Tag: communication

  • Summary of How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Can Talk

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    by

    will
    in

    How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Can Talk is a parenting / communication book written by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. While this book is specifically intended for parents to have better relationships with their children, the vast majority of the advice contained within applies universally to all interactions, and…

  • How to Build a Tribe

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    by

    will
    in

    It is important to preface this entire document by saying that I had very specific objectives for creating a tribe. In particular, I wanted a group that was emotionally vulnerable with each other, who are reacting in real time to each other’s responses, where we create a safe space to say and feel and process…

  • How to Listen Effectively

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    divia
    in

    I recently had a conversation with a friend about listening that seemed worth writing up. There are a bunch of things we humans like to do when other people are talking to us. Thinking up what we’re going to say in response is a big one, crunching social rules that we’re afraid of breaking can…

  • Relationship Tests and How to Respond

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    divia
    in

    I want to try to point at and describe a particular phenomenon I’ve often seen in relationships: testing. While I’m more familiar with the ways women test men, and I would never claim the testing is on average totally symmetrical, certainly men test women as well. This post will be about the ways that most…

  • Why Don’t We Empathize First?

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    divia
    in

    Last week, I advised empathizing before advising. To attempt to remedy my hypocrisy, I will now empathize with the desire not to empathize. Because there really are a bunch of good and legitimate reasons we try other tacks. I’ll say some reasons I don’t empathize, so I’m not speculating too much about general motivations, but…

  • Reminder: Empathize First!

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    divia
    in

    If you’re talking to someone who is seeking support, it is incredibly useful to empathize before giving advice. This is true even if the person is nominally seeking advice.  I know to do this, but in the past few weeks, it’s happened at least three times that I can think of that I’ve been in…

  • Conversation Rules for My Birthday Party

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    divia
    in

    The feedback I got indicated that the “ask a personal question” rule was the most helpful.  I suspect that setting the intention to have good conversations in the first place was more effective than the specific ruleset, but it’s hard to know with these things. I consider the ruleset an alpha version, and I want…

  • I’ve Been Resisting Unblending

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    divia
    in

    There’s been a pattern going on in my own life recently that I’m going to try to articulate, mostly in hopes that doing so will help something shift. There’s a sense in which I can always unblend from my current trigger, go into Self, get some more perspective, laugh at myself, and get into a good…

  • How to Keep Going When You’re Triggered

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    divia
    in

    One of the topics I get the most questions about is what to do in the moment when you and your partner are both triggered. It makes a lot of sense that this would keep coming up, because this is the hard relationship/communication situation. It’s easy to deal with situation where one person is acting like…

  • The Comcast Gambit, or How to Save $35 Per Month in Five Minutes

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    by

    will
    in

    I really didn’t expect that was going to work. By nature I am pretty conflict averse: I don’t like to directly confront people or get angry or fight for myself. For this reason I will almost never do things like return food at a restaurant, or complain to customer service, or anything like that. I…