Five Secrets of Effective Communication
Feelings Chart + Five Secrets of Effective Communication (EAR)
- Feeling Good Together
We all have someone we can’t get along with—whether it’s a friend or colleague who complains constantly; a relentlessly critical boss; an obnoxious neighbor; a teenager who pouts and slams doors, all the while insisting she’s not upset; or a loving, but irritating spouse. In Feeling Good Together, Dr. David Burns presents Cognitive Interpersonal Therapy, a radical new approach that will help you transform troubled, conflicted relationships into successful, happy ones.
- Intimate Connections
In this breakthrough book, Dr. David Burns, M.D., author of the bestselling Feeling Good, applies the proven principles of Cognitive Therapy to eliminating the negative thinking and low self-esteem that causes loneliness and shyness. With sensible and sensitive advice, case histories, and revealing exercises: • Pinpoint and rid yourself of attitudes that keep you apart from others • Master the techniques that make you feel and look more attractive • Deal with people who give you the runaround • Resist romantic temptations not in your best interest • Release inhibitions to conquer performance anxiety and enhance sexual pleasure • Develop fulfilling relationships . . . and mor
- 014: The Five Secrets of Effective Communication (Part 1)
- 015: The Five Secrets of Effective Communication (Part 2)
- 019: Ask David — The Defiant Child: A Secret All Parents Should Know
- 036: Ask David — Empowering the Victim With the Five Secrets
- 065: The Five Secrets (Part 1) — Overview
- 066: The Five Secrets (Part 2) — Disarming Technique
- 067: The Five Secrets (Part 3) — Thought and Feeling Empathy
- 068: The Five Secrets (Part 4) — Inquiry
- 071: Ask David — Expressing Anger, Narcissistic Bosses, Social Media Bullying
- 073: Ask David — Implementing the Five Secrets
- 062: Ask David — The Five Secrets of Effective Communication & Psychotherapy Homework
- 098: Live Session (Lee) — Methods, Five Secrets (Part 3)
- 126: The “Advanced” Secrets of Effective Communication
- 127: Communicating with the Opposite Side of the Political Divide
- 158: Changing the Focus: One of the Advanced Secrets of Effective Communication
- 146: When Helping Doesn’t Help!
- 154: Ask David Five Secrets Relationship Questions
In this podcast, David and Fabrice discuss five communication secrets that can rapidly transform conflict and misunderstanding into intimacy and trust. David describes an experience that suddenly changed the direction of his life and career when he was working with an insecure medical student from England early in his career.
- The Disarming Technique: You find truth in what the other person is saying, even if it seems illogical, self-serving, distorted, or just plain “wrong.”
- Thought and Feeling Empathy: You summarize what the other person just said (Thought Empathy) and acknowledge how he or she is probably feeling, given what he or she just said (Feeling Empathy)
- Inquiry: You as gentle, probing questions to learn more about what the other person is thinking and feeling.
- “I Feel” Statements: You express your own feelings and ideas openly according to the formula, “I’m feeling X, Y, and Z right now,” where are X, Y and Z refer to any of a wide variety of feeling words, such as anxious, attacked, hurt, or sad.
- Affirmation (formerly called Stroking): You convey warmth, caring and respect, even in the heat of battle David and Fabrice also describe the Five Secrets of Effective Communication and emphasize the incredible power of the Law of Opposites, with a vignette about a severely depressed patient who told David that he was “too young to be my doctor.”
If used skillfully, the Five Secrets can resolve nearly any relationship conflict and transform hostility, resentment and mistrust into intimacy and warmth, often with amazing speed. And although this may seem easy when you first learn about the Five Secrets, it’s extremely difficult in real world situations.
In this Podcast, David and Fabrice discuss a number of predictable emotional and mental errors nearly everyone makes when trying to use the Five Secrets to get close to someone he or she is at odds with.
Can the EAR techniques help a listener deal more effectively with a defiant, oppositional child. Dr. Burns reveals a fantastically helpful secret that he and his wife stumbled across in raising their own children. If you have ever struggled in your attempts to deal with an oppositional child or adolescent, you will find this podcast enlightening!
David and Fabrice begin by discussing the fact that sometimes people vacillate between other-blame (it’s all his/her fault) and self-blame (it’s all my fault), and emphasize that neither approach is helpful. If you blame the other person, the problem escalates and may turn to violence, but if, instead, you blame yourself, you’ll probably end up feeling worthless, guilty, unlovable, and depressed.
So what’s the solution to this dilemma? Dr. Burns encourages patients to use the Five Secrets of Effective Communication and make a radical change in the way they communicate with others, along the lines of EAR. E stands for Empathy, A stands for Assertiveness, and R stands for Respect.
David gives five compelling examples of how to deal with people who REALLY ARE violent and abuse, including a raging psychiatric patient who was threatening the staff and on the verge of exploding, a serial killer who kidnapped a social worker who had attended one of David’s communication workshops, some drunken, abusive teenagers in a huge jeep who threatened David, an insulting, demoralizing, critical boss who put down everyone who worked with him. He includes with the story of a Lutheran minister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned and mistreated by the Nazis during world war two.
In the first two Five Secrets podcasts, David and Fabrice will be joined by Helen Yeni-Komshian, MD. Helen was David's student during her psychiatric residency training at Stanford roughly 15 years ago, and she now teaches David's at weekly psychotherapy training group at Stanford, and is on the adjunct faculty there.
Feelings Chart + Five Secrets of Effective Communication (EAR)
Lots of dedication and practice will be necessary if you hope to use them skillfully and effectively in your relationships with the people you care about.
David mentions that the Five Secrets exist on two levels.
- One the one hand, they are sophisticated and powerful psychological techniques that can change your life and your relationships with others.
- on the other hand, they are profound spiritual techniques that require the death of the ego.
The definition of the Disarming Technique is finding truth in what the other person is saying, even if it seems blatantly wrong, or illogical, or exaggerated. And it's based on the Law of Opposites.
A great question, and David and Fabrice share their thinking. Many people, including therapists, are afraid of the Disarming Technique, thinking that something terrible will happen if they agree with someone who is criticizing them.
David and Fabrice then discuss Thought and Feeling Empathy
- Thought Empathy: Let me see if I got what you just said. You told me that A, B, and C. (A, B, and C would be what the person said to you, using his or her words.)
- Feeling Empathy: Given what you just said, I can imagine you might be feeling X, Y, and Z. (X, Y, and Z would be words from the Feeling Words list.)
- Inquiry: Did I get that right? Can you tell me more about what you've been thinking and feeling?
These techniques are invaluable in therapy, and go back to the pioneering work of Carl Rodgers, who argued that therapist empathy is the necessary and sufficient condition for personality change. Although subsequent research did not confirm this idea, there is still little argument that empathy is absolutely necessary for good therapeutic work.
- Helping
- Rescuing
- Giving advice
- Correcting distortions
- Making interpretations
- Failing to acknowledge the other person's anger
David encourages listeners (that includes you!) to try using Thought and Feeling Empathy three times each day, even in superficial interactions with people in any setting, such as the grocery store, and give examples of how to do this. Although this will not be the deepest application of these techniques, the practice will give you a clear understanding of how these techniques actually work.
Making errors is totally okay in a training and learning situation, as well as in real therapy sessions--as long as you get feedback and try to correct your errors with humility. This can actually deepen the therapeutic relationship.
David and Fabrice discuss Inquiry, the third of the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. Inquiry means asking gentle, probing questions to learn more about what the other person is thinking and feeling.
David encourages listeners (that includes you!) to try using Inquiry five times each day, even in superficial interactions with people in any setting, such as the grocery store, and gives examples of how to do this. Although this will not be the deepest application of Inquiry, the practice will give you a clear understanding of how this technique works.
- What do I do if I am using the Five Secrets and I feel angry? If I use the Disarming Technique, isn't there a danger that I might not express my own feelings? And isn't this the same as your "Hidden Emotion" Model, where we don't express our feelings due to excessive niceness?
- How would you use the Five Secrets if you're attacked in public by a narcissistic boss? Should you use the Disarming Technique? Won't that make you look weak? Should you only use the Five Secrets in one-on-one situations?
- Why is the Self-Monitoring technique rarely effective?
- How would you help young people who are being bullied in social media?
We address five questions submitted by listeners who listened to the recent series of podcasts on the Five Secrets of Effective Communication.
Will people manipulate you if they catch on to the fact that you're using the Five Secrets of Effective Communication? Is it fair to ask depressed patients to do psychotherapy homework between sessions when they're already struggling with a loss of motivation?
David and Jill do M = Methods, and show Lee how to respond to his wife more skillfully, using the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. Like everyone who is trying to learn the Five Secrets, Lee struggles with several blind spots:
- “I Feel” Statements. Lee has tremendous difficulties sharing his feelings openly, in a respectful manner. He seems indoctrinated with the cultural idea that men should not be vulnerable and express feelings.
- Lee makes the common error of “problem solving” instead of asking his wife to share more of her feelings.
- Lee makes another common error of apologizing and using the trite phrase “I’m sorry” instead of encouraging his wife to open up. David discusses the different between dysfunctional and effective apologies. David and Jill do lots of role-play practice with Lee and give him a homework assignment.
T = Testing.
“My epiphany came at the moment I realized I had been afraid of emasculating myself and realizing that my vision of what a “man” should be was completely inaccurate.”
At the end, Jill reads an emotional email from Lee describing how he relapsed and started arguing with his wife, and then remember to empathize use the Five Secrets instead, with an amazing result!
Learning to use the Five Secrets skillfully requires strong motivation and lots of practice, but the benefits can be tremendous.
In this podcast, we discuss three advanced techniques:
- Changing the Focus. This technique can be tremendously helpful when there’s an “elephant” in the room.
- Multiple Choice Empathy. This technique can be transformative when you’re trying to connect with a teenager, friend or loved one who refuses to talk to you.
- Positive Reframing. This technique can be invaluable when you’re fighting with a colleague, patient, friend or family member, and you’re both feeling frustrated, angry, and upset.
People who are serious about learning can read Feeling Good Together and do the written exercises while you read!
Can the Five Secrets of Effective Communication Help Us in this Era of Intensely Polarized Politics?
“How can you talk to someone with whom you fundamentally disagree? My Mom is a big fan of the current regime (Trump) and I’m horrified by what’s happened in the past two years and what’s coming. It’s hard for me to get past my rage at her. . . intensely distorted and not-reality based beliefs, fed by right-wing media. To be clear, she thinks exactly the same about my beliefs and information sources. I feel so stuck. . . and I would love to repair this relationship with her before she dies.”
I have often seen that estranged friends or family members do not talk or resolve a trivial conflict for years because one or both of them have ego issues or have fear of rejection. This problem of unfairness may even exist between a demanding parent and the child, ranging from secretly resenting to not talking at all. They might come face to face in family occasions or professional settings in case of friendship and bear the discomfort, but not attempt to reconcile.
Changing the Focus. This technique can be tremendously helpful when there’s an “elephant” in the room.
Today we take a deeper dive into Changing the Focus. "When you use Changing the Focus, you gently point out what's happening, and focus on your feelings, and drawing out the other person's feelings, instead of continuing in the same pattern of arguing or avoidance."
Although this technique can be tremendously helpful, it is very challenging, so I have written two memos explaining the technique in greater detail, with examples. One is for therapists and one is for the general public.
you have to be skillful with the Five Secrets of Effective Communication before trying this technique
Have you ever noticed that when you try to help or give advice they just keep complaining? This can be very frustrating--fortunately there's a fabulous solution to this universal problem.
Rhonda, Jill, and I discussed the most common errors we all make when we lose patience with someone who's complaining, and illustrated the techniques that are effective. As usual, they involve the Five Secrets of Effective Communication, especially Disarming, Stroking, and Feeling Empathy, along with some compassionate I Feel Statements.
We also discussed a closely related and possibly controversial theme--is it okay to use the Five Secrets just to get someone to stop complaining, especially if you're angry with that person and they tend to complain most or all of the time? Do you always have to use the Five Secrets in a totally sincere manner?
- I appreciate that you have written and spoken about relationship problems at length, but in what I have read and heard so far I do not see how this can apply to the current climate of casual dating and hook up culture which is fueled by apps such as Tinder.
I think this may be a significant problem for many of your listeners, and would greatly appreciate your thoughts, as well as any practical steps on how to date in today's world.
- For some reason, when it comes to sex, it seems that I have a lot of self-worth wrapped up in my sex drive.
- Someone I know, I won’t say whom, told me he felt emasculated when I asked him to take my car to the gas station to get the wipers replaced.
- Here’s a specific example which occurred whilst I was trying to use the disarming technique.
"I knew it all along, you really don't want to meet with me or actually have lunch with me!”