How to Communicate Feelings Effectively With a Spouse

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is John Bosworth, I am a licensed mental health counselor in St. Petersburg, Florida. I would like to talk about how to communicate feelings effectively with a spouse. Usually when we say we lack communication or we don't have communication or we are not communicating with our spouse we are communicating, but what we are really doing is not communicating very effectively. What I found is some education helps people communicate a lot more effectively. And by education what I mean is most people when I ask them how they feel they usually say well I, you know, what happened was he came down to me, and I got really upset. I say no that's, and I will tell them that is a thought. How did you feel in that situation? And they will say, well, and they will usually go to their head again, and come up with another thought. So I try to educate people as to the difference between a thought and a feeling. And a good way to look at that is a feeling usually is a one word phrase. Like I felt happy, sad, bored, frustrated. So usually one word will clue you in to a feeling instead of a thought. A thought is usually kind of a litany of words that you had about that feeling or about that situation. So if you can communicate effectively how you feel to somebody it usually will diffuse an argument. Let's say a spouse or a couple is arguing one person usually has a blame tendency, which is well you did this, you left the cap off of the toothpaste. And then the other person will say well no I did, or even if I did well you do this. So one way that we can kind of diffuse that, and that we can make a little bit of head way in communicating better is to instead of saying well you left the toothpaste off or you did this you could say hey honey I feel frustrated when you keep leaving the cap off of the toothpaste. We are using kind of a simple example, but it is an easy way to see it. I feel frustrated when you leave the cap off of the toothpaste, because it might get all over or it might roll off, and toothpaste might be all over. There you are communicating effectively, because you are stating how you feel instead of what the other person did, which kind of implies that they made you feel a certain way. But we know that it is our thought process that makes us feel a certain way. So in communicating effectively show empathy, and reflective listening to the person that you are interacting with, and then use effective I statements to tell the person how you feel. A person becomes a lot less defensive when you tell them how you feel instead of what they did wrong to quote make you feel a certain way. My name is John Bosworth, and we are talking about how to communicate feelings effectively with a spouse."