Escape the Argument Loop

How to avoid getting stuck in the argument trap. Now, this can often happen not just in clinic, but in personal situations as well. And see if this sounds familiar to you. This is the way that most arguments start. You know, somebody will come and say something to you, or person A says something to person B. That's something like, oh, like, yeah, I felt really bad after whatever you did last time. Like, you know, I don't want to do that again. Can we not do any justice? I'm not really sure that's right for me. Or, oh, you know what? Like, you didn't do the dishes again this morning. And I came downstairs, there was a complete mess in the kitchen. The. There's some sort of emotion and there's some sort of, you know, I'm sharing this with you because there's something I'm not happy about here. Now, person A says that person B, which might be you in this situation, hears that, and that comment or that reaction triggers an immediate internal emotion. It triggers an internal reaction. And that might be like, whoa, hang on a minute. Like, it's okay to feel sore after treatment. I explained that's nothing to be worried about. Like, don't go blaming me. That's just what happens. Or, hang on a minute. I had a really stressful morning this morning trying to get our daughter out the door, and the taxi was, like, late and this was happening and she'd overslept. Like, I didn't have time to do the dishes. Like, it's not fair to be annoyed at me. So we might feel that an emotion along the lines of it's not fair, or they haven't understood something about this person's point isn't accurate or isn't valid. They don't have a right to be mad at me. Or they don't have a right to be upset about this. So we have this internal reaction. The first thing we then do is go, let me externalize that. Because it's uncomfortable holding that in. We want to get rid of that, put it out there so we can solve this. So you might come back with, well, yeah, but that's completely normal. Like, don't worry. Like, that's a normal thing that happens with adjusting there. Or you might go, like, well, hang on a minute. Like, I had such a stressful morning. Like, you can't get mad at me for doing like, the dishes were supposed to be done the night before. You didn't do them before. You know, we might come back with something that's like, whoa, hang on a minute. This is unfair. Person B then goes, I was just sharing something about how I felt. Now you're making a criticism about me. And they're going to go one or two ways. They're either going to fight fire with fire and go, you never do the dishes in the morning. Or, or they're going to go, no, no, no, it's not about that. It's actually just about this. They're going to dismiss what you've said either way. You're then going to feel like they haven't listened, they just completely disregarded what I said. Or hang on a minute, they're making this about something else. Whatever it is, you can see how this loop has now started. The reason for that is both people are now in reactive communication and reactive communication is essentially, I feel something and I want to verbalize that. It's self focus. It's about, oh, I want to say what I'm doing here. It's very much trying to take charge of the, of the communication, very much taking charge of the conversation. And the problem with that is that means taking charge of the other person. And people don't generally like that. They don't generally like it when someone tries to take charge of something for them. So the solution to this, the way you avoid this is by becoming proactive and really simple way of doing this. It helps avoid so many arguments, it helps avoid so many miscommunications with patients in clinic as well that you don't go, oh, I feel this, let me act on that. You pause and you go, let me just make sure I've got this right. Let me just like double check things for a minute. And the easiest way to do that is you basically just repeat back what you've heard and ask if you got it right. You might go, okay. So you're feeling a bit worried because, you know, we treated a few days ago and since then it's been really sore for a couple of days. It's only just started calming down and you're struggling to put your socks on. That's left you feeling a bit worried that, oh, what if the treatment was actually making things worse? Did I get that right? Or okay, so let me just check. You're annoyed because when you came down in the morning, you know, I said I was going to try and do the dishes and I hadn't done them and that left you feeling stressed. Did I get that right? Doesn't matter what it is, you just repeat back what you've heard. Because the first thing I want to do, if I'm going To avoid an argument is I want to make sure that I've understood what they've said correctly because I'm going to hear this through my own lens and I might hear something quite different. So just doing that, just being, pause, repeat what they've said and then go, okay, did I get that right? It just lowers the energy on both sides that, it just calms things down that little bit. Then hopefully they go, yes. Or they might go, no. They might go, no. It isn't really so much that I'm just, you know, like, I'm just worried that is that gonna happen every time? Like, you know, if when it flared up like that, like, I haven't had that sharp pain for a couple of weeks, like it just, just a bit worried about it. And I'm thinking, ah, okay, so it wasn't that you thought it did some harm, but you're just worried about what if that happens each time. So you're just going to come back and just repeat it again. Okay, so what I, what you actually meant was this. Did I get that right? And you might have to do this once or twice, but you're just looking for them to go like, yeah, that's it. And then you'll be tempted to go, okay, I've understood. Let me respond. Don't. There's one more thing to do here. The first thing you do before that is you want to validate them. You want to show that you, you understand how they feel and you are not judging them for that. But it is okay for them to feel the way they feel. Doesn't mean you agree with it, doesn't mean you feel the same way. But you just basically say something like, that makes sense to me because. So, okay, well, yeah, it makes sense that if you haven't had that shooting pain for a couple of weeks, it's going to be worrying if it suddenly comes back. I understand how you'd be worried about that. Or right now it makes sense to me how, you know, when you came down in the morning and I hadn't done the dishes, you felt like I just left them for you again or I couldn't be bothered. I can see how you might feel that way, or I can see it might look from that perspective. I'm just going, I understand what it looks like to you now. I have a totally different idea in my head of what's going on.