This is why you struggle during hard conversations

Do you suck at communicating in your relationship? Are you terrible at it? Do you feel like you. You are unable to communicate what you want or what you need? Do you feel like anytime that you get into conflict with your girlfriend or your wife that it just sort of spirals into something even bigger than the initial sort of conflict or argument or disagreement? For a lot of guys, communication relationships is like one of the big things that they're really trying to work on. And for a lot of men that I've worked with over the years, when they, when they come in, whether they're coming to work with me one on one or they're coming to work with me as a couple, communication is one of the biggest challenges that they seem to be facing in the relationship. So why is it that many of us struggle to be proficient at communicating in our relationships? The first thing they're going to say, I'm going to talk very clearly and give you some very specific pointers about how to improve your communication within your relationship. But one of the things that I think most of the videos on YouTube and most of the videos online don't talk about when it comes to communicating more effectively, right? Telling her exactly what you want, getting your needs met in a relationship, being clear, being direct. There's a lot of good stuff out there and there's some really good advice, I think some shitty and terrible advice. But I think one of the things that most of the videos miss is that poor communication is not just limited to your ability to express yourself. And that conflict and arguments and fights, reoccurring fights happening within your relationship, not simply because you or your partner have some bad habits in your relationship or are, you know, not very good at communicating. They happen because of the level of regulation within your nervous system, right? So your ability to communicate is directly correlated to your ability to regulate your body and your nervous system. So your body, your nervous system is an incredibly important aspect of how you communicate, right? If you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out, if you're feeling anxious or shut down, if you're feeling, you know, overwhelmed with anger, none of those experiences, none of that, none of those states that you are experiencing within your body, within your nervous system are going to be conducive for you to communicate your message or to listen to your partner or to communicate your needs or your wants or your desires to the woman that you're with. And so for a lot of men, they go out, you know, they watch YouTube videos, they go and read a book, and what they're looking for are tactics of how to say the right thing. And there's a lot of stuff out there that'll teach you, you know, sentences and phrases that you can use within your relationship, how to diffuse an argument very quickly. There's some decent stuff out there. But the problem that a lot of guys face is that using those tools, right, Using just a simple sentence within a conflict, you know, like, the problem isn't X. The problem is Y. That's a very simple redirect that you can use within a relationship that, you know, if you're. If your partner's saying, well, the problem is that, you know, you forgot to do this and you're saying, no. Well, the problem isn't that I forgot to do that. The problem is that I just haven't had time to get it done yet. And here's. And here's why, right? So there's a very simple redirect that you can use. But the issue with that is that if your nervous system, if, as you're communicating from that, you know, using that, that tactic, using that redirect, if your nervous system is dysregulated, right, You're. You're tensed, you're wound up, you're angry, right? You're boiling, you're like, no, the problem isn't there. The problem is you're. You're not going to be able to communicate the message effectively. And so for most men, what I've seen over the years is the problem. I'm going to use it right now. The problem isn't that they're poor communicators. The problem is that their nervous system is poorly regulated. And the degree that you're able to regulate your nervous system equals the degree to which your partner is going to trust your communication and that you are going to trust your capacity to communicate, right? Really effective communicators, what they do really well is they create a baseline, a felt baseline of experience. And so if you watch any good communicator, whether it's a lawyer, you know, in a courtroom, or you watch somebody on YouTube or whatever it is, what they do really well, first and foremost is that they have a solid baseline within their nervous system. They're calm, they're grounded, they're centered. And from that place they can communicate. And you can see anybody do this, right? Anybody that you. That you follow or that you watch. The reason why they're so good at what they do, the sort of draw that you naturally feel towards them is often that there's a. There's a kind of steadiness to their nervous system, right? There's a place of homeostasis, of relaxation, of calm and ease that naturally allows your body to settle in. So where a lot of men are going wrong is not that they're communicating poorly. Maybe that's true some of the time and they need to actually change the language that they're using, change the way they listen. But most of the time it's that the baseline of their nervous system is jacked up. Their really anxious, they're super stressed out, they're really angry, you know, they're disconnected. I don't give a shit about this, I don't care about this. I don't want to even want to be talking about this. And so they're automatically disengaged. And what happens is that their partner can feel that, right? You're a woman, can feel that. She can feel when you're worked up. So the first step to healthier, more potent, more powerful communication is being able to down regulate, what's called down regulate your nervous system. So very quickly, your nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, has two separate parts, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. And I'm going to give just a very basic version of this. There's, there's so much more data and information here that I can give, but I'm going to give you the basic version, which is that your sympathetic nervous system is responsible for your fight, flight, freeze or fawn. That one doesn't get talked about a lot. I'll touch on it here in a second. So your sympathetic nervous system is kind of like the gas pedal, you know, the more in your sympathetic nervous system that you are, the more that you're going to want to take action. You're going to want to do stuff, you're going to want to push back in a conversation. If you're a fighter, you're going to want to shut down and run away. If you are a fleer, you're going to want to not do anything. You know, if you're a freezer, that sympathetic nervous system is responsible for releasing a whole host of chemicals within your body, right? Neurochemicals like cortisol and adrenaline, depending on the situation to, to move you into action in some capacity. The parasympathetic nervous system is like the brake pedal. So the parasympathetic nervous system is what gets activated, like let's just say after you have a big meal. So after you eat a big meal, that's what you know, your body starts to relax and calm down. Your heart Rate, you know, goes down, blood accumulates within the core of your body, and you feel a little bit more at a restful state. So if you're able to communicate from this place, even in high conflict situations, right, maybe you forgot to do something, maybe your wife is upset with you, or she's pissed off at the kids and she's, you know, really riled up. If you're able to communicate and engage from a more grounded, calm orientation, the likelihood that that communication is going to go effectively versus if you're wound up, if you're super anxious, if you're really nervous, if you're angry, the likelihood that it's going to go well in your parasympathetic versus your sympathetic is quite a bit higher. So you want to find ways to, to down regulate, to regulate your nervous system into that more calm, grounded orientation. So how do we do that? Well, some very simple ways. Movement is a good way, right? So if you know you're gonna have a tough conversation, um, you can move your body, you can do some stretches, you can do some yoga, you could do some pushups, some squats just to get the blood flowing in the body, um, and, and feel a little bit more in the body and out of the head. Because most of us as men, we live up here in our thoughts constantly, and we're disconnected from the charge of anger or anxiousness or stress that we are actually feeling in our chest or in our belly, in our bodies. So movement is one, breath work is another really big one. You know, there are some very simple protocols that you can use. A really good one that has been proven time and time again. I think it gets used with people that have PTSD symptoms is inhale for four in through the nose. So for a count of four, hold for two, exhale for six out the mouth, hold for two. And what this does is as you breathe in through the nose, very natural breath, right? For a count of four, that inhale is measured, and then you hold the breath and exhale out through the mouth for six. And over time, if you do this for a minute or two minutes, what it's actually going to do is to start to reduce your heart rate. So if you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling anxious about a conversation with your partner, or if you've had a little bit of an argument and you're, you know, you're worked up and your breath is shallow and you're tense, this is a really good exercise for you to do to allow yourself to down regularly because you're Sort of forcing your heart rate down, you're forcing your blood pressure down. And just that natural shift can cause a lot of ease, a lot of relaxation within the body. So you start to use things like the breath work. And then finally is something called CO regulation. CO regulation is when you engage with your partner in the act of regulating your nervous systems together. There's a number of ways to do this. They often include using the breath. But a very simple activity is going forehead to forehead with your partner, putting your hands on the back, on her back, and having her put her hands on your back, ideally where the very bottom of the rib cage is. And when you do that, just taking 30, maybe 40 breaths together and having your breath match up with hers. Now, what's going to happen here again is that after about 20 breaths, right, so you've got forehead to forehead, you've got your hands on the back of her ribs and you're following her breath. So as she inhales, you inhale. As she exhales, you exhale. And as you go through this practice, after about 20 breaths, because you're following her breath, your heart rates are going to start to sync up. So your physical heartbeat is going to reduce, hers is going to reduce, and you're going to find yourself in a much more synchronistic space because your heartbeats will actually start to line up. And so it gives you a baseline where you're regulating one another's nervous system. Now, obviously, if you're in the heat of an argument, you're not going to be like, oh, let's sit down and put our foreheads together and breathe. That's probably not what you're going to do in the heat of an argument. However, after an argument, right, you can say, hey, come sit down with me. Let's just take a few breaths. Clearly, this, you know, this conversation did not go well, but let's just take a few breaths together. And you leading the, the repair after the conflict, you leading the communication, you beginning to sort of set the tone for. This is how we have these conversations. We have these conversations in a grounded way. We have these conversations in a couple calm way. And you prioritizing that grounded nature within your own body, first and foremost is going to set up a certain standard within your relationship. So comment below. Let me know what you thought about this video. Let me know what you took from it. Obviously, I gave you a couple very sort of basic practices that you can use, but let me know what stood out to you, what you found helpful, what you think would be very helpful for me to cover if you're looking for more of this in terms of practices or questions that you'd like me to cover in future videos. So thanks very much for tuning in. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Don't forget to hit the bell notification so you can get notified of future videos. Until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.