In this follow‑up video to his "Healing Your Relationships" workshop, Dr. Emmett Miller expands on core principles for building and sustaining healthy relationships. He begins by emphasizing that the present moment is the only reality, urging listeners to step aside and recognize each other's uniqueness—language, orientation, accent, etc.—and to honor those differences. He stresses deep listening that seeks the space between partners to uncover emerging themes and possibilities. Drawing on the World Café model, Miller outlines practical guidelines: find common interests, focus on what matters, speak honestly from the heart, listen for insights and patterns, and enjoy the experience. He advocates for high‑quality communication that creates a supportive architecture, allowing partners to understand differing viewpoints and reach collaborative agreements. Miller then introduces the SAD framework—Silent treatment, Attack, Denial—as destructive responses to conflict, and provides a constructive alternative: a four‑step communication process (identify feeling, describe the other’s behavior, reveal one’s thinking, and check for accuracy). He explains how to tailor emotional disclosure to the depth of the relationship, offering examples of language for close partners versus acquaintances. The video concludes with a call to action, directing viewers to drmiller.com, his Facebook page, and encouraging them to submit questions for future videos.
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Hi, I was in the studio and I thought I'd make a quick videotape to follow up on my lecture workshop from last night, Healing Your Relationships. We had to speed through the last little bit, but these are some important points and I want you to make sure that you at least understand that. As usual, if they're useful to you, then go ahead and integrate them into your reality. We talked a lot about the fact that this moment is the only moment that exists. There's no yesterday, doesn't really exist. Tomorrow doesn't exist. In fact, everything that exists exists right now in this moment. And right now, the relationship that we want to have is already present in this moment. We need to get out of the way so that we can discover who we are and what our relationship is really all about. Our relationship evolves as we recognize each other's uniqueness. Instead of resisting the uniqueness, whatever it is, whether it's our language, our way of approaching it, our accent, our orientation, whatever, we want to honor those unique contributions and respect them. Then we can listen. It's about listening and allowing us to connect our ideas. Instead of you having an idea and I having a disconnected idea, or even an opposing idea, how do I— our ideas connect? And then together we want to listen to the middle to see what's emerging in the space between us. To notice the deeper themes, the deeper questions, and to see the possibilities that may exist. We need to see those possibilities because that's what's going to empower us to move forward together. Seeing the possibilities. And then the monkey can just go ahead and do what the monkey needs to do. So as we discover how to interact in diverse and creative ways then the true power of our relationship comes forth, whether it's a personal relationship or family relationship or community or team relationship, whatever it may be. And now, as I promised you last night, let me just take a few moments and share with you those guidelines that I drew from theworldcafe.com, reinterpreting them a little bit so that they relate to closer relationships maybe than we're usually thinking of when we look at a, at someone doing a World Cafe. First of all, find common interests or values. Look for things that we enjoy doing together. That's especially important if you're having trouble in a relationship. You need to take some time and do what you enjoy doing together. A lot of times if you've got some significant dissonance going on in your relationship, you may want to take a night away, go to a bed and breakfast, spend the weekend, spend the week away, but doing something that both of you are really passionately interested in. And that deeper bond forms. That's when the, the oxytocin comes out, when you're doing those things together that you both enjoy. And in your communications about these things that you hold in common, Focus on what matters. Don't just listen, contribute. And it's not about teaching or convincing, it's about saying, "Here's one more thing that we can add." Speak your mind and speak your heart. Listen carefully so that you fully understand what you're hearing from your partner or partners. And then again, we link and connect ideas. Listen together for the insights, patterns, deeper connections, ideas, possibilities, things that we might both be passionate about, things that we might all be passionate about. And above all, enjoy the experience. This is the only moment that exists. This is the only day that exists. Why not have fun today? Use high-quality communication techniques to create a positive and supportive architecture of engagement so that you establish a common ground, so you can understand different points of view and come to a mutual collaborative agreement or plan. You can either choose to be right, or you can choose to have a successful relationship. Which most appeals to you? Approach your relationship as a learning experience. Each of you has important information to learn, and indeed, we're here to help each other learn. That's part of sharing the love. Be responsible. Tell the truth and be responsible to your shared notion of what the relationship is. Is this relationship important to you? If so, treat it with integrity. Follow through and be your best. Finally, I'd like to share with you that SAD approach. I sped through that a little bit in my recent talk. Here it is a little bit more slowly. The S in the SAD stands for the silent treatment, the cold shoulder, sullen silence, freezing someone out, not communicating. And as I said, that may be the most painful thing that you can do to a person. And of course, What we're talking about is if someone insults you, someone says something that hurts you or does something that feels bad, what you want to not do is use the S, the A, or the D. The A stands for attack. "Why'd you do that? You knew I was coming!" Whatever that way that you might have of attacking. You've seen what happens when someone attacks you, you draw a counterattack. It doesn't get you to the core of what's going on. It certainly doesn't improve the relationship. You get a defense, or you get a counterattack, or the person withdraws. Which means you really extend the pain and the disruption in the relationship. Thirdly, there's denial. The Uncle Tom approach. Oh no, it's okay. That's okay if you smashed up the fender to my car. That's okay if you set my house on fire. That's okay that you completely missed out on our date last night. You have to express, you have to let the other person know that it happened, and they need to know that it hurt you. If that person cares about you, they're going to work with you to learn how to do things in a way that it doesn't hurt you anymore. If they don't care, then you should probably consider engaging in other relationships or maybe taking this one to therapy. At any rate, here's our formula for responding without using S, A, or D. Your basic perspective needs to be one of being in touch with your emotions, being generous, being accepting, creating safety, affection, common purpose, and trust. And so that, that's the, the subtext for what you're doing here. First then, you become aware of what did you feel when you didn't show up. I felt alone. I felt lost. I felt confused. I felt worried. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. That is, when you— and then you describe the action that the other person did, the behavior. When you said that you thought that I didn't understand the subject at all, I felt very sad. I felt hurt. I felt small. I felt as though somehow you were superior to me, and I was very embarrassed. I'm not saying you did something wrong. I'm saying that that's how I happened to respond. I'm taking responsibility for my feelings, and yet I'm letting you know what triggered them. So again, I'm offering you some information that I think you should be, or I suspect you might be interested in. So first of all, I want to know what I felt, and then comes my response. So I need to take a moment. Sometimes you need to go in the other room for a few moments and come back in, and your statement begins, 'When you said or did I felt. And that's when you reveal what you're feeling. And my suggestion is, in most relationships, go beyond anger. When you said that, I felt really ticked off somehow, that doesn't invite the person into the conversation in the way that you want to. So go beyond the anger. There's always some hurt. There's always sadness, there's always feelings of loss, there's always a sense of disappointment. Go to those deeper feelings. When you said or did X, then I felt— I felt Y. I felt sad. I felt lonely. And then number 3, you're going to reveal your thinking. You're going to reveal your thought process. Now, how open, how generous, how trusting can you be to say, "Because I thought when you responded that way, I felt bad because it seemed to me that you really didn't care whether I was there or not. I wondered if the reason you did that was because I was late to our appointment last week. Or, I wonder if you were doing that because you didn't want to upset your sister-in-law. Whatever it might be. Or even, I wonder if you did that because you wanted to see me in pain. Probably not. That's probably not. Again, you probably need therapy or something if it's at that point. So, The fourth step then becomes, is this correct? Is that line of thinking correct? And I'm not saying that it's true. I don't know what you're thinking was, but it occurred to me that it might be this. It might be several other things too, but I'm just— just to give us something to begin to talk about, I choose the most likely one of the possibilities. I'm wondering if this is what it is. Is that "Correct?" or "Tell me what was going on for you at that point?" And that gives the person an opportunity to go back to what they said and rewind the tape a little bit and remember what they were thinking, what it was that they wanted to get across to you. Because they may have made a terrible blunder and chose totally the wrong words and totally the wrong presentation, and you're not holding them Guilty for that? And they can say, no. Oh, oh. And the response that you're looking for is a partner who'll say, whoo, well, oh yeah, I get it, that felt bad. Lo siento. I feel your feelings. I see that it hurt you and I care about that. Gosh, I'm sorry that you're in pain about all of that. I'm not saying that I'm a bad boy. 'But I care about this.' So you want that person to show some caring and then to be able to say, 'No, I'm sorry you felt that way. No, and that's, that's really not what I was thinking. Then now I'll share with you what I was thinking.' And then, so again, what we're doing is we're getting behind the presentation, behind the stance, the negotiating points that the person's coming forward with and saying, "Gee, I hear that was difficult, you know, what's behind that?" That's what we always want to do. "By the way you presented that to me, I'm not really sure what you were getting at, and in fact it was kind of painful, so I'm wondering what you were getting at." And so that's basically what we're trying to do. The more intimate the relationship is, then the more deeply it should be possible for you to share your feelings. To the degree that it's more of an acquaintance or just a loose friendship, then you probably don't want to say too much about your feelings because it's kind of weird. They'll say, "What are you, from California or something?" You don't want to share too much. You can say, "You know, I was feeling kind of confused when you didn't show up yesterday." Or 'You know, it was a kind of a difficult time for me yesterday. For that whole hour I was waiting for you, I was kind of tortured inside. I wasn't right sure what to do. It was really kind of uncomfortable.' So you don't have to say, you know, 'I felt, you know, deeply wounded and saddened and ashamed.' No, no, just you can use more of a business-like language in order to do that. So I hope these are useful to you. Keep, keep working at it. And if you run into a question you think I might be able to help you find an answer to, come on over to drmiller.com, D-R-MILLER dot com, and click on the contact button, send an email with your question, or better still, connect with me on Facebook. Go to facebook.com/askdrmiller Ask Dr. Miller, and who knows, your question might be the subject of the next video. Thanks for spending this time with me. Be well.
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