Simple Key To Communicating With Difficult People, Teens & That Infuriating Family Member

Try as you might, you won’t be able to avoid all difficult people, or difficult conversations. Here is an easy acronym to follow the next time you find yourself going down that same rabbit hole again and again ~ it may save your sanity and maybe, finally put that same looping argument to bed for good! Learn this communication trick today with me and then we will do a special guided meditation together.

In this episode we will learn:
~What JADE means and why it works
~How to use JADE in every day conversations to end old, poor communication patterns.
~Guided Progressive Meditation

The Host for this podcast: Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW The Stress Therapist and Author
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[00:00] Hey, beautiful people. What’s up? So we’re working on our communication skills, and today we’re going to be learning a very, very helpful communication skill that you can use with difficult people. Teenagers. Yes, teenagers. Or anytime that you just feel like the same arguments going on or the same conversation’s going on and it just keeps coming back and there’s no resolution. It’s season six tips and tricks that this psychotherapist wants you to know. So relax and settle in and listen up because your stress therapy session is about to begin right now. Hey, beautiful people. It’s time for some Stress Therapy, a podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living in the real world. Finally, a place to park my 25 plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental health field. And now, your host, me, the stress therapist, cheri Flake. Okay, before we get into the thick of it, we’re going to take a teensy tiny break. Be right back. Hey, beautiful people. Okay, so this one has been coming up quite a lot lately in my practice. And I think it’s because I’ve been spending a little bit more time with a lot of clients talking about how to talk to their teenagers. Okay, so I get it. I’m in this boat with you, man. I mean, it is a whole other communication realm, pretty much. I mean, you have to really, I don’t know, bite your tongue. This morning I had a particularly hard time. I mean, come on. I guess I just refuse to believe this expert that I heard speaking about teenagers, talking about your prefrontal cortex. They don’t have one that’s fully developed yet. In fact, little boys don’t even get them until they’re 30 and girls probably when they’re 25. And really, the only people who are acknowledging this on the earth are rental car companies because they don’t want their property damaged. But the rest of us could really take a lesson from knowing this because well, first of all, it would be nice if the schools would acknowledge this, because it’s really difficult for kids to get up in the morning and it’s very difficult for them to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. What their parents would consider a reasonable hour because of the way that they are developing their brains and their brains are changing. And so their melatonin levels are different than ours, and their sleep cycles are different, and we’re not really acknowledging that. However, let’s acknowledge it now, okay? It’s a different conversation with a teenager, and all of us remember being a teenager, and you just can’t believe how you thought of your parents. You just thought they didn’t know a **** thing, didn’t you? And it can be very hurtful because not having a fully developed prefrontal cortex means that these kids are often impulsive. They will just say whatever. Right? And when someone says whatever and they’re not thinking about the consequences of that and they kind of flip their lid or whatever, it can be very hurtful. Now it doesn’t have to be a teenager that you’re talking to. It could be a spouse or a partner or a friend or whatever where you’re going around and around and around and you’re not getting anywhere in the conversation. And this method also works with that. So hang in there if you don’t have a teenager and God bless you. Can I come over for a little bit? Just until my ego heals from having a teenager? Okay? So it’s not necessarily just for teenagers is what I’m getting at. It’s for all of us that are having difficult conversations today. We’re going to be stealing some communication skills from the organization, Alanon, which is a lot like Alcoholics Anonymous, but different in that people can find support where they feel as though they are exhibiting codependency and codependent behaviors. So rather than getting into all of know, when you are in a codependent relationship, there’s a lot of emotions going on and there’s shame and anger and fear and doubt and there could be a lot of trauma that they’re dealing with. And a lot of times in a codependent relationship we tend to latch on to specific communication behaviors that are unhealthy. And so here is a little trick, a little thing to remember when you’re going into a difficult conversation. Maybe with a teenager, maybe with a friend, maybe with a partner, whomever it is and it’s just going around and around and around. The acronym is Jade, right? So these are the things that you don’t want to do when you’re in this kind of communication stuck pattern, okay? Which is usually what’s happening, right? We’re stuck. It’s going around and around. It’s the same old thing. We come to no resolution, right? So what we don’t want to do is jade, justify, get angry, defend ourselves or explain ourselves, okay? And this is rampant in these poor communication skill scenarios, okay? So just kind of keep that in mind. It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to. This is just a situation where you’re in a conversation or an argument. It’s going around and around and around or someone has accused you of something that’s not true. You feel like you have to defend yourself or explain yourself. So here’s what you need to do, okay? So the J is justify. Sometimes we feel like we need to justify our behavior, especially when we want someone to like us and we feel uncomfortable when someone is upset with us. And so we feel this need to come in and give this very clear explanation of why we did a certain thing. And if you’re actually talking to a difficult person or a bully or a mean person or something like that, all they’re going to do is turn that around on you anyway. So don’t even give them the explanation. You don’t have to, right? You don’t have to justify any choice you make. Isn’t that amazing? It’s private. You don’t have to tell anyone. I felt so free when I was like, oh, my gosh, I’m not going to go into this long thing of why I did this thing with my teenager. It’s not even going to work. It’s not even going to help. You do not need to engage in an argument. This is all about awareness. Be aware. Is your conversation feeling like just an argument? Has it gone from being productive to just arguing? Because you don’t have to engage in that argument. And next week, we’re going to talk about exactly what to do. Maybe when you come to the A in Jade and you’re trying to avoid it, but for now, just know that it just means, what’s going on here? Am I just arguing now? Just disengage. You can walk away. You can become quiet and just not react. Make sure that you’re responding and not reacting. Okay? The D is defending, and if I feel attacked, man, I might want to defend myself. I totally get it. Okay. Now, standing up for yourself or being kind to yourself or that kind of thing, that’s a completely different thing, okay? But usually if you’re dealing with a difficult person, they’re trying to get you riled up, right? They’re trying to get you right? And so don’t let them get you. There’s nothing to defend. Remember, you don’t have to justify your actions. You don’t have to say why you’re good or why your intentions were good. None of that. None of that. Because it’s probably going to be falling on deaf ears anyway, right? So just be aware. Are you defending yourself? And the last one is explaining yourself. I think I have a tendency to do this one. Maybe it’s like a lot of things where one little cognitive distortion or negative habit or whatever really speaks to you. Out of the jade ones, I think this one’s mine. I don’t want to get anybody mad at me. And so I might be over explaining. I’ll say something like multiple times, right? Because I just don’t want someone to criticize how I went about something or I guess I’m just having a little bit of a boundary problem right there, maybe setting boundaries, but I over explain it. And I’ll go on and on and on and on, which is shocking. Right? Are you shocked that I would go on and on and on about explaining myself when I don’t have to? I don’t have to. And I will tell you when I have brought jade into my communication realm, at home with my family, with difficult people, it has helped enormously. I mean, enormously. I invite you to bring this into your awareness when you’re speaking with someone, and it’s a hard conversation because if you think about these four things while you’re having a difficult conversation, it’s just going to go better. It’s just going to go better. Okay, so let’s take a quick break, and when I come back, I’m going to tell you exactly how to do this. I’ll be right back, okay? So how do we take jade into our everyday living when we’re having regular conversations or conversations that might be hard or conversations that could turn into arguments? How do we stop negative communication patterns with jade? Not justifying not arguing, not defending yourself and not explaining yourself well. The first thing you can do is just say it out loud. I don’t have to defend myself. I’m not going to argue with you. Whatever it is. Right? And also make sure that you’re listening to what the person is saying so you can respond rather than have these knee jerk reactions that will often anticipate a jade reaction, which is how it might go with a teenager who’s just willy nilly says something trying to get you going, right? So you have to be very aware of how it’s going down if you’re doing any of the jade behaviors. And you have to listen to yourself, like, how are you feeling? Do you need to walk away? Do you need to tell this person? This is not a conversation that you want to have. You have every right to not tell someone anything. You have every right to keep something to yourself, to share it. I tell my kids, I mean, it’s kind of like a tube of toothpaste. As soon as you let it out, it’s out there. You’re not going to be able to squeeze that stuff back in the tube, right? So even if you apologize, even if you say you’re sorry later, you need to make sure that you’re not just reacting to what they’re saying, because once it’s out there, it is out there in the ether, and you can’t take it back. Even if you say, I’m going to take it back. So you got to be aware of that. And a way that you can avoid it is by physically removing yourself from the conversation, verbally removing yourself from the conversation, telling someone how you feel about them. And that’s why you don’t want to have the conversation, because you feel like it’s going south or whatever, and you’d like to move away from it. That makes perfect sense. And just make sure that when you go into it, it’s okay to stop and take a breath. People always say, Stop, take a deep breath. Stop, take a deep breath. But who is really stopping and taking a deep breath? I mean, you can do that. You don’t have to respond immediately to a text, to a verbal conversation. You don’t have to. You have the right to your privacy about what you think and feel about any situation that arises in your life, and you don’t have to e explain it to anyone. Okay? So that means that you got to kind of like, you got to check in with yourself and you got to be kind to yourself. And remember with any hard conversation, any conversation ever, especially the ones where we think they’re going to be a little awkward or they could turn into an argument, it’s really important to remember. Ask yourself first going into it, what do I want from this conversation? Do I want resolution. Do I want this person to be happy with how I’m handling things? Ask yourself, what do I want from this conversation? What is my goal here? Am I trying to accomplish a task? Am I trying to resolve an old disagreement? Am I trying to just get through the evening? Am I trying to express myself and really say exactly how I feel? What do you want from the conversation? Know that going in and it’s going to be a little bit easier to be kind to yourself and remember that it’s perfectly okay to feel uncomfortable. And sometimes that’s the better way to walk away from something rather than having spilled out everything and leaving yourself vulnerable in that way. Last week we talked about being vulnerable by mentioning that you feel awkward when you’re having a conversation with someone who’s difficult or who might actually come at you. You are leaving yourself vulnerable by sharing more. And when you share more, you might be overexplaining yourself, you might be defending yourself, you might be picking a fight, you might be justifying your actions, and you just don’t have to. And I’m telling you, it’s like a license to back off and walk away. I was explaining it to someone the other day. I’m like, have you ever seen somebody get in a verbal altercation with someone else? When you’re in your 20s, it’s like you’re all involved, and you want to know the ins and outs of it and what’s going on. And then this happens in your just walk away. You’re like, life is too short, man. You kind of learn like, that is not how I roll anymore, right? And it’s just not worth the psychic energy, the psychic negative energy that comes from getting involved in, quote, that kind of drama, which I think that’s overused. So I don’t love using that term. But in that way, you really can walk away from it because it’s not even yours, right? And so that’s the idea of codependency. This isn’t even yours. The problem that this person’s having, the situation that they’re dealing with, it’s not necessarily yours. And you don’t need to take on other people’s hurt and pain. And you definitely don’t need to justify why you may have done that in the past or how you were feeling about this and that just be really clear about what you want, how you feel. And in the end, if you’re kind to yourself, it’s going to come across in all your conversations. Okay, so let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll meditate together.

[15:09] Sometimes it’s really hard to relax your body sometimes we hold tension and we don’t even know that we’re doing it. Sometimes we need to teach our bodies how to relax. This meditation is going to be guided a special treat. This is called progressive relaxation. So find your comfortable space sitting up like you would in any meditative space, in any meditative posture, and do a quick body scan. Just noticing where you might have tension, where you might be holding on. You don’t have to change anything, you’re just noticing it. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s not wrong, it’s not right. You’re just noticing it’s. Take a long, slow, deep breath in your nose, holding it for just a moment at the top and then letting it all go out of your mouth. Take a second to notice where you may have let go of some tension. Just notice it. And again, take a long, slow, deep breath in your nose. And then let it all go out of your mouth. And again, assess for any changes. Simply taking a deep breath can change things. Now I want you to bring your attention to the very top of your head. There aren’t really any muscles or limbs to move here or anything to change. You’re just bringing laser focus to the very top of your head. And as you breathe in with attention and focus, see if you can relax this part of your scalp. As you breathe out, without moving, without changing anything, simply notice. If not, that’s okay. Bring your attention down to your brow, to your forehead, and to your eyes. And as you breathe in slowly through your nose, crunch your eyes out. Breathing in. Breathing in. Crunch your eyes really, really close them tight. Close them really, really tight. Hold it. Breathing in. Hold it, breathing in. And hold it, hold it. Really, really squeezing now. And then, let it all out of your mouth. Just allow your eye muscles, your forehead to smooth. Just noticing what it feels like. And now again, after you empty your lungs, breathing in. I want you to really grit your teeth, close your jaw, clench your teeth. Breathing in. Breathing in. Bring your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Breathing in. Breathing in. Hold it. And then let it all go out of your mouth. Allow your jaw to maybe even fall open. Allow whatever relaxation comes from relaxing your whole face. Just enjoy what it feels like it. And now I want you to empty your lungs and then begin to breathe in. And as you do, bring your shoulders up to your ears. Breathing in. Higher, higher. Really, really clench your shoulders up to your ears. Clench up your neck. Let those muscles really, really tighten. Hold it, hold it. And then let it all go out of your mouth. Feeling what it feels like for fatigue to teach your body to fully relax, coming down to your biceps and triceps, your elbows, your forearms, your fists. I want you to make a fist empty your lungs. Breathing in tighten your fists, tighten your forearms, tighten your elbows, your biceps, your triceps. Really, really hold breathing in breathing in hold it at the top, really squeeze it, squeeze it, hold it, hold it and then let it all go out of your mouth. Relaxing your arms, let them just lay where they fall bring all your attention into your arms, feeling what it feels like for your arms to be completely relaxed. And now go ahead and let the air out of your lungs. And on your next inhale, bring your shoulders as far back as you can get them. Arching your back, arching your back. Stick your belly out really, really arch your back, squeezing it, breathing in, breathing in. Hold it really, really squeeze it and then let it all go. Allow your spine to fall back into your back to settle, feeling what it feels like to have your spine relax, coming to your belly. Let go of your breath and then breathe in. And as if you’re putting on the tightest jeans and need to zip them up, bring your belly, those muscles, all the way back to your spine. Really suck it in. Suck it in. Breathing in. Breathing in. Breathing in. Hold it, hold it. Squeeze it and then let it all go. Allow your belly to just resume business as usual. Just feeling what it feels like to have your belly muscles relax. And then, depending on how your legs are, know that you’re going to be squeezing your quadriceps, your knees. And so allow your breath to let go and then as you breathe in really tighten up those quads, your butt muscles, your butt, your glutes, your quads, all of it. Breathing in. Breathing in. Squeeze it tight. Hold it, hold it, squeeze it, squeeze it and then let it all go out of your mouth. Those big, big muscles even get a break just sort of noticing the difference above your knees and below your knees. Then just allow yourself to empty your beautiful lungs and breathing in, squeeze your calves and your shins and your ankles and point your toes as hard as you can. Really, really tighten it. Squeeze it. Clench. Hold it, hold it breathing in. Then let it all go out of your mouth. Allow yourself to take a few moments and luxuriate in this peace, this calm, this utter body relaxation that you have created. Notice that you may have thoughts coming in, coming out, where you were, where you’re going, but notice that they have slowed probably a bit there. Always wanting to think, but can you gently bring your attention back to your body? Are there any spots that are stubborn, that are stuck, that are still tense with laser? Focus on this area. Tense it up as you breathe in, breathe in really, really squeeze it and hold it, hold it, hold it and then let it all go and notice any more stubborn spots and you might notice that just breathing in with attention and focus, breathing out with relaxation and letting go may work without the tension. Just sit in this space of peace that you have created. It’s all yours. I’m here with you. This is all we’re supposed to be doing. You take a long, slow, deep awakening breath in your nose. Let it all go out of your mouth. And when you’re ready, you can open your eyes and feel what it feels like, how different it is, or the same, or lovely, wonderful to sit in this comfortable, calm space that you have created. Okay, so I hope you are feeling progressively relaxed. I would love, love, love to hear.

[28:34] How avoiding any of the traps that Jade brings along. When you’re having a difficult conversation, please let me know. You can always shoot me an email at sherry@thestresstherapist.com. Remember, my name is with accheri@thestretherapist.com the C wasn’t my idea. We’re rolling with it, and I would love to hear how these communication skills are working for you. And next week, it’s going to get better and better. You’re going to be a communication god after this, or goddess. Okay, so a lot is happening. We have a lot of new listeners. I welcome all of you. Hi, how are you doing? Let me know how I’m doing, please. And I suspect it’s because I am a part of this amazing Ethereal Network of shows, and we’re all promoting one another. And so I’m going to leave you with one now. I think you’re going to love this. So I love you. Take care, look out for yourself, be kind to you. Have a lovely, lovely day. Before I go, I want to tell you about another Ethereal Network shows podcast that I think you’re going to love. Ever wanted to astral project speak to.

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[30:25] How y’all feeling after that stress therapy session? Good? Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, the stress therapist, on social media, at the Stresstherapist on Instagram, and at stresstherapy on Twitter. You can always go to ilovetherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and other offerings that I have there. If you live in Georgia and you’re ready to be one of my clients, go to my website to find out how you can sign up for a free face to face consultation with me. At the very least, jump on my mailer so you don’t stress or miss one thing until next time. Have a lovely, lovely day.