APPROACHES IN COMMUNICATION THAT USUALLY DO NOT WORK

In "A Brief Guide to Brief Therapy" (Cade & O'Hanlon, 1993), Brian Cade (eminent Brief Therapist) wrote about a handout that he gives to his clients to help them identify aspects in their communication with their loved ones, spouse, children or parents, that would not work. Based on his experience he identifies that not only do these approaches fail in achieving our intended results, they "often intensify the occurrance of the very behavior or attitude we are trying to change" (Cade & O' Hanlon, 1993: pg 81)

These Approaches are

1. The Unsolicited Lecture
- usually involves giving nagging lectures telling the person to change and appealing to logic or sommon sense. This includes "why can't you just try to behave this way! everyone else is doing it properly except you.. blah blah"
- My thoughts is that it is probably ineffective due to the blaming stance the user takes, and the constant repetition he or she may be undertaking where a simple statement of want or need from the other.

2. Taking the High Moral Ground
- This refers to a position one takes, which is of superiority when talking to our loved ones, where the user identifies that he or she knows the turth about how things are and how they should be.
- For e.g. "Anyone with Common sense can see that you are doing things wrongly!" , "After all I've done to help you, you are still not able to see the right of things!"

3. Self-Sacrifice/ Denial
- This entails putting the happiness of others before your own, and protecting them from the consequences of their actions. Telling yourself "I will just do whatever he/she wants to make him/her happy, etc".
- For me, being self-sacrificial may only work for a while, but soon, we may become more resentful of our loved ones, as the more we feel that he/she does not know what we feel or what we are going through. Sweeping things under the carpet may provide temporal relief in protecting our loved ones, but things will eventually pile up.

4. Expecting someone to do things Spontaneously
- where we try to make someone do something or "adopt a different attitude", but we also expect that person to change because he/she wants to. For e.g. "I would like you to show more affection, but I'll only accept it if you do it gladly/ willingly".
- What Brian says is that when we try to make others want to do things, we are in fact trying to make them more obedient to our expectations of what they should be doing. Most likely the response to this would be increased disobediance, anger, and resentment.


Do you use any of these approaches?