Dr. Gottman’s first discovery is that there are no happy couples—in fact, there are no lasting emotional relationships—without chronic conflict. To the contrary: Couples that have no chronic subjects of dispute should be worried. The absence of conflict is a sign of an emotional distance so great as to preclude an authentic relationship. The second—astonishing—discovery is that Dr. Gottman can analyze a mere 5 minutes—5 minutes!—of an argument between a husband and wife and predict with more than 90% accuracy who will remain married and who will divorce within a few years—even if the couple is still in the midst of their honeymoon. Nothing afflicts our emotional brain and our physiology more than feeling emotionally cut off from those to whom we are most attached—our spouse, our children, our parents. In the Love Lab, a harsh word or a tiny facial contortion of contempt or disgust—hardly visible to an observer—is enough to speed up the heartbeat in the person to whom the comment is targeted. After a well-aimed jab combined with a bit of disdain, the heart rate will suddenly climb to more than 110. Once the emotional brain is aroused in this way, it turns off the cognitive brain’s ability to reason rationally. The prefrontal cortex is “off-line.” Men, in particular, are very sensitive to what Dr. Gottman calls “emotional flooding.” Once their physiology is aroused, they are “flooded” by their emotions and they think only in terms of defense and attack. They no longer look for responses that will restore calm to the situation. Many women also react the same way. When we hear this exchange—from one of Dr. Gottman’s studies—it sounds terribly familiar: Fred: Did you pick up my dry cleaning? Ingrid (in a mocking tone): “Did you pick up my dry cleaning?” Pick up your own damn dry cleaning. What am I, your maid? Fred: Hardly. If you were a maid, at least you’d know how to clean. During that exchange, Fred’s and Ingrid’s physiology quickly becomes disorganized. (I imagine that their heart rate variability would also be very chaotic, though this was not measured in the Love Lab.) The effects on the relationship are disastrous. With compelling arguments, Dr. Gottman defines this type of negative situation as featuring the “four horsemen of the apocalypse,” four attitudes that wreak havoc in all the relationships that they encounter on their passage. These conveyed attitudes activate the emotional brain of the other person to such an extent that the other party can only respond with meanness or else withdraw like a wounded animal. If we rely on the four horsemen for communication, we are literally assured of not getting what we desire out of the relationship, yet we almost always call these warriors up to the front of our emotional battles.
Attitude 1: Criticism
The first horseman is criticism, criticizing someone’s character instead of simply stating a grievance. An example of a criticism: “You’re late again. You only think of yourself.” A grievance would be: “It’s nine o’clock. You said you would be here at eight. It’s the second time this week. I’m lonely and upset when I wait for you like this.“Criticism: “I’m fed up with picking up your clothes. Your messiness is exasperating!” Grievance: “When you leave your things all over the kitchen, it bothers me. In the morning when I’m having my coffee, I need order around me to feel good. Could you try to pick up at night before you go to bed?” Dr. Gottman gives an infallible recipe for changing a legitimate grievance with a good chance of being heard into a criticism certain to spark resentment, ill will, and a virulent counterattack. All you need to do is tack on a scornful, “What’s wrong with you?” What is so surprising about these observations is how obvious they are. We all know exactly how we don’t like to be treated. It is hard for us, on the other hand, to say exactly how we would like to be treated. Yet, our gratitude immediately overflows when someone addresses us in an emotionally intelligent manner. I remember an unexpected lesson I received one day over the telephone. I had been waiting over 20 minutes while an airline ticket agent looked into the status of my reservation. The flight was for that same afternoon, and I was impatient and worried. When she finally admitted that she could not find my reservation, I burst out, “What!? But that’s crazy. What use are you if you can’t find a reservation?” As I was speaking these words, I was already sorry. I knew very well that I was alienating the person I most needed to solve my problem. But I did not know how to get out of this jam. I thought it would be ridiculous to apologize. (In fact, it is never too early or too late to apologize, but that was something I had not yet learned.) To my great surprise, she was the one who saved me: “When you raise your voice, sir, I can’t concentrate on helping you.” I was lucky; she had just given me the perfect opportunity to apologize without losing face. I did so immediately. A few moments later, we were once again talking like two adults trying to solve a problem. When I explained how much the trip mattered to me, she even changed into a real ally; she broke a rule by giving me a seat on a flight that was theoretically blocked.I was the psychiatrist, but she was the one who had completely mastered the emotions of the conversation. That evening, I imagined her on her way home, undoubtedly more relaxed than I was. That experience led me to learn about nonviolent emotional communication. In fact, in my years of training, nobody had considered it important or useful to teach it to me.
2. Contempt
Dr. Gottman’s second horseman, the most violent and dangerous for our limbic balance, is contempt. Contempt shows its face in insults, of course. From the mildest—some would say underhanded—such as “your behavior is inappropriate,” to the most conventional and violent like “poor thing, you really are dumb,” or the common “you’re a jerk,” or the simple but no less deadly “you’re ridiculous.” Sarcasm can also be very hurtful. Listen again to Fred’s response to Ingrid: “If you were a maid, at least you’d know how to clean.” Sarcasm can sometimes be funny at the movies (and even there, it all depends). But it is not funny at all in a real relationship. Yet, in an attempt to be clever or witty—often at the expense of others—sarcasm is precisely the tool to which we often turn, sometimes with relish. I know a major French journalist with a very sharp wit who spent more than 15 years in what she considers to be a very successful course of psychoanalysis. One day, long after her analysis was over, we were talking about ways of dealing with conflict. She told me, “When I feel attacked, I try to destroy my adversary. If I manage to smash him to smithereens, I’m happy.” Facial expressions are often all it takes to communicate contempt: eyes rolling toward the ceiling in response to what has just been said, the corners of the mouth turned down with eyes narrowing in reaction to the other person. When the disparager who sends us these signals is someone we live or work with, they go straight to the heart. And that makes a peaceful resolution of the situation practically impossible. How can we reason or speak peaceably when the message we receive is that we inspire disdain?
3. Counterattack and 4. Stonewalling
The third and fourth horsemen are counterattack and stonewalling. When we are attacked, the two responses the emotional brain offers us are fight and flight (these are the famous alternatives described by the great American physiologist, Walter B. Cannon, in a classical description in 1929). These responses have been engraved in our genes over millions of years of evolution, and they are, indeed, the most effective choices for insects or reptiles. Now, in all conflicts, the problem of counterattack is that it leads, in turn, to only two possible outcomes. In the worst of cases, it provokes an escalation of violence. Wounded by my counterattack, the other person will raise the stakes. This horseman is very active in the Middle East, of course, but also in all the kitchens of the world where couples clash. Escalation usually carries on until there is a permanent physical separation between the warring factions—the destruction of the relationship by dismissal, divorce, or murder. In the best of cases, the counterattack “succeeds” and the other party is defeated by our verve. Or victory is obtained—as parents often do with their children, and men sometimes do with women—with a slap. The law of the jungle has spoken, and the reptile in us is satisfied. But that kind of victory inevitably leaves the vanquished wounded and sore, and this wound only widens the emotional gap and only makes living together more difficult. A violent counterattack has never inspired an opponent to beg forgiveness and take the aggressor in her arms. Yet, even in torn relationships, this outcome is precisely what we are yearning for. The other option—stonewalling—is a masculine specialty that’s particularly upsetting to women. Stonewalling often foreshadows the final phase of a disintegrating relationship, be it a marriage or a professional association. After weeks or months of criticism, of attacks and counterattacks, one of the protagonists will choose “flight” and abandon the battlefield, at least emotionally. While the other person still seeks contact and offers to talk, the second party scowls, looks at his feet, or hides behind his newspaper, “waiting for the storm to blow over.” The antagonist, exasperated by this tactic that supposes to ignore her completely, talks louder and louder and eventually starts shouting. Stonewalling is the stage of the flying plate or—when the person who turns into a “brick wall” is a woman—of possibly getting beaten up. Physical violence is a desperate attempt to reconnect with the other who has left the scene, to try to make her hear what we are experiencing emotionally, to make her feel our pain. Obviously, it never succeeds. In The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo magnificently illustrated this vain and violent pursuit of the love object who ignores you. To feel recognized by Esmeralda, who persisted in ignoring him and rejecting his advances, Abbé Frollo ended up torturing her and sending her to her death. Emotional withdrawal is not an effective way to deal with conflicts. As Dr. Gottman has shown in the lab, and Hugo described before him, stonewalling often leads to a sorry end.
Saying It All While Doing No Harm
Thanks to the Seattle Love Lab, we now understand, to an unprecedented extent, what is going on in the heads and hearts of people in conflict, and how they often head straight into a wall. Naturally, we have every reason to believe that the same reflexes and same mistakes undermine the course of conflicts outside of marriages as well. These conflicts may involve our children, our parents, our in-laws, or, most often, our boss and our colleagues in the office. But what, then, are the principles of effective communication? One of the masters of effective emotional communication is the psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, PhD, author of the book Nonviolent Communication. Born in a poor and violent neighborhood of Detroit, he was very young when he became passionately interested in intelligent ways to solve conflict without violence. He has taught and practiced in many circumstances and parts of the world where conflict management is indispensable. The first principle of nonviolent communication is to replace judgment—that is, criticism—by an objective statement of facts. Saying, “You are doing a poor job,” or even “This report isn’t good” immediately puts the other person on the defensive. Being simply objective and specific is much better: “In this report, there are three ideas needed in order to communicate our message that seem to be missing.” The more specific and objective we are, the more likely the other person will be to react to our words as a legitimate attempt to communicate rather than as an attack on his or her being. The second principle is to avoid any judgment of the other while concentrating entirely on what we feel. This reservation of judgment is the master key to emotional communication. If I talk about what I feel, nobody can argue with me. For example, if I say, “You never think about me; it’s your usual self-centeredness,” the person I am talking to can only challenge what I have said. If, on the other hand, I say, “Today was my birthday and you didn’t remember it. When you do that, I feel lonely,” the person cannot question my feelings. She may think I should not have them, but that is not for her to decide; they are who I am. The whole point is to describe the situation with sentences beginning with “I” rather than “you.” By talking about myself, and only myself, I am no longer criticizing the other person; I am not attacking either. I am expressing my feelings, and therefore, I am being authentic and open. If I’m skilled and really honest with myself, I can even go so far as to expose my vulnerability by showing how the other person has hurt me. I may be vulnerable because I have exposed one of my weaknesses, but in most cases, it is precisely this honesty that will disarm the adversary. My candor will make the other person want to cooperate—insofar, of course, as that person is invested in our relationship. This technique is exactly what the ticket agent used with me. (“When you raise your voice, I can’t concentrate on helping you.”) She talked about only two things: what had just taken place—objectively, and therefore beyond judgment—and what feelings she experienced in response. According to Dr. Rosenberg, what’s even more effective is not only to say what we feel, but also to express the disappointed needs we had. “When you arrive late for a movie date, I feel frustrated because I really like to see the beginning of the film. It’s important for me to see the whole show in order to enjoy it.” Dr. Rosenberg talks about a participant in his workshop who told him the following story: This man had started to refer to a card, on which he put what he had learned into practice with his children. At the beginning, it was obviously a little embarrassing, sometimes even ridiculous. His children had immediately pointed out how stilted his approach was. But, as a conscientious beginner, he had looked at his card and addressed that very scorn with the procedure he was learning: “When you tell me I’m ridiculous, just as I’m trying to improve our relationship and be a better father to you, you make me sad. I need to feel that it also matters to you that we change the way we’ve been talking to each other.” His new approach worked; the kids began to listen, and their relationship was improving. He went on in the same vein for several weeks–long enough, in fact, to dispense with the card. Then one day, while he was arguing with his children over television, he lost his temper and forgot about his nonviolent resolutions. His four-year-old son burst out with some urgency in his voice, “Daddy, go get your card!” Excerpted from The Instinct to Heal: Curing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy MORE: Are You Really Listening?
