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       This article is one of a series describing effective thinking, communicating, and problem-solving. The series summarizes seven learnable communication (relation-ship) skills  that are essential for building high-nurturance relationships and resolving social conflicts effectively. These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified profes-sional help.

        The unique guidebook Satisfactions (Xlibris.com, 2001) integrates the key Lesson-2 Web articles and resources in this nonprofit Web site, and provides many practical resources.       

        This article aims to grow your relationship awareness by...

• summarizing 41 (!) common ineffective problem-solving strategies, and...

• illustrating a typical lose-lose communication sequence between two adults; and then...

• illustrating the same scenario in a win-win context. 

        The article assumes you're familiar with:

the intro to this nonprofit Web site and the premises underlying it self-study Lessons 1 and 2 common blocks to effective (win-win) communication; and... ways to improve communication with adults and kids

Premises

        Any perceived behavior in one person that causes a significant change in another person is com-munication. "Significant" is subjective.

        All communication aims to fill current needs - i.e. to reduce emotional, physical, and spiritual dis-comforts. Needs usually occur in layers, from surface needs to the underlying primary needs that cause them. Surface needs will usually recur until the primary needs causing them are identified and satisfied.

        "Win-win" communication occurs when each person feels...

• their current (primary) needs were satisfied well enough,

• in a way that all people felt good-enough about.

        "Lose-lose" communication occurs when no communication partner feels one or both these criteria were met well enough. Other possibilities are win-lose I get my needs met and you don't), and lose-win. Lesson 2 in this nonprofit educational Web site offers concepts and skills to promote consistent win-win outcomes.

       If people (like you) don’t do win-win (effective) problem-solving together, what do they do? See if you recognize any favorites here...

Ineffective Problem-solving Strategies

        Each communication partner can choose one or more of the conflict-responses below (a) within themselves (internal conflict), and/or (b) with their communication partner (external conflict). Until you become fluent with the learnable skill of process awareness, your choice of responses will probably stay largely unconscious and habitual. If true, your unconscious mind (false self) controls you and your rela-tionships.

       Thoughtfully scan the common ineffective communication strategies below. Seen all at once, our buf-fet of possible responses to internal and interpersonal conflict is pretty amazing! Consider that we never studied any of these, but became “experts” anyway!  Option - check or asterisk strategies below that you or another important person use.

 1)  KEY: anxious, distrustful subselves disabling your true Self. This causes most of these       other lose-lose responses

 2)  Denying (to Self or partner) your thoughts, feelings, needs, and/or current reality

 3)  Avoiding (lying, omitting, “forgetting”, and “walking out” fit here)

 4)  Intellectualizing / rationalizing / over-explaining / lecturing

 5)  “Gunnysacking” and “re-living” (bringing up and rehashing old unfinished issues)

 6)  Minimizing the conflict, and/or it’s importance

 7)  Deferring / not following up / procrastinating

 8)  Giving in or up - choosing a victim or martyr attitude and role

 9)  Defending / Explaining (justifying beliefs, opinions, behaviors)

 10)  Never forgetting or forgiving yourself and/or your partner

 11)  Deflecting / distracting / confusing / defocusing

 12)  Numbing and/or spacing out / “clamming up” / silence

 13)  Complaining / whining / nagging / hinting (vs. asserting)

 14)  Catastrophizing  / exaggerating / over-dramatizing

 15)  Getting sick / hysterical / depressed / enraged

 16)  “Mind reading” / assuming / second-guessing / predicting

More common ineffective problem-solving strategies...

 17) "Time-traveling” - over-focusing on the past or the future;

 18)  Threatening, demanding, intimidating, or bullying  vs. requesting or negotiating;

 19)  Attacking / blaming / shaming (“guilt trips”) / “getting even”

 20)  Discounting your Self and/or your partner’s worth, opinions, feelings, and/or needs

 21)  Pretending or disguising - e.g. laughing when anxious or hurting;

 22)  Maintaining or allowing a one-person or no-person ''awareness bubble''

 23) Composing your response while your partner talks

 24)  Interrupting or over-talking vs. genuine listening

 25)  Confusing fighting and/or arguing with problem-solving

 26)  Competing - equating “problem solving” with winning

 27)  Generalizing - “you always… / you never…”

 28)  Preaching or moralizing - “You’re bad / good / wrong / right / when you…

 29)  Rambling - talking on and on with no awareness or point

 30)  Rehearsing - reacting now to an event that hasn’t happened yet

 31)  Addictions - numbing inner pain with chemicals, activities, moods, and/or relation-        ships. This is a false-self (unconscious) avoidance strategy

 32)  Flooding - venting a stream of gripes and not pausing to let your partner respond

 33)  Dictating, ordering, and/or commanding. All these imply "I'm superior, here."

 34)  Name-calling / swearing / yelling / throwing things

 35)  Punishing - e.g. by withholding something of value or intentionally bringing up some-         thing painful

 36)  Dodging responsibility - using “we” or “you” instead of “I …”, or saying "I was only         joking."

 37)  Talking to a third person or “the wall” - avoiding eye contact (another way of dodging)

 38)  Playing “Yes, but…” - a covert control game

 39)  Interrupting and/or talking over the other person  

 40)  Pretending to listen while thinking of other things

 41)  Faking agreement to avoid conflict 

         Can you think of other ways people (like you) avoid win-win problem solving?

Example - Ineffective Couple Communication

        What do some of these common ineffective communication strategies sound like? Here's an exam-ple: A custodial biofather (Jim) declares in exasperation to his new wife Rae: 

“You’re all first with me! No one comes in second! Why can’t you get that, Rae!?”

        This response came after the couple had been “talking” (i.e. arguing) in their bedroom for almost 10 minutes. The “talk” began when Jim got home from work, and his wife Rae complain that his pre-teen daughter Georgia had again ignored Rae’s requests to pick up her clothes from the living room floor. The example below omits some repetitions, and nets out their attempt to resolve their shared tensions. 

Ineffective Couple's Dialog (neither partner gets their needs met)	Communication Errors
Rae: “Why won’t you ever get after her about pick-ing up her messes? You never miss a chance to rag Nickie (Rae’s biological son) about not putting his dishes in the sink - but hassle or put reason-able limits on your princess daughter? Never! Clearly, your daughter remains far more important to you than I am. I’m sick of this!”	Generalizing; playing the victim Sarcasm: implies “You’re ‘bad’, 1-down” Attacking (blaming) Jim, not focusing on her needs Complaining; starting to “flood” Jim with three different problems.
Jim: (Grimacing, sighing, not looking at his wife) “Rae, look - I’ve had a really long day. Gimme a break, for once. We’ll talk about this later.”	Avoiding (eye) contact: (Rae decodes this as ‘you think I’m not important now’ - i.e. “I’m 1-down”) Attacking; dictating; avoiding; deferring
Rae: (sarcastically): “Yeah, sure. That’s what you always say, Jim - only later never comes. And why am I always the one who has to bring up these problems - you don’t! For you, everything’s always la-la fine.”	Distrusting; discounting; blaming; shaming Attacking; exaggerating; generalizing; de-focusing (bringing up a new problem)
Jim: “Well how come when I ask you to get Nick to turn his boom-box down after dinner, you al-ways give me ‘the look’, and tell me I’m (falsetto mimicry) ‘just being too picky’? Your son has the sensitivity of a fireplug.”	Not hearing; arguing; Counterattacking (defending); Deflecting the focus to yet another problem;
Rae (shaking her head, snorting): “You seem to have gotten us off the main problem again. OK, I’ll try it one more time.        I want you to act like a father for a change and talk to Georgia. Get her to show a little re-sponsibility in this house by picking up her litter around here.        I am getting really tired of being just the maid here, and coming in last with you, behind your job, your daughter, and Nina (Jim’s ex wife)! This isn’t what I signed on for! I never thought …”	Blaming; not hearing; deflecting back again; Martyring; discounting both Jim (the person) and his needs, via words, voice tone, and body language; (implication ‘you’re 1-down’); attacking Georgia; implied vague threat; gen-eralizing; Exaggerating; adding a new problem: Rae’s true need to feel respected; Dramatizing; flooding;
Ineffective Couple's Dialog	Communication "Mistakes"
Jim: (glaring): “Read my lips, Rae: You - are - all first - with - me! No one comes in second! Why can’t you get that!?”	“Arguing”: [interrupting (i.e. not listening) + not focusing + defending (explaining) + counterattacking]: implication: “I’m 1-up”
Rae: (Shaking her head, sighing loudly) “Oh, I give up! I can never get through to you.” She turns angerily and walks out of the bedroom.	Blaming; generalizing; complaining; Giving up (overwhelmed); Unaware of resolution process
Jim: looks after her, shaking his head in irritation, weariness, and frustration.	Avoiding; giving up (overwhelmed too); silent blaming and denial.

        Notice what you’re thinking and feeling now. Anything sound familiar here? This is a classic step-family loyalty conflict, where the bioparent feels in caught the middle of a frustrating, impossible lose-lose situation, and the stepparent feels painfully “second best” (i.e. disrespected and unimportant), and usually guilty for “forcing” their mate to choose. Did you identify with Rae and/or Jim here, or neither? Why? Did either of these people get their needs met?

        Though this bit of typical (lose-lose) marital dialog is brief, it illustrates a lot:

• Neither mate identified what they really needed, or stuck to it, though Rae tried;

• Neither really tried to hear the other non-judgmentally, as a partner;

• Neither Jim nor Rae thought to change their focus to how they were trying to problem-solve. As they each felt increasingly unheard and frustrated. they got more and more tangled in a growing knot of unmet needs (discomforts or “problems”);

• During the exchange, neither mate felt respected by the other - i.e. they each decoded "1-down"
  R(espect) messages from the other. Thus, their communication process added to their unmet pri-mary needs, vs. reducing them;

• Each mate unconsciously used many ineffective resolution strategies to re-create a predictable communication sequence causing these lose-lose outcomes:

1)  Neither partner filled their communication and other needs;

2)  They diminished their mutual trust that “talking” together (on this loyalty-conflict issue) would “work” (fill their needs). Their expectations of "communicating well about the kids" ratcheted down another notch, so the next time they try, they'll expect it not to work ... That becomes self-fulfilling, with unaware mates...

3)  Jim and Rae both unconsciously added this incident to their respective “gunnysacks” of "unfinished marital business" (old hurts and resentments);

4)  They each repressed their hurt, anger, and frustration, which “leaked out” later in their re-lations with Nickie and Georgia - adding to their kids’ unspoken family discomforts and anxi-eties; and finally …

5)  Rae and Jim’s marital relationship received another injury.

        When enough injuries accumulate, ineffective resolution sequences like promote relationship decay, separation, and divorce. Does this seem valid to you? Could this happen to you partners, over time?

From long unconscious habit, this average couple each tended to find fault with their partner, ra-ther than agreeing “let’s do some win-win problem-solving together soon, when we’re both up for it.” Una-ware, they never got past dig-down problem-level two.

 Are you wondering “What would this have sounded if they did ‘problem-solve effectively”? Let’s take a look...

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Updated  September 01, 2010