Category: conflict management

CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A LESSON FROM BLONDIE

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date July 14, 2013
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Over the course of the last few weeks I presented some lessons that aim to get you to think about immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism to yourself (see CRITICIZING YOURSELF: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY and CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE). As I’ve pointed out on many occasions, becoming a master at utilizing the higher levels of maturity takes more than just thinking about them on a single day. It requires some practice utilizing the concepts over several occasions. And so, from time to time, I insert a little practice session to remind you of the previously presented ideas and to give you a little practice utilizing them. Today, we will take a look at a Blondie comic example. There, you will find that after Dagwood gives Blondie a statue she sees as ugly, she criticizes herself. Please take a look at her response to her self-criticism, and see if you think she handled it maturely.

As you think about how maturely Blondie criticizes herself in this comic, perhaps it would be of help to look at the five levels of providing criticism that we discussed earlier:

This level requires displaying one or more of the following:

Cries without stating what the crying is about
Physically attacks themselves
Damages property

2. This level requires displaying one or both of the following:

They do not explain what the offending behavior is, but instead express displeasure with glares, insults, shouting, silence, or threats that do not involve bodily harm. (For example, calling themselves a jerk”)
Threatens bodily harm regardless of what else is said.

3. The criticizer clearly states the criticism with enough detail so the criticized person, if he or she wills, can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance, but couples it with glares, insults, shouts, or threats that are not about bodily harm.

4. The criticizer states the criticism without bodily attacks, damaging property, glares, insults, threats, or shouts, and with enough details so that the criticized person, if he or she wills, can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance. If the person becomes defensive or angry, the criticizer empathizes without returning, glares, insults, threats, or shouts.

5. When the criticizer provides criticism, he or she does so in a manner very similar to a level four response, but beforehand, the criticizer considers the situation that he or she is in. As a result of such considerations, the criticizer may decide to alter the criticism.

Now that you refreshed your memory of the five levels, does any one of them seem to match how Blondie criticized herself? Think about this, if you will, and then you can have some fun comparing your thoughts with mine.

My answer: Obviously, what we see is not meant to display Blondie’s whole response, but there is enough here to hazard a guess for our educational goal of familiarizing readers with the maturity rating system.

Blondie frames her feeling as “terrible.” It would be a sign of higher maturity if she conceptualized her experience instead as “sad” and “a valuable emotion that will lead to her thinking more deeply about something very important to her—her relationship with her husband.”

We know from what we see here and from observing her behavior over the years that Blondie is a very caring person. So, perhaps she is the type to be compassionate toward her own limitations. She doesn’t hit herself, so she may not be at level 1. In the last box, she may be crying and this would indicate her response deserves a level 1 rating unless she also displays some set of responses that deserves a higher rating.

When Blondie calls herself insensitive, it comes pretty close to matching level 2. Admittedly, this is a tricky call. One reason for the difficulty is that she might not be really insulting herself at this point. Instead, she might be displaying the process of thinking through the best course of action for herself. That is, she might be laying out for her consideration the value of being considerate.

If she had obviously put herself down by calling herself a rat for example, this response would be easier to rate as a level 2. But the descriptor, “insensitive,” is very relevant to what concerns her about her actions. I like her concern for her husband. I view empathy as a sign of higher levels of maturity.

In the last frame, she is taking some time to deal with her challenging experience. Maybe she is actually using the “sensory focus” technique we recently discussed (see DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL PAIN). “Sensory focus” involves turning your attention to the physical qualities of the pain and observing the sensations you are experiencing. This can convert challenging feelings into a search that leads to ever higher levels of truth.

I think this is where we leave Blondie in the comic we are analyzing. Without being able to discuss this episode with her or to observe further how the events continue to unfold, I’m going to just take a very tentative guess that she is indeed trying to figure out how to respond in a sensitive way toward Dagwood, and that she will not really insult herself. In time, she probably would have displayed a response very close to a level 4 or 5.

Thanks for visiting today. I hope to see you soon.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags Blondie, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, maturity, maturity levels, negative criticism, self-criticism, types of criticism, wisdom

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CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date July 1, 2013
7 Comments on CRITICIZING YOURSELF MATURELY: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Recently I presented a post that aims to get you to think about immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism to yourself (see Criticizing Yourself: Five Levels of Maturity). In that post there is a fun practice section to help people to get familiar with the different levels. Becoming a master at utilizing the higher levels of maturity takes more than just thinking about them on a single day. It requires some practice utilizing the concepts over several occasions. So today, I’ll once again describe the five levels of maturity, and then let’s practice some more with the help of some of our favorite friends.

PROVIDING NEGATIVE CRITICISM: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY

Below you will find preliminary descriptions of how people at five developmental levels of maturity provide negative criticism to themselves, that is, criticism that points out what we don’t like about our actions, beliefs, or appearance. Level one is the most immature and uses observations of babies as its starting point. Each successive level is more mature:

1.This level requires displaying one or more of the following:

Cries without stating what the crying is about.
Physically harms you,
Damages property.

2. This level requires displaying one or both of the following:

You do not explain what the offending behavior is, but instead express displeasure with glares, insults, shouting, silence, or threats that do not involve bodily harm.
Threatens bodily harm regardless of what else is said.

3. You clearly state the criticism with enough detail so you can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance, but couple it with glares, insults, shouts, or threats that are not about bodily harm.

4. You state the criticism without bodily attacks, damaging property, glares, insults, threats, or shouts, and with enough details so that you can improve the behavior, idea, or appearance.

5. When you provide criticism, you do so in a manner very similar to a level four response, but beforehand, you consider the situation that you are in. As a result of such considerations, you may decide to alter the criticism.

A PEANUTS EXAMPLE

Below, in the Peanuts comic, Lucy provides negative criticism to herself while Charlie Brown listens. Take a shot, if you will, at rating how mature you think her criticism is on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most mature. Think about why you gave her your rating, and then compare your answer to mine.

My answer: I think Lucy’s actions best match the level 3 description— You clearly state the criticism with enough detail so you can, if you so choose, improve the behavior, idea, or appearance, but couple it with glares, insults, shouts, or threats that are not about bodily harm. The main reason I have for this is that she is shouting at herself. Lucy’s actions indicate to me that she knows what her negative criticism is about; instead of becoming discouraged, she wants her life to move from one “up” to an “upper-up,” without any “downs.” I believe her actions should be reduced by .5 because she doesn’t make it clear to herself what she should do about her expressed concern. I would have felt she at least tried to come up with a plan of action if she had said something to herself like the following: “For the next few weeks, each time I feel discouraged, I’m going to write in a journal how I feel, what led up to how I feel, and then see if I can come up with something that leads to my feeling better.” In the end, I gave Lucy a 2.5 rating.

ANOTHER PEANUTS EXAMPLE

In this next one, Lucy again provides negative criticism to herself, and again we get the sense that she knows what the criticism is about, but she doesn’t come up with some plan to address her concern. What rating do you think she deserves? Also, see if you can come up with a statement that Lucy can make to herself that would indicate she has come up with a plan to address her concern.

My answer: This time Lucy doesn’t shout at herself. She does shout at Linus about the negative criticism he provides, but our job here is not to rate that, but rather her negative criticism of her own actions. That occurs in the last box where she says to herself, “How humiliating!”

I don’t view her comment as an insult, although in real life she would have to decide that for herself. It seems to me that people, when they are dissatisfied with “a failure to accomplish a task,” can feel a sense of humiliation, not as an insult, but as a humbling experience that has the potential to motivate them to seek to make some improvement. As far as I am concerned, a person can feel humiliated and still respond at level 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. If Lucy had insulted herself or shouted at herself, I would have felt that level three was the best match for what she does. I’m giving Lucy, instead, a question mark because sometimes criticism is provided that is clear about what is not liked but useful information about improving is not provided. If this is done in a supportive manner that does not use any insults, shouts, or threats, a question mark can be used instead of a rating. This indicates that sometimes mature people will provide this type of feedback to gently encourage themselves to come up with a solution to the problem of how to improve. The criticizer is in essence merely asking the question, “Can I come up with a way to make some improvement in this area?” Because asking such a question using a supportive tone of voice is not necessarily a sign of immaturity, no rating is immediately assigned, but as time goes on, some rating may become earned.

A FUNKY WINKERBEAN EXAMPLE

Let’s try rating Les in this Funky Winkerbean comic. Below, we see that Les, the guy with the glasses, has been invited to his thirtieth high school reunion. When he looks in the mirror he begins to evaluate how he now looks and recalls how he looked thirty years ago. As he does so, apparently he is providing some negative criticism to himself. Please rate how mature you think his response is.

My answer: The thought of going to his thirtieth high school reunion has put Les in a deep funk. He is saddened to see how he has aged. He doesn’t seem to be insulting himself in any way or threatening to harm himself. He’s also not hitting himself. Hmmm.

Some who view themselves as “healthy-minded” say that by letting himself feel sad about something he can’t do anything about, Les is actually acting in an unhealthy manner. These so called “healthy-minded” folks argue that Les would be far wiser to avert his attention from what is bothering him and live in the light of what is good in his life.

Admittedly, this method does seem to work for many people, and if it works for you, feel free to continue with it for as long as you like. I promise that I won’t send the mental health police after you.

There are those of us, however, who have tried this “healthy-minded” approach and find that, when melancholy comes, the whole system quickly breaks down. If that is your experience, perhaps the words of the brilliant psychologist, William James, might be more to your liking. “[T]here is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”

Clearly, people confront events that create feelings of sadness, horror, and dread. To James, the feelings that accompany such events can lead toward truth. Many of the most creative people have come to believe that periods of melancholy are an essential part of their creative process.

My readings of the research and my own personal experiences have led me to several tentative conclusions. First of all, if you can learn to avoid insulting and threatening yourself during these periods of melancholy, that’s a good thing. Some special types of insults can be especially harmful. “I’ll never be happy again,” is one of these. “I’ll always be a terrible person,” is another. “All is hopeless,” may be the worst .

Practice saying at such times, “Melancholy is part of the creative process; it is a tool that most creative people have experienced, and this mood can spur me to come to a useful understanding of my life.” “Creative” in this context means more than artistic creativity. It encompasses all aspects of a person’s work, and interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

The melancholy that Les is experiencing will not be his whole response to his dissatisfaction with his current appearance. He will perhaps come to realize that he has some time to still live and the years he has already lived have given him a unique perspective that can enrich the time he has left to fulfill the desires that only come about from our deepest searching. For Les, I am going to put off any rating. As far as I’m concerned, he has just begun to provide to himself negative criticism and some more time will be necessary to evaluate what his rating should be.

Okay, that’s our lesson for this week. I would love to get some comments about the ideas I’ve presented. Do you think that there are more mature ways to respond to criticism than the ideas that I’ve put forth? Has there ever been a time when you criticize yourself in a manner that you would like to discuss?

My Best, Jeff

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Tags anger, conflict, conflict management, criticism, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, maturity levels, negative criticism, self-criticism, types of criticism, wisdom

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THE CREATION OF THE COOL STEVE STORIES

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date June 16, 2013
No Comments on THE CREATION OF THE COOL STEVE STORIES

It was way back in 1972 on a pleasant autumn day. As I stepped out of the sparkling sunshine into the shadowy confines of the Coney Island Child Psychiatric Clinic, I was greeted by three people who could have been movie actors. One was a beautiful social worker in her late twenties, with flowing brunette hair; another, a tall, handsome psychologist in his early thirties; and the third, a psychiatrist who looked like he was trying out for a part as Sigmund Freud, with his long, graying beard and pipe. Initially they were warm and friendly but, within a few minutes, switched to more earnest expressions. The psychiatrist took charge at this point, informing me that I would be working with eight very troubled male teenagers—two individually, and six in a group. My first job teaching conflict resolution under the auspices of a real life professional organization had begun.

It was a period of time before the current practice of converting the psychological concerns of all children brought to a psychiatric clinic into a language of illness believed to be due to chemical imbalances. The prescribing of pills as the main—oftentimes only—action offered was something I had never dreamed of. Instead, a staff of professionals and several advanced psychology students from Brooklyn College sought to provide empathic emotional support, understand the conflicts the children were experiencing, and guide them toward more mature coping. I was one of the Brooklyn College students.

Achieving the first two goals proved to be a breeze. The kids’ hunger for attention made it easy to develop genuinely enjoyable relationships. And the way the boys spoke and interacted readily revealed volumes on the topic of conflicts with which they struggled on a daily basis. Guiding the boys toward more mature coping, however, tripped me up.

I remember one of my first attempts. A burly thirteen-year old boy with wild, unkempt hair began to express his anger about a kid at school who had called him a jerk.

“Called you a jerk!?” I replied. “Yikes! What did you do about it?”

“I shoved him.”

“How’d that work out?”

“I got sent to the principal.”

“Do you like to get sent to the principal?”

“NO!”

“Hmm, if you don’t like it, maybe we can figure out how to respond to a name caller in a better way.”

“If someone puts me down, I ain’t gonna let him get away with it.”

“I can understand that. Let’s discuss a few ways to deal with name calling that doesn’t let the other guy get away with anything and yet won’t get you sent to the principal’s office.”

“Na. If that guy calls me a name again, I’m really gonna let him have it! He better not start with me again!”

“I can see just thinking about this is really making you angry.”

“Yeah, it is!”

“Well, I have good news for you. I think I can help you to come up with some ways that you can handle name calling that you would respect but won’t get you in trouble. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“Listen, I don’t wanna talk about this anymore!”

At this point, I realized that, for now, to pursue this any longer would be counterproductive.

Shortly after this, I noticed that the two black kids in the group I was working with were frequently being put down by the four white kids.

Some words got thrown back and forth that could have made a Brooklyn boy blush. Well, okay, maybe not a Brooklyn boy, but most people. Anyway, my efforts to address this were, unfortunately, met with the boys shouting over me as their anger flamed into rage.

“You’re doing just fine,” my supervisor assured me. “Working with kids requires great patience.”

I would have preferred specific suggestions on how to better teach. Still, his comments at least temporarily took some pressure off of me.

But as time went on, my patience waned, and I began to have difficulty falling asleep. In the wee hours of the morning my mind kept going over and over incidents in which my efforts to teach something to the kids ended without success. And then, during one such night, amidst an experience of what felt like endless tossing and turning and excruciating frustration, suddenly I recalled an incident that happened to me in fifth grade. Back then I had recently seen the movie, The Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper starring as the New York Yankees’ great baseball player, Lou Gehrig. Nicknamed “The Iron Horse,” Gehrig had his Hall-of-Fame career cut short at 36 years of age when he was stricken with a fatal disease. As the film comes to an end, it reenacts Gehrig’s farewell address in front of a packed, tearful crowd at Yankee Stadium. I’ll never forget his parting words. “People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today…today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Shortly after seeing the film, I decided to read a Lou Gehrig biography and learned that his parents were from Germany. Because I had grown up on war movies that depicted Germans as the vicious enemy, I had, at that time, come to hate Germans. But, when I began to read Lou Gehrig’s biography, I found my hatred undergoing a dramatic change. The story tells us that Lou’s parents were from Germany, spoke with a German accent, and this led the kids in his neighborhood to incessantly torment him.

Somehow, my heart went out to Lou, and from that day on, I came to believe that it wasn’t right to judge a person by their nationality.

Lying in bed recalling having read that biography so many years ago, my mind, at one point, returned to thinking about teaching kids coping skills. It seemed to me that there was something about that Lou Gehrig story that enabled me to reconsider attitudes that I had firmly held for so long. Perhaps if I could tell the kids at the clinic stories about a hero who portrayed higher levels of maturity, they might identify with the hero. I figured that kids like to try out the behaviors of their heroes. I know I did. Criticizing the actions of characters in the story would produce less defensiveness than when I had directly criticized the actions of the kids at the clinic. If I told the stories when the clinic kids weren’t already in a defensive state, maybe they would be open to a real discussion. Once they had thought the issues through, perhaps then they would be better able to integrate what they had learned into their own lives.

Soon afterwards, each time I saw the kids at the clinic dealing with a different conflict in a way that struck me as immature, a story dealing with the conflict in a more mature way just came to me in some strange, effortless manner. The hero of the stories, Cool Steve, has many of the attributes that the clinic kids admired.

I made it a point to tell each story at some point in our session when things were relatively calm. And it turned out that the kids loved them. When I told the stories to the group of kids I worked with—kids well known for their rambunctiousness—they settled right down and you could hear a pin drop as the tale unfolded. They discussed them, grappled with the issues, and oftentimes came to agree that Cool Steve had handled the conflict in a way they respected.

An interesting discovery that I made when I was teaching conflict management to graduate students at the University of Minnesota was that the adult students there enjoyed the stories every bit as much as teenagers. And so, with that encouragement, the stories grew and grew so that they now comprise a series of three novels collectively called The Cool Steve Stories that you can learn about HERE.

Readers of this blog know that as I provide lessons on conflict management, I often illustrate the ideas with newspaper comic strips. Although these comics are very helpful for introducing basic ideas, to really learn the subtleties of applying the ideas of conflict management in actual situations it is hard to beat the longer narratives that novels provide.

The first novel in the trilogy is A Hero Grows in Brooklyn. Most of the action occurs when the main characters are junior high school students. If it was a movie, it would likely be rated “PG.” Fights in the Streets, Tears in the Sand, the second novel in the trilogy, deals with some more mature themes. The main characters are now beginning an urban high school and there is a modest amount of cursing, and some talk about sexual feelings and fantasies. It would probably be rated “PG13” if it was a movie. Love, Sex and Respect, the final novel in the trilogy, takes the main characters through to their high school graduation. If the book was a movie, it might be rated “R.”

You can learn more about the novels at this blog’s NOVELS page toward the top of this page. There you will find that the first novel in the series can be downloaded for free on any iPad, Nook, Kindle or computer, or you can order a paperback version HERE.

I encourage my students to check these books out because they provide memorable adventures that are not only fun and exciting, but teach some profound lessons as well.

Have a great week!

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Tags anger, bullied, bullying, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, enjoyable relationships, free social intelligence and emotional intelligence curriculum, insults, threats, violence, wisdom

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“BULLY” AND BEYOND

Although the deeply disturbing documentary, “Bully,” has been out for over a year, I just got to view it as a rental a few days ago. It grabbed my guts and gave them a wrenching twist.

The documentary focuses on the struggles of five families. Two students end up killing themselves, others seriously consider it, while one young lady attempts to discourage her persecutors from continuing their bullying by bringing a loaded gun on a school bus and screaming threats.

Each of the family stories is brought vividly to life. For example, Alex, a 14-year old, is teased, humiliated and assaulted daily.

Here we see him getting abused on the school bus.

Trying to make sense of it all, at one point he sticks up for his tormentors, saying they are “just messing around” when they stab him with pencils and call him vile names. At another point, he asks his deeply troubled mother, “If not for them, what friends do I have?”

It is not only boys who are humiliated regularly at school.

Many are berated about their sexuality.

Others, because of the color of their skin.

It happens on school buses.

In school hallways.

And more and more, on the internet.

Often groups of children band together to pick on others.

The educators that we see in the film come across as needing some sound advice on handling bullying. A. O. Scott, in his review of the movie for the New York Times, refers to them as well-meaning but clueless. Particularly irksome to Scott is the scene in which an assistant principal tries to settle a conflict between two boys who apparently had been fighting at recess.

“When she insists that they shake hands, one eagerly obliges, with a smile and an apology. The other sullenly resists, and as she scolds him for his noncooperation (letting his antagonist go), it becomes clear that this boy is the victim, and that the assistant principal’s rushed attempt to be fair is in fact perpetuating a terrible and continuing injustice.”

At first, I was very disappointed that the movie offers very little constructive suggestions about what can be done to turn this dismal problem around. But its emotional impact has been an important part of the emergence of a coalition working toward altering intolerable conditions too often regarded as “just kids being kids.”

The movie has spawned The Bully Project, an online site where people can learn more about dealing with bullying. There, kids who are bullied can learn that they are not alone. And educators can learn about how to set up a viewing of the movie for their entire school and to follow up the viewing with classroom discussions.

In one video that we can access at the site, we see one entire school going to the movie and then getting the reactions from students. One kid reports that there was not a dry eye in the auditorium. Others admitted that they had bullied, but now realized it was wrong.

Also available on line, as my regular readers know, is this blog, From Insults To Respect. The blog can be used as a free curriculum that teaches the social skills to deal with these challenging experiences.

For those of you who are first getting familiar with this blog and want to help others to learn how to deal with problems involving insults, I recommend starting with my post titled:

INSULTS: A COMIC STRIP LOVER’S GUIDE

There, readers can learn about eight different reasons why people insult others and get some suggestions about how to deal with each of them.

If you are a parent or educator, in my post titled, TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO DEAL WITH CRITICISM, I recommend a fun game that teaches kids how to respond to criticism in a manner that enhances their reputation.

One approach that I have used in a school setting to deal with these types of issues is to have kids create brief TV shows that illustrate each of the four levels of responding to criticism that I discuss regularly on my blog (see, for example, RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: FOUR LEVELS OF MATURITY). The kids loved doing this. When the kids were done acting out these video role-plays, I had the parents of the kids in my group come, and it created a dialogue about these issues that was very well received.

After the parents saw the TV shows, I made another set of these four-level role-play videos with the same group of kids, and again, the parents showed up. By now, the kids had learned this set of skills like it was the back of their hands, and were using them in settings outside the group.

A particularly powerful way to teach skills that deal with bullying is through narratives that are designed to change the valuation of bullying to make it signify ineptitude rather than manliness. We can change the culture by telling stories in which kids, out of fear, act nice to a bully when face to face with them but speak negatively about them as soon as the bully’s back is turned. “Is that the type of respect you are after?” is a question to ask the students after each story is told.

I’ve published a trilogy of three novels that not only addresses this question, but presents a character who rejects bullying and yet learns to achieve respect.

In my view, it is vitally important that we raise the awareness that something that is viewed as “normal” is terribly wrong. The film, “Bully,” does an excellent job of doing this. But we must go beyond this crucial step. We must also raise the awareness that there are very specific actions that people can take to alter the awful injustice we find in and around our schools, and to teach students, parents and educators alike what those actions are.

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Tags "Bully" the Movie, bullies, bully, bullying, conflict, conflict management, criticism, emotional intelligence, insults, psychological maturity, respect, school buses, school hallways, wisdom

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IMPLIED CRITICISM: ADVANCED LESSON

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date March 2, 2013
2 Comments on IMPLIED CRITICISM: ADVANCED LESSON

In last week’s post I began to discuss some forms of implied criticism.

In this Dilbert comic that we first looked at in last week’s post, we see that complimenting someone in front of another person can lead to an experience that feels like a subtle form of negative criticism. Learning to recognize not only the most obvious types of negative criticism, but the more subtle forms as well, can improve our ability to handle difficult anger arousing situations.

A single lesson on identifying the more subtle forms of negative criticism is really not sufficient for most of us to actually begin to utilize this skill in a helpful manner. Therefore, today we will practice this skill some more. Then we will look at an example of a woman who is dealing with a challenging interpersonal interaction. We will see that by combining her knowledge of subtle forms of negative criticism with some of the other skills that she has learned from following this blog, a difficult anger arousing situation can have a positive outcome.

Last week, I mentioned that making a suggestion is one form of indirect negative criticism. Let’s take a second look at this.

Suggestions

Often when someone offers a suggestion, a criticism is lurking within the suggestion—sometimes the direct kind and sometimes the implied kind. When Lucy suggests to Charlie Brown that “we just sort of slip away,” it implies that she has evaluated the team’s performance and she does not like it.

In the workplace, terms like “providing feedback” and “input” are often used as alternative terms to “offering a suggestion.”

In addition to complimenting someone in front of another person and making suggestions, another indirect, implied type of negative criticism is making educational recommendations.

Recommending Education

Like the word “suggestion,” whenever you hear the word “instruction,” you would be wise to think that some criticism is most likely close about. In order to make this point concrete, let’s go back to the scenario we used last week that involves Katrina and Betty, but let’s change it a bit.

In this example, instead of looking over to Betty’s wilting tomato plants and then making a suggestion to move the plants to a sunnier area in the garden, Katrina offers to give some “instruction” on how to plant tomatoes. Although Katrina doesn’t directly say she thinks Betty’s skills can use some improvement, why else would she offer to provide her the instruction? When people say, “I think your skills can use some improvement,” it is a form of criticism.

An Example that Utilizes the Skill to Recognize Subtle Forms of Negative Criticism

Let’s go back, once again, to the example we used in last week’s blog post. Betty has invited Katrina over for some tea in her backyard. The sun is shining and the birds are singing a pleasant song. As the two friends chat, Katrina glances over at Betty’s tomato plants.

“Betty,” says Katrina, “let me make a suggestion. Perhaps it would be better if you moved your plants to that sunny patch over there a few yards from your hedge. They’ll get lots of sun there.”

“Listen, Katrina, I don’t care for your coming over here criticizing my gardening skills?”

“Criticize!” yells Katrina. “I didn’t criticize anything! All I did was offer a suggestion!”

Notice that in this example when Katrina provides Betty her “suggestion,” Katrina doesn’t recognize that she has indeed provided Betty negative criticism. And then, when Betty responds to Katrina’s criticism by criticizing Katrina for criticizing her, Katrina gets defensive, shouting at Betty that she didn’t criticize anything!

This example illustrates the problems that can occur when both parties in a conflict are unskilled at dealing with criticism.

Let’s once again change this Katrina-Betty scenario a bit. This time, let’s pretend that Katrina has been reading my blog and therefore she has been getting more and more familiar with some of its basic ideas.

Katrina looks over to Betty’s wilting tomato plants. Betty,” she says, “let me make a suggestion. Perhaps it would be better if you moved your plants to that sunny patch over there a few yards from your hedge. They’ll get lots of sun there.”

“Listen, Katrina, I don’t care for your coming over here criticizing my gardening skills.”

When Katrina hears this, because she has been reading my blog, she quickly recognizes that Betty is now criticizing her. Immediately, the image of a woman comes to her mind:

Then Katrina pauses. She thinks about how she is about to respond to Betty, and notices that she is feeling defensive, and she is about to start shouting at Betty, denying that she has provided any criticism. Katrina then thinks about my blog post titled RESPONDING TO CRITICISM: FOUR LEVELS OF MATURITY. She ends up saying to herself, “That response I was getting ready to give to Betty would be rated a fairly immature level–something like level 2 or 3. What would a more mature level look like?”

Katrina then tries to come up with a response to Betty that would be more like level 4. Katrina also thinks about what she learned about implied criticism from my blog and from this she comes to recognize that Betty is correct.

After a few more seconds of thought, Katrina feels pretty comfortable with the new response that she has come up with and decides to give it a try. She recognizes that if her response doesn’t lead to something positive, she can always summarize in a caring way Betty’s concern and then say that she will think more about this over the next few days (see blog post Summarize and Delay).

And so, Katrina begins to respond to Betty’s angry reply:

“Betty” says Katrina, “you say that you don’t like that I criticized your gardening skills. When I said what I said, I thought I was just offering you a suggestion. But after some thought, I see you are right. My suggestion does imply that I criticized your gardening skills.”

“It certainly did!” Betty says.

“I also see, Betty, that you don’t like to be criticized. I really like you a lot, so now that I know this, I’ll try to be more sensitive about that.”

“No one likes to be criticized, Katrina? Do you?”

“Well, Betty, actually I used to have a lot of difficulty dealing with criticism, but now I’m much more comfortable with it. I feel that I can handle it in a warm, friendly way that helps me to understand what others are thinking about me and I learn wisdom from it. There’s still some times when I find that it can be pretty painful to hear, and sometimes my husband gives me so much criticism all at one time that I end up asking him to back off for awhile.”

“That reminds me of today’s Sally Forth comic,” says Betty. And after digging through her newspaper that was sitting on her patio table, Betty shows the comic to Katrina.

Smiling, Katrina says, “Yes, Betty, that comic does captures how I sometimes begin to feel when my husband, Frank, keeps giving me one criticism after another in a real short period of time and I do get so I want to clobber him. Instead, we once discussed it when we weren’t all worked up and angry about something, and we made an agreement. Whenever he begins to criticize me and I’ve had enough, instead of ruining one of his shirts, I just tell him in a loving manner that I’ve had enough for now. He’s agreed to back off whenever I say that, and I do the same thing for him when he asks me to back off for awhile. It’s less expensive then buying a new shirt.”

“Well, Katrina, maybe I am a little too sensitive about being criticized. I think it’s because of how some people in my family criticize me. I have a younger sister, and whenever she criticizes me, she starts to shout and call me an idiot. And I know she knows how to criticize in a nice way because when she’s with her boyfriend, she’s so sweet when she criticizes him. Maybe I should talk with her when we’re not in the middle of a quarrel about it.”

“That’s a great idea, Betty.”

Well, that’s today’s lesson. I hope you found it helpful.

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Tags anger, challenge, conflict, conflict management, criticism, emotions, insults, maturity levels, name calling, negative criticism, respect, types of criticism, wisdom

anger Bullied conflict management conflict resolution criticism emotional intelligence insults interpersonal conflicts Name calling social intelligence stress threats wisdom

INSULTS, LIKING AND FREEDOM

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date February 9, 2013
2 Comments on INSULTS, LIKING AND FREEDOM

Back in April of last year, in a post titled, WHY IS CRITICISM SO HARD TO BEAR?, we began to discuss the fact that when we provide negative criticism to others, they may feel insulted, they may feel that you feel they are not worthy of being liked, and they may feel that you are trying to push them to make some change that should be only for them to freely decide. They, therefore, may become defensive and their anger may become destructive.

Of course, it is not enough to just know that the desire to be liked and the desire to maintain freedom can lead to problems when we provide negative criticism–we also want to know what we can do to either prevent these problems or to resolve them when they come up. To develop these skills, I first presented a post titled PROVIDING NEGATIVE CRITICISM: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY. In later posts we began to look at a variety of very specific situations in which negative criticism is provided in a wise and helpful manner (see for example, DEALING WITH CRITICISM: LESSONS FROM DENNIS THE MENACE and DENNIS THE MENACE AND CRITICISM: AN ADVANCED LESSON).

In order to learn these skills at a level at which it becomes second nature even in emotionally arousing situations, from time to time I will be returning to this topic. By providing a wide range of examples over an extended period of time, readers will become better and better at applying these skills. To this end, today, we will look at some new situations in which the use of these skills are considered.

PRACTICE USING THE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE DESIRE TO BE LIKED

There are many people who don’t like to receive negative criticism. Some people, therefore, insist that if you don’t have anything positive to say, don’t say anything at all. And yet, there are occasions when the risk of starting a conflict because of providing negative criticism does makes sense.

Let’s say I like Marie, and it is pretty clear she likes me. But there is one thing Marie does that is making me feel like I want to end our relationship—when she criticizes me, she uses a very nasty tone that involves shouting, name calling, and glares.

In this example, Marie hasn’t asked me for my opinion, but I nevertheless decide that it’s worth a shot to confront her about the way she criticizes me because both of us may benefit from solving this problem. What might be a skillful way to go about providing her this negative criticism? Let me give you one approach to consider.

Knowing that when people are criticized it often brings up a “liking” conflict, I might present my comments by first trying to find a time when we are alone and she appears to be pretty open and relaxed. Criticizing someone who is already distressed with feelings of being unloved is unwise because they are very likely to resist hearing you out.

When I do find the right time, I might say, “Marie, I sure like you a lot. You’re smart, and most of the time you treat me in a very caring way that I really love. I am having difficulty with this one problem though. There are times I do something that you don’t like, and when you confront me, you do it in a tone that’s beginning to get to me.”

Notice how I began my comments by reassuring her that I like her. Then I gave her a few specific examples of what I like about her. This helps to fulfill her desire to be liked. Once this desire is fulfilled to some degree, it can potentially decrease the intensity of the conflict as we attempt to solve the problem.

After I provide the criticism, it is crucial that I give Marie a chance to respond without interrupting her. I would wait until she is completely finished, and then summarize what she has said without a tone of defensiveness. After my summary, before making any additional points, I would see if she is satisfied with my summary. It seems to me it is essential that I do my best to show Marie I have fully listened to what she has to say on this topic.

Practice Using the Knowledge About the Desire to Maintain Freedom

Another approach to consider when we suspect someone might experience defensiveness when criticized is to empower the person who is the target of the criticism. Here’s an example:

“Hi Fred. Last time we got together we had quite an argument.”

“Yeah, you made some stupid suggestion.”

“I know you disagreed with it, Fred. I’ve been thinking a lot about these arguments. I think I get so into them that I start pushing you too hard to change your mind. It comes across as pushy and like I am getting in the way of your freedom to make your own decisions.”

“Yeah, it does come off as real pushy. You don’t know when to back off!”

“I understand. Well, I really value our friendship so I want to change that. I’d like to set up a couple of rules that I’m willing to agree to follow from now on. First, if I bring up a topic you don’t want to talk about, I’d like you to tell me you don’t want to talk about it. I promise I’ll silence myself immediately. Second, if we start getting into a discussion, at any point you have had enough, just say, “Enough!” and that will signal to me to drop the topic. Do you think that might help us to get along a little better?”

“Well, if you really do drop the topic when I tell you, it could help.”

“I’m determined to stick to my promise. If I can’t, it will be my fault. I’m sorry for being so pushy in the past.”

Notice how this plan puts at least some of the responsibility for the unwanted arguments between Fred and myself squarely on my shoulders. It also gives some power to Fred. It makes it clear to Fred that he now has a way to get me to back off when he no longer wants to engage. Also, I agree to follow these rules and admit that if I don’t follow them the fault rests with me.

Of course, if Fred were to signal to me that he wanted to drop a topic by using angry shouting, I might seek to change our plan a bit. I could explain to Fred that I have a hard time dealing with someone shouting at me. Then I can ask him to signal me to drop a topic by using some silent signal like a palm down wave of his hand. We call this “a silent back-off signal.”

The skill to empower those who have a tendency to become defensive when criticized is a powerful tool. It avoids unnecessary conflicts about freedom.

It Can be Challenging to Learn these Types of Skills to Deal with Criticism

It’s interesting that some people, even when they realize that providing criticism at a given point in time is not the best thing to be doing, have a hard time refraining.

In the above Sally Forth comic, Sally seems to desire to be helpful and yet she does something she knows will not be helpful. This one incident doesn’t mean she will never be able to make the change that makes sense to her. Sometimes we have to work on making changes over a period of time.

Seeing ourselves make mistakes while we are trying to make a change may lead to criticizing ourselves. In the following Luann comic, notice that Toni calls her mouth stupid while she criticizes herself.

Most of us desire to like ourselves. To feel the blues deeply while knowing that mistakes are part of the learning process is a different bluesy feeling than the feeling we get when we think a mistake means we are unchangeably bad. The “learning” bluesy feeling is more hopeful. Learning to be kind to yourself when you make a mistake is an important step in learning to be kind to others when you see them make mistakes.

SUMMARY

Today we practiced using the knowledge about two major reasons why providing negative criticism can be difficult. The two major reasons are:

Many people associate criticism with not being liked.
Many people associate criticism with an attempt to reduce their freedom to make their own decisions.

Once we begin to recognize these types of conflicts, we are in a better position to come up with plans to either resolve them or to lower their intensity. If we like the person whom we are about to criticize, providing reassurance about our esteem, using some specific examples of what we like about the person, is a valuable skill to learn. For people who tend to get defensive when criticized, suggesting the use of a “silent back-off signal” can empower them to deal more effectively with criticism. To learn these skills so they can be used even during trying times takes time. Learning to be kind to yourself when you make a mistake along the way is an important step in learning to be kind to others when you see them make mistakes.

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Tags anger, bullied, conflict, conflict management, criticism, disrespectful, emotional intelligence, maturity, maturity levels, negative criticism, psychological maturity, respect, second nature, threats, types of criticism, wisdom