If you are studying the family or marriage you will find that you love the work of John Gottman, Ph.D., at least that is the way I feel. Right now I have been reading 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work and Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children. I love them!! If you haven't read them please do. They are amazing. It is focusing on making things right instead of putting out the fires of things going wrong. I appreciate a proactive approach to my relationships because I don't like drama. The book I want to focus on here is Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children. I used to think I was a really good listener in high school, but after I got married I realized I was good I making conflict feel uncomfortable around me it didn't come. Though the book is for raising kids I have been using it to become more emotionally intelligent. I basically do accept the emotion and then look for ways to cope/work with it. My problem is that I try to promote my "parental agenda" or in lame man terms I push the goal I think they talker should be pushing for instead of listening to what they are saying. This leads me to "side with the enemy" as I am trying to make sure those I talk to don't become close minded. And in all of those attempts I try to just give them an answer so they can be fixed and feel better again. I have learned that I am bad at validating emotions that I don't agree with. That doesn't mean I should pretend I do, my poor husband has been my guinea pig in this and that got us no where. However when he told me that he didn't like his teacher or his class in an attempt to follow the emotional coaching book I didn't go with my first instinct which was to tell him that his teacher wasn't that bad and that he just had to find different solutions to do better like get a tutor (notice how I had my own agenda their for him to be a good student, I sided with the enemy and tried to give the solution). But I didn't do that. Instead I asked if his what was going on in his class. He talked about how he wasn't understanding the information. I repressed my desire to talk about better study habit's and instead validated his feelings of frustration. All in all what happened is he firugued out that he was frustrated that he had two big assignments due this week and he was feeling that his efforts to understand the information were fruitless and he had talked to his teacher about it and gotten now where. This was something he didn't realize that he was even feeling at the time that he made his first comment and something I wouldn't have know about if I had just tried to "fix" the problem. Because he realized that was what was irritating him he made a plan to get to the computer lab that could help with his projects (something I didn't know was a resources and would have wanted him to do anyway). Because I was being emotionally intelligent I was able to be closer to him. Really I am only on chapter four of this book, but I am going to keep it forever.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Emotional Coaching
If you are studying the family or marriage you will find that you love the work of John Gottman, Ph.D., at least that is the way I feel. Right now I have been reading 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work and Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children. I love them!! If you haven't read them please do. They are amazing. It is focusing on making things right instead of putting out the fires of things going wrong. I appreciate a proactive approach to my relationships because I don't like drama. The book I want to focus on here is Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children. I used to think I was a really good listener in high school, but after I got married I realized I was good I making conflict feel uncomfortable around me it didn't come. Though the book is for raising kids I have been using it to become more emotionally intelligent. I basically do accept the emotion and then look for ways to cope/work with it. My problem is that I try to promote my "parental agenda" or in lame man terms I push the goal I think they talker should be pushing for instead of listening to what they are saying. This leads me to "side with the enemy" as I am trying to make sure those I talk to don't become close minded. And in all of those attempts I try to just give them an answer so they can be fixed and feel better again. I have learned that I am bad at validating emotions that I don't agree with. That doesn't mean I should pretend I do, my poor husband has been my guinea pig in this and that got us no where. However when he told me that he didn't like his teacher or his class in an attempt to follow the emotional coaching book I didn't go with my first instinct which was to tell him that his teacher wasn't that bad and that he just had to find different solutions to do better like get a tutor (notice how I had my own agenda their for him to be a good student, I sided with the enemy and tried to give the solution). But I didn't do that. Instead I asked if his what was going on in his class. He talked about how he wasn't understanding the information. I repressed my desire to talk about better study habit's and instead validated his feelings of frustration. All in all what happened is he firugued out that he was frustrated that he had two big assignments due this week and he was feeling that his efforts to understand the information were fruitless and he had talked to his teacher about it and gotten now where. This was something he didn't realize that he was even feeling at the time that he made his first comment and something I wouldn't have know about if I had just tried to "fix" the problem. Because he realized that was what was irritating him he made a plan to get to the computer lab that could help with his projects (something I didn't know was a resources and would have wanted him to do anyway). Because I was being emotionally intelligent I was able to be closer to him. Really I am only on chapter four of this book, but I am going to keep it forever.
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