Hello and welcome to the Kappa Podcast.
My name is Matt. I'm the Senior Practitioner for
Kappa First Response and I'm joined today as ever by our
Founder and CEO, Jane Griffiths. Hi, Jane.
Hey Matt, how you doing? So lovely to be here.
With you, with me, face to face, I know.
In your lovely flat sunny. It's a rare treat, isn't it?
Fantastic. It you know what, It is a rare
treat. Yeah, I think it.
It's so lovely to be together to record this.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
It already feels a lot more real.
Yeah, Yeah. So this series is going to be
slightly different to what we've done previously, isn't it?
Do you want to say a little bit about about why we're doing this
series to begin with? Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess our previous series that we we've
thought about, we've sort of been in conversation with or
we've been zooming and and speaking to particular people
about particular issues. This one is really designed for
families who feel a bit more isolated, whether that be via
location or through circumstances and their
experience, feel like they're unable to talk to people.
And we wanted to provide something that families could
access 24/7 regardless of their locations.
I also think it's really important to say that East
Sussex local authority sort of really commissioned us to do
this because they really wanted to support families living in
those rural outlying areas who found it really, really
difficult to get support. And we'll be offering, well, I
guess if we were to sit, Matt, and think about what would be
our top five or six strategies, we're sort of aiming to to sort
of think about those strategies for families, aren't we?
That's what the series is going to be about.
Yeah. So it's, it's a little bit more,
it's going to be a little bit, I mean, I think hopefully all, all
of our podcasts have been useful, but this is a bit more,
something a bit more tangible, a bit more solid that people can
use and put into practise. Yeah.
We're not thinking about, you know, this, these episodes
aren't for about us understanding what this issue
is. This is really let's go, what's
the support that we offer to families and let's share that,
Yeah. I think you said a minute ago
that these are like probably 5 or six of our top strategies
that we, we know are useful to quite a few different families
that we work with. But it's always really important
to say that nothing works all of the time.
And there isn't one thing that is going to work for every
single family. And if even if it works for that
family, it doesn't mean that it's going to work 100% of the
time. So it's just important that we
say that at the at the top, I think to say these are all ideas
that, you know, have a listen, keep it in mind.
Hopefully you think I'm going to give that a try.
But even if you think it's not going to work for me, it doesn't
feel quite right. Hopefully you'll still think
about the idea behind it. And even if you don't action
anything from it, you can think about why, why it might be
useful and why it might be important.
And hopefully there's some use in that as well.
Yeah. And and I think, you know, a
reminder that all of our work and all of our support to
families is tailored and bespoke.
You know, we speak to families and think what's happening for
them in their home and we can, you know, it could be that we
don't talk about any of these strategies, but generally what
we've found out is these strategies come into our support
at some point for families. And there will be somebody out
there listening to this and maybe think I can't, I can't get
on board with what Matt, I can't get on board with what that that
strategy that you've spoken about.
But I can really get on board with this other strategy.
And we we anticipate that and expect that.
I think what's important as well is that, you know, everything
and all everything we're going to be sharing on the in this
series, it's not necessary. It's not going to do any harm.
It's all about it's all relationship building.
And that's only a positive thing.
You may see things and we'll talk about that and what in one
of the episodes that we're going to be presenting about, you
know, what can happen if actually things do feel
different. My child has noticed something
different. What do I do then?
So, and we will we'll sort of address that weren't we want to
I think it's Episode 2 when we're thinking about our safety
Lanning. OK, so, so that's a little bit
about why we're doing it and you know, some of the things we're
going to be covering, but it's going to it's going to look a
little bit different from our other podcasts, right?
Yep, Yeah. So, you know, up until now it's
been us chatting, hasn't it, And having conversations.
Yeah. What we've decided to do with
this, which will look a little bit different, is the beginning
of every episode. We'll have a little explanation
around what we're doing. You know, this isn't about
explaining why this happens, because we've done that.
This is about sharing those strategies, how we would share
them with a family. So we're doing it separately.
So I'm going to be presenting three of them and thinking about
3 strategies and you're going to be presenting three of them and
support 3 strategies. But we're doing them solo.
So they won't have that opportunity of a back and forth.
And I think that that's going to be the main difference that
people will see. Yeah, and I think that's
hopefully will make it a little bit more useful because you can
follow along. It's not you're not listening to
a conversation like you're saying of us back and forth.
You're listening to us giving you a strategy as we would, you
know, in a session if, you know, as we were explaining it to you
and and kind of telling you why we're suggesting you do this,
what what the background is to it.
Is there anything else we've missed, Jane?
I think we, I don't think we have.
Hopefully we can just let's do it.
Let's go all. Right, let's get into it.
Matt, so episode 4, yeah. And today you are going to be
presenting about the drama triangle.
Yeah. And the communication pie.
Do you want to talk a little bit more about this?
Yeah. So two really important things
that I think we we often talk about with parents in sessions
because again, they help you to view what's going on a little
bit more from a sort of bird's eye view rather than just being
in the middle of it, you know, being caught up in and it's all
flying around you. It's so hard to make sense of it
when it's like that. The drama triangle, the
Cartman's drama triangle is useful as a way of understanding
conflict and thinking about the roles and the dynamics when
we're in conflict. So that can be really useful,
help you to kind of see rather than this is happening to me,
this is happening a little bit, OK.
These are the roles we are taking up here and, and
observing how they shift. So that's really useful.
And the communication pie is a really good way of thinking
about our communication and how what we can, what the, the, the
areas of our communication that are most important, essentially
what's carrying the most weight and what what messages are
getting through. Now, sometimes the communication
point, what we're going to talk about in that can link into the
drama triangle because what happens in the communication
aspect is what can set that drama triangle in motion.
So we'll look at them both together.
So, yeah. And.
I think it's very important to, you know, emphasise as well that
communication is key, isn't it, in a lot of the support that
we're offering to family? Isn't it really?
It's not, it's not also only how you communicate with your child,
but how do you communicate with everybody else around you?
And that's what I like about all the strategies really.
We think about they, they can be put across all aspects of your
life, all of us, you know, And it's the more we embed them, the
more they just become natural to us.
So how? How many times have you heard
that I was using the, I was using the drama triangle.
I was thinking about validation with my, my husband or with my,
my wife or my partner. And it's, it's really nice when
you do hear those things because.
And then you see it everywhere, Matt.
Yeah. Suddenly we introduce the drama
triangle or even the communication play, and we're
like, Oh my God, my tone of voice.
Oh my goodness. You know, you start thinking
much more mindfully. Yeah, about how we're
communicating, which is why I think they're really important
ones. You know what that word mindful
mindfully, it's that awareness, isn't it?
Yeah. That you start looking at things
in slightly different ways. Because very often when you,
when you're experiencing issues like, like what we're talking
about, it's my cat going wild over there.
Jane. Yeah.
My cat, you know, she lives here as well, so she's, she may make
an appearance, but yeah, sometimes you can get stuck in
one way of looking at things, especially when you spend so
much time in a heightened state yourself because you're in a,
what you're experiencing is triggering.
It's, it's so stressful, so difficult to deal with.
And our minds can become a little bit 1.
You know, they see things from one way.
So if we can just see things from a few different angles, we
can make a little bit of movement and that movement's
what's necessary in order to create change.
So you can go from being in a, you know, cycle of conflict to
to sort of being in that cycle of cooperation a little bit
more. I look forward to hearing more
in your presentation. Matt, Are you ready?
I am so the drama triangle and communication pie 2 separate, 2
separate things but but linked. So we're going to do them both
both together. They're both really useful, and
I think the thing that makes these particularly useful is
that it helps you to sort of look more of a bird's eye view
of what's going on rather than just being in it, things flying
at you from all angles. As I said, it helps you to make
a bit more sense of things. So it's a really useful model to
think about. We're starting with a drama
triangle. It's a really useful model when
we're thinking about what happens when we're in conflict
and the roles that we're likely to take up.
And it was, it was originally developed by Doctor Stephen
Cartman in the in the 1960s. And it's been used in various
settings. Obviously we're using it to
think about family dynamics and the relationships, the roles
within, within those, those complicated parent child
relationships. We've kind of, I guess, you
know, tweaked it for our for our work really, but there's loads
you can there's loads you can read about this online.
So if you're interested, you know, really encourage you to to
look more into it. So the drama triangle, I'm going
to draw it out. If you imagine an upside down
triangle, so I say upside down triangle.
Is there an outside? I don't know if there's that
even makes sense, but where the base is at the top and then you
know the the single point is is at the bottom.
So if you want to draw this along, you can or just if you're
if you're watching, you can you can see see it's drawing it out.
So an upside down triangle, at the bottom point you have the
victim, at the top point, top left point you have the
persecutor, and at the top right point you have the rescuer.
Now these three roles are the ones that we are likely to go to
when we're in conflict. There's a few important things
to keep in mind here. The victim is down the bottom
for a reason. The victim.
Well, actually before I go into that, these roles are perceived.
OK, We're not saying this is absolute truth.
This is, you know, this person is definitely a victim.
This definite person is definitely a persecutor.
But this is how it will feel when you're in it.
These roles feel very real. You know, that's our perception
and our perception is our experience of life, you know, so
not saying it's absolute fact, but it's kind of how it will
feel. So down the bottom, you've got
the victim. The victim will feel sincerely,
sincerely as though they are a victim.
They'll feel powerless. They have no agency.
I think things are being done to them that they can't control.
You know, it's, it's that feeling that life is happening
to you doesn't feel fair. So that's the victim.
Now they're the only one at the bottom.
They perceive themselves to have no power.
The top 2 roles are the persecutor and the rescuer.
So the persecutor is perceived to be someone who is
domineering, may be critical. They probably make the rules,
they enforce the rules. They may be seen to be someone
who is, you know, overly harsh, gives out punishments, that kind
of thing. So that's the persecutor role.
And then over the other side, you have the rescuer, someone
who seeks to to rescue. It may be they, they seek a, a
victim that they can then rescue.
But again, that's a position of power.
The rescuer, you know, you're making choices for the other
person. I'm going to fix this for you.
Don't worry. I can step in.
I I have power here. I'm not powerless as you are.
So these are our three, our three roles, victim, rescuer and
persecutor. So I'm just looking at my notes.
Yeah, they're perceived. So the roles, there may be one
role that feels you may go, yeah, that's me, I'm the victim
here. And we may go, yeah, I'm the I'm
the rescuer. Now, you may be more likely to
take up one role than the others, but in all likelihood,
you're going to cycle between all three of these, or at least
a number of them. And they're going to and they're
going to change within a within a conflict.
And then over time they may change as well.
So none of us is ever just one role in all likelihood.
Now The thing is we're all kind of hard wired to take up these
roles, but they're not useful. So the idea being that if we can
bring a greater awareness to to these roles and bring a greater
awareness to the, to the dynamic, what's kind of going on
within it, we can then become a little bit more, bit more
mindful and make kind of, I guess, more helpful choices in,
in terms of how we respond, how we react.
So I'll give you a quick example of of what may, how you may see
this playing out in your home. So let's say, you know, you've
said to your child, well, look, you can go on.
I don't know, you can, you can, you can go on your on your on
your Xbox tonight. But listen, you need to make
sure that that washing up's done and you've bring brought down
your dirty clothes. OK, put them in the washing
machine, something like that. So I'm going out to work Now you
get in, the dishes are still in the sink, the clothes are in the
washing machine. And you come and you say, well,
look, I told you to make sure the washing up was done.
But you're not going to, you're not going to use the Xbox until,
until you've done these these kind of chores, these these
jobs, which is completely fair enough.
But in that instance, you take up the role of persecutor.
Now, something I didn't mention earlier on, we can't be in two
places at one time. So you can't be both persecutor
and the victim at the same time. You can jump between them very
quickly, but you can't be both at the same time.
And if you're in one, someone else is going to be somewhere
else. And so as you take up the
persecutor role, you place your child in the victim role, they
are likely going to feel sincerely as, as though they're
a victim here. This isn't fair.
Yeah, but you don't get it. There's a reason why I didn't.
And you know, you're being unfair to me.
And no, why can't I play my Xbox or whatever it is in that
moment? As I said, you take the
persecute, you take out the persecutor role, places them in
victim. They feel as though they're a
victim. They feel this isn't fair.
This is being done to them now for many young people who who
struggle to regulate their emotions.
We've talked about this previously.
Often there's a there's a there's a reason why there may
be there may be a history of trauma.
There may be a reason why this person is particularly sensitive
to feeling out of control, why it's intolerable for them not to
be in control, for them to intolerable for them to feel as
though they're in that victim role.
So in all likelihood, the first sign that they get of being in
that victim role, something's going to jump up inside and go,
whoa, whoa, we can't deal with this.
So what they do is they're going to flip it.
So they can't tolerate being in that victim role.
And you're currently in that persecutor role.
So what they do is they flip it and they're going to come back
at you and go, Nah, you can't tell me what to do.
I'm not going to do that. In this instance, they've jumped
up to Persecutor and they've placed you down in Victim.
Now, OK, it's not fair. But what's happened is they're
safe now. They're out of that Victim role
where they feel powerless, where they feel helpless, where they
have no agency, no control, and they're in a position of power
and control. So now they feel safe.
They're they're out of that intolerable place down there in
Victim, but you found yourself there and you don't deserve to
be there. Now you feel unsafe and you're
going to be triggered and you may likely it's it's likely that
you, you then you think, well, I can't tolerate being here.
I don't deserve to be here. So what happens then is you go,
I'm not going to accept you talking to me like that.
If you carry on like that, then you know, you're not getting
your Xbox for another week. I'm taking it away.
You jumped up to that persecutor role you're trying to take, you
know, get that upper hand, be the persecutor to have that,
that power and that control, placing that child, your child
down in victim and they go, you aren't going to take my Xbox
away. I'm going to take her.
You come back, they come back, you come back, they come back
and you're jumping between these roles and victim and, and
persecutor. Now this is going to lead to an
escalation. Each time you do that, you know
the temperature's ramping up a little bit and it doesn't help
you. As we've spoke about previously,
your main aim initially always is to de escalate the situation.
Because when we de escalate, well, it's just the safest thing
to do. It's safer to de escalate.
So that's, that's our focus to begin with.
Also when we de escalate, we can then get a thinking brain back
online. We can have a conversation with
that, that part of the brain in that emotional state in, in this
instance, you know, we did three faces previously.
You know, maybe you're both heading up towards face #2 here
you both don't have a lot of your thinking brain online.
A lot of the, a lot of what's coming out is coming from that,
that feeling brain, which isn't the most rational.
So de escalation. And then we can then we can make
sense of it. That's always the first step.
But if we choose to not, we choose as if, well, kind of
choose, yeah. But it's hard to make that
choice. It's hard to be, to be aware of
that. But if we continue taking up
these roles, victim persecutor, we'll talk about rescuer in a
minute as well. Likelihood is this this conflict
is going to continue and it's going to escalate.
And you're, you're kind of vying for that, that upper hand of
being the persecutor to, to get control.
Now I'm going to talk, shall I talk about the yeah, I'm going
to talk about the, the rescuer role briefly.
So, so those, you know, most parents that I speak with those
the victim and persecutor roles, the ones they, they really
connect with. But also sometimes they can say,
look, I didn't do anything and it's just, and it just came out
of nowhere. We'll talk about this a bit more
in a moment as well when we come to the communication pipe, but
we'll talk about this in terms of the rescuer.
Sometimes by being the rescuer that reinforces the victim's
position as well. So there's a problem and you
step in. God, don't worry, I'm going to
deal with this. Ah, I've done this for you.
You don't need to do it now. You've done a nice thing, right?
And it's a, you know, it's helpful.
You may, you may think this is just a lovely thing I'm I'm
doing, and it can only be perceived in that way.
But what taking up that rescuer role can do sometimes is making
choices for the other person, the child in this case, taking
control away from them. It can be as well that by taking
up that rescuer role, you reinforce the idea that, you
know that child is the victim. You reinforce that idea that,
yeah, I can't solve this on my own.
I am powerless, I am helpless here and they can't tolerate
that as we've we've talked about.
So by you, by you doing something helpful at times, I'm
not saying by any means don't help your children, don't do
anything helpful. That's not it.
It's just bringing awareness to this.
But by taking up that rescuer role, you reinforce that idea of
the child being the victim or you take control away from them
by making a choice about something.
They can't tolerate that. And so you can very quickly go
from I just, I do, I was just helping out to your child
feeling as though they're the victim to not being able to
tolerate that, to jumping up to persecute to you ending up in
victim and you go, how do we end up here?
I was just helping you a second ago and now you're giving me all
this whole barrage of abuse. What's going on here?
So that can be what happens sometimes in terms of in terms
of the rescuer role in the victim and how they how that
dynamic works. So one thing to sort of
recognise these roles, but it's, it's good to know what to do
about it as well. Because as I said, if you, if
you take up any one of these three roles, likelihood is this
conflict's going to continue. If you allow yourself to view
yourself as a victim, most likely is you're not going to be
able to tolerate, you're going to have to try and jump up to
persecute her to get out that victim role.
It's going to carry things on. If your child feels as though
they're a victim, they're going to have to jump up to persecute
to to get out of it. If you take up that rescuer
role, it keeps your child in victim.
Again, it may perpetuate what's going on.
This, this is going to continue this, this conflict and this
escalation. So instead of responding from
any one of those three points on that triangle, instead the idea
is to respond from a kind of middle ground.
And that middle ground is 1 of responsibility and compassion.
So to start with responsibility, now knowing about this dynamic,
you know, as the adult, I guess in the room, you, you want to
take responsibility for saying I'm not going to play a part in
this carrying on. I'm not going to allow this, I'm
not going to allow myself to to be on this drama triangle to
just allow this to play out in this way.
I'm going to, I'm going to make a choice to do something about
it. Just taking responsibility,
taking action. So that's the first step, you
know, guiding things in a better direction, taking responsibility
for that. The second step is responding
with compassion. So recognising what was it that
got us on this drama triangle in the 1st place?
What was it that made my child feel as though they're a victim?
And you, you know, it may seem completely disproportionate, you
know, the reaction you got from, from what happened in the 1st
place. But the idea is to think, what
was it that that they felt was was too much for them?
They couldn't tolerate, they put them in that victim role that
they couldn't tolerate that they had to get out of.
So, you know, it's one thing to talk about this stuff is it's
another thing to actually put into practise.
It's really hard. But so to start with taking that
responsibility, choosing to do something different.
Secondly, responding with compassion and going right when
I said, Oh, you know, you said you were going to do the, the,
you know, come back to that initial sort of example.
I told you to do the dishes. You said you're going to do the
dishes and bring down your, your dirty washing.
You didn't do that. Maybe you were perceived to be
critical there and you're telling them what you've done
isn't good enough. It's fair enough.
It it maybe you know, it wasn't good enough.
But again, thinking about that sensitivity, then being on a
like on a hair trigger to if they perceive you to be in that
persecutor role, which places them in victim, how quickly
they're going to respond to protect themselves.
So maybe they thought, well, you're being critical when you
said, you know, you're you're not going to get your
PlayStation for for a week when you're not getting your
PlayStation until you've done it.
You're enforcing that wrong, that rule.
Sorry, you're withholding this thing they think they need for
their for their own enjoyment, for their own happiness and
well-being. You're, you're kind of setting
that, setting that rule and enforcing, enforcing that rule,
which is a really important thing you have to do.
So I'm not saying that you just go, oh, no, no, no, take take
the Xbox. It's fine.
And you know, no worries. But what I am saying is that you
recognise where the difficulty was to begin with, right?
You know what it was really it felt like I was I was giving you
a hard time or you know, it was really frustrating because you
you were hearing that you wouldn't be able to get your
Xbox and how important that is to you.
I get that could be difficult. So what we're going to do is
when I say responding with compassion, we then thinking
about validation. So previously we've talked about
validation. If you haven't listened to that
episode, go back and have a have a listen to that one.
But we've talked about using validation in the quieter moment
here. We're using the validation in
the moment. So as things are kind of blowing
up a little bit, we're going to use validation as a way just to
de escalate to connect. This is linking back to the
three faces. Listen to that episode as well.
But we're connecting, you know, the emotional brain that's or
the, the feeling brain that's kind of running the show at that
moment where people are becoming heightened, struggling to
regulate their emotions. We're going to connect with that
part of the brain, the brain that's going, this isn't right.
And I need, you know, I need you to recognise this.
That's the bit you're going to connect with.
Not like, wait a minute. No, you understood it.
We said that if you didn't do this, these chores, you
wouldn't. We're not going to try and
rationalise it. We're not going to try and
connect with that thinking part of the brain that's likely going
to push us further into dysregulation.
We're going to connect with the emotional part of the brain
that's going, this doesn't feel fair.
I don't feel safe. I don't feel in control here.
This doesn't feel good. That's the that's the dominant
part of the brain. So we're going to connect with
that and we're going to use validation in that moment and
go, you know what? I get how I get how upsetting
that is. I can see how that would have
been it. It might have felt like I was
being really critical there. It might have felt like I was
giving you a hard time having a go, whatever it might be.
Because when you do that, instead of taking up the
persecutor role against the victim, you know, when, when
it's persecuted versus victim and you're both swapping it and
trying to, you know, trying to stay out of that victim role,
trying to gain that upper hand and you're in conflict with each
other. The problem is the other person
trying to take your safety away, trying to take that persecutor
wrong, trying to keep you down invicted.
You're you're against each other.
The problem, like I say, is the other person there, when you
step out of that and you choose that middle ground of, of
responsibility and and compassion, what you're doing is
now you're standing more side by side and you're looking at the
problem going right. I get how frustrating I was.
I get how upsetting that was. Yeah, they may, they may still
be angry with you, but the issue is this overwhelming emotion
that they're not able to regulate, they're not able to
control. That's the real problem here.
The emotional response, the thing that's making them feel.
I feel so angry. I feel so bad.
OK, so we're stepping back and we're looking at that and going,
yeah, I get that. It's really tough.
I can understand how upsetting that is.
So instead of it being like we're against each other, we're
we're more side by side and we're looking at the problem
together. Now, most times this takes a lot
of the heat out of out of a conflict and it will, it will
stop escalation or it will reduce it or slow it down, gives
you a little bit more control, a little bit more breathing room.
It may be that you kind of, you know, some, sometimes people
will kind of name it and go if you've talked about it
beforehand with your, with your child, you may be able to go.
You know what, I think we're on that drama triangle.
I'm going to, I'm going to go get a glass of water.
I'm going to go and get myself a drink.
I'm going to come back. I just need to give myself a
moment. You know, some people, some
people you can use that as well. But I think it's really
important that you just you bring an awareness to these
roles. Look out for it anyway.
You can see it happening at work, you can see it happening
on on the TV. You know, you probably see it in
your friendships, different relationships.
We're all sort of hard wired to respond in these ways.
And when you bring an awareness to it, you start noticing it
everywhere. And the more you notice it, the
quicker you get at noticing it when you're in the middle of it
and you go, OK, I know what's happening here, right?
You've just taken up that victim role because you think I've
taken up that persecutor role and you've jumped up to
persecutor and now I'm a victim and I'm feeling really triggered
myself. And you know, it helps you to
make a little bit of sense of it.
So that's the drama triangle essentially.
Now, I once spoke with a parent and she said something that was
really powerful and she said I realised that, you know, she
really connects with that. And she said I realised that all
this time we were on that drama triangle and we'd have these
this conflict that would be escalating all the time.
And the best that I was trying to hope for in those times was
that I was trying to keep my child in victim and I was trying
to end up basically in persecute her.
It's like if I continue doing that, that's the best I can hope
for, that I keep my child in victim that they, they, they
feel as though they're a victim and I have the upper hand.
So I don't want to do that. And it was, I just thought it
was really powerful because what we're hoping for is, you know,
again, normalising that cooperation rather than being in
conflict and being like, I have to win so that you lose.
You know, it's that we both can look at the problem together.
We can both win and we can both go, wow, that's really tough.
We're not in conflict with each other.
We're both looking at a problem going.
That's difficult. Now, sometimes we can get onto
the drama triangle through, you know, like I said, we it can be
through the, you know, taking out that rescuer role.
Let me fix that for you. I'm going to sort that out.
I'm going to I'm going to step in and do that making making the
other person feel reinforcing the idea that they are a victim
feel powerless. Sometimes it's due to our
communication. So I'm going to talk to you
about communication pie as well now.
So it's a 11 today. You get in there two lots of
good stuff, hopefully. So the communication pie is
really useful so that we do with parents to kind of keep an eye
on where we're focusing our energy and attention when it
comes to our communication. Now everything we're talking
about is all about communication.
You know, humans, communication is vital for us.
We, we experience life through our communications, mostly with
other people. So it's it's really important we
bring a lot of awareness to it. So if you're following along
with this, maybe you can maybe you can draw this, this out or
you may, you know, I just want to watch it.
If you're watching it on the video, if you're listening, I
hope this makes sense to you. If you're listening and not
following, you know, not drawing it out as well.
I hope you can visualise this. So what I'd like to do is draw a
circle and kind of imagine it imagining that this circle's a
clock face. I'd like to draw a line from the
middle of that circle up to 12:00.
So just a straight line from the middle straight up to the top of
that circle. Then draw another line from the
middle of that circle up to where 2:00 would be.
Again, I don't want you to draw the numbers on just imagining
roughly where 2:00 would be on a clock face.
Draw a line there, and then I'd like to draw a line down to
where 5:00 would be. So you should now have what
looks like a pie chart with three segments, one quite small
segment up the top, then a bit more of a chunky segment, you
know, put off to the side, and then a final segment, just over
half of this pie chart. So in the small segment, right,
7%, that's 7% of this pie chart. In the next segment 38% and then
in the biggest segment of this pie chart going to put 55%.
So these segments are going to represent the different parts of
our communication. So we have three main areas of
our communication. One is our non verbal
communication. So all body language, you know,
however you want to put it, these are parts of communication
that essentially the bits that we can see.
So it's facial expressions, it's what we're doing with our hands.
It's, you know, are we tapping our foot?
Are we picking our nails, smiling?
How closely am I standing to you?
You know, all those things, what's my posture, my arms
crossed, all those things that we can see that we, we pick up
on through, through what we've what we're seeing visually of
the other person. So those non verbal
communications, you know, body language.
So that's one, one part of our communication.
Another is our tone of voice, how our voice actually sounds
when we're talking. It's a big part of our
communication that another big part of our communication, what
what we sound like when we're talking.
And then the third part, another major part of our communication
is the words that we use, you know, the actual, the actual
words we're using, the things we're saying now, it'd be
interesting to know what you think are the, you know, which,
which bit of communication goes with which segment of the, of
the pie chart. So which, which one of those
three non verbal tone of voice, the words we use, which one of
those counts for 55% of our communication, which counts for
38%, which counts for 7%. You can pause it, have a moment
to think if you like, little little quiz, little test, if you
like. But this often surprises people.
It's what we do a lot in sessions.
And you know, if we were sitting here having a session together,
I'd, I'd wait and hear your response, but I can't do that
here. So I'm just going to tell you.
So quite surprisingly for some people, 55% of our communication
is our non verbal communication, our body language, the, the
signals we're giving off in terms of, you know, what our
faces are doing, how we're holding ourselves, all of those,
all those visual cues, that's 55% of our communication.
This, this is as well when we're, you know, face to face
with someone, when we're in the same physical space, we're not
talking about communication over text or emails or phones,
obviously. Now, the next biggest part of
our communication is our tone of voice.
So 38% of our tone, I'm sorry, 38% of our communication is our
tone of voice. Again, surprises a lot of people
how we're saying something that is an awful lot, which leaves us
with 7% of our communication being the actual words we're
using, which isn't that much. But what we often find is that
that's the bit that everyone focuses on.
That's the bit that we're really putting all our effort and all
our thought into. You know, we're really focusing
on saying what it is we need to say.
And we're, we're, you know, we're trying to get our point
across and we're, we often use a lot of a lot of words, a lot of
communication in, in terms of the actual words we're saying.
That's where we, we put our energy.
Now this can, you know, maybe give a bit of a, an example
here, but it may be that you shout upstairs to your child,
dinner's on the table right now. You don't mean it to sound
aggressive. You're not being horrible.
You're just letting them know dinner's on the table.
But it's simply the act of shouting may trigger an
emotional response in that child.
You know, it may be that you're saying something quite kind, but
you're, you know, you're, you're kind of, you're not looking
particularly friendly. You're scowling.
And I know things have been really tough for you.
I get that. And you look angry.
And I don't know, often I hear from from parents and they say,
my child always says you're shouting at me.
And they're like, I'm not shouting, I'm just talking.
But other bits of the communication are more
important. They're picking up on on non
verbal cues they're picking up on.
You know the tone of voice and they perceive it as shouting
even though your voice is quiet. You're not raising your voice,
but the child will perceive it as as shouting because they're
picking up on all these other bits of the communication other
than simply the words you're saying.
So I guess the the point here being address the bits that
you're really focusing on. Are you giving loads of
attention to the words you're saying and ignoring the, the
more important parts of the communication, which is how
you're saying it? You know, what's your body
language saying? What's your tone of voice?
So these are more important. So, and it's like, you know, if
you've ever met someone that you really don't trust and something
just feels really off about and there's nothing in nothing they
say to you, you know, all sounds fine, but something just isn't
right with this person. You don't, it doesn't feel good.
You're picking up on the cues from their body language and
their tone of voice. And most times we, we listen
more to those bits of communication than the words
someone's saying. Or sometimes we kick ourselves.
We go, I knew I shouldn't have trusted that person.
We go against our instinct and we regret it sometimes later.
And that, you know, it's just, it just goes to show that the
things that we really feel that really matter are those, you
know, those, those bits of body language and, and the tone of
voice, those aspects of our communication.
Now, also, I'm going to link this to three faces again.
And going back to that, that what we talked about in that
podcast in that when we talked about that the three faces, if
you think your child is probably a child is using this behaviour,
it's likely that they are quite often their line is quite high.
They are probably quite close to dysregulation.
Quite often. They're showing that they aren't
able to regulate their emotions by their behaviour.
They, they, they can't do it really.
And so that line's going to be quite high for them.
They're close to, you know, that line's getting close to the top
for them. So they have limited thinking
brain available. And now what happens is if we,
if we focus a lot of our communication on talking and on
the, on the words we're using, we're asking their thinking
brain to do more work. And that thinking brain needs to
be given space in order just to regulate the emotions.
So rather than focusing so much of our energy on the words we're
saying, if we just went, you know what, I'm not going to use
so many words. I'm going to focus much more on
the way I'm saying this and my tone of voice.
How can I communicate calm here? How can I communicate care?
How can I communicate safety? Because a lot of this comes back
to feelings of safety, feelings of security.
Then we we often find that we get better results.
So I guess, you know, if you can think about your communication a
little bit more. Again, same with the drama
triangle. Bringing an awareness to this
is, and you know a big part of it, being aware of, of your,
your tone of voice, being aware of, you know, how am I holding
myself? What are my hands doing?
What's my facial expression doing?
How close am I standing? How loud is my all these things,
how quickly am I speaking? The more awareness you can bring
to it, the more you can influence yourself, the more
control you have, the more you can make choices in terms of how
you want to use these things, which are going to be more
useful again to making sure you can de escalate situations and
keep things safer. And the more you can de escalate
and the safer you can keep things, the the more you can
normalise not being in that place of conflict.
And the more you normalise that, the more everyone in the family
expects to be more in that place of cooperation rather than in
conflict. And that in turn can start to
change the narrative around what we do in our relationship.
So rather than someone always being ready to, I'm ready to
fight because I know we always fight.
If you can be the person that that manages things, that
creates an environment where it's easy for people to stay
regulated, you start expecting that more.
And that's a really important, you know, part of all of this as
well. Anyway.
So that's the the drama triangle and the communication pie.
Hope there's some useful stuff in there.
Yeah, keep them in mind. You might want to with both of
these, you might want to draw these out, put them up on the
fridge, put them up, you know, inside of a kitchen cabinet, put
them up on the wall in your bedroom, whatever someone where
you're going to see them because you probably will forget about
it. And, you know, it's good to
remind yourself equally, put it up somewhere in your home where
your child may see it, they may go, what's that?
And you say, you know, I was, I was learning about this thing.
I heard about this thing. Have a conversation about it.
You know, this, this is stuff that relates to all of us.
This is human stuff. This isn't right because you're
a bad child or because you know, you can't control it.
No, this is This Is Us. This is what happens with
humans. This is this is being human,
essentially. You can have that conversation,
maybe see how it goes. Only do that, obviously, if you
feel like it's safe to do so. But you know, you know your
family better than anyone. So see if you think that that
could be worthwhile. Right.
I'm going to leave it there. That's a long one.
Yeah. Like I said, hopefully some
useful stuff in there. We'll see you next time.
All right. Thank you.