Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright, and I’m here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Hi, we are here.
Nikki Kinzer:
Here we are.
Pete Wright:
It’s very exciting. Another podcast day. And we are talking about saying the hard thing in real time. Oh, what a doozy we have ahead of us. I’m excited for this topic, especially after last week talking about asking for help and receiving help. This seems like an able follow-on to what we have been discussing.
Before we get into that, I want to tell you about our Patreon community, because if you’re a regular listener, this is your next move. Members of our Patreon community get early, ad-free access to every episode, access to members-only channels in our Discord server, and a seat in the live stream recording session of every show, where you can ask questions to us, to our guests, to yourself if you’re feeling introspective as we record. Plus, we’re often throwing in special events along the way. But honestly, the thing we love so much about the Patreon community is the community itself. It is this group of real people living with ADHD, showing up for each other, aspiring to be better in a way that is really interesting and hard to find in other places on the internet today. If you have ever wanted to be more than just a listener, this is where it happens. Visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to learn more and join us. And if you’re not ready for that, that’s totally fine. Find us at takecontroladhd.com, connect with us on the socials, join the free part of the Discord, or sign up for the weekly email newsletter. We’d love to have you wherever you may land.
Okay, Nikki, hi. How are you feeling about saying the hard thing? You’re probably good at it. I think you’re good at it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I don’t think I’m that good at it.
Pete Wright:
You don’t think you’re good at it?
Nikki Kinzer:
Whoa. Who’s really good at saying hard things?
Pete Wright:
What?
Nikki Kinzer:
Who wants to do that?
Pete Wright:
I don’t know. I don’t know. This makes me think of one of my favorite French terms that I know people relate to: l’esprit d’escalier.
Nikki Kinzer:
I don’t relate to that.
Pete Wright:
It’s like the spirit of the escalator, or the humor of the escalator, and it is a French term that comes from the 1800s. It describes the feeling that you get when you have an opportunity to have a witty comeback or a strong saying, but you only think about it later when you’re already on the escalator down to wherever you’re going. It’s too late. And it’s important that it’s an escalator, because it’s the machine that is taking you further and further and further away from the opportunity that you had to say something cool.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
You feel that, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Of course you’ve felt that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
We’ve all felt that. And I think that’s so much of where this conversation comes from. This is not necessarily about witty comebacks, although I’m not one to shy away from a witty comeback if I can find it. But it really is about being able to be honest in the moment. To be able to say, hey, that thing you just said, that hurts. Or I’m not going to take that on right now. Or I don’t agree. I don’t agree with what you’re saying right now. And sometimes we hide those feelings because of the other complications of living with ADHD, when it would really be better if we just ripped the band-aid off in the moment. What do you think?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think it depends, right? I mean, it depends on the situation, who you’re talking to.
Pete Wright:
Well, of course.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. What is it that you want to say but maybe shouldn’t say because you’re in the heat of the moment?
Pete Wright:
Well, right. Totally.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And I just want to clarify, we’re going to take as writ all of those complications.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
We know that it depends. And what we’re talking about today exclusively is the times when maybe you had an opportunity and didn’t, because you were what? Afraid, nervous, anxious.
Nikki Kinzer:
Confrontation is scary, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right, afraid of confrontation, when it would have been otherwise okay to say those things, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right.
Pete Wright:
For example, someone asks you to do something, and we say all the time, wait before you say yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Right.
Pete Wright:
Go check your damn calendar first, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Pause. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We know.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We know those circumstances exist. But we also know that there’s an opportunity sometimes to say the real, true thing in the moment and be able to move on.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And more often than not, we are nervous to do so. Although…
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
My AuDHD family members do not have that problem. And it is aspirational when I am talking with somebody whose prefrontal cortex doesn’t get in their own way and they say the real thing. Their problem is the opposite, often, they tell me. I can’t read social cues, so I say the thing that’s in my head right now, when I should not.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm, interesting.
Pete Wright:
That’s the other side of this coin. So today we’re talking about it from the perspective of, I often overread social cues, and I am fearful of upsetting the apple cart, or of showing some sort of thing that I feel like I should understand but don’t, and so I don’t say the right thing in the moment. And there’s some really interesting research and commentary about that. Does that make sense?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yes, absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Okay, so what happens?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, where do we start?
Pete Wright:
Well, first of all, we talk about what happens in the moment, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Okay.
Pete Wright:
So there are these failure modes that I think about. The first is the blurt, where you say something fast and you say it wrong, and you spend a week apologizing about it, because you’re carrying the burden of something that you said that you regret.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
The other side is the freeze.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Which is where we live, which is the say nothing, which is the everything’s fine. It’s fine. That’s fine. Whatever you say is fine. I’m acquiescing to the conversation. And then you get back to your car and you write a speech in your head, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. And it sounds so good in the car.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it sounds so good in the car. But why is that? So which one are you, more often than not?
Nikki Kinzer:
I’m more of the freeze, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I will say that there’s been times in my life where I have blurted out.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because, whatever, the emotions get so heated and I just can’t contain it. But I would say most of the time it’s shutting down and, I don’t want to talk about this right now, and leave.
Pete Wright:
How does that play in context of the relationship? This is something that I think is worth at least addressing, because I think there’s a curve. So does your answer change when I ask you how you are with Brad, with your husband?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
How so?
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure, it changes. Again, it depends on what we’re talking about, or what we’re maybe disagreeing on.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
And it also depends if I think I’m right and I think he’s wrong.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Or I know he’s right, but I don’t want him to be right. And that makes me mad. That happens too. But no, I think it’s different with my husband than it would be with my kids, and your example of a boss, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Uh-huh.
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean, all of these things, how I would react to you…
Pete Wright:
Well, but you’re the boss, so what is it like with me? What I’m looking for here is to define where our interpersonal guardrails are for when we’re afraid to speak truth to authority. Because there’s your husband and your kids, and then there’s people you work with, like me and Melissa, and then there’s people like customer service agents that you’re dealing with on the phone.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And it’s an interesting curve, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Because you feel more free to be your honest self and give your honest responses, and they may even be the dumber responses that you’re letting loose, when it’s your spouse.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, because you’re more comfortable with them and they’re more forgiving, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Right. And then on the other end, somebody that you have no previous relationship with. If you’re talking to a customer service agent, the reason they take the brunt of emotional burden online and on the phone is because you have no personal relationship with them. And when you’re frustrated, there is a very, very small gate to get over to unleash the true statement.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, it is interesting, though, because I think this is a personality thing, for sure. But there’s been a couple of times in social situations where both my husband and I have been in this situation, and it had to do with a waiter, and the people we were with handled it in a very different way than what Brad and I would have handled it. Granted, it was frustrating and everything, but I would not be flat-out rude to the person.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, and that’s a really interesting example, because now you have a personal relationship, because you’re in the same space as those people and you have a different degree of empathy with those people, but you still don’t know them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, no, I’m talking about the people that we were with.
Pete Wright:
That’s what I mean.
Nikki Kinzer:
They were rude.
Pete Wright:
They clearly have a shorter gate than you do.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, for sure. Because it was a couple times in the weekend where…
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Both my husband and I were like, wow, we would have just never said that, or we wouldn’t have acted that way. And I don’t know if that’s a personality thing or what, but I have a really hard time being rude to someone, even if I’m really mad at them, or I’m frustrated in the situation. That just doesn’t come from me. I would not tell the waiter how I really felt.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s probably the freeze thing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Where I’m just gonna let it go. And I think I have probably more empathy, where it was a busy day, busy night. They probably didn’t have a lot of people. He was doing the best he could. He wasn’t rude. So I don’t know. I think that in that situation it’s hard. It’s hard because part of it comes, I think, like you said, from your threshold.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. When you look at what the research actually supports, emotional dysregulation, the storms of ADHD, dare I say, to coin a phrase of a dear friend, shows up in 25 to 45 percent of kids and 30 to 70 percent of adults with ADHD. Which is not a judgment or character flaw.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
It’s just the documented feature of the condition for most people who are likely listening to this show. That’s just the way it is. And as soon as you add emotional dysregulation to an opportunity to speak truth to power, in this case…
Nikki Kinzer:
And that’s probably exactly what was happening. I can see it from…
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Their point of view, too. They probably were dysregulated and frustrated, and it came out on the waiter.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Kinzer:
I get that too.
Pete Wright:
Right. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
I’m so Switzerland.
Pete Wright:
So Switzerland. Well, what’s interesting about it…
Nikki Kinzer:
I get both sides.
Pete Wright:
From an ADHD perspective, one of the things I find really interesting is that there is a 2013 meta-study of 319 other studies that highly suggests that reaction time… we often think that reaction time is slow in ADHD, right? It is not slow in ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
It’s just more variable. So sometimes it’s slower, but sometimes it’s a lot, a lot, a lot faster. And so those opportunities to respond clearly, clear-headedly, cogently in a time of stress are much more variable. Sometimes the words are there, sometimes the words are just not there.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I think understanding that gives you permission, or at least gives you freedom, to understand why you freeze when you freeze.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
It’s not an opportunity for self-judgment. I’m not dumb, I’m not slow, I’m just not ready.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Exactly. Yeah, you’re flooded. You’re flooded and overwhelmed.
Pete Wright:
Following up to that study, this 2023 study pinged 122 young adults five times a day for five days, so over the course of a business week. And moment-to-moment swings in inhibitory control predicted emotional dysregulation. So they could see when people were less inhibited, they were en route toward a state of emotional dysregulation. It’s the brakes on inhibition that end up fluctuating, and whether you’re braking or not in a state of higher intensity or higher stress leads to your ability to freeze, or let the floodgates go, or just be rational in a given moment. So it’s all about giving yourself permission to understand who you are in a given moment and not punish yourself for not saying the right thing at the right time.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Right, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Or feeling the intense feelings that you’re feeling at the time. I mean, we both have young adults. I find that to be very true with both of them. One with ADHD and one without, but I think that both of them definitely are intense with their feelings. And when something doesn’t go quite what they expected, or something goes wrong, I should say, like actually goes wrong, in that moment, it’s pretty strong feelings around it, almost like feeling like it’s the worst thing that could happen in that moment.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And then us trying to kind of bring it down. Okay, I know this is upsetting, but we are gonna find a solution. But I don’t even think that they look at there being any solution. And so they’re kind of swirling in this thing for a moment until we can figure out what to do next.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And do you find that with your young adults?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I really do. But what’s so funny is that they’re so different in the areas that cause them to spin.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Right? But the result is the same. It’s just we have to navigate which version of which person are we dealing with at any given moment? What kind of weight is causing them to feel the pressure at this moment? Because it’s not the same.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. But it also takes awareness from our part, the parent, to understand what’s happening and be able to offer that guidance without telling them what to do, or without minimizing what they’re feeling. So it does take that part from us, too. We may have the experience and wisdom that they don’t, but we also can’t push that onto them. They still have to figure it out on their own.
Pete Wright:
A hundred percent.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that can get tricky.
Pete Wright:
Well, okay, as a personal sidebar, what you’re describing is so well attuned to my kids, whose experience of being able to say hard things in a conversation is so different. And it ends up being that one of my kiddos is incredibly competent in one area that the other is exactly not. And so everything they say to one another becomes a dagger.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, right.
Pete Wright:
It just continues to peel back lack of competence, lack of safety, lack of understanding.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And it’s interesting to watch them navigate their relationship together, to understand when they hurt one another, it’s because their competencies are so different.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And they use it against each other. Which leads to the next part of what I want to talk about, which is how our processing gets weaponized.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm, yeah.
Pete Wright:
I think we’ve all been there, because the pace of a given argument or a conversation is set by the fastest person in the room. The person who is able to process the most quickly sets the pace. And a pause reads as a concession, or evasion, or it can be perceived as some other negative emotion, guilt, whatever. So you end up with these cues like, well, say something.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Are you even listening?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Do you care?
Pete Wright:
Do you care, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Are you here right now?
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
And that is such unfair language, because often the ADHDer in the conversation will lose the tempo before anybody gets to content. It may take time.
Nikki Kinzer:
They’re shutting down.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
That pressure causes a shutdown. I’m curious, as I say all that, you’re nodding in agreement. How does that hit you when it relates to your clients? What do you see?
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s what I notice. Yeah. What do I see is a really good question, because it’s not what I hear. It’s not what they’re verbally saying. I couldn’t do this on the phone, but when we’re on Zoom and I can see you, then I can see the physical pieces of you shutting down. I can see the drop in the face. It’s almost like the person is there, but they’re kind of seeing through me. They’re not really focused on me. I know I’m losing them. So it is something I’m noticing, and it’s not necessarily that they’re shutting down because of the conversation we’re having. It’s just that I can tell that I’m losing their focus, or their, not agreement, but willingness to go further in this. Like maybe I have asked a question that was hard, and they’re not quite ready to answer it yet.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm. As someone who would be on the receiving end of that, you can feel like pace is being used against you. Even though, of course, you’re not using it against them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, I hope they don’t feel that way.
Pete Wright:
But it’s just a natural occurrence of living with ADHD, because it can feel like you’re coming ill-equipped to converse on a subject. If you’re dealing with something with your boss who’s moving quickly, and you end up saying something at full velocity…
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
That you would give anything to take back and have been given a chance to think about. Or freezing and not saying a thing, and letting the assumptions that trail behind you in silence speak for you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, right.
Pete Wright:
Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
So it can feel like you are a victim of your own pace.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
We talked to Melissa Orlov a little while ago about the parent-child dynamic, and she sort of warned about that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
How does it show up in the live moment when you’re living through your own blurt or freeze cycle?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Well, that was something in that conversation that we had that really resonated with me. Because I don’t do a lot of work with couples. I don’t do any work with couples.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
So it’s not something that I have a lot of experience with, but it was just a really interesting conversation, because when we do talk about couples, we usually have an expert like Melissa to talk about it.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
And from what I do hear from clients, and of course relationships of all kinds, yeah, that parent-child dynamic is really important to recognize, because you don’t want to be a parent to your spouse. You don’t want to be a parent to your coworker. It really is something to be aware of, how it shows up and what side are you on?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Are you the child or are you the parent? Because you could be either or. But having it be a partnership, and what does that look like?
Pete Wright:
I’d like to transition to the other side, which is how to assert the permission that you need to speak and process at your own pace. And this is some coaching stuff, right? Because the core move that we’re talking about is, name your state.
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure.
Pete Wright:
You need to be able to have the language that defines how you’re feeling in a given moment. That says, I have something to say, and it’s not quite ready yet. It’s still cooking. Give me a second.
Nikki Kinzer:
I need some time to process.
Pete Wright:
That kind of language. Yeah. How do you do this in a coaching scenario? Coach me through figuring out how to name how I’m feeling, because that’s a thing that I struggle with.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, I think that it begins first with just being aware of yourself, how you’re feeling in your body. We get these signals when we’re getting upset. So paying attention to the stomach that is getting nauseous, or the tightness in your chest, or are you getting red in the face? Is your heart rate speeding up? Because those are all signals that you’re ready to blow here any minute. And so I think part of it is just being aware of your physical signals.
And then, what are your words? So I may not say I’m flooded, but you may, because that really resonates with you. So what are your words that you can say comfortably, that are coming from you, that will help the other person understand that you need space? For me, it would be, I’m feeling overwhelmed, or I need time to process this. This is all too much. I need some time to process this.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Kinzer:
And have that be a signal to whoever I’m talking to: back off. Because you can’t keep poking me, because then I’m going to get more upset.
Pete Wright:
And you’re not gonna get the best out of me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. And you’re not going to get the best conversation, because I need time to think about this.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean, this happened last night. I won’t go into it, but something happened and my husband and I had to make a decision. But I didn’t want to make the decision last night. So I was like, let’s talk about it tomorrow. And then first thing in the morning I’m like, so I guess we’re gonna do this, huh? And he’s like, I think that’s the best thing. I’m like, okay. So sometimes you just need to sleep on it. So I think you’ve got to figure out, trying to be in tune with your own body, when you’re feeling this way. And I think flooded is a really good word. It’s just not something that I would use. But it is a word that describes it beautifully.
Pete Wright:
It totally does, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And so adopt that and let that person know. But if you don’t want to say that in a work environment, then it does make sense to say, give me some time to just process what you’re asking, and let me get back to you. But also give yourself permission to ask questions to that person before you make a decision, or if you need clarification because you didn’t hear everything that was in the conversation. I mean, that happens, because you get stuck on one thing they say, and then anything after that you didn’t hear.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And so I think it’s important that you’re able to be honest about that and say, hey, can you just clarify this? Or, after you said this, I don’t know if I understand the rest. This is why we also always want to go to the doctor with another person.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because it’s the same thing. They hear something and you stop listening. So it’s the same thing with any kind of relationship.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
But yeah, finding what you’re comfortable with, and then having that communication openly when you’re not heated in the moment.
Pete Wright:
Right. Well, and being able to recognize that is the challenge, right? Because sometimes when we’re flooded, it’s hard to recognize, this is a time I need to pull out one of my slow sentences.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Because the trigger has to be so fine and so effortless that when you feel a certain way, you just know you have to pull out a slow sentence and say, stop for a second.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
I don’t think I agree, but I’ll tell you why as soon as I can.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Or, this is landing really hard. I need a minute to process before I can answer. Or, I’m gonna start speaking kind of slowly. I need you to wait until I finish.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Right. I’m not leaving the conversation. I’m just leaving the room so I can process for a second.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I’ll be back. Make a promise to come back. I had a colleague in my corporate job who had a great one. He was actually my boss, but he often would get overwhelmed because of his own relationship with his brain. And he would always start with a compliment. He would say, you process so quickly. It’s one of the things I really love about you. I’m still catching up. Give me a minute.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right? And it sounds like it could be a demeaning, sort of self-effacing way to manage your role in the conversation, but it’s actually quite welcoming. Because it signals he’s paying great attention to me. He’s not leaving. He’s not taking himself out of the conversation. It signals he wants to be a part of it and he wants to be his best. I always liked that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
So…
Nikki Kinzer:
You put something here in one of our notes that I think is a really nice sentence, too. It says, that landed hard. I need a minute before I answer.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think that’s a really nice way to respond, especially if you’ve been sort of hurt by what they’ve said.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
That landed hard.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Let me think about that.
Pete Wright:
It’s honest, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s honest, and it’s giving you that pause. It’s allowing you… the issue is trying to remember it when you’re in the middle of a conversation. But I really like that language a lot. I think it’s nice.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think it really works. So for me, having those sentences on lock. And maybe I’ll put them in the episode notes for this episode so that you can see them, copy and paste them out, put them in a document, come up with your own. I have something to say about this, and it isn’t ready yet.
Nikki Kinzer:
Maybe we have a download here.
Pete Wright:
I don’t even know. Who even knows if we have a download?
Nikki Kinzer:
Maybe. We’ll see.
Pete Wright:
What a mystery, with some scripts in it. Okay, so: I have something to say about this, and it isn’t ready yet. I’m flooded. I’m not leaving the conversation. I’m leaving the room for a few minutes. I’m gonna say this slowly. Please let me finish. I don’t agree. I’ll tell you why as soon as I can. I like that one. That landed hard. I need a minute before I answer. There are just five starter sentences, slow sentences.
Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.
Pete Wright:
To internalize, that you can assign to that feeling of being flooded, of feeling the emotions hard, when you need to slow down. Just memorize them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Just straight up memorize them so you don’t have to think. We’ve talked about Gottman, the Gottman approach to relationships, many times. And the way Gottman approaches it, the sort of Gottman rule, is that taking a break because I need space without rules is just walking out. As soon as you use these slow sentences, you’re putting a rule in place that asks for what you need, which is generally patience, but also defines the rule you’re living by.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
You’re coming back to the conversation. You’re going to tell them what you think when you can. That is a relationship agreement that works not just with your intimate partners, but it works with your colleagues, your bosses, your team members. It works everywhere. So I think that is really important.
Nikki Kinzer:
I like Gottman because he talks a lot about how to fight nicely.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s the key, a lot, to a successful relationship.
Pete Wright:
There is an approach to this that I think is a perfect follow-on that comes out of dialectical behavioral therapy, DBT. Marsha Linehan has an interpersonal effectiveness skill set, and she has an acronym: DEAR MAN. DEAR MAN, I don’t know.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
Sometimes you stretch for acronyms.
Nikki Kinzer:
DEAR MAN. Right. And that’s what she got.
Pete Wright:
Right. So DEAR MAN stands for describe, express, assert, reinforce, be mindful, appear confident, and negotiate as appropriate. So from the ADHD perspective, I think we adapt it to just say DEAR. Just DEAR.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, right.
Pete Wright:
You don’t need the MAN. Let’s just focus on the simplest ones. And that’s what we were talking about just before, those sample sentences. But this happens when you feel like you’re being confronted in a way that’s making you uncomfortable, and you feel aware enough and capable enough to respond in the moment.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
So this is leveling up. We’re not just taking a break to process.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Now we’ve done the processing. Here’s how we’re building the sentence to respond.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Let’s just say somebody makes plans without you when they said they were going to make a plan with you, and you feel betrayed by that, whatever it is. You made the plan without me. Describing the situation. That’s your D. You made the plan without me. I felt invisible. You’re expressing the nature of your experience of the description of the thing. You made the plan without me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I felt invisible. Well, why was that important to you? You have to assert your perspective. I want to be asked next time.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Now we’ve got our D, E, A. You made the plan without me. I felt invisible. I want to be asked next time. And to reinforce that behavior, the icing on the cake: I’ll say yes a lot more often when I’m asked. I’ll be a part of this engagement if you give me an opportunity to do it. There’s your DEAR. You have described the event, you’ve expressed how it made you feel, you’ve asserted your position, and you’ve reinforced that this thing would all go away if we just came to one central agreement on it. D-E-A-R.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
There’s something about these little acronyms, and I never remember all of the letters at a given time when I need it.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
But I do think that practicing just a little bit, just visiting this concept, will allow you to internalize it a little bit easier when you are confronted with an opportunity to use it. Because you may not remember the D or the E or the A or the R, but you will remember, hey, this is how I felt.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is how I felt. This is what happened.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. When I feel this way, it makes me respond in certain ways.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And what I found is I’m better off if we can come to a different agreement.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Right. I think that’s really important. And I don’t often enough outline important conversations that I’m having with loved ones, with people that I’m in conflict with, whatever. And when I go through this process, I find I’m better at it. When I use my slow sentences and come back and build the sentence intentionally.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Probably a lot less talking in the car, wishing I would have said this or that. Yeah, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Oh, so much less talking in the car. So much less.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is great.
Pete Wright:
So I’d included in here just a reminder that all of these are exercises to build new kinds of muscles. And when we’re doing exercises, we do them in reps, in sets of repetitions. And so what are you going to do this week, if, let’s just say, we happen to throw together a download that defines…
Nikki Kinzer:
Let’s just say we might do that.
Pete Wright:
Some of the scripted elements that might be useful to you. How are you going to visit this concept to make sense of the cues that you are overstimulated emotionally, that you need to call on a slow sentence, that you need to use the DEAR MAN approach to actually define a response to strong stimuli? What are the reps you’re going to take this week?
You could practice naming the state. Name the state that you’re in out loud in a low-stakes disagreement. You could say, I’m angry, I’m confused, I’m frustrated, I’m sad. Name it out loud. That’s one rep. You could make sure you take breaks, but always define the rule, the Gottman rule that you’re living by. That I’m gonna leave this conversation, but I am going to come back to it in ten minutes. That’s a rep.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Practice that with someone. Write a DEAR sentence. Build the sentence that you need to respond to someone carefully. And maybe come up with a staircase joke.
Nikki Kinzer:
I like that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. All right. So I would love to see what others are doing, how they handle saying the right thing at the right time.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s great.
Pete Wright:
And not running away from it. You don’t always have to run away. You can practice this. We have the ability to be better at feeling our own feelings out loud, and to do it in a way that doesn’t scare other people.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Right, or ourselves.
Pete Wright:
Or ourselves. We can do it, I am confident.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
All right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Is that it? I’m telling ya, this one wound me up a little bit, Nikki.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, this is a hard one.
Pete Wright:
It did.
Nikki Kinzer:
This one goes deep, for sure.
Pete Wright:
It did. We do have a lot of back catalog episodes that I went back to dig through, and I will put in the show notes the links to the back catalog. It includes things like the five D’s, disappoint obviously in there. We’ve got How to Repair Without Overapologizing, misattunement with Dr. Dodge, the fine mask, the unreliable narrator. So we’ve got a bunch of episodes in there if you want to just jump back through. And here’s some of the source material, plus obviously the links for the research that I cited this week. I’ll put it all in the show notes if you want to dig further.
Nikki Kinzer:
Good stuff.
Pete Wright:
Thank you, everybody. We so appreciate you downloading and listening to the show. Thank you for your time and your attention. Don’t forget, if you’ve got something to contribute, you want to share your DEAR MAN sentences… ugh. I’d love to hear some DEAR MAN sentences. We’re heading over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
