I vs. You: Communication 101

Hey, Cadre family doctor Kerry here. We're going to have a really basic conversation today about I versus you statements. Now I know this is not a new concept to you, but I want to shed some light on this as far as communication and relationships and just in general, in any environment, whether it's colleagues or significant others with your kids, because I think there's some common misconceptions about these statements. Statements. And I can tell you from experience that I used to use these incorrectly.

So let me give you some examples. A you statement is you never take out the trash. An I statement is I don't like it when you never take out the trash. Now those are two different statements. One has starts with you, one starts with I, but they say the same thing. Okay. There's no feeling or emotion when you use a you statement. What you're doing is you're actually pointing your finger at the other person and blaming them, accusing them of doing something or not doing something. That's the only purpose of a you statement.

And a lot of times it comes with the word never or always, which I've made another video on that topic as well with the absolutes that we bring with that. But even if you don't say one of those absolutes and you just say you don't take out the trash, you are insensitive. You are this, you are that, whatever it is that they do not do or you're pointing out a character or trait in another person. What happens when you say that phrase is they immediately get defensive because they're basically being put on trial.

They're being told, this is something that I've observed and there's no arguing about it because it's such a final step statement. So when you make that statement, you immediately get the other person defensive. Whether they want to be defensive or not, they are going to feel defensive. It's just a natural human emotion when somebody comes at us accusing us of something. But by saying the statement, I don't like it when you never take out the trash or I don't like it that you're so insensitive. You really didn't include any feeling in that sentence.

And that's the major difference that I had to learn. I actually learned this in couples counseling. I have to insert a feeling word in the beginning of that sentence so that the focus actually comes back onto me and not them. So it's saying, I'm struggling with something over here. I've got an emotion and it's a result of something you've done but I'm going to own my own emotions, and then we can actually have a conversation because I'm not just going to flat out accuse you and make you defensive.

So saying something like, I feel disrespected when you don't take out the trash. I feel left out when you don't call me. I feel whatever the feeling word may be. But the hard part about this is it actually requires you to know what you're feeling. And for somebody like myself, I used to really struggle with that because I wasn't in touch with my emotions. I couldn't identify my feelings. And so all I could come up with was, I feel hurt or I feel angry. And that's a good start. But really try to think about what is the root feeling that's going on for you before you make that sentence.

I actually, for a while, no joke, printed out a list of emotion words and put it on my fridge so I could start to review them and say, okay, so when do I feel that? Do I feel in touch with that emotion? Right now, there's a little, like, picture of faces that you can get for your kids to put on the fridge, and it's got, like, a little frown face, smiley face, excited face. And they can, like, put a little circle around which one they're feeling that day. It's a really good exercise to get your kids in touch with how are you feeling?

But as adults, some of us who've never had the opportunity to figure out how we're feeling have to actually kind of just then go through that. But I can tell you right now that if you start using statements like this that have an I feel at the beginning of them, not just an I, I'm mad. Whatever it is, I am. But I feel it has such a different connotation when you say it to another person. And I would also invite you to try this. If somebody comes at you with an accusatory you statement, they did not include an I feel at the beginning.

They didn't even try. By including an I am mad kind of at the beginning, take a deep breath and say, I'm feeling defensive based on what you just said. Could you rephrase that? You can invite them to try it again. Or you can say, what I'm hearing from you is this. But I can tell you that being married to somebody who was emotionally and verbally abusive and not knowing how he was going to react, I actually got fairly good at this because I would do anything to diffuse the situation. Because what you're doing is you're saying, okay, pause.

I'm going to diffuse this instead of getting defensive and coming back at you. Well, you're too insensitive. You're this. You're that. You can pause the situation and say, okay, I'm recognizing that I'm feeling defensive because I was just accused of something or blamed. And I'm gonna pause before this turns into a fight. So I know this is really basic and there's so many more minutiae to this conversation, but I just wanted to shed a little bit of light on those statements, the you and the I statements, and invite you to just try using them differently and see what happens.

And maybe it's not the right time to try it in a relationship that's already unhealthy or not going well. Maybe it's something you try in a less high stress environment. Maybe you try it at work. It's not in your significant other. But I guarantee if you start using this technique and diffuse before you have defensiveness, enter a situation, you'll have way less conflict. I can tell you from experience that it works. So I hope this was helpful for you guys. Thanks for tuning in. God bless.