Actionable Strategies for Effective Communication

Kevin Anthony 0:05
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast, a safe and fun place to get real and learn about sex, whether you’re a man or woman, single or couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony, and I am here to guide you to go from good to amazing in the bedroom and your relationships.

All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 328 and it is titled actionable strategies for effective communication. So if you’ve been listening to this show for any length of time, you know that communication is a huge, huge piece to not only the work I do but basically the work that anybody that is working with couples does. It’s like a foundational piece. In fact, when I’m working with a couple doing coaching work, I mean, I always have a strategy call with them, where they both come on, we get to talk about what it is they are actually wanting out of the work that we do. And I can immediately start to see issues with communication, like from the first moment that we meet. And so often we have to start by laying the foundation of good communication, because there’s going to be a lot of things I’m going to be asking them to do together throughout the course of this work, and it’s not going to work if the communication breaks down and, you know, just nothing else works after that. So it’s just such an important piece.

I’ve done multiple episodes over the years on communication. I’ve looked at it from a bunch of different angles, as far as you know, different strategies and different ideas and all of that. But I’m always open to new ideas and, you know, new potential tools that you can put in your toolbox for better communication. And so I have a guest on the show today, who I will introduce in a moment, who has written a book on it, of course, and has a lot of experience working with couples in their communication. And so we’re going to dig in and find out what kind of gems she has to share with us today.

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So today I have Dr Patricia Timerman, Barbosa da Silva. She is the author of the book, Why are we fighting actionable strategies for effective communication, which I have right here and we will be talking about throughout the show. In this book, she talks about her IAP model, intention, action, and perception, which we will get into, also which she calls the Google Translate of communication. I’m really curious to find out how that works. Dr Timmerman is a psychotherapist with over 12 years of experience since opening her practice in 2012 advocate2create. Dr Timmerman has been providing individual, couples, and family therapy, psycho-educational workshops, and consultations, in addition to her focus on interpersonal communication, Dr Timerman’s, areas of specialization, specialization also include anxiety management, grief with a focus on suicide grief and composing clinical evaluations for immigration purposes. Welcome to the show. Dr Timerman.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 4:17
Thank you for having me. I look forward to our conversation today,

Kevin Anthony 4:21
Me too. So it’s been a while since we talked in the pre-interview call, and I haven’t had a chance to read your book yet, although it’s next in my queue, and I’m actually really excited to dive into it, but I did, of course. I will always go look at the table of contents. I’ll flip through it, read little sections of it, you know, and I always get extra things like code words. I want to know about code words a little later on in this show. But since it has been a while since we talked I went back and I really reviewed the notes from when we did talk, and I was like, Oh, wow, yeah, okay, there’s some things I really want to know about here. Yeah. So one of the things that I want to start with is actions because actions are a big piece of this model. And so one of the things that you say is that all actions do not have a universal meaning. And this is something I really, really, really want to talk about, is the difference between how one person perceives an action and how another person perceives an action. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 5:31
Oh, absolutely. So there’s the expression, actions speak louder than words, right? But inherent in that expression is that every action has a universal meaning, and that’s not always the case as you just expressed it, because, again, an action to me, the way that I grew up, may mean something different to you as an example that I come across a lot, right? So let’s say that there are two people conversing and entering to an argument, and one person decides, you know what, I’m going to just stay quiet and let my partner, or whomever that individual is, speak and give them that opportunity to talk, and I’m going to stay silent to be able to process that information. So I’m using silence, but not letting the other person know the reason behind it. That’s an action if I don’t know what your silence means, I am going to perceive it based on my own experiences of it.

Now if I come from a place where my partner or ex-partners would become silent when they no longer cared, then I am going to take your silence as you don’t care, right? So that’s why the concept of intention, action, perception, that’s where it came from. I’ll give you an example where this was kind of birthed from my relationship with my husband. So I’ve been together for 12 years, and I want to say maybe 11 years ago, or 10 years ago, we were having an argument, and I left my interpretation or my intention behind that was to show my frustration and my expectation, which is attached to the action that I took, was that you’re gonna follow me, to show me that you care. It didn’t stay put.

And so to me, it’s like, well, if you didn’t follow me, that means that you don’t care, because attached to my action, there was the expectation of what the other person was gonna do with the meaning behind it when we then conversed, because, of course, things got worse and right, but when I talked to him and I said, Why didn’t you follow me? Like it is so clear that that’s what you do, and he’s like, I you created space. I thought you wanted that space. So in respecting you, because that’s what I would have wanted, if I created space, that’s what I would have wanted. In respecting you, I didn’t follow you. So that’s what I mean by all actions are not universal. We may have a specific meaning associated with a behavior or a word or whatever it is, but it’s not necessarily common across everyone else’s life, so they may have a different perception of that same behavior. Does that make sense?

Kevin Anthony 8:16
Oh, absolutely. And the example that you shared is such a common one when it comes to men and women having an argument. You see this all the time. She actually expects him to follow her, and it’s exactly what you said. Well, if he cared, he would come after me, right? And on the man’s side, especially today, especially like, you know, post-metoo movements and all that. Like, men are super I don’t know if conscious is the right word, but concerned about being too strong, being too forceful, like, if I run after her and grab her, like, what’s how’s that gonna be perceived? Right? Yes. And so men now are sitting here going, Okay, I’m just gonna give her space to process her thing and do her thing. This happens very, very frequently. So that’s a great example.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 9:05
And one of the things that I love about this is I often say, if you go on my website, you see walk up with awareness comes action. My former supervisor, Dr. Syverse, used to say that to me a lot, and I really like love, this model. So part of with awareness transaction was when we became aware of what we needed from each other, from these behaviors. Now we follow suit. So if we have an argument and I leave, he knows that I want him to follow. But if we are having an argument and he leaves, I know that he wants me to give him that space. So it might be counterintuitive to us, right to give somebody else what they want, but that’s what we learn. We’re able to have more effective interactions after learning through an argument or through conflict. Hence, the reason conflict resolution is just a matter of learning how to argue or have productive conflicts and not getting stuck in it.

Kevin Anthony 10:00
And I think another point is, what you just said is, you know, give them what they need as opposed to what you would need. Because what a lot of people tend to do in relationships like this is the big thing that comes up when we’re teaching, say, The Five Love Languages, right? Like, why that’s, why that’s such an important tool, is because what most people tend to do is give in the way that they like to receive, not in the way that their partner likes to receive, right? So this is another example of that.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 10:29
So I’m gonna go in my book. I so I use Gottman and Chapman at one point in my book when I talk about what I call the IEP currency exchange. So Gottman through his studies, right, and, and I’ll say more to your viewers, because I’m sure, like in your experience, your you know, but in his immense study, or just observing couples and identifying the masters and disasters, he talked about the emotional bank account, right? We need five positive interactions to offset one negative interaction, so that emotional bank account, I think, is a great thing to determine and identify. And I say that the deposits are exactly that of Chapman’s five love languages, right? Words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gift giving, and touch. I was trying to figure out which one was the one I didn’t say.

But even that there has to be a currency exchange, because what may be quality time to you may be different to me, to some, Netflix and chill is quality time to others, that’s your being lazy. Quality Time is us going outside, right? And just because I give love in one way doesn’t mean that I’m going to receive love in that with that same currency. So in the book, one of my worksheets. And I created worksheets because I am a visual learner and a kinesthetic learner. I learned through doing, that some people be able to read it and just absorb everything so I try to make sure that I incorporate, you know, for different learners. But is in the IEP currency exchange worksheet, I worksheet, I ask one partner or one person if this is communication indiscriminate of relationships. So it doesn’t have to be just within the couple, family, friends, or even within the workspace.

But let’s say it’s a couple. I’ll have one partner identify their love language and how they receive it, what they believe the love language of their partners is and how they receive it, and then have their partner actually identify what is their love language and how they receive it, so that we know, how can I input deposits into our emotional bank account using things that you see at deposits? Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely,

Kevin Anthony 12:49
yeah. And that’s so, so important because I like how you make that distinction too. So, so yes, there is knowing what your partner’s love language is, but then there’s also knowing what that means to them, right? This is the same idea, again, sort of coming around full circle about actions and what do the actions actually mean? What does quality time mean to you versus what it means to me?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 13:11
Yes.

Kevin Anthony 13:11
These are things that I think are really important for people to learn early on, like when you’re in the dating process and you’re getting to know each other. These are the types of conversations you should be having. You should be asking each other these kinds of questions. When somebody says, hey, I really want to spend some quality time with you, rather than just saying, Okay, let’s go do this. Say, What does quality time mean to you? What would that look like for you, right? Yeah, that’s part of that getting to know each other process. And these are just, I think, conversations, you know, we’re talking about effective communication strategies. These are conversations that couples should be having.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 13:49
Even going so far as asking, how do you communicate? There are people who are great with phones. There are people who are not, I am not a texter, so I know, like, Now often, like, we’ll talk to my friends, and I’ll say, like, I much rather call, because I’m not a texter. I have friends who are like, Oh my God, just text me. Like, don’t call. But when I don’t call, or when I don’t text, it’s not because I’m ignoring you. It’s just like, I am not the greatest with the phone. Oh my God, my husband is even worse than I am. But if there are people that are like if I’m talking to you and I know that you’re not good with your phone, I’m not going to fill in the blank and say the reason that you’re not responding to me within what I believe to be an appropriate amount of time is that you’re not into me, right?

Because we fill the blank with our perception, and that’s the idea of the intention action. Perception is intention is internal to me, you cannot know what my intention is unless I verbatim tell you, perception is also internal, but to the receiver or observer of the action, and you may perceive the world in a different way than I do based on. Right, based on something as simple as our gender difference, right, where we grew up from, what? What is our culture, our ethnicity, our religion, our, you know, sexual orientation, all of those factors impact our perception of the world and the meaning we associate to certain things.

Kevin Anthony 15:23
Absolutely. And you know, it’s really interesting. You brought up the texting thing because this is another one that comes up a lot, something I started doing earlier this year that I’ve really, actually been enjoying a lot of, that I haven’t done before, which I’ve been doing these group coaching calls with all women and in every single call, there’s at least one woman in there who is like, well, I sent him this text, and he hasn’t responded, or he said this. Or, what does it mean? What do you know? And it’s just like, you see this. Just so often, this idea of, personally, I hate text messages for important communications. I think they should be like, I’ll be there in 10 minutes, honey, pick up some milk at the store. Like anything other than that, no more texting, right? Because that’s exactly what happens is, you know, there’s so much mist, you know, there’s so much non-verbal communication that is not present in a text message, and then there’s all this space, right? We don’t know what’s happening, and therefore our monkey minds fill that space in with a bunch of nonsense.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 16:29
And then we create a narrative. Once we’ve created that narrative, we have a tendency of not allowing data that is different from our narrative to penetrate. We create, like a cognitive distortion, right? So now, if I believe that you don’t that you don’t love me anymore, it’s really difficult for me to receive information that will deny my thoughts, right? So that’s the danger of that, of that narrative creation sometimes, and I love so when we’re talking about effective strategies, there are things that I’ve tried to implement that are essentially like easy things, and one of them is the rule of three interpretations. As you were saying, right? Like we will attach a an assumption to a behavior, as if you were fact.

And the rule of three interpretations, asks us for the person who’s receiving the action to identify this is a fact. The person did not respond to me in what I believe is a timely fashion. My first thought, which tends to be either a worst-case scenario or taking it personally, is he doesn’t like me, right? In this case scenario, or he like doesn’t want to be with me. What are two other possible assumptions for the same fact? Right? This creates a pause, and I don’t go from okay, I can differentiate. This is a fact. This is an assumption. If I do the worst-case scenario, for balance’s sake, I’ll say the second one, let it be the best case scenario, and the third one let let it be a likely case scenario, and then choose the one that serves you best.

Kevin Anthony 18:10
Yeah, that that’s fantastic. I love the idea that that causes somebody to pause and think for a moment. Because I think too often that first thing that comes into our mind, like, we people just get stuck on that like, well, it must mean this, right? And they don’t give themselves the space to really stop and go, Oh, because, I mean, one of the simple things that I’m sure you do all the time, and I do all the time in my work, is when I hear that, right? My mind is, you know, I’m a third party, right? I’m, you know, looking at it from an outside perspective. So I have a bit more clarity on it, and immediately I’m already thinking it probably could have meant also this, this, this, or this.

And so one of the simplest things that I’ll do is say, okay, yeah, it could have meant that, but he could have also meant this or this or this. And as soon as you give them that you know those other options, they’ll pause and then all, most of the time, they’ll go, oh yeah, you’re right. I guess it could have been that, yes, but they never gave themselves the time to stop and pause and think about it first. So I love, that strategy of pausing for a moment and then thinking and coming up with at least two other things that it could have possibly meant,

Dr. Patricia Timerman 19:24
I am a person who struggles with anxiety, right? But like, if I think of energy and depression would be energy-depleting. Anxiety is like that surge of energy and my anxiety is when certain stressors come about. Um, it can become disproportionate. Right? So part of bringing its proportionality back has been the rule of three interpretations and identifying My mind goes towards case scenario. But that’s not the only possibility, right? What are other possibilities? And if you do struggle. With anxiety or even with oppression. This is a great tool to use because it really differentiates between facts and assumptions.

Kevin Anthony 20:09
Yes, facts and assumptions that yes, I think a lot of times people mistake one for the other. In other words, a lot of times they think that they are talking about a fact, but they’re really talking about an assumption, and confusing those two creates a lot of problems.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 20:29
Yes, and sometimes one of my responses is, I don’t have enough information to actually be able to make a right So the worst-case scenario came. Best case scenario, okay, but actually, I don’t have enough information to formulate a response to this, you mentioned something about texting that I actually thought was really interesting, and I put it in the book under the rule of three interpretations. I wrote it as the rule of three intonations, because sometimes through texting you, I remember this case where a client of mine was reading a message. I mean, it was a novel that her ex-boyfriend sent to her, and as she’s reading it, her head is going, she’s pausing every like five words to explain to me the context behind it and write all of that animation.

So she finished reading and I said, Can you please read it again, but neutral without any explanation when she read it a second time without all of that, and I’m like, the first message to you was, he’s attacking me. What is the message you receive now, when she read it the second time, she was like, He’s hurting. Like, yeah, we tend to especially since that’s what gets lost. What you were saying, right? Body language and all of that, and intonation gets lost on texts. And if I am angry, I might read your message from an angry point of view, right? I don’t know what you mean. I realized through my supervisees that like they will say that I’m intimidating via text. So I became the queen of emojis, because sometimes I will be like, oh okay, no problem. And they were really like, oh, okay, no problem. I was like, Oh, okay. That’s right, I do, however, have this couple that they communicated really well via text because they were able to process their thoughts better. So I can’t say it’s a rule of thumb to everybody. So hey, be cautious of text, because there are people whose best delivery method is in processing my thoughts is via message, and they’re able to read each other’s messages from a neutral point of view, a neutral tonality.

Kevin Anthony 22:34
Yes, sometimes that does work. I have not via text, but I have had a client do it via email because that allows them. It’s, you know, it’s basically like writing a letter. But as you said, it does allow them to slow down, pause, collect their thoughts, and write something out that’s more coherent instead of reacting. But I generally only use that when somebody really, they’re, like, really struggling in person, and they’re reacting and they’re lashing out, and it’s like, whoa, okay, we gotta find a way. Yes, but my preference, like, I always tell people, when it comes to communication, you need to talk to your partner about something like number one, face to face, in person. If you can’t do that and you really have to talk about something, we’ve got the technology now. Get on a video call. Get on a FaceTime signal, whatever. There are like a dozen apps out there that’ll let you see the person’s facial expressions and hear their voice. Can’t do that, get on a phone call if you can’t do a phone call right now, we’re really now, this is several rungs down the ladder, but do a voice message at least.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 23:41
Yes. Oh, my goodness, yes.

Kevin Anthony 23:44
And then if that doesn’t work, you know, I mean, if it’s an emergency, a text message, otherwise, figure out a way to make time to do one of those other things above.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 23:56
So, so well spoken, absolutely. I have this. I have certain people that we have political views, different political views. And when we talk about politics, especially today, it is very poignant, right? And so one of the things that I will do is I always want to do a voice message, and I tell them, I’m doing a voice message for you because I want you to hear my tone. This is already a poignant subject, so I want to make sure that it’s not read with an intense tonality, right?

Kevin Anthony 24:32
So I agree with you. All right, we’ve got so much to dive into. We’ve already been chatting for almost half the show, but it was just great. I loved everything that we talked about, and I’m like, sorry now, how am I gonna get the rest of this in? Let me do this. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do my second ad a little early because I don’t want to interrupt the next segment we’re gonna talk about with an ad.

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Okay, so we were talking obviously about actions and how, you know, we can have different meanings for those actions, which led us into, you know, ways to communicate so that we don’t have those types of misunderstandings through that. We’ve already brought out some of the parts of the IAP model, but I want to really dive into it now, like there are three parts, intention, action, and perception. Let’s take them one at a time and talk about each one a little bit so people understand what this model is.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 26:14
So our intentions, right? It’s where they come from. What we want the other person to know, right? What is the purpose behind what we’re going to do? The actions that we take, oftentimes are because, like, this is how we’ve seen it happen. So for example, if I know that my mom always took care of my dad through cooking, then I will believe, Oh, that’s how you show love. So now I’m getting together with somebody, and I’m gonna show them love through cooking. But let’s say that that person is not an ex of service, an individual who likes to cook for themselves or is a very picky eater, right? And their love language is quality time is not so while you are cooking, and they’re now sitting or doing something by themselves, and then when you’re finished cooking, to me, that’s how you show love. That’s your intention. Now you’re gonna go clean the dishes, and we don’t get to eat together.

So all this time, all I can see the person receiving it is you’re not spending time with me. You rather spend time in the kitchen, and you know doing so your intention is to show me love. But I don’t know if like the person who is perceiving it, am I receiving that? Right? So our intentions are very internal to us only we know what they mean. When we have the actions that we take for our intentions, we have an expectation as to how the other person is going to respond, right? So, for example, if I actually had a couple a while back that the husband wanted to get for his wife like he was looking at this purse, was a really difficult person to get a hold of. He was like contacting like her best friend who knows and all of that. And he’s going after this first, but he’s a surprise. She doesn’t know anything, and on the day of her birthday, she gets the purse.

So he had a lot riding on this right to him, he was going to be this gigantic lump sum deposit that was worth much more than just a regular deposit. When she received this, she was like, Oh, it’s beautiful. And she put it to the side. All that she wanted for a while was quality time, and because he’d been working so much, she wasn’t receiving quality time. So when she got the purse to her, it was just like, oh, yet another material thing, pretty but now let’s be together his expectation of her response, or he was that, oh, my god. Thank you so much. This is beautiful. I really appreciate it when he didn’t receive that, he wasn’t met with that expectation. It became a fight, right? You don’t take me, you take me for granted, or you don’t appreciate the things that I do. So the intention was so positive, but the expectation associated with it once it was not met. What was a positive thing became a negative. Does that make sense?

Kevin Anthony 29:19
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And these, you know this, these types of things happen a lot. Well, they happen a lot in couples. But what I’m thinking about is just from my own life, how I felt like I’ve really gone above and beyond in past relationships only to not have it really appreciated, and how that really affects our desire to want to do that. So I can, I can really see how, you know, how I can see both sides, of course, but I can really see from the man’s perspective, how deflated he probably felt after all the work and effort and energy he put into doing that. And yet, at the same time, I can see, from her point of view, that that’s not something that’s that’s that important to her, that time with him is more important. So I see. All events, but like, there’s, there’s a part of me, just as being a man who’s been in that position before, who, like, kind of felt that bit a little bit more.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 30:08
It’s in a way, like, if you look at the iceberg, right, all that she saw was the tip of the iceberg, which was just the, here’s the purse, not all the work that was put into it, yes, right? And one of the sentences that I use a lot is I cannot know what I don’t know. And when I don’t know I act based on what I think I know, right? So if I had known the work that like all that you did to be able to get to it, I maybe would have appreciated it more. I may have also gotten more frustrated, because I could also say I would much have preferred that you’d not do that, right? So that’s why I love the IEP currency exchanges. We get to understand what are deposits for each individual, right? Some people love giving and receiving. Some people really don’t. Some people love that service. Other people like don’t touch my kitchen, right?

So it’s really important for us to get to know one another, which is what you said, right? Part of the dating is really getting to know each other. So the intention is internal to me. Only I can know what my intention is. And as you said, perception is from the person who’s receiving it, but our perception is impacted by our behaviors. An example that I have in the book is, let’s say that I am with a partner of mine, and I’ve never been cheated on in the past, and my partner is takes a phone call and goes into a different room and maybe not notice it or notice but not think about it at all, but if I have a history of having been cheated on either by this partner or previous partners, and now you take a phone call and go into another room, now that’s suspicious behavior, right? My perception changes based on my experiences, because we’re a construct of our experiences. So now we talk about that narrative again right now, to me, you already cheated. You have to prove to me that you are not cheating, because that behavior is now suspicious.

Kevin Anthony 32:10
Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the things that I’ve I like to do, and I do fairly regularly, is when I do do some behavior, it’s usually after the fact. So it might not help immediately in that moment, but I like to try to explain my intention behind it, you know, for instance, like, if I get a phone call like that, and I have to step out into the other room or whatever, when I come back, I might say, Oh, that was so and so. And I, you know, I needed to go in there because whatever he was in such a noisy environment, I couldn’t hear him, he couldn’t hear me. Or, you know, maybe whatever it is, I try to explain those things, it doesn’t necessarily help in the immediate moment, because, you know, she might still go into story right then and there when I walk out of the room. However, over time, it starts to build an understanding, and she’ll start to see patterns in my behavior, and then she won’t make so many assumptions in the future.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 33:04
I like to say that you, when you do that either preventatively or postventively, right? You are able to catch it before the narrative becomes a tattoo. Yes, right? So I was able to catch it before it was fully formulated because you didn’t have to come to ask me. That’s one of the things that I do see a lot. What I’m gonna say is not statistical. I have not done a study on it. It is more empirical experience when I’m talking about male and female experiences that I notice a lot. The female, what I noticed is me finding information.

So let’s say for the male, um, there are some things that I didn’t think were important, and because I don’t think was important, maybe I didn’t share with you. Let’s say that like a woman from the gym, you know, like caught my phone from her friend and sent me a message saying, Hey, you want to go somewhere, and I just ignore that, and like, you know, deleted it, or I just, like, didn’t do anything to it, but didn’t tell my partner, and then my partner finds it. Now the question is, why didn’t you tell me? Because now that I found out, that means that there’s more to find. Okay, so it’s a different sometimes it’s a different way of looking at the same thing. I think a lot when talking about this is, if this is so insipid, why shape, why rock the boat, or why bring something that would maybe become a distress in the relationship? I don’t think is worth the energy. And then the other side is, if there’s nothing to hide, then why are you hiding? That’s, that’s the sentence I get a lot,

Kevin Anthony 34:47
And they are very, very different points of view or intentions. But they’re, you know, they’re very different, and they can cause huge problems because they are so different.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 35:02
Yeah. And so the more that we learn about each other, the easier it becomes to figure out, you know, I know that this person sent me this, although I found it to be in sip it. Now that I know that to you, it isn’t, I want to bring it to you, right? But from my point of view, it’s not so like we learn from one another. The same thing with me and my husband. When I get angry and leave the room, he follows. If he leaves the room, I stay. We learn.

Kevin Anthony 35:32
And you know, hopefully, you can learn those things the easy way and not the hard way. In other words, if you weren’t doing a good job at, you know, asking questions, getting to know, getting to understand their behavior patterns and why they do what they do, or if you haven’t been doing a good job of explaining, you know, why you do what you do, then you might end up learning the hard way, which is, you have a big argument, and then eventually, throughout arguing, it comes out what it was, and then you come to some sort of understanding that’s learning the hard way versus, you know, learning the easy way, which is having these conversations ahead of time, and getting to learn who the person is, what they need, how they act, how they react, that sort of thing.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 36:13
So there are a couple of strategies here that I like using. One of them, and I think it was the last one that I added to this book is what I call the preamble. The preamble has two functions to it. And just because of something that you said, when you express like, I tell the person like my intention even after the fact. So the primary purpose of the preamble is when I tell you what I want from our coming interaction, right? So let’s say I will. I call you Jeff, and I’m like, Hey, I Jeff. I don’t know. I go to Jeff Kevin, like, Hey, Kev, I really want to vent, but I don’t want any solutions. Right now. Do you have the time to do that, right? And you can tell me yes or no. Um, when I tell you this, you know exactly what I’m expecting. I don’t want you to give me solutions.

Sometimes I’ll tell my husband, you don’t even need to pay attention. I just need to be able to get this off my chest, and I need somebody who’s there. Do you know what I want from our interactions? Most times people don’t do that. I know because I was one of them, right? We would just start the conversation, and the person who’s receiving it is doing a couple of things. I mean, one, you’re thinking about your own stuff. Two, you’re trying to pay attention to what I’m telling you while also trying to identify what is it that she wants from me, from this conversation. And most of the time, people believe that what we want is their input or their solution. But if I’m not ready for their solution, guess what? I’m going to start defending my problem and get frustrated with you for giving me a solution, right?

So when I tell you what I want from you, now you know. So that’s the primary function of the preamble. The secondary is the one that you kind of talked about, which is when I tell you the intention behind what I’m gonna say before I say it. Now, the reason for that is oftentimes, we find ourselves going through a sea of wrong word choices, and we can’t get out of it. And so if I tell you my intention before, like, if my intention is, hey, I want to be able to share with you something that really frustrated me. I don’t want to change anything about the situation is just so we can learn for next time. I don’t know exactly how to say it, but know that the intention is positive. It’s for us to figure out. You know, next time that we go to something, how to go about it, and then I tell you, you gain a little bit of grace with the wrong word choices, right? Because the intention was already laid out.

Kevin Anthony 38:54
That’s a wonderful tool. I love that. I love the preamble as well. You know, it’s interesting in the context of, you know when a woman is sharing something, you know, most women haven’t learned the preamble, so they don’t actually stay upfront what it is they’re really wanting or needing in that moment. To further complicate that, as I’m sure, you know, they’re not always aware of what they want and need in a moment, right? So they can’t communicate something that they’re not aware of. So you know when, when teaching men how to deal with these situations, it’s usually like, just automatically assume she’s not wanting you to fix the problem, then give her space to ask you to help her with the problem, right? But you know that’s that’s a strategy for when she’s not using the preamble. And I think if you know if she could learn to use the preamble, he could learn to give some space, that that could really shift that dynamic. Now, of course, I’m not saying that it doesn’t work the other way around as well, from men, of course, to a woman, but just using that as an as an example like that you brought up, which is a very. A common one that we see, yeah, so I love that idea.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 40:04
I also have what I call the inverse preamble, right? When the person says something before you respond, you’re like, Okay, so, and I do that in therapy sometimes, because, you know, like, when so, like, you can see the possible avenues to go through, but sometimes the client is in a venting space, and so I’ll do an inverse preamble, and I’ll say before I respond, what would you like from me in this moment? Would you like just to go through the venting process? Are you ready or open to feedback? So when we don’t know, just use the inverse preamble.

Kevin Anthony 40:34
That’s another great one. So we’ve got the preamble, the reverse preamble, and wait, what was the third one?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 40:40
The rule of three interpretations, which is the one, right? This is the fact and three possible assumptions from that fact. There’s one that I did for the person giving the information. They call the three columns of communication. So column one is venting, say what you need to say, not to the intended person for the love of goodness, right? The venting is unfiltered through the venting, we go on tangents, right? If we’re interrupted, we get frustrated. So the venting process is your own. I like to say, to use your senses. When life gives you stress, use one of your five senses. So if you write it, you’re using the sense of touch, the sense of vision. You can read it and hear yourself if you just want to say it out loud. I’ll often tell clients to do it in the shower, because you’re feeling the water, getting your body as you’re hearing yourself.

The second column is deciphering the message. What is it that you want why do you want the other person to receive this message? So I guide you with questions. I don’t know if I know that off the back of my head, of my head, so I’m going to come here. Here it is. So the questions that I guide you to in identifying or deciphering the messages. Why do I want the intended person to receive this message? What’s the intention behind that? What purpose will it serve, and to what end? And what are my expectations in return, once I’ve deciphered the message, now I go into column three, what is the best delivery method for that person to receive my message? How well do I know that individual? And if I don’t know them well enough, then I can always fall back into the I statement, and then I go through the do’s and don’ts of the I statement because people cheat the I statement all the time. Oh, my God.

Kevin Anthony 42:30
Well, let’s go into that a little bit more. How do they do that?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 42:33
Okay, so I’ll talk about the formula for the i statement is I feel the emotion when something specific happens and what I would like or prefer in the future, right? Gottman talks about it as complaint versus criticism. By the way, His Book Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is wonderful, but when we’re doing the I statement, the way to cheat it is, I feel like you don’t blah, blah, blah. I feel that you so words like or that not there we can’t. Is I feel, and then the emotion, right? The other part of it is that we tend not to use the word you, to not create a defensiveness right the moment that I say, I feel like you don’t do enough.

Kevin Anthony 43:30
Well, it’s no longer an I statement. It’s a you statement at that point.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 43:34
Thank you. Just because I started with the word I doesn’t make it an i statement Exactly. So I feel like you don’t let me talk. I don’t feel heard, right? I feel silenced. So you need to put your emotionality there. I also say to go from active language to passive language, right? So active languages, you don’t let me talk, passive language. I feel silenced. So the word you is, we avoid it as much as we can. If I can’t avoid the word you, sometimes, I’ll put it as we why are we fighting right? As opposed to, why are you fighting with me? Because it’s more it’s not so distancing. We are together in this.

Another thing that I put here is generalizable. Shy away from always and nevers because the moment that I’m accused of something to be done all the time. I’m either going to think of a time when I didn’t do it, or if I can’t, I’m going to think of a time when you did what you’re accusing me of. But in both instances, I am not listening to you, I am defending myself. Yeah, right. And when I’ve done the three columns of communication with clients in session, we would put the deciphered message into the I statement formula, so then they were able to bring it to the intended people that they wanted to talk to.

Kevin Anthony 45:00
That’s great. I love another thing that you were talking about there, which is stating your feelings, I feel this. And I think one of the reasons why that’s such a good thing is because we were just talking about intentions, right in actions, and that that creates a little bit of separation, right? Because when you say, you know if you don’t use the feeling statement, right, people can, of course, get defensive, because it’s basically you did something, as opposed to, this is how I feel. And then the other person can say, Oh, okay. Because there can be a difference between a stated act, action or intention, and how it makes somebody feel right because we were talking about how people can interpret things differently, right? And so it helps bring a little bit more clarity to that when you say, I feel this way because then it’s not blaming you that you did this thing. It’s saying I feel this way. Oh, okay, let’s figure out, you know, why you feel that way. And it may not be that the person did anything wrong, it may just be that there was a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of something.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 46:07
Yeah, it’s like there are people that have I’ll use me as an example. I grew up in a very between me and my siblings, like being on time, so punctuality has always been something for me, and I equated punctuality with trust, right? I can rely on you if you’re punctual. And then I’ve had to understand because I married h2 although I’m from Sao, Paulo, Brazil, my husband, my in-laws, they are from Rio, and the concept of time is very different, right? So they are not always functional, but I can rely on and always trust them. So I had to kind of separate that, but I have an anxiety that comes from now being on time. I might feel overwhelmed and anxious, but that does not mean that they are doing anything wrong. Does that make sense? So sometimes when I will allow my husband to know I am feeling anxious, so right now I am going to be more irritable, therefore, just be cautious when around me.

Kevin Anthony 47:16
Yeah, absolutely. And there’s, there’s so many little things like you were saying earlier on in the show about, you know, where we grew up, what our nationality is, you know, what our gender is, like, all of these things influence that. So like when you were just talking about the on-time thing, what was going through my mind in that moment is, you know, I grew up in the northeast, here in the US, and if you said you were going to be somewhere at a certain time you better be there at a certain time, right? But I’ve lived half of my life here on the West Coast, where time is a lot looser. People here on the West Coast are like, Yeah, I’ll be there at such and such a time, and it’s normal for them to show up an hour later, like, not even, not even 10 minutes later or 20 minutes, just like, Ah, it’s close enough. And then they don’t understand why you’re so annoyed at them, right? So, yeah, I understand how just simply growing up in two different places, you know, in the same country, can make a big difference.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 48:15
Oh, my God, yes. I had to learn that if I make an appointment with you, it’s setting stone. And I’ve had to learn that here in Miami is very much that this culture, where it’s not unless you call me the day before, it’s not happening, right? Whereas for me is unless you call me the day before to cancel, then you know, it’s happening histories, like when you and I had our pre-interview, and it was the day after, like, the hurricane, I was taking this stuff, and I didn’t, like, realize it when you’re like, Hey, are you not coming? And that’s why, like, I had such a response to that, because I’m like, Oh my God, I don’t miss things, right? This is something that is set in stone. So I had my own self-punishment in that process. But because of that, of in growing up, it was your word that had to be as good as your signature look at that has to be. And even in conversing with my therapist, she turns to me and she’s like, but it’s okay for you to change your mind, right? If you say yes to something, that does not mean that if later on, you don’t want to do it, you can’t say no. Now I’m like, okay, yes.

Kevin Anthony 49:34
And in all things there’s, there’s a balance, right? Yes. So you know, this is another great difference between the East Coast and West Coast United States. On the East Coast, when you say you’re going to do something, you do it. If you say you’re going to spend time with somebody, even if you say I’m going to spend time with you three weeks from now, you do it right. Unless there’s some major complicating factor here on the West Coast, people will see. Stuff all the time, and maybe 30% of it actually happened. Yeah, let’s do that. Or, Yeah, I’ll be there. Let’s do them. And most of it never ever happens.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 50:11
Yeah, I’ve had, I’ve grown more accost into it, but at first, when you first, as I imagine, was with you, it’s very different, because you’re ready for all these things, and I know no one is coming. No one is okay. So that is really impactful on can you imagine these two people come together that have different relationships to time or different relationships to scheduling things? So one is, yeah, we talked about it, but whatever to the other settings down. So then when it doesn’t happen, you know, it’s much more impactful to one than the other, yeah. So being able to have those conversations of like, this is my these are my expectations. This is how I grew up. If I know the reasons behind yours, or how you say things, then I will be better able to see it from your point of view as always, as opposed to looking at it from my own.

Kevin Anthony 51:06
Yes. Okay, we’ve only got a few minutes left. I have a bunch of questions. I’m gonna do something I’ve never done before on this show. I want to do a little bit of a lightning round. I’m just gonna, just gonna hit you with like, three or four fast questions, and we’ll see what you can do. No pressure, by the way, but I want to know the answers to these from your perspective. So okay, one of the questions I had is, are there some generalized differences between men and women and how they perceive actions?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 51:36
Again, not statistically speaking. I haven’t done a study on it, but I do see that oftentimes, males will tend to be more silent as a way to like not aggravate the situation more, and the female will take that as you don’t care. So now I’m fighting for me and for you, and the more that I argue, the more silent you become, until you explode. That is one of the things that I see, a big difference from one side to the next.

Kevin Anthony 52:06
I would agree with that. Next question, what happens when men leave a blank in their communication?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 52:15
Women fill in the blank. We all fill in the blank but with our own assumptions. And you better believe that my assumption is much worse than whatever you’re saying.

Kevin Anthony 52:33
The next one is, what happens when a woman assumes he should just know?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 52:38
Oh, okay, so the question is, how would he I cannot know what I don’t know, right? So, did you teach him? Well, right? How was it somewhere so he would, he would have known. If not, then, no, I need to give him the manual, and he needs to be willing to read it.

Kevin Anthony 52:58
And, you know, I always say when women are like, well, he should just know, you know, I always go, Okay, let’s, let’s take the man out of the equation for just a second here, and realize that you are actually creating a situation where most likely you’re going to get let down. Yeah, right. So you’re actually hurting yourself by assuming that he should just know because most likely he doesn’t just know, and then you’re going to be disappointed.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 53:21
And I’ve seen it from both ends, right, like but this person should just know, and again, you it’s coming from your experience, so from your experience, maybe everybody would know, but this individual is somebody that you know outside of your previous experiences. So I again, I cannot know what I don’t know, and I cannot assume that you know what you don’t know.

Kevin Anthony 53:41
You know, at 50 years of age, I now automatically assume no one knows anything. If I want them to know, I have to tell them.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 53:51
I appreciate that.

Kevin Anthony 53:54
That includes me sometimes. Okay, let’s see what else I got on here. And we covered that. We covered that. Oh, okay, here’s a good one. What about a man, a man’s tendency to always want to fix a woman’s problems? What’s, what’s the problem with that?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 54:15
I mean, we can go to the stereotype of meaning, right? But it’s, again, that preamble, if I am telling you something because I’m frustrated the moment you give me a solution to a problem that I didn’t ask you to fix, now I am going to latch my frustration onto your solution, right, and I’m going to be defending my problem. So instead of giving the solution, you can ask, Would you be open to feedback? Right? I had a boyfriend, this was a while back and he was complaining to me that his sister would give him problems and he would give her solutions, and she would always defend the problem and get frustrated with him.

And he said, when I ask people when I talk to people. I don’t like I wouldn’t get mad at them if they only gave me solutions. So I said, Are you sure? He said, Yes. So for the next two or three days, every time that he would vent to me, I would immediately give him a solution to his problem, and he got really frustrated with me. And I said, I often give you the space to vent, and then I ask you, what do you think about this? Or would you want feedback? But when I just give you a solution, it’s frustrating because you don’t feel heard. So here then ask.

Kevin Anthony 55:35
That was great. Those were the major questions I wanted to I wanted to get in before we ran out of time, so I appreciate you doing the lightning round with me. I love it. I might start doing that from now on in the show when I have a bunch of questions that I didn’t get a chance to ask. All right, so I want to give you a space if there are any last things that you want to say or share with the audience, and also some space to tell people where they can find you, the work that you do, your book, all of that.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 56:07
Okay. So there’s one thing that I can say, I love the IEP model. I work with it a lot, but I always tell my clients one of the first coping strategies is gratitude, right? Sometimes we are in a confrontational space at the moment that our partners open their mouths, our entire body contracts because we’re waiting for a fight. But if I don’t know if my person is going to tell me thank you or blip here, that ambiguity can help classical conditioning, right? So when we don’t know if we’re able to like, say thank you. One is acknowledging that all the things that the other person is doing are not empty Thank you. But if I’m gonna win something worthy of criticism with criticism when he’s worthy of gratitude, just say thank you. It can be very helpful. Why are we fighting? You can find it on Amazon, have both print or ebook. You can find information on me at www dot advocate to create.com and two is the number two, I will be having some workshops that I’m going to be doing, or video trainings on the IEP coming soon at advocate2create.teachable.com,

Kevin Anthony 57:27
Awesome. And the link for your website advocate to create will be in the description, so just go look for it there. And you know, I personally, first of all, I’m a big fan of hard copy books, so I suggest that people get hard copy books, but, there’s another reason why I think people should get the hard copy on this is because if you, if you do go through it, you’ll see that there’s lots of spaces to write things in. It’s a workbook as much as it is an information book. And so you just, you can’t really do that with the e-book version of it. And you might, you might want to use these worksheets more than once, and I know how it is. Like, if I’m having a conversation and I’m like, oh, we need some help. We need a resource. I’m probably not going to go get my computer and go find where I put that e-book somewhere on my hard drive. Like, I’m just going to go to the bookshelf and go this. We need this.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 58:24
I agree.

Kevin Anthony 58:26
I agree. So that’s my personal recommendation. All right, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge and your wisdom, and you really did give the listeners some really great strategies that they can literally use, like right now, like today, at lunchtime, you know, this afternoon, this evening, whatever, in their communication with their partners. And while we are we’re talking primarily about communication between partners. These skills also apply to any communication that you’re having that could be business partners, that could be friends, that could be even with your kids to some extent, right?

Dr. Patricia Timerman 59:07
Yeah, it is indiscriminate of relationship, even the IEP currency exchange I have both for loved-based relationships and non-love-based relationships, that we can use with our employees or employers and I work on Korea, yeah.

Kevin Anthony 59:21
All right. Well, thank you one more time for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge and wisdom.

Dr. Patricia Timerman 59:26
Thank you for having me. This is awesome.

Kevin Anthony 59:30
All right, everybody, that’s all the time I have for this episode, and I will see you next week.

I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoyed this show, subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with your friends, and for more free exclusive content, join me in the passion vault at https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. That’s https://www.kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault/. Thanks for listening and remember, as Celine used to say, you’re amazing!