GIVE More to Your Relationships with Effective Communication

Do you have trouble starting or maintaining relationships with others, whether it be a romantic relationship, a relationship with a coworker, or friends and family? Today, we're going to discuss the GIVE skill. GIVE is part of DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy, and helps with relationship effectiveness.

Relationship effectiveness is required in all of our interactions with others. It doesn't matter if it's with the wait staff at a restaurant or our nearest and dearest family member.

While we may not weigh these relationships equally, we do want to consider how we want others to feel about us after an interaction. If the waitress forgets to add cheese to my grits as I requested, there are different ways I can go about getting my objective met. We've all seen someone yell at another person over a seemingly minor mistake. We've also seen others respectfully assert themselves in the same scenario. Both can lead to getting cheese on your grits. The former might just mean you get a side of spit as well.

Maybe you've noticed that you're a little too harsh with your best friend or that you're sometimes dismissive of your grandparents. The GIVE skill, used in combination with other communication skills you may have, is great for appropriately prioritizing your interactions with others. It will help make sure that you're acting in a way that allows others to feel good about their interactions with you.

G: be Gentle

The G in GIVE is for being gentle. Being gentle refers to being respectful and nice in your demeanor with others. The old adage of "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" is the trick here.

This might be my deep southern roots showing (I have already mentioned cheese grits in this podcast), but being hospitable towards others has its advantages. In general, people will respond more favorably to positivity than they will to your harshness.

We have four main objectives with our gentleness: no attacks, no judgments, no threats, and no disrespect.

Let’s start with no attacks. This means that we aren’t making any verbal low blows, throwing objects, or physical attacks.

With no judgments, we are avoiding character attacks, name-calling, and put-downs, both overt and implied. You might be wondering how a put-down can be implied. We can imply things not only through our word choices but through our tone of voice. Let's practice! Take the sentence, "Have a nice day," a say it with a warm tone, a neutral tone, and a sarcastic or mean tone. (If you really want to engage, leave me a voicemail with your practice sentences and let me know what you discovered!) I can tell you with full confidence, it's not just about what you say, it's how you say it! Finally, with no judgments, you want to avoid guilt-tripping others. It's a tried and true unhealthy tactic used by...

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