"I Feel Like You Don't Listen" Is Not a Feeling

Big thoughts, quick talk, flip facts, tick talk, level up your mind, every single line. Hello, how are you? Welcome. My name is Ryan McLaughlin. And this is another episode of Anatomy of Conflict Podcast. Today, we will dig into what I see over and over again in Mediation and in Personal Life, which is, I think the perfect overlap, which is, I feel statements that are misused.

So if you stick with me to the end of this episode, what you will get is an understanding of why and how I feel statements are misused and therefore ineffective and how you then can use them correctly and effectively. The exact breakdown, we're going to go through multiple different studies that confirm why and how to use an effective I feel statement. And this is basically like, if you want to de-escalate conflict, if you use I feel statements correctly, it's a major tool in your tool belt. If you misuse them, it's a major disruptor.

Okay, so that's what's at stake. So here are a couple of take-home points that we're going to, we're going to flesh out. One, and this is the litmus test. If you can swap I feel for I think an ascendant still works, then it was never a feeling to begin with. So that's the litmus test and we'll get into that. And we've all probably heard this as well relating to the Gottmins, but I'm going to, I'm going to preview it for you guys here at the outset anyway.

So Gottmins can predict your divorce in three minutes, right, and we'll go over this study. And the tell tale, the sign, the indicator, the litmus test isn't yelling, it's how you open, right? Because they can tell so quickly. I think it was six minutes, they can tell. We've been three in six minutes. It's how you open.

And so if you say something like, I feel like you never helped me out, I feel like you never helped me out in the dishes, I feel like you never helped me out with the kids, I feel like you're never really present for me in the way I want you to be. That's a death sentence according to the Gottmins. And it's dressed up as vulnerability. And because I see this so often, I hear these words cascade out of my own mouth, I hear them in my house, I hear them with mediation clients. It's worth just like our previous episode, which if you haven't listened, check it out. The one where we dissect apologies and the anatomy of an apology, which you should go check it out.

I think this is really worth diving into just to focus ourselves. So if that said, let's dive in. Okay. So let's paint the scene, right? Picture a couple sitting across from me in mediation. Let's suppose it's a man and woman. Woman takes a breath, like she's been coached or prepped by a therapist, and maybe she has, I don't know, but she's really trying and she says, you know, I really feel like you never prioritize our family, or you don't prioritize our family as much as I'd like. And in turn, he folds his arms, he crosses the arms, he stiffens his lip, he furrows his brow, right? And I can see that she, she was going there, she was trying with the feelings statement.

She said, she said the exact, basically what happened is she said the exact words in the wrong order. She thinks she's being vulnerable. She intends to be, to be vulnerable, sort of, and what he hears is an attack. He hears an indictment, and here's the thing, every self-help book, every Instagram reel, every therapist, and couples therapist says to begin with, I feel, and so she's doing that part right. She did exactly what she said, what she was told to do, so why did it blow up? Because I feel like you never prioritize family, or I feel like you don't prioritize family, is not a feeling, it's not a feeling on the feeling, though, it's an attack.

It is a prostitution, and just inserting the two words I feel as a preface, they don't change that. And so today we're going to dissect and study exactly why, with neuroscience, with couples research, and in fact, with a very memorable tranche law, one of the studies has a tranche law, so we're going to talk about that. Guys, this podcast is brought to you by Flannel People Mediation, Flannel People Mediation is a virtual mediation practice, where we started with divorce folks, and now we are expanding into the commercial world of business as well, because the through line is people and emotions, and oftentimes money is a cloak, or a service layer, and underneath it's just people and emotions.

So if you're having a conflict from workplace to divorce, reach out, flannelpeoplemediation.com, where you can have a free 30 minute console. Okay, back to the show. We're going to go through a number of studies that really look at this from multiple different angles. Okay, so study one is the Rosenberg diagnostic. You guys can Google Marshall Rosenberg, but what the take home here is the swap test. And arguably, if there's one thing you take from this podcast, the episode, it could be this, which is to say, if you can replace, I feel with, I think, and send it still make sense, you don't have a feeling.

So for example, I feel sad, okay, that's a feeling, I feel sad, I feel small. That's also a feeling, I feel, I feel really lonely also feeling, I, if we replace that now with, I think, I think small, I think lonely, I think, like, no, those are actual feelings. No, I feel like you never watch the dishes, if we replace it with, I think, I think that you never watch the dishes, right? It's the same thing. It's, I'm stating that you don't watch the dishes, right? We can just cut the two words I think, and I feel, and the sentence would still stand.

And so that's the litmus test. It's what he calls, faux feelings, or not really feelings, or using, I feel, which is great and then we're following up with not feelings. We might say, you know, and here are some examples. I feel abandoned, I feel attacked, I feel betrayed, I feel disrespected, I feel manipulated, I feel unappreciated, I feel unsupported. Why are these all faux feelings? Because they are all interpretations of someone else's behavior, they are all about the other. And if you noticed about our apology episode, the whole point of an apology is to acknowledge the other person, right, rather than center yourself.

And here the, the, the opposite is true with the I feel statement, we want to center our own feelings that we're experiencing and not center the other person. So real feelings, sadness, being scared, angry, being lonely and being ashamed, they center you, the speaker, the person.

And so this is a, this is a great line from the study here. And I quote, faux feelings are trojan horses, it looks like vulnerability, but inside they're full of soldiers, accusations that the other person has to defend against. So language, language, language, now you might be asking like, okay, do we have any research to support like the effect of this, right?

Okay, we're pointing out the language, what is the brain do with these words? So let's move on to our second study, which is we're going to look at a brain scan. We're going to ask the question, does your mingla know the difference when you use these two constructions? Okay. What? And there's two studies, both by Lieberman, one in 27, one in 2007, one in 2018, that if you're not familiar with Lieberman's work on affect labeling is really worth the deep button dive. If you Google Lieberman and affect labeling, like if there was five things that I would say are worth noting for for conflict resolution, one of them is affect labeling, which is to say, and let's get into it right here.

Basically the thesis here is, well, let's go through the study. Lieberman did an FMRI study with 30 adults, and he showed them emotional faces, and then he had two groups. So he'd show them an angry face and side face, whatever. The first group, he would say, namely a motion that you're seeing, right?

So obviously an angry face, say the word angry, and the second group, if you saw an angry face, he would say like point to the person who's angry, and if it would be Bob, you'd say Bob, right? So you just said a name. You wouldn't state the emotion. Now the finding is that when you name the emotion, your experience of it decreases.

So there's something in the brain about if you're feeling sad or if you're observing sadness, if you're observing, like naming that experience decreases it, okay? Decreases the intensity, the valence of that experience. So I feel disrespected, doesn't tag a feeling from the speaker.

So it's not reducing the feeling, reducing the latency of the speaker at all. The person's amygdala who is speaking, who says, I feel disrespected, is still hot and fiery, and what we want to do is move them from amygdala fight or flight to a calm, prefrontal cortex state. And the way to do that is to name the emotion that you yourself are feeling.

So in other words, this study Lieberman's work in affect labeling shows us, tells us that when we use I feel statements, we the speaker receive regulatory benefits, right? It is like saying, okay, this is Lieberman's metaphor, that when you name a feeling you're experiencing, it's like hitting the brakes on that particular feeling. It's like slowing down the intensity a little bit.

So what does this have to do with the I feel versus I think on our previous study, well, your prefrontal cortex, what experiences the emotions, doesn't care that you started with I feel, it's listening for the very next words. And feeling disrespected isn't a feeling word, right? It doesn't activate the, oh, that matches my feeling and I'm going to feel calmer now. I'm going to release a little bit of that tension.

But if you say I feel scared, that does name the emotion and reduce the intensity. Okay, so when we name our emotion, we reduce the intensity of that for ourselves. In other words, there are benefits for the speaker of the I feel statement. Okay, let's move on to Gottman's because I alluded to it earlier and I want to make good on it.

So the Gottman's basically say that, hey, the first sentence or the first few minutes of interaction, we can predict everything. They studied 124 newlyweds, videotaped their conflict discussions, coded the first three minutes and followed them all for six years. And among the 17 couples who divorced, there was an open, like the way the Gottmans were able to predict with 97% certainty who these 17 couples were, was that in the opening few minutes, there was more negativity, overwhelmingly more negativity. And one thing that emerged as sort of a first principle here is that when Gottman observed these harsh startups, that was a key tell of these overwhelming negative traits.

And so what is a harsh startup? It's something like an I feel statements are key culprits. I feel like, so be like notice here, right? What follows? Is it a true emotion on the feeling meal, a true feeling, or could you replace, I feel what I think? I feel like you never listen. It's still a harsh startup. It still blames. It's still not a feeling. It's still not about the person who's speaking, okay?

So this is predictive of divorce. It's corrosive in relationships. It's one of the tells. It is a toxic thing to avoid according to the Gottman's research. And again, like what's interesting is, they didn't need an hour, they only needed three minutes. They coded the interactions and they found that those who headed for divorce weren't necessarily screaming, but they were having these negative experiences embedded in their interactions. Number four, this is an interesting, interesting, interesting one, which is that to the extent that you're sophisticated, you as a person, and can distinguish between different emotions, it benefits you tremendously in many domains in life.

So this is like a longevity hack. So if you can be self-aware, and you can distinguish between specific emotions, like disappointed versus anxious versus ashamed, right? If you have that level of precision versus just say, I feel bad, I feel upset, just sort of these blanket ones, then you have measurably better life outcomes across multiple domains.

So here's the three bangers from this particular study. On high stress days, and this is called low versus high granularity, the ability for you to with granularity, with specificity with precision to identify your emotions, high granularity people on high stress days, drink less. There's less need for them to self-medicate. People with major depression, or who rank higher in depression scales, have less ability to distinguish between negative emotions, which is to say that part of depression is a collapse of the emotional vocabulary. This is kind of why I want to get a feeling wheel tattooed on my chest or on my back, right? In all color.

Additionally, third, high granularity people are buffered against aggression when provoked. So AB study, you kind of poke and prod someone, and the high granularity people have, like that vocabulary, translates into more resiliency, less likely to freak out. So if we're going to connect that study to this episode, it's I, if we take the example of I feel disrespected, I feel disrespected isn't just imprecise language, it's low granularity language, and low granularity predicts drinking more, lashing out more and being more aggressive, hitting more, staying more depressed, according to these three studies.

So it's not merely that the difference between I feel bad on one hand and I feel ashamed. It's not just like, it's not just poetics and semantics and sparkly language, right? It's a clinical predictor that the people who can name precisely what they're feeling are the ones essentially who thrive more, if we're to, if we're to still it down. Um, should we do two more?

Yeah, let's do two more, I think there's both really important. You guys, well done for standing with me, this is thick, but I think it goes to words matter, they really do, on multiple different fronts. So if this episode's helpful for you, if it's dense, listen to it again, share it with the friends, start a conversation, share it with your partner. If this was interesting so far, leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts, that would mean a lot, that would help the show grow and get validity, but start conversations and make it something that's actionable for you.

Okay. Um, fifth, this is the tarantula, so this is the beginning we'd be talking about a tarantula. This is Kerkanski, Lieberman and Krant from 2012, and what they found here essentially is that, um, when we say, and we name our emotions, um, we, as we mentioned earlier with Lieberman, we downregulate that physiological response, right?

So, um, the group who can identify their fear in the moment, so for example, in this study, um, they took 88, uh, adults who were afraid of spiders, spider phobic. And then they did live, uh, tarantula exposure. And then they had, um, four different groups that they were testing, um, one was just exposing them to the spider and then measuring a couple weeks later, how well they did with another exposure, um, measuring physiological and arousal response.

So you're like, show them the spider now, show them the spider a week later and just you did the exposure help. The next group is a distraction, um, like testing, like showing them a picture of a fuzzy, like, like a clown or something, um, and the other two groups are the one that's interesting. The first group is where you just say, say how you feel when you see the spider and most people are like, I feel fucking freaked out, right? I feel terrified. I feel super nervous. And the other people, um, that they want to reframe basically, which is to say, like, they want to try and trick themselves that the spider isn't scarier dangerous.

So they say, the spider's not scary. The spider's not dangerous. I don't have to be afraid. And, um, what do they find? Not surprisingly, the group that used the affect labeling per our discussions earlier about Lieberman had the most reduced physiological fear response. And in fact, the more emotion words they used, the better the outcome. Guys, this is crazy to me.

So if you're a spider full, look, if you're going through a tricky situation, a scary situation, a humiliating situation, uh, whenever the situation, if you can like journal about it, put words to that experience somehow, those feelings, you will reduce the internal physiological response, physiological felt lived, um, feeling set that you're experiencing. This should be a weight what moment for sure. This should be, um, because I think this runs counter to much of sort of the self-help culture, which is that you have to sort of manifest a little bit and tell yourself a positive story if you're in a negative place.

And this study says that naming the feeling you're having right now far beats, just trying to reframe and be and trying to like create a manifest or tell yourself a positive mantra that you're not feeling. Um, so for example, uh, if you say I feel scared, that outperforms. Hey, this is no big deal.

Okay. So I feel like in like the practical upshot here is in conflict, we're constantly telling people to reframe, um, try to see the other person's perspective, for example. Um, and the spider says that the spider study, excuse me, says that that's not the first move. The first move is to say I feel scared for your own physical, again, for you, the speaker physiological benefits.

Now, um, let's turn in this last section. Now, it should be fairly obvious that if you say I feel attacked by you, the attack by you part is really an attack on the other person and it's going to land this such. Here, I want to identify a study and this is our last study by Kubani in 1982 and Rodgers in 2018 that talks about pronouns and how much they matter.

So here, you statements like you don't do the dishes, you are never listened to me. You, uh, annoy the shit out of me, you statements, a vogue, as we could expect, antagonistic responses, more so than I statements that express vulnerable emotions. I feel sad versus you annoy the hell out of me, right? Like they land very, very differently.

And so the best, highest rated opening language in conflict is I language with acknowledged perspective. I understand why you might feel this way. So you're giving them an olive branch. Hey, yo, bro, I understand that you're pissed, that you're angry, that you're sad. Um, and I feel this way. I feel I'm acknowledging you and I feel, I feel like a shame, right?

So you versus I, you versus I in a couple study that was done in 2005, the more you use you pronouns, generally speaking, the worst your marital health and the higher incidence of negative behavior, we pronouns predicted better outcomes. So words matter like these are little, little things that make huge differences. And if we go back to the construct of I feel right, the word pronoun I is doing some work, the word feel is queuing to us that a feeling should come that centers us as the speaker.

Okay. So if we say I feel like you don't care. Um, that sentence only has six words. It starts with an I feel statement, but the only word that matters there is the you and lands with the person as an accusation, which it is. Okay, that's a wrap on this whole thing. Let's review. Let's try and consolidate really quick.

So here's the recipe step one, run the swap test. If you can switch, if you're going to say I feel and just switch it, if you can, if you replace, I feel with I think and the Senate still works, try again. You're not naming a feeling it's a complaint. Step two, try and go smaller and more granular. Don't say, I feel this respected, say, I feel sad, scared, lonely, ashamed, angry. These are actual words that for you, the speaker will flip the switch in your prefrontal cortex. Um, step three, stay with that feeling. Don't try and immediately like talk, talk, talk, explain it, justify it. Like a pin it on the other person. I feel scared can be and should be a complete sentence.

And from the spider study, when we name that, like that naming in is in and of itself a regulation and you don't have to do anything else with it yet. That's the beauty of it. And I think that's the trap that we as Westerners, we as humans, we as problem solvers, me, maybe someone in the conflict management business, we're always trying to solve like, what's the solution? And I, I as a person and as a practitioner, go too quickly from. I feel sad to what am I going to do about it? What's the next step? What's the feeling? Like I'm always in next step mode.

And so in this case, I would slow down. I would need to slow down and stay with that feeling. Step four, when you're, when you're ready to connect the feeling that you have to the other person, because many of the times that's, that's why we're in conflict with another person, right? I feel scared when, use we language, not you language. Even if it's some, if it's semantics, use we not you because it outperforms. I feel scared when we go quiet for days and when we don't talk to each other and when we don't connect, sounds a lot different than I feel scared when you leave me, you abandon me, you go out with your buddies and miss that and the other thing.

So guys, this is four studies, one FMRI machine. This is a tarantula. This is the Gauntmans and they all say the same thing. The word, the words after you say, I feel those are the working words. Those are the golden words to pay attention to. If you can get them right, not only does your brain calm down, the other person's defensiveness drops and the conversation can actually go somewhere. And if you get it wrong, you're three minutes into a Gauntman divorce prediction. This has been really awesome episode of juice on squeezing around the words. I feel a much needed reminder for me. I wanted to pin the science to my observations from doing lots of mediations where this happens. My name is Ryan McLaughlin.

This is an enemy of conflict. I will see you guys next episode. And again, if you loved it, liked it, thought it intriguing, replay it, share it with a friend. Please give us a five-star rating if you thought it was worth five stars. Give us that rating and we'll see you next time. Facts, TikTok, level up your mind, every single line.