High emotional intelligence is a must! Urging marriage, having children... Psychology tells you how to communicate when you go home for the Spring Festival

The Spring Festival is approaching, and young people always have conflicting feelings about returning home. Although seeing long-lost family members can heal the mood, as the saying goes, every family has its own problems, and for many families, this problem must include those "difficult" relatives.

How is your work? Do you have a partner? ... Sometimes dealing with these relatives is more torturous than working overtime. If you often encounter people who offend you verbally during the Spring Festival, it is very likely that you have encountered a "difficult personality".

Are you always "offended" by your elders at home during the Spring Festival?

Beware of "difficult personality"

Researchers from the University of Georgia combined multiple scales to study and analyze what characteristics are contained in the personality of "difficult" people. The researchers recruited 532 participants and tested them in multiple dimensions. The results showed that these "difficult" people often have some fixed personality traits, mainly including: cold, arrogant, aggressive, unable to trust others, manipulative, domineering, adventurous, etc.

During the Spring Festival, chatting with people who have the above personality traits can be a huge mental challenge. If you feel that your relatives and friends are difficult to deal with, you need to set reasonable expectations in advance before entering into a conversation with such people. Make sure you really understand that "all this is caused by his or her personality traits, not the current communication."

At the same time, you can also appropriately convey your experience to the other party. You can clearly tell him/her "I don't like you doing this" or "This sentence offends me." It should be noted that since these people generally lack empathy, you may be ignored in the process of communicating these ideas, and it is difficult to obtain timely positive effects.

The conflict may be due to "misunderstanding"

Beware of defensive listening

Of course, sometimes relatives and friends just ask about your living conditions in good faith, without intending to offend you, but you speculate that they have something else to say, for example, when they ask about your living conditions in Beijing, you suspect that they are trying to compare with you, or even look down on you in their hearts. This situation belongs to "defensive listening".

Defensive Listening is the "wrong way of listening" that is least likely to be detected by the listener himself. In many cases, it is an instinctive self-protection. Defensive listeners firmly believe that what they hear is the truth, which can easily lead to misunderstandings and damage relationships.

Therefore, when you go home and chat during the Spring Festival, if you find yourself in the following states, it is a sign that you have fallen into "defensive listening". For example: when listening to others talking, it seems that there is a voice in your heart that keeps saying, "I didn't" and "It's not like that", etc.; try to find out which of the other person's words are accusing you and which are hurting you; always feel that the other person "has something else to say", and feel that you can hear the "subtext" behind his words; the other person will repeatedly clarify to you that he is just expressing his views and suggestions, and has no other intentions, please don't mind, don't have other ideas, etc.

It is not difficult to see that when entering this state, people's focus is no longer on the content of the communication itself, but on being alert to the other party's word by word in order to identify the attacks and damage caused by the other party, etc.

Defensive listening usually occurs in "highly sensitive groups". They are highly sensitive to the details of life, and because of this, they are easily over-stimulated by external information. In other words, they are more likely to notice possible attacks and accusations in the words of others, and sometimes even over-interpret some language and actions, which makes them feel that they are always under attack from others.

If you are a "highly sensitive group", it is easy to engage in "defensive listening" and misunderstand the care of your elders when you go home for the Spring Festival as attack and sarcasm. At this time, you might as well remind yourself to consciously focus on the objective factual part of the other person's words, rather than the judgment and evaluation part. Although it is not easy, you can form a habit through deliberate practice.

How to effectively deal with relatives who "urge marriage" and "urge children"

Of course, sometimes even if your relatives have no ill intentions, being frequently urged to get married and have children is a terrible experience. Since it is difficult to change their minds, if you want to deal with your parents and relatives during the New Year, you have to use some roundabout strategies.

When they say "It's time to get married", you must express your determination to get married: "Yes, yes, I'm anxious too, but I just can't find anyone." This kind of feedback is "empathetic communication", which is a good way of "joining if you can't beat it" and can easily resolve conflicts.

At the same time, you can also show your own vulnerability and helplessness - "It's not that I don't want to get married, it's just that it's too difficult to find a suitable partner now." Showing some conflicts in marriage at the right time and revealing your own vulnerability of "It's not that I don't want to get married, but the reality is too cruel" is also an effective way to bring people closer together.

Finally, please believe that parents love us. Urging them to get married is just a means. The ultimate goal is to make their children happy. I hope that when you go home for the Spring Festival, you can find a good communication mentality and have a warm and pleasant holiday.

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Author: Tang Yicheng, Deputy Secretary-General of the Psychology Popularization Committee of the Chinese Psychological Society

Editor: Guru