I do like the “How To Talk” book and definitely use those techniques on my kids (“Oh, you’re very upset, you’re sad that we ran out of red peppers...”—me 20 minutes ago) though I haven’t successfully started the habit of using it on adults. (Last time I tried I was accused of being condescending, guess I haven’t quite gotten it down yet.) “Nonviolent Communication” and other sources hit that theme too.
…But I don’t think that’s quite it. That would be “positive reframing” without “magic dial”. It’s not just about acknowledging that the negative thought exists to address certain needs, it’s about making sure that those needs continue to be addressed. “Magic dial” is one easy way to do so—if the negative thought addresses a set of needs, then fine, keep thinking the negative thought, and think it often enough to address those needs, and no more often than that. But the other part is, by calling out the needs to awareness, and thinking about how they can be addressed, you might come up with other solutions that don’t involve thinking the negative thought.
I also have difficulties in applying this techniques on adults, of the “Me mad?No shit Sherlock!” kind. I’m not fluent with it yet, but what I’ve observed is that the more sincere I am, and the more my tone matches the tone of the other person, the better the results. I think this explains big chunk of “don’t use that tone of voice on me!” responses I’ve got in my life, which I used to find strange [as I personally pay much more attention to the content of the text/speech, not the tone/style/form], but recently I’ve realized that this can be quite a rational response from someone who reads the cues from both content AND form, and seeing a mismatch, decides which of the two is easier to forge, and which one is the “real” message [perhaps based on their experience, in which controlling emotions is more difficult].
Also, I agree that the “paraphrase the emotions” only maps to the “positive reframing” part. In my eyes the analogy extended also beyond this single step into the pattern of using this discharge step as a necessary step to use some other rationally obvious thing, which you really think should work on its own in theory (like the “Classic CBT”-ish self-talk), but in practice you need to prepare the ground for it.
Indeed there seems to be no analog of “Magical dial” in the “How to talk..” approach. There are some fragments of the book though which teach how to extract the goals/needs/fears of the child and then help them construct a solution which achieves those goals/needs, but this is more like a part of the analog of “classic CPT-ish self talk”-step I think. (In particular I don’t recall the book saying things like “do the same stuff just less intensively”, so yeah, this part is new and interesting). For example today I told my son, that “So you get mad each time we come to pick you up from your friend right in the moment when you’ve finally figured out some cool way to play with each other, and this is mega-frustrating, I know. Sure, one way to handle this would be to find yet another way to express anger which doesn’t hurt mommy, say punch a pillow, stump, or tear paper, BUT I think that your feeling of being mad is actually trying to tell you something important: that you like your friend very much, like spending time with him, like playing, and hate to be surprised by abruptly having to stop. I don’t think we should expect you to feel this each time over and over again each day we pick you up, and try to somehow manage this—how about instead we give you a handwatch, teach you how time works, and let you know in advance when we gonna pick you up? That should eliminate the root cause, not just the effect.”.
I do like the “How To Talk” book and definitely use those techniques on my kids (“Oh, you’re very upset, you’re sad that we ran out of red peppers...”—me 20 minutes ago) though I haven’t successfully started the habit of using it on adults. (Last time I tried I was accused of being condescending, guess I haven’t quite gotten it down yet.) “Nonviolent Communication” and other sources hit that theme too.
…But I don’t think that’s quite it. That would be “positive reframing” without “magic dial”. It’s not just about acknowledging that the negative thought exists to address certain needs, it’s about making sure that those needs continue to be addressed. “Magic dial” is one easy way to do so—if the negative thought addresses a set of needs, then fine, keep thinking the negative thought, and think it often enough to address those needs, and no more often than that. But the other part is, by calling out the needs to awareness, and thinking about how they can be addressed, you might come up with other solutions that don’t involve thinking the negative thought.
I also have difficulties in applying this techniques on adults, of the “Me mad?No shit Sherlock!” kind. I’m not fluent with it yet, but what I’ve observed is that the more sincere I am, and the more my tone matches the tone of the other person, the better the results. I think this explains big chunk of “don’t use that tone of voice on me!” responses I’ve got in my life, which I used to find strange [as I personally pay much more attention to the content of the text/speech, not the tone/style/form], but recently I’ve realized that this can be quite a rational response from someone who reads the cues from both content AND form, and seeing a mismatch, decides which of the two is easier to forge, and which one is the “real” message [perhaps based on their experience, in which controlling emotions is more difficult].
Also, I agree that the “paraphrase the emotions” only maps to the “positive reframing” part. In my eyes the analogy extended also beyond this single step into the pattern of using this discharge step as a necessary step to use some other rationally obvious thing, which you really think should work on its own in theory (like the “Classic CBT”-ish self-talk), but in practice you need to prepare the ground for it.
Indeed there seems to be no analog of “Magical dial” in the “How to talk..” approach. There are some fragments of the book though which teach how to extract the goals/needs/fears of the child and then help them construct a solution which achieves those goals/needs, but this is more like a part of the analog of “classic CPT-ish self talk”-step I think. (In particular I don’t recall the book saying things like “do the same stuff just less intensively”, so yeah, this part is new and interesting). For example today I told my son, that “So you get mad each time we come to pick you up from your friend right in the moment when you’ve finally figured out some cool way to play with each other, and this is mega-frustrating, I know. Sure, one way to handle this would be to find yet another way to express anger which doesn’t hurt mommy, say punch a pillow, stump, or tear paper, BUT I think that your feeling of being mad is actually trying to tell you something important: that you like your friend very much, like spending time with him, like playing, and hate to be surprised by abruptly having to stop. I don’t think we should expect you to feel this each time over and over again each day we pick you up, and try to somehow manage this—how about instead we give you a handwatch, teach you how time works, and let you know in advance when we gonna pick you up? That should eliminate the root cause, not just the effect.”.