The 7 Elements of Positive Communication

In addition to the LOVE communication skills taken from Motivational Interviewing, CRAFT prescribes positive communication skills as additional communication tools for your toolbox. You might be thinking: “wouldn’t that be nice…to just be positive!” But CRAFT breaks it down into seven elements, all within your reach. These elements will improve any kind of communication, but they are especially useful for making requests. What we have found with these seven elements is they are both straightforward and difficult to do, so practice is important.

“Positive communication” does not mean only saying nice things and avoiding conflict. Here’s what it does mean: (For examples and more explanation, see our chapter on Positive Communication in Beyond Addiction.)

Be Brief

Most people say more than necessary when they haven’t planned it in advance, especially when nervous or angry. Try to hone in on your central request ahead of time, and stick to it. Script, edit, and rehearse what you want to say as concisely as possible. Extraneous words can drown out your core message (as in the “waa waa waa” of Charlie Brown’s teacher).

Be Specific

Vague requests are easy to ignore or misunderstand, and are often difficult to translate into concrete behavior. In contrast, referring to specific behaviors instead of thoughts or feelings makes change observable, measurable, and reinforceable. For instance, instead of telling your child to “be more responsible,” specify a behavior you want to see more of: “On school days, I want you to get up when your alarm goes off.”

Be Positive

Where “positive” entails describing what you want, instead of what you don’t want. This shifts the framing from critical and complaining to supportive and doable, and ties into positive reinforcement strategies, since it’s easier to reward someone for doing something—a concrete, verifiable thing—than for not doing something. Being positive in this way decreases defensiveness and rebellion and promotes motivation. Framed positively, “Stop coming home late” becomes “Come home by curfew time.”

Label Your Feelings

Kept brief and in proportion, a description of your emotional reaction to the problem at hand can help elicit empathy and consideration from your child. For best results, state your feelings in a calm, nonaccusatory manner. If your feelings are very intense, it can be a good strategy to tone them down. So if you were feeling “furious and terrified” you might say “frustrated and worried.”

Offer an Understanding Statement

The more the other person believes that you “get” why he is acting the way he is, the less defensive he will be and the more likely to hear you and oblige. Plus, trying to understand your child’s perspective builds your empathy, which will help the relationship.

Take Partial Responsibility

Sharing in a problem, even a tiny piece of the problem, decreases defensiveness and promotes collaboration. It shows your child that you’re interested in solving, not blaming. Accepting partial responsibility does not mean taking the blame or admitting fault; it communicates “We’re in this together.”

Offer to Help

Especially when phrased as a question, an offer to help can communicate non-blaming, problem-solving support. Try asking, “Would it help if…?” Or simply, “How can I help?” A little goes a long way to improve communication and generate ideas. (“Yeah, if you texted me a reminder, that would help.”)

There are classic communication traps you can recognize a mile away… if you know what to look for. Here are some of the most common.

The Information Trap: If only he knew the facts he would see things differently and change. Information can be helpful, especially when it fills a gap. It is less helpful to tell your child something he already knows. When you do have fresh information, offering it in a “sandwich” as you learned in Section 3 will maximize the chances that it gets across. But there are no magic words for change, so try to be patient. Improving the quality of your communication over time will help, as well as being a valuable change in and of itself.

The Lecture Trap: This is a deeper information trap. One sign that you have entered this trap is when you find yourself talking “at” your child about what you think he should do, what his problems are, what went wrong last week, and so on, rather than talking “with” him.

The Labeling Trap: Labels are not necessary for change, and at times get in the way. This trap results in a conversation being about labels and not behavior (“You’re an addict.” —“No, I’m not”).

The Blaming Trap: When you’re worried, frustrated, or sad about a situation, it is easy to get stuck in the blaming trap—who is at fault or who is to blame? This trap shuts down a conversation and backs your child’s motivation into a corner.The Taking-Sides Trap: If you take only one side of a discussion, it’s practically a set up for your child to take the other, and she may end up defending behaviors she actually feels ambivalent about. Instead of one side against the other you can be on the same side, the side of constructive conversation, considering different options together.

The Question-and-Answer Trap: Closed questions set off this trap and result in an interview, or worse, an interrogation (“Did you get high last night? Did you forget your phone? Did you do your homework?”). Open questions are more likely to steer your conversation to a productive exchange.

Helping with Actions

This section will cover a variety of critical tools for encouraging change in your child’s behavior and motivation. It follows “Helping with Self Care” and “Helping with Words” because the skills in those sections are the foundations of sustaining change and keeping things on track day-to-day. The tools in this section will help you understand motivation and how it is different for different people, how to reinforce new and positive behaviors as well as how to deal with negative behaviors, how to understand and allow for ambivalence in your child (and the sometimes jagged upward course of change), and very importantly, paying attention to collaboration with your co-parent.

How To Solve A Problem

We start this section with the topic of problem solving because that’s what you are facing! Your child’s substance use, as well as the ensuing problems with communication, behavior, friend choices, school performance, and emotional development (you name it!). We will discuss all of these issues, but as we start this process we want you to have a general strategy for approaching ANY problem.

CRAFT (among other behavioral approaches) sets out seven steps for solving problems.* This approach will take you beyond painful avoidance strategies and unreliable quick fixes to help you work through problems thoroughly and systematically. As you practice with these steps, try to apply (and give yourself credit for) what you already do well, and take the time you need to learn what would be useful that you don’t already know.

Define the problem as narrowly as you can.

Often what people take as “the problem” is actually many

smaller problems lumped together. No wonder they feel overwhelmed. When you describe a problem, be on the lookout for multiple problems embedded within your description, and tease them apart. The idea is to tackle one relatively discrete problem at a time. Solutions are more manageable with a series of smaller problems and you’ll feel more accomplished and optimistic as you get through each one.

Brainstorm possible solutions.

In this step, your task is to write down as many solutions as you

can think of, to foster a sense of possibility and give yourself some choice. Brainstorming is an open, free-for-all process of allowing every idea in the door as they come, to be sorted and refined later. Your inner critic will tend to dismiss ideas out of habit or fear; but some of these could be viable options if you gave them a chance. List without judging. Try not to rule out anything before you’ve written down every conceivable solution to your problem.

Eliminate unwanted suggestions.

Now that you have an exhaustive list of potential solutions, you can examine them more closely and cross out any that are unappealing. Eliminate options that you can’t actually imagine ever doing, have too many downsides, or seem unrealistic. If you end up crossing off every idea, then return to step 2 and brainstorm again.

Select one potential solution or goal.

Pick one solution that seems doable to you, that you can

see yourself trying this week. Hint: a doable goal is put in brief, simple, and positive terms (what you will do, not what you won’t do or haven’t been doing), is specific and measurable, reasonable and achievable, in your control, and involves skills you already have or are learning. (For a detailed discussion of goal setting, see Chapter 8 of our book, Beyond Addiction.)

Identify possible obstacles.

Next, identify potential obstacles that could get in the way of completing your task. By anticipating problems you can plan strategies for dealing with them. This can include specific, predictable obstacles as well as a more general awareness that unforeseen challenges may arise, which can lend you some emotional resilience in dealing with them.

Address each obstacle.

Design specific strategies to cope with each obstacle. Not just, “I’m sure I can deal with it,” but exactly how you will get past it and move forward.

See how things go.

After you’ve carried out your plan, evaluate the process… How did it go? Look at what went well and what was more challenging in the implementation. Did your strategies for dealing with obstacles work well? Did obstacles come up that you hadn’t predicted? Is there anything you would do differently next time? This is how you figure out what works and what doesn’t work for you.

Parent Collaboration

When a child struggles with substance or other behavior problems, communication often breaks down between the adults who love that child.* Most people struggle to not get defensive or lose their cool in situations they don’t understand or know how to control, and it’s not uncommon for parents to feel at wits’ end with each other when their child is doing risky, upsetting things. Disagreements are understandable. After all, misalignment can easily happen in the best of circumstances over lower-stakes issues like bedtime and vegetables; the more serious the issue, the more polarizing it can be. But helping depends in no small part on finding a way to collaborate with your co-parent (and anyone else involved in raising your child).

As you try to help your child change their relationship with substances, it will be important for every adult involved to give clear directions and consistent consequences (positive and negative). Change, even change for the better, is difficult and your child will feel ambivalent about it. It will be hard for her to make different friends, or not be high at parties, or leave earlier than other kids. The more ambivalent she is, the more important it is for you to make your expectations clear. Different expectations (explicit or implied) between you and your partner amount to mixed messages for your child.

Additionally, the more agreement you can reach with your partner, the less stressed you will each feel and the happier you will both be. And with less conflict and stress in general you can, in turn, be more positive with your child.

Alignment and collaboration with your partner doesn’t mean across-the-board, united-front agreement on “the party line,” especially with older children. Children over sixteen live in the adult world enough to know that uniform agreement is not realistic. Alignment can mean understanding what you agree on, what you don’t agree on, and what the “policy” is in any case (“Your father and I have a somewhat different feeling about this, but we’ve decided it’s important for you to be home by midnight”). You can acknowledge differences and still align your expectations.

Where are we going? What if it's true?

Marlene

 

Are we here as part of our journey through the cosmos? Will we connect with others to learn from them or to teach them, or maybe both? Many of our encounters will be brief; some may last a lifetime. What will you do today, in this present moment, to further your understanding of the human experience?

 

I wish you love, joy, and kindness throughout your journey.

Be well my friend; you and I have so much more to do.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one of those words that is easy to say and hard to do. So why should you forgive? You do it for yourself, to release the pain and memory that cannot be changed. It’s almost like lifting a 50 lb weight off your shoulders. Be quick to forgive others, as you would want them to quickly forgive you too. Kindness in action is an amazing event to witness and/or experience. Your heart feels happy, your faith in humanity is restored, you feel better and more compassionate than you did before. What other gift can you repay by passing it on to someone else? Kindness. The lack of coverage by the media about kindness in the world is heart-breaking to me. I believe that every day, stories of kindness and compassion should headline the news. Today’s story really moved my heart, and I hope it moves yours too. How Kindness Can Change Everything takes place in a hospital; a young girl will experience kindness she never even imagined. Show some kindness today – you never know what will happen. yeremiah@aol.com Yeremiah Hardt

Rent In The Cloud

White. The color white surrounds me like a blinding veil... white walls, white sheets, white door, white windows, white curtains... even the pipe connecting my bloodstream to the IV fluids is a strange dirty white-brown in color.

Sometimes I wonder when this white prison will open its doors and let me escape. Sometimes, I wake up, wondering whether I have already died and am now in the other world.

White... the color that once would have brought peace to me. White... the color of truth, of sacrifice. What truth holds any meaning to me any more? What sacrifice must I make in this life to ease the pains of my next one?

They move and speak-these strange, strange people... I am the silent watcher of their strangely listless, strangely rote-like motions. Though their attention is fixed on me, they seem not to notice me at all.

This was not the first time that the cold sting of a needle entered my flesh without my knowledge, without them telling me, piercing my body into pincer-like spasms of uncontrollable terror, making me shriek wildly, sobbing hysterically as the antibiotics entered my bloodstream-more of out of fear than of pain... and yet, perhaps, I should not speak so harshly. Perhaps... perhaps without these people, I might not have lived to speak my heart once more.

Even now, dreams of the rain crashing down from a disturbed, steel-grey heaven, pounding on my back like maces and seeming strangely vile-not like the first cool, purifying drops of rain that would send us into transports of delight after the scorching drought of summer-seeming as if it would dirty my body, not cleanse it.

This was not the life-giving rain that would draw forth the first tender green saplings from the dying earth and bring out the birds and animals and those of my kind from their dark shelters to populate the land once more.

These were not God's tears, raining down from his abode to purify the world of its sins-this was what had caused the deluge that would irreparably destroy the lives of more than a hundred thousand innocents who had all done little to deserve such an untimely death.

All around me, chaos reigns. I live that fateful evening once more, when I foolishly escaped the safety of my school and ventured out into the rain to return home... only then to wade through four hours of grey, foul-smelling water, the refuse from the gutters openly pouring out onto the streets... and the rain... the endless, torrential rain.

It was late evening when I finally staggered through my front door, only to collapse into a dead faint, my exhausted limbs not being able to handle the pain anymore, my wet clothes weighing me down, and a strange weakness beginning to spread through my body like a slow poison, lying latent... and which, upon striking out, led to my imprisonment in this white world I now lie alone and helpless in... a prisoner of my mind.

Leptospyrosis - the only word which my drugged brain is able to register. The rest of my thoughts are faint nothings, merely tapping against my consciousness like dying tendrils of sunlight straining to shine against a darkening evening sky-meaningless, insignificant.

How long I have been lying in this daze of unreality, I know not. My senses diminish to an infant's weakness... sights reduced to mere blurs of navy-blue-the uniform the nurses donned... smell-oh, the only smell that reaches me now strikes a shard of fear within me... the cold, metallic smell of the needle they will once again insert within the tender, throbbing veins of my upper palms... sounds reduced to mere howls and shrieks of meaningless uncertainty in the distance.

No more, no more!

This world of white strangely seems unreal no longer... one glance into those eyes and I am frozen, wondering who this new torturer was, wondering what fresh hell they had in store for me now.

What if my disease was incurable?

What if I would be crippled for life and would never be the one I had always dreamed to be?

What if... what if, what if - oh, he nears me now.

My heart bangs wildly in my chest, making me want to scream with the sudden onrush of tears and terror combining into a single knot inside me, wondering how they would hurt me now... wondering how they would hurt me forever, for the rest of my life.



He raises a hand. I feel the spasm of a flinch cross my face as he moves it towards me, but... but-what is he doing?

He is not going to hurt me. Those hands are stroking my hair, those warm brown eyes filled with all the sorrow of the world-never leaving my own.

"Brave girl... " he whispers - and his voice is a stream running over the black river-stones of the northern waters, the breath of the mountain winds against the fortresses of impenetrable white that surround them.

"Brave, brave girl... you were strong all through it, did you know that? You have been here for an entire week and are already recovering... "

I felt myself trembling, not even daring to let the tiny seed of hope he had planted burst into fruition.

"Then when can I go home?" I spoke slowly, enunciating all my words like a toddler struggling to speak a difficult sentence. My tongue suddenly felt too thick for my mouth. Strangely enough, I, who had always been known for my outspokenness, was silenced before this man.

For those brown eyes had warmed. "Soon, child. Very soon."

The stories would reach me only later. I had been too heavily sedated to notice anything that had been occurring around me - for I had not felt my mother's arms, nor my father's hands gripping mine, had not felt the urgent praying of my siblings, had not felt the shower of the rains pouring against the windows-threatening to reach me again.

We would not have even been able to pay for the hospital room had it not been for that man who had spoken to me with such comforting words.

"He is a Muslim man," my sister whispered to me one night. "How strange, to think that one who is not even of our religion would take so much trouble for someone he does not even know... "

I was silent, not knowing when I would meet my savior again.

I was probably one of the thousands of patients in this hospital, suffering from the many diseases that had defiled the land when the rains fell-and yet, this man, this man whom I did not even know, who had no connection to my family whatsoever, this man who lived a wealthy life, in a wealthy home - had paid all the expenses for the room, the treatment, the medicines, for a girl of a middle-class Hindu family.

I met him only once again. Until today, I will never forget that face, those eyes... that voice.

"You wonder why I have done this for you," he spoke softly, one hand unconsciously smoothening out the sheet, deftly avoiding the IV connection. I wondered, from the fine clothes he wore, what kind of a life he led. "I, who know nothing of you or your family... you wonder why, do you not?"

Again, I could not speak, feeling a strangely reverent peace filling my every vein in his presence. To speak something irrelevant before him would seem almost like a profanity. Almost like questioning God's intentions.

The man looked at me-though his eyes were calm, I could see grief lingering in every nuance of his unmarked face, in the depth of his eyes, in the slight break of his voice, in the way his hands clasped against each other. When he spoke, I felt a lump grow in my throat.

"I had a daughter once myself," he said quietly. "She was the same age as you when she died - a disease similar to yours."

For a moment, he paused - and then spoke once more in a harder voice, as if he felt that any softening would reveal all emotions.

"I wasn't strong enough to save her then... but she was returned to this world through you."

For the first time, he smiled a small, sad smile that to me was the most heartbreaking sight in the world. My eyes were obscured by the hot, wet tears until vision blurred. Watching him was like watching him through a waterfall.

"When I saw you, I saw my Zubeida again... and I can only hope Allah has been merciful on her soul."

I nodded dumbly, not knowing what to say. Despite his kindness, there was still a rift between us. He sensed it as well-somehow, he seemed to have been expecting it.

"Dear child... " the man whispered, stroking my hair again, his mask of calmness suddenly beginning to crack.

Suddenly, he was no more the wealthy Muslim man who had stood as our beneficiary. Suddenly, he seemed to be no more than one who had once loved... one who had once held dear.

"We are divided by hatred... not by the one who has created us. I was merely one to see past that hatred."

And then he was gone.

I sat there silently, feeling ready to laugh and cry at the same time, before my tearful family walked into the room-smothering me with hugs and kisses, the word "home" entering into every conversation.

Memory fails me now... all I remember before my mind slept once more was a pair of brown eyes, shining with tears, filled with all the love and sorrow of the world.

How ironic, that in times of adversity, all boundaries that demarcate the Hindu from the Muslim, the rich from the poor, the sinner from the saint, the atheist and the fanatic, all seem to melt away to nothingness.

A chance meeting with a tortured, yet healing soul had changed my way of thinking for the rest of my life. A simple act of kindness had shaken the very foundations of what I had based my thinking on for the past fourteen years of my life.

For I had always seen myself as a middle-class Hindu girl...

He saw me only as a girl.

Pallavi Chatterjee --- Submitted by Sandeep Chatterjee