- Do speak up when an issue is important to you. It is a mistake to stay silent if the cost is to feel better, resentful or unhappy. We de-self ourselves when we fail to make a stand on issues that matter to us.
- Don’t strike when the iron is hot. Sometimes it’s better to seek a temporary distance from the problem and think it through more clearly.
- Do take time out to think about the problem and to clarify your position. What is it about this that makes me so angry? Who is responsible for what? What specifically do I want to change?
- Don’t use below the belt tactics: These include blaming, diagnosing, ridiculing, preaching, interrogating.
- Do speak in “I language.” Learn to say “I want…I need…I feel… I fear. The I statement says something about the self without criticizing or blaming the other.
- Don’t make vague requests. Let people know specifically what you want.
- Do try to appreciate the fact that people are different. Different perspectives and ways of reacting do not necessarily mean that one person is “right” and the other “wrong.”
- Don’t tell another person what she or he thinks or feels or should think or should think or feel.
- Do recognize that each person is responsible for his or her own behavior.
- Don’t participate in intellectual arguments that go nowhere.
- Do try to avoid speaking through a third party.
- Don’t expect change to come about from hit and run confrontations.
SOURCE: An article by Harriet Goldhor Lerner PhD. Staff Psychologist at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka Kansas.