August 28, 2007This Week in the World – a flair for the dramatic

Filed under: This Week in the World by merylrunion |

She could push my buttons like no one else. Yet I went relatively untriggered during a four day visit last week.

I gained the awareness I needed to bridge our communication while preparing for my most recent teleseminar, How to Talk to Your Communication Opposite. (Check back for the CD to become available.)

She didn’t change – I did. I listened with the awareness that she has a different communication style from mine. She’s more dramatic and figurative than I am. I decided to put my logic aside and to stop taking her so literally.

It was the best visit I remember ever. I look forward to the next.

Learn about how it all unfolded in my article: The Logician and the Dramatist: Learning How Not to React

I invite you to read that article and comment here.

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5 Comments »

What a fun story. Had I but known, I’d have had some great fun with this at the San Francisco seminar I attended a few years back.

Is Helen by any chance from the South? We southerners love to engage in overblown hyperbole. It adds a lot of flavor to some rather funny stories.

I’m really happy you found a way to enjoy Helen!

Comment by Ron Pulliam — August 28, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
My name really is Helen, and I’m not the Helen in the story! In fact, I’m more the Meryl communication style. I have a friend who is a “drama queen”, and I used to react by becoming less and less responsive, until I realized she had just as much right to her communication style as I had to mine. Reminding myself of that lets me enjoy my friend’s company, much like your experience with “Helen”, Meryl. As my mother used to tell me, it would be a boring old world if we were all the same!

Helen Wilkie
http://howtowriteabusinessletter.blogspot.com

Comment by Helen Wilkie — August 29, 2007 @ 11:07 am
Yes, yes Ron, Helen is from the south. I moved to Nashville from Minneapolis when I was 11 and didn’t know what hit me. Now, some decades later, I’m starting to decipher it all.

Helen, I will say that it’s on my list to tell the stories of how I adapt to people who are more literal than I am. I’ve found them challenging over the years as well!

Thanks for your posts!

Meryl

Comment by merylrunion — August 30, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
Well, I’m definitely not from the south, but I love my hyperbole! Since I live in Las Vegas, the summers make them almost a necessity. “It’s *got* to be 850 degrees outside today!” LOL. I’ve always found humor in hyperbole, especially around personal, casual, intimate conversations. I’m glad you finally relaxed and realized that Helen is harmless. She sounds like a sweetie. I’ll bet she’d cut her own throat before she’d upset you!

Oh. wait…

Comment by Irene King — March 4, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
Your article made me smile with self-recognition. I live in a foreign country and am easily defensive when someone makes a generalization about America or Christians or me, but I couldn’t stop THEM, that’s what they thought or had learned. I needed to change MY reaction. So, I came up with all these witty “come-backs” that they loved, that diffused the tension of the conversation, and just simply made me feel better! Then I could share the truth after that without sounding/being defensive. Had I spit out some sarcastic comment or correction (and I admit it happened a couple times), the communication would have died.

Also, my husband gets irrationally angry, in my opinion, at the driving skills (or lack thereof) of the people here – and it is his country! He challenged me to help him get out of his mood by agreeing with him, at the very least, or making a joke. At first, I refused, because I thought his anger was, as I said, overboard, so why should I have to hear it? But, I found he did come out of his anger a lot quicker if I said something like, “Well, I think she’s just training” or “He evidently loves his cell phone more than his life” or something funny. So, better for our relationship if I react differently.

Comment by katie — March 5, 2009 @ 12:55 am