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Comment by igravious | Hacker News Reader

You jest but absolutely every fractious argument I have starts with the words, “You always […]”, every such argument quickly turns sours, and inevitably without fail leads to me becoming depressed.

For the love of God is it so difficult to say, “You nearly always […]” or “You almost always “…”] or some non-absolutist variant? Are all the people I argue with mentally unwell?

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According to the theory of Non-Violent Communication (NVC), it's better to identify a specific instance of the behavior rather than generalize.

1. Agree that a particular thing happened

2. Express how you felt about that thing happening

3. Explain what your needs are

4. Request the person to do it differently next time

Realize these arguments should really be about getting your own needs met, rather than proving that the other person is objectively wrong because of how they "always" or "almost always" do something.

NVC changed my life! It's helped me gracefully navigate little relationship difficulties that could have otherwise ballooned into moments of sabotage.

Here's how I've internalized the NVC formula:

1. Identify what has happened in an objective way, e.g. "we got in a car accident" or "my partner said I don't care". Be honest, and don't inject any judgement. Just lay out the situation.

2. Describe how you felt and how you feel. Use actual feeling words: stating "I felt manipulated" is actually a judgement, not a feeling. Saying "I feel unheard" is a judgement. Avoid these kinds of judgements guised as feelings at all costs. Learn to catch them in your sleep. The NVC book has two pages of true feeling words, like "anxious", "uncertain" and "joyful". There are times when I've sat there with a notebook looking at these pages and been brought to tears. In the heat of a difficult moment, having a page full of feeling words is really helpful.

3. Use your feelings to discover your basic needs that are or are not being met. The idea is that a difficult feeling springs from a basic need going unfulfilled, whereas positive feelings arise when basic needs are met. Connect the dots.

4. Make your request(s). If you've discovered some unfulfilled needs, figure out what could be done to meet them. Now you're ready to make a specific request, rather than a vague one wrapped up in unexpressed emotion and judgement! This step is about helping yourself and/or someone else understand how to support your needs in understandable, concrete ways.

Is the book actually called "non violent communication"?

It's called "nonviolent communication, a language for life"

"You almost always" is just an intellectualized, passive-aggressive variation on "you always".

That's a very interesting observation. You're possibly right. A few others here have recommended "often" instead or totally different constructions.

Point in fact, I have never had so many replies to a comment on HN in all my many years here. I've hit on something obviously. I can't reply to everyone but I do want to say that I've read all the responses and they're super interesting and food for thought. :)

“It bothers me how often you...” is objectively true and doesn’t start the conversation with a condemnation.

You are bothered. Maybe it happens every week, maybe it’s only happened three times. But it’s happening enough that it’s bothering you.

The approved soft psychiatric way you're supposed to do this is something like this:

"When you do X, it makes me feel..."

Which is actually a pretty effective construct when you try it.

Even better is "When you do X, I feel..."

Your feelings might be triggered by X, but it's a stretch to say X is the cause, and not productive.

say anything to another person starting with "you .... " will immediately bring up defenses and come off as argumentative and passive aggressive and all kinds of boundary violations going on there. There is no harm in saying what you feel: "I feel bad about the way we talked last time"

Unless I read this the wrong way, are you being addressed like this by someone?

"You need to..." is one of my favorites. I'm often guilty of it myself when offering advice to others, but recently I've realized how off-putting it can be and have made an attempt to stop phrasing things in that way.

I go with “you often”. Or even better, rephrase the entire thing so that it can start with “it seems like” to avoid the accusatory tone altogether.

You never do the dishes vs You often don’t help out with the dishes vs It seems like I’m always the one doing the dishes.

Huge fan of “too often” myself, along with “not always <get that out of the way up front>, but many times...”

I like your suggestion at the end of speaking from the speaker’s POV. I dunno, I first heard this pointed out in a 100 level psych class, a lot of folks here have been to college/uni. Hopefully this isn’t news to many. But we can be a forgetful lot.

Yeah, my first reaction was also "what about 'often'?"

What about "I'd like help with the dishes?"

vs "I often feel like I'm the only one doing the dishes"

vs "I have gotten the impression you like helping out, but I also noticed that sometimes you don't do the dishes even when you have good opportunities to. Is something wrong? Can I help you get started with that in some way?"

I strongly prefer the latter. More verbose, yes, but it also acknowledges the other person does help, it does not assume malice, and it anchors a strong desire to help out. Which is ehat we want!

If you're having that many arguments, maybe it's you. Not being snarky, it can be difficult to assess your social interactions int he aggregate and conflict may sometimes be drive n by a desire for emotional activation (and maybe dopamine or other neural reward) that isn't satisfied by shallow/bland interactions.

Of course, not all arguments are bad. I prefer to be around someone that argues (in a constructive lets-compete-for-a-good-solution way) than someone who is just habitually agreeable; in the latter case, you might want someone to test out the strength of your ideas but you end up feeling like you're pushing a string, which is demotivating.

You can't control what other people do and say but you can control your reaction to it (obviously easier said than done and in some cases impossible without help). So many arguments in life are made because you've inadvertently gone against an expectation another person had based on their own experiences.

> absolutely every fractious argument

Surely you mean... NEARLY every????

Nailed it!

But I was paying homage to the style in which you wrote your original post!

The brain is binary. Neurons fire or they do not. Holding more complex notions in mind that go beyond a simple binary relationship requires more energy (this is not as direct as my statements make it sound, but it generally captures the situation). Because civilization is profoundly safe, there is no substantial benefit to expending that larger amount of energy. Even the worst mistake generally will not result in serious injury or death, so most people will not bother to exert themselves so.

This is wrong on so many levels... Just to point out the physiological misunderstanding: The word "binary" is quite misleading when applied to neurons.

While neurons do work in concrete impulses, these impulses encode continuous values in the frequency domain.

The evolutionary mechanism is also wrong: Starvation is also largely absent today, so any evolutionary pressure to preserve energy would be equally unimportant as other causes of death. In fact, obesity far outstrips starvation as cause for mortality. So if evolution had had the time to adjust, we'd all wallow in ambiguities.

As a rule of thumb: attributing human behaviour that is more complex than basic emotions (fear, hunger, arousal,...) to evolution is almost always wrong. Overcoming evolutionary instincts is, after all, one of humanity's proudest achievements.

It's also not entirely settled if thinking hard actually increases the brain's energy usage. It appears that the brain has a relatively high caseload, with minimal variability.

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