About this Episode

Welcome to today’s episode of The Communication Solution podcast with Casey Jackson, John Gilbert and Danielle Cantin. We love talking about Motivational Interviewing, and about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve.
In this episode, we discuss the increasing stress associated with the holidays and explore how motivational interviewing can be differentiated from healthy communication in managing this stress. The conversation highlights the importance of aligning one’s behavior with personal values and employing empathy to reduce familial tensions. We also touch upon the ethical considerations of trying to change family members’ behaviors and the significance of maintaining holiday rituals and joy.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Impact of Stress During Holidays: Discussion on the increasing stress levels during the holiday season and its effects on relationships.


• Motivational Interviewing vs. Healthy Communication: Differentiating between motivational interviewing techniques and general healthy communication practices.


• The Role of Brain Science in Communication: Exploring how understanding brain science can improve communication, especially under stress.


• Aligning Behavior with Values: The importance of aligning one’s behavior with personal values during the stressful holiday season.


• Empathy in Family Dynamics: Strategies for employing empathy to reduce tension and improve engagement within family interactions.


• Ethical Considerations in Changing Family Dynamics: Ethical implications of attempting to change family members’ behaviors to align with personal desires.


• The Importance of Celebrating Rituals and Joy: A discussion on the significance of maintaining rituals and finding joy in holiday traditions.


• Navigating Expectations and Boundaries: How to manage expectations and maintain healthy boundaries with family and friends during the holidays.


• The Spirit of the Holiday Season Beyond Clinical Tools: Reflecting on the essence of the holiday spirit beyond just clinical communication strategies.


• Self-Reflection and Personal Growth: Emphasizing the importance of self-reflection and personal growth in improving communication and relationships.

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Thank you for listening to the communication solution. This podcast is all about you. If you have questions, thoughts, topic suggestions, or ideas, please send them our way at casey@ifioc.com. For more resources, feel free to check out ifioc.com.

Transcribe

 Hello and welcome to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. I’m your host, Danielle Cantin. Here at the Institute for Individual and Organizational Change, otherwise known as IFIOC, we love to talk about communication. We love to talk about solutions and we love to talk about providing measurable results for individuals, organizations, and the communities they serve.

Welcome to the communication solution.

Hey, welcome everyone. This is Danielle Cantin. I am facilitating the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. Hi guys. Hey. Hey, hey, thanks so much for joining us today.  I’ve got a fun topic for us to discuss.  The holidays are upon us, and it seems like it starts earlier and earlier every year.

 And I’m just curious as I’m starting to interact more and more with friends and family. And talking to other people and the stress that creeps up. So I thought that’d be a great topic to dive into.  Just stress in general around the holidays and where that little segue or interaction is or how motivational interviewing could potentially help.

This is one of those ones, Danielle, that I think it’ll be fun to differentiate healthy communication from motivational interviewing.  There. Because fundamentally motivationally, the constructs that I think would work well during stressful times or stressful family situations are things where are you trying to reduce resistance or tension or discord?

Absolutely. For some people during the holidays, that is, that would be a gift,  under the tree is if there’s a little less stress or discord amongst family members or friends.  So there’s aspects of MI that we know that can do that. But it’s not fundamentally, well, maybe it is about behavior change.

 But then there’s more, I know John would love to dive into the ethics of trying to get your family members to change,  just because you want them to, and is that, am I,  but I think it is a fascinating topic to talk about it. What I would even launch a little bit with is just my brain goes to brain science because I’m just so immersed in that right now, just trying to understand better and look at trauma.

And the more pressure we feel, I think your point, especially about how early it starts now,  you know, I know in our house, it was the day after Halloween that Christmas tree started going up,  which tends to draw a lot of ire from some people,  like it’s, you do not do that before Thanksgiving and, you know, just so already it creates tension.

 It makes us happy and that’s pretty much our behavior in line with our values.  But I think when it starts earlier, the pressure starts more and more and. Again, I think there’s combining features. I think one of the features to me is that when we know we’re moving to the holidays as adults, what we know is, Hey, if I can get a little extra time off or, you know, which means I’m trying to get all my ducks in a row before I leave work, which creates stress.

And then you get home because you’re probably working a few more extra hours or trying to get more things done. And then it feels like there’s a little different pressure. It just is going to pull us into our limbic system, that emotional system, or maybe into the fight flight freeze system, which makes us a little more on edge or a little more nervy,  when people are putting more expectation on us.

So, and then usually people that oversee us have their stressors. So then they’re saying, Hey, I need you to pick this thing up. And you’re like, well, I’m ready to try to pick up extra things. Cause I’m trying to take some extra time off. And I’ve got to get all this stuff done. And then we’ve got this party we need to go to.

And I don’t even want to go to this party. And, you know, we’ve got to go and I’ve got to go to my spouse’s party and I don’t even want to do that. So the brain is just going to start to get more and more in that defense. Motor that fight, flight freeze mode. And then all of a sudden the holidays become not fun.

For people,  you know, and whose families do we have to hit and, and, you know, which friends do we have to go visit? And, and all of a sudden the joy starts to seep out of, you know, a time of the year. That’s supposed to be, you know, wonderful for at least in construct, it’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year.

 And then it’s been some of the most miserable time of the year. So that’s just off the top of my head, kind of rambling about some thoughts that I have. Well, yeah. And that’s where I’m kind of curious, Casey, what you think about this be related to EMI and healthy communication, because, you know, we were just at the international conference for this with, with mint,  a little recently.

And  It’s like, is it, is it motivational interview and becoming just helpful communication? It’s like, well, there’s a, there’s a differentiation here of what is my, and what is healthy communication. So you were starting about that and getting into kind of the thinking around the holidays. And so I’m just kind of wondering what you think might be,  some key distinct factors there or things that, you know, this is really where the, some of the pieces of MI you think would come in such as empathy or some of these others Versus, you know,  maybe other pieces like strategically responding to change talk or other things that maybe you don’t do as much for, you know, communication with your family.

I don’t know what are your thoughts about the difference there practically or concretely or more tangibly. I, you know, you and I discussed this quite a bit. I remember the ethics, you know, breakout session, I went to motivation being an ethics and I told you part of my itchiness around that was that people were talking about applications of MI and then acknowledging it might not score high in, in a spirit of motivational interviewing or what we call the intentions with the MICA.

And I think, well, then it’s not motivational interviewing. You know, I think, I think that’s where we get looped in. It’s like, well, I tried to use that mind. Then you listen to the conversation like, well, you did reflective listening and you did open ended questions, but that’s not motivational interviewing.

You know, I, I always talk about that, you know, that’s flour, sugar and butter, but that doesn’t make it grandma’s recipe, but everybody thinks if you’re using flour, sugar and butter, it’s just a variation of grandma’s recipe. But the difference between a chocolate lava cake and an oatmeal cookie is significantly different, even though they both use flour and sugar.

 They’re not even close to the same thing. And I think people confuse communication skills with a communication style. Um. So, and what tends to ha