How to Converse With Family Members You Disagree With

"When December arrives, we may feel a familiar emotional cocktail of anticipation and anxiety. No one knows how to push our buttons like family. They were, after all, often the ones who put those buttons there in the first place. Political differences. Stubborn relational patterns. Topics that feel like landmines. Or the unspoken agreements to "just not go there," even when the elephant in the room is waving its trunk."

"When you don't know what to say, or when anything you say feels risky, it can be helpful to have a few reliable communication tools to fall back on. Nonviolent Communication (NVC), developed by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, has been used in over 60 countries to help communicate across polarized sociopolitical divides. It's a proven strategy from boardrooms to war zones."

"While NVC's four-step approach to conflict is extremely powerful, a tool for more casual contexts is NVC's " Empathetic Listening." This involves attentive listening and then paraphrasing back the feelings and needs that you hear. Here are the four steps for Empathetic Listening: Thank the speaker for sharing. Reflect back what you hear, without judgment or correction. Name any feelings or needs that you hear. Ask them if you understand them correctly."

Family gatherings can trigger anticipation and anxiety because relatives often activate long-standing emotional buttons. Family interactions include political differences, entrenched relational patterns, and conversational landmines, yet they also create cross-generational connection and lasting memories. Nonviolent Communication's Empathetic Listening offers a practical method for risky conversations by pairing attentive listening with paraphrasing of feelings and needs. The four steps are: thank the speaker for sharing; reflect back what is heard without judgment; name any feelings or needs; and ask if the listener understands correctly. Empathetic Listening functions as a casual, reliable tool to reduce risk and bridge differences.

Read at Psychology Today