Yasmine Murphy

COMM 2110
Personal Change Project Final Report
Date: 4/20/2022

Overview:
The focus of my paper is bringing attention to what I have been working on while in

this class. My relationship communication is the goal, I have successfully tried many

different strategies explained in our textbook to make my relationship between my spouse

and I work better. During this project my speaking skills have become more detailed, and

my listening styles are more open to understand where he is coming from. We still have

some work to do but we know now that being childish and shutting down doesn’t make the

situation better. A goal we still must complete is understanding where each other is coming

from.

Unwanted Communication Pattern:

A terrible habit I have is Avoidance, not being open to understanding and just trying

to stand my ground. From a childish and selfish standpoint, I am very stubborn, and my

spouse must fault to being wrong and apologize even if it's not his fault. I’m unsure why I

must be proven right, this is not something to be proud of. This can be over a very simple

argument, or a long week drawn out argument where we ignore each other, and you can

cut the tension with a knife. I will explain in two situations.

 Situation #1:
 Our anniversary last year, I set expectations inside my head of what I wanted to be

done for me, with little to no communication I made this whole scenario up of what

NEEDED to happen for me to be happy. Once the day came and my spouse did nothing, I

mean the day was a weekday, so I had convinced myself even though we had planned that

weekend I just knew the day of was going to be fantastic. When I came home, nothing

extravagant was displayed, I spent the remainder of the day under my covers in silence and

not speaking like a child, avoiding the situation, once my frustration got the best of me, I

called off our weekend plans. The impact was huge, I killed his spirits and whatever plans

that were made, looking back at the consequences, my selfishness ruined what could have

been a great evening and made more tension between us and whatever progress we had

established. This is referred to in the textbook as a lose-lose situation.

 Situation #2:

The person using the lose-lose situation approach to conflict style wishes the problem

or conflict would go away (Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. V. (2020). Interpersonal

communication: Relating to others. Pearson. Pg. 920)

I have a very close, very opinionated family. Once we get together, we immediately

get to go at each other, and it always seems to happen during holidays. I developed so much

anxiousness and anxiety that even living 10 minutes of each other. For me once it builds up

so much, I just can't even take a call or begin to have a conversation because it will all be

too much, so what happens, I shut down, for days at a time because sometimes it seems

easier than dealing with the issues head on. The consequences this brings on is complicated
build up and guilt, the guilt I'm unsure why but overall, it's horrible and doesn’t go over

well.

Strategies:
Once I began this assignment, I immediately knew I was going to focus on my

avoidance, everyone has always commented on how I chose this option. I focused on the

following strategies and chose to bring them to everyday use. I wanted to not expect the

worst of a situation and build up anxiety as a habit.

 #1 Strategy

I want to be more confident in working towards speaking up and explaining my

feelings rather than getting worked up and immediately avoiding the situation.

Accomplishing this I worked with:

(Responding Skills (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020, page.557)

When dealing with complicated situations, as I previously stated, avoiding negativity is

always seen as the better situation for me. A good friend told me it sometimes helps if I just

do not give my input, basically not letting it affect me by having word vomit and forcing

myself to hold it in. Sometimes the best response is not a verbal one- it can be better to just

keep listening (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020, page.557). This strategy comes in handy

with me being the one everyone runs to; I can also turn my anger into Asking Appropriate

Questions (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020, page.557), for me this means I will ask the
obvious questions to allow the venter to realize what is going on in their dilemma and that

way it gets handled a lot quicker and my anxiety doesn’t have to be tied up in knots.

When dealing with my spouse and my family, as far as a response I can Accurately

Paraphrase. The only way to know whether you understand another person’s message is to

check your understanding of the facts and ideas by paraphrasing your understanding (Beebe,

Beebe & Redmond, 2020, page.558). I do only see this working with my relationship mainly

because with less chaos I can have a since of pause and listen, rather than a mess of words

that nobody understands.

 #2 Strategy

In many of my relationships, I feel it's important to understand what exactly the issue is

and how it keeps resurfacing. Most of the arguments begin with something we disagreed

with and have nothing but tension now, so we begin to dig back into the same tussle. I want

to use this strategy more to not do this anymore.

(Conflict Defined (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020, page.861)

Almost every family feud or relationship blocker in my life is repeating something that just

won't go away, Unresolved and poorly managed interpersonal conflict is a significant

predicator of an unsatisfactory interpersonal relationship. (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020,

page.862). In a situation of close conflict, it usually focuses on An Expressed Struggle. This

is my problem, my working project. When in conflict with my spouse he usually gets what

the point I'm angry by a glare or a low tone non expressive response. With this strategy I

want to take the chip of my shoulder and have an open positive mind. Establish a
supportive rather than a defensive climate for conversation (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020,

page.898). This can do by not believing I'm always right, that’s a tough one.

Constraints:

There was absolutely a bunch of walls I ran into with this, and some situations

simply were complicated being sometimes you can't just listen and sometimes, I feel like

avoidance of a negative situation is what needs to happen. Being the one who chooses to

use avoidance as a strategy, I am the one who gets called on to vent and even though my

opinion would be to stop the negativity, that alone engages in more conflict, family wise.

Dealing with my brother, he mostly likes to vent about things that can be easily not an

issue, but if I speak my mind instead of avoiding it backfires and we end up arguing.

When dealing with my spouse, I run into wanting to immediately turn to childlike

tendencies, that never makes the situation more complicated and less likely to be resolved.

Vai is really the one who has natural conflict management and then there's me that must

remember the strategies to stop me in my tracks when I felt it coming on. This could be

over the trash can not being taken out, I will huff and puff without even saying words, but I

assume he knows what I'm angry about, I just rather avoid it.

Implementation:
Once I began to put the strategies to use, I needed to take baby steps that

weren’t very easy to execute.

One example I used and kind of waited for the effects, was to listen to my brother

vent without saying anything, my worry was he would start in with me by feeling
like I wasn’t listening to his complaints. He dug in with my mother and her

complaints of him not taking the trash can out on Thursday nights, I mean this is a

minor issue to me especially when you know that you can just get it over with by

doing it, and she wouldn’t complain leading to a conflict. This time I listened without

responding, remembering that in our textbook it explains, Sometimes the best

response is not a verbal one- it can be better to just keep listening (Beebe, Beebe &

Redmond, 2020, page.557). So, I did just that I listened and let him get it all out

without cutting him off or giving my response, so I actively rephrase his point and I

ask, so she wants you to take the trash out the night before, so she doesn’t have to

move it early before work? Which made him understand this didn’t need to be a

conflict at all and that he figured out his. This made a major change outside the

normal and my anxiety wasn’t affected. I was just a wall he was talking to that made

his conflict a lot clearer.

As I mentioned earlier, I felt like he would feel like I didn’t care by my non-

verbal response and it would move him to lash out, but it didn’t I managed to

redirect his issue and allow him to answer his own conflict. The change I wanted to

make was that my anxiety wouldn't trigger, or that he and I would develop an issue,

Earlier in this paper I mentioned that I wanted to become more vocal instead of

avoiding an issue, this might have been my chance to explain him making our 50

year old mother take the trash out is ridiculous and selfish but I chose to not go that

route, this is something I want to achieve by making other realize there being unfair,

but this wasn’t the topic, what stopped my from accomplishing this is I chose to let
 them hash this minor conflict out and just use my non-verbal skills. I was proud of

how the situation played out with what I've learned.

Results:
My focus when dealing with family or my relationship is that I’m heard, and that the

situation doesn’t get out of hand and I chose to avoid it all together, by understanding the

strategies I've applied a positive consequence instead, by just beginning to listen and not

respond I lay a boundry to not allow people to trigger my anxiety with their selfishness and

I can still help.

Within my relationship, one of the listed conflict types that focus on Different positions on

the issue, do not try to tackle too many issues at once (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020,

page.898). Once I begin to understand ways to improve conflicts, I begin to open one to

many issues at once, experiencing negative consequences. By doing this we would

accomplish greatness in one task and then I would point out another issue, basically

showing that I had more conflict once the previous was resolved, this didn’t feel right, and I

prefer to just stick to one at a time. These strategies have made my plans turn out a lot

better using simple rules and steps, it felt great! leaving me very satisfied with the

approaches I took to help with avoiding situations.

Recommendations:
I plan to use what I've learned and apply it to everyday life, because it really does help a lot,

next I plan to use my focus on:

 (Understanding Nonverbal Communication Codes (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020,

page.730)

I want to work on my facial expression when people talk to me, my mother always

tells me to fix my face, and that my emotions aren't hidden. Leading me to believe I can take

all the strategies and good that’s come of what I've learned, but my face is still a working

progress.

Being able to recognize anger, contempt, disgust, fear and sadness on someone's face

has been shown to enhance the ability to manage conflict. (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2020,

page.751)

References:
Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. V. (2020). Interpersonal communication: Relating to
others (9th edition). Pearson.