Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 245, “How to build more rapport in your relationship”, an interview with Richard Bolstad. Before we get started, I wanna take a moment to center with you, taking a deep breath in, and a deep breath out, as we prepare ourselves to learn, contemplate, and perhaps consider relationship principles that either we’ve heard before, or perhaps are new to us.
And granted, some of the topics from week to week might directly relate to what you’re experiencing in your relationship at the moment, or perhaps it might be a little outside of what you’re experiencing… And yet, the conversations and what’s shared on the Empowered Relationship is intended to support you, helping you feel better prepared, more equipped, more resources in negotiating the landscape of long-term intimacy, knowing at times we might feel challenged, or perplexed, or feel really stuck… The goal here is for you to make moves that grow your self and co-create relationship with your significant other in a way that’s directly meaningful to you.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com click on Podcast, and there you can find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 245.
Let’s get started in today’s interview.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I just wanna share that I love being able to connect with people in different countries around the world that help us understand that we’re all in this together, negotiating relationship… I just think it’s great to be able to collaborate and share voices from different people to help support our learning and development.
Richard Bolstad is a member of the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists. Richard runs training worldwide, both singly and with his wife, Julia Kurusheva. He is the author of many books on NLP coaching, cooperative relationships, published in ten languages, including “Transforming communication” and “The rapport based family.” Instructors teach his “Transforming Communication” cooperative relationships course in more than 14 languages. Richard also runs training on conflict resolution in war zones and after major disaster events.
Richard, thank you for joining us today.
Richard Bolstad: Thank you very much for having me here.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, I’m super-pleased to be getting someone who’s an expert in the field of NLP and couples work, and I’m super-excited about our conversation today. What got you interested in NLP, and working with couples in that modality? I know you do many things, but if you could share a little bit more about you and your work around this…
Richard Bolstad: Okay. Well, I have a background in several professions – teaching, and nursing… And as a counselor and a therapist, I was sort of always looking for an educational framework for working with the couples that I was working with, and with the individuals that I was working with… And I was very skeptical, I think, about NLP as a field, when I first heard about it… But I think that a lot of that changed after I realized that the things that the NLP people were saying would be kind of mapped onto the research about couples work by people like John Gottman, for example.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Great! And can you give people a sense of NLP? …just who maybe are not even familiar. What is NLP?
Richard Bolstad: Sure. NLP stands for something that sounds even worse, which is neurolinguistic programming… And the neuro part of course means the brain, linguistic means the language that you use, and not just the verbal language, but also the nonverbal language. And then programming – when NLP was first developed in the 1970s it was kind of a buzzword, and the idea is that using the brain and the language that we use with each other to create change internally, and therefore in our results. It’s a bit of a long-winded way of saying “A user’s manual for the brain.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. And can you give us an example, so people can see how you might see NLP? I know that’s probably extensive, but if you can give people an example, that’d be wonderful.
Richard Bolstad: Sure. Well, one of the things that I often do with people when I’m introducing this myself is I get people to stand up and to keep their feet in the same place and turn around, pointing to one’s side, and see how far they can go. And then I get them to come back to the front and imagine that they went further; that they went 2-3 feet further around, so that they were flexible, their body was more comfortable turning around, and they could look at the places that they didn’t even see that first time. And then after I’ve had them imagine that, then I ask them to turn around again – so listeners can experiment with this – and what almost always people will discover is that they actually go quite a bit further the second time, without any exercise.
So what I was telling them is that the things that they pay attention to visually, auditorily, and in their body, kinesthetically, actually predetermine a lot of the results that they get. And the same thing happens in their relationships, of course.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And would you be willing to share an example around that?
Richard Bolstad: Yeah. For example, when I first learned communication skills, the focus back then was on conflict resolution. And I remember a big a-ha in my early NLP training – when I realized that when I thought about relationships, I was continuously thinking about “How do you resolve the conflict?” So it was kind of like I was turning each of my relationships into a conflict resolution experience. So that’s what I was imagining, that’s what I was focusing on, that’s what I was expecting, and it’s kind of priming my brain, flooding my body chemicals [unintelligible 00:07:44.28] And of course, I would be sensitive to all these little cues for conflict, but not sensitive to those little cues for connection, and for affection, that I think is probably more important.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I can see the Gottman work, and even Susan Johnson work in this… So what would be an example of these cues if you’re focused on the conflict, versus focused on the affection and the bond?
Richard Bolstad: As you say, one of the things that John Gottman talked about was this idea of bids. He found when he was watching couples that they would be continuously making little bids for each other’s attention. And I guess most couples have had the experience of trying to get their partner’s attention for something like “I had an interesting happen today”, and their partner is too busy, or their partner doesn’t even seem to understand that they were trying to get attention. It’s just a tiny moment, it’s an uncomfortable thing that happens in relationships, and the more that it happens, the more we can actually see people breaking what NLP would call rapport. By rapport I don’t just mean a nice feeling, I mean the kind of synchronization that happens between people naturally.
When you see a couple have coffee together in a cafe, they often nod in time with each other, they synchronize their body position, they laugh together, things like that. And those things break if one of them tries to do one of these bids for attention, say something, and the other person completely ignores it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And from an NLP perspective, what’s happening there?
Richard Bolstad: In NLP terms, we would say that the most fundamental building block of relationships is sustained rapport. So rapport means synchronization. And of course, since NLP [unintelligible 00:09:38.14] back in the 1970s, we have a lot of research about this – when people are in a good relationship, they’re continuously synchronizing with each other.
For example, we know that not just their breathing synchronizes, not just their body position synchronizes, but even their brainwaves begin to synchronize. So these are all indications of something happening which NLP would call rapport. And one of the most important things for people to understand about that, of course, is that if there’s no rapport, then you can’t actually make agreements, but you can’t also suggest something to the other person and get them to cooperate with you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. You need an alliance in a relationship to be able to influence.
Richard Bolstad: Yes, that’s right. Of course, NLP, when it first emerged – it’s a little sad for me to be talking to you in the United States, because since NLP first emerged in the United States, it was very quickly used for sales, which is a perfectly appropriate thing to use these skills and understandings for… But it’s kind of got a name for itself as being a way of getting someone else to do something. Of course, in a couple, I think that’s not a very healthy framework for a couple relationship – the idea that my job is to get the other person to do things, to kind of turn our relationship into a project.
So one of the things that’s been important to me is to take these NLP skills and instead of having them seem like things you use to manipulate or influence someone else, use them as things to co-create a relationship.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And Richard, even as you’re talking, I’m imagining times of playing with children and mirroring them, and being in this co-creative space… Or even the martial art Aikido, you can’t actually move — I don’t know if you’re familiar with that martial art, but the quality of it is even if somebody’s coming at you with a so-called attack, you can’t move them if you’re not aligned or if you’re not in relationship.
Richard Bolstad: Absolutely. In fact, I teach in a lot of different places around the world, and one place where I teach quite a lot is Japan. The trainers who are working with us, they often use Aikido as a metaphor for relationship and for NLP. So their process of aligning with someone else, even if you want to influence them, in NLP it’s called pacing and leading; so walking along beside them before you can invite them somewhere else.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And I get the negative connotation to the word influence… And most of the time, at least when I’m working with couples, they’re not ready to align and look at how to do things differently where both are considered until they’re feeling heard and seen. And that relationship, and that goodwill, and that bond is reinforced. You’re saying if that’s not there, it’s really difficult to have a conversation or to move together in any significant way.
Richard Bolstad: Absolutely, yeah. I had a really interesting experience on television in Egypt – the Middle East is now the place where I teach, and… In Egypt, of course, right now the #metoo movement is very strong, and there’s this huge shift in men-to-women’s relationship [unintelligible 00:13:03.19] And the interviewer was a man, and he asked me – he said “Well, Egyptian men feel like often they have no influence over their wife anymore.” And he said “We sort of look longingly back to the past and wish that wives would do what we said. How can Egyptian men make women do what they want?” It’s kind of a tricky question, because it’s moving in the opposite direction to what I’m actually teaching.
And so the best thing I think I could answer to him was to say “Well, if you want someone else to do what you want, you need to listen to them more.” And there’s no other way around it. I know it may seem frustrating, but if people don’t feel understood, then they’re not gonna do what you were hoping they would do.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, it’s so critical, whether or not we’re addressing any particular conflictual or volatile issue or sensitive topic, and when we talk about intimate partnership and couplehood, this is typically where we feel most activated or threatened.
So help us – when you were describing the NLP exercise, I was actually doing it, and I was like “Oh wow, I went two feet further.” So what happens — and I can imagine, but I would love to hear from your perspective, when you’re using that NLP framework, when people are approaching a conversation expecting it to be tense, or there to be friction or potentially a fight… Help us with that.
Richard Bolstad: Yeah. Well, one of the things that I want to teach couples to do or teach people to do is to notice that what people usually call thinking is made up of the things that they imagine visually inside their head, the things they say to themselves and listen to replay like an audio recording, and the things that they feel by paying attention inside their body. Those three things especially. So those are kind of like engines that drive those internal experiences; they drive what they’re gonna say to their partner, or what they’re going to respond with non-verbally. So what I would encourage people to do is to actually notice not just the [unintelligible 00:15:20.09] they’re most comfortable with, but what are they doing in all those three ways.
And I guess another way of saying it – of course, this is like talking about love languages – is that idea that for some people the things that you picture happening are going to be incredibly powerful, and for some people… And it’s not an either/or, but for some people the way that they talk to themselves, and not just the words, but the tone of voice, are incredibly important.
I married myself, and I know that for me, internally, the way that I picture things is pretty powerful. For my wife Julia, the tone of voice that I use – which I wouldn’t even notice, as always – it’s really the thing that sets the mood when you go to each other.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And so as you’re describing the visual and the auditory and the physical sensation, is this something that you would encourage people to notice before they’re even approaching a conversation, how their–
Richard Bolstad: Absolutely, yeah. I had a really interesting — just a while ago I was working with a couple, and this guy had started complaining about what was going on in their relationship, and he was talking visually continuously about a mess, he tidied up things, and then he would come back and see that things had been kind of spread out, and stuff like that. His partner, she was saying “I don’t understand what you mean, but I know that the way that you talk to me about these things – it really hurts.” So he had no idea. It was kind of like I’m translating between those two things. He had no idea that his tone of voice, the loudness of his voice, and so on, was having such an effect on her. She had no idea that for him, when there were things lying around on the floor, it was as if they were kind of all over him. It was really important for him to have things organized around his visual field.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. So it’s actually how couples are experiencing the interaction – it could be attending to one of those channels, and perhaps missing or speaking different languages, if you will.
Richard Bolstad: Yes, that’s right. In terms of getting ready for a discussion or an experience with [unintelligible 00:17:45.06] that means that we can actually enrich that experience by deliberately paying attention to all of these single inputs. So we’re not stuck with the particular preferences that we had originally, and we can actually enhance our ability to notice all those things.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. I did an episode a while back on stonewalling, and I know Gottman talks a lot about that; stereotypically, men stonewall… I think 80% of stonewallers are men, or something, he says… And the physiological arousal is enormous. I just wonder if that would be helpful for people that get flooded, or potentially —
Richard Bolstad: Absolutely, yeah. Gottman talks about the importance of self-soothing, and being able to calm down in those situations… And I know that you’ve written and talked a lot about those kinds of things yourself. One of the key skills that we teach in NLP for this is something we call anchoring, which means being able to hold yourself in the state of mind you want to be in, just like an anchor holds a boat. To do that, what we teach people to do is to find a really pleasant time in their past and to create in their mind visually, auditorily, and then in their body; even the smells and the things they would say to themselves, so they have that experience… And create some kind of gesture, for example, some particular hand position they don’t usually use, as they think about that in a relaxed, positive situation… And then be able to use that as this kind of calming down, self-soothing process, even when they’re in that conflict situation. So that’s called an anchor.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And it’s a situation that it sounds like brings a lot of safety and positivity and soothing that they can reference?
Richard Bolstad: Absolutely, yeah. One of the most animated ways that I’ve ever heard being used – someone that I deeply admire, Virginia Satir. Virginia Satir was one of the people studied by the developers of NLP, and she was a family therapist… And when she was working with a couple, the first thing she would do is she would, in a sense, be taking a family history. So she’d say “I need to find out how you met each other, and how did you decide to be with this person?” So each of the couple would say this, and obviously, they would light up like a Christmas tree when they described that event. It’s usually such a powerful event when you’ve met the person that you end up living with.
So they would say, “You know, the look on his face, the sound of his voice…”, and all of these kinds of things. And then as they would end their positive state, she would use that as what I’m calling an anchor. So she’d say “And now, I’d like you to turn and look to this person and realize it’s the same person.” So what she’s doing is taking that positive feeling from a time which is almost always a resourceful time, and reconnecting it to this other person. Because in conflict, of course, what happens is that very often people have negative responses even to the sound of their partner’s voice, they have negative responses to the expression that they use on their face… They don’t have, at that moment, those positive anchors running.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And yes, as you’re describing those subtle cues, and when we can see those micro-facial expressions, and the non-verbals, and the softening and the positivity, that that creates such more bond that you’re referring to, that perhaps can allow for this deeper conversation.
Richard Bolstad: That’s it. That’s it. NLP, of course, and the sound of it, “programming”, suggests that it’s a very technical thing… And I think what’s important, adding the research by Gottman and deepening our understanding of NLP, is that this is not just a technique thing. It’s not a way to fake your emotional experience and get away with it in a relationship… So it really important to create what Gottman calls a friendship between a couple. I think that’s one of the things that was missing in early NLP. If people have read the early NLP books, they’ll realize they’re full of brilliant tricks, kind of a tool bag of wonderful things, but I think what’s often missing is what Virginia Satir herself really had, which is a kind of a focus on this whole relationship, and friendship.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Mm-hm… It sounds like too really provides this safety and connection to do the harder work sometimes, so there are more allies… So can you take us back to the example? Because if we’re gonna reference the exercise of accessing these different channels, and it sounds like in that couple example that you mentioned, about him being frustrated with the items disorganized or all around the house, and she’s attending to his tone of voice – those perhaps are two different moments or two different interactions… What does that look like if they’re gonna run through the visual, the auditory and the physical?
Richard Bolstad: Well, the first thing that I’m hoping that they can learn how to do in that situation is to realize that the other person is not trying to be mean; they’re simply paying attention to different things. So at that moment when, for example, the guy that I was thinking of – he would say “Sometimes I come from work and you haven’t even brushed your hair.” Well, for her that’s not the thing that she’s paying attention to. She loves him, and she is sending that message in some other way that he didn’t even think of.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. “I just made you this amazing meal…” and whatever.
Richard Bolstad: Exactly. So one of the first things [unintelligible 00:23:43.16] listening to them and acknowledging “When this thing happened, you [unintelligible 00:23:48.10]” and show them that actually if you were paying attention to another sensory system, it wouldn’t even have much significance in terms of meaning.
So once they understand “Oh, okay, people can do this in different ways”, often I’ll notice that people will actually cry or have tears in their eyes just realizing “Oh my goodness, I wasn’t paying attention to the thing that was important to them.” And then, of course, I can do two other things – I can show them how to communicate a neutral system, and the other sensory system that they are more likely to both have an equal ability with, or I can show them how to enrich their experience by sharing the other person’s sensory attention as well.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I would love to hear a little more about that… Are you open to sharing?
Richard Bolstad: Yeah. So that means — first of all, I created kind of a transfer from one sensory system to the other. Let me give you an example here… With the guy who complained about the mess, the woman who was in a relationship with him, she was saying, well, she paid attention to her body sensation as well, and she tried to reach out to him, and she paid attention to her voice, but she didn’t really know or she didn’t think it was important what things kind of looked like. So the first thing I did was I said “Well, I’d like you to imagine that when you’re walking across the room there were a whole lot of things that you were tripping over, imagine how that would feel like.
Or imagine that you were in bed, and he had gone into bed first and he’d been eating toast in bed. So there were crumbs through the bed. Do you know what they would feel like on your body?” And she starts brushing that off, and saying “Ugh. I know that feeling.” And they might transfer it across and say “Well, that’s what it feels like to him when he sees the things that he tidied up being spread around and untidied.” So I wanna kind of create a transfer from one sensory system to the other.
So to explain to him, then I need to explain “Look, when you talk in a louder voice, when your throat gets tight as you’re talking, the sound of that is like the whole room has gone dark.” So once he understands it, and as he changes his tone of voice, then he started to have visual experience of what that would be like.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that, because you’re, again, helping translate, and it’s so important to give that. I actually have an example that’s so similar… This was years ago, and I had been trying to cook a meal, and do laundry in-between sessions, so I was actually accomplishing a lot by the time my husband got home; and we had plans that evening to go play volleyball, or something, so I was feeling rather proud of myself… And he came home to things in process, so food debris was on the counter, and towels were everywhere, and for him it was alarming to see all the disarray, where for me, I’m like “I just did all these things”, so I had to kind of access that with for him being more attentive to feeling calm when he walks home, feeling peace when he walks home, and wanting that environment. I was like “Oh, okay, I get it. I get it. He’d rather me do less and have it be more calm than me try to do too much.”
Richard Bolstad: Yeah, that’s a really lovely example. In New Zealand we have – as you do – a multi-cultural society, and one of the things about this is there are actually often cultural differences that we can understand using this NLP framework. For example, New Zealand Māori culture, the original culture here, is very kinestetic. So people hug each other a lot, and so on. And when someone is Māori and they’re in a relationship with someone who comes from a European culture, if there’s some kind of conflict, then the natural instinct for the person who’s Māori is to reach out and give the other person a hug, and actually try and hold them while they talk about stuff. If the other person is from a European culture, that can feel suffocating; it can actually feel quite scary, because it’s as if they haven’t got the space, they can’t even see the other person, they can’t stay back and see their face and see their response to things. So it’s almost like they’re playing a sports game using different rule books.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… It’s amazing that you can apply this to cultural differences, or any difference probably, to be able to help people identify the channel and to be able to translate. So for people listening that maybe don’t have you in their space to be able to help translate, is there anything that you recommend to begin to do this work to identify the different channels for themselves?
Richard Bolstad: Well, there is. I have various books out, and I guess one [unintelligible 00:28:40.03] The Rapport Based Family. Listeners can download that on Kindle, or get the hardback from Amazon, of course. The Rapport Based Family has some exercises in it to practice these things. It’s focused partially on children, and I think that’s an important thing to understand as well – actually, if you want these kinds of skills to work in your life, it’s really useful not to just think of them as being for your partner, but for your whole family interaction.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. Wonderful. It sounds like you provide a lot in your books, and particularly The Rapport Based Family, which I’ll make sure to put links on today’s show notes… You provide a lot of details around how to do some of this work. Do you feel like even just the awareness, that there is a visual, there is the auditory and the physical, can help people begin to build awareness?
Richard Bolstad: Yeah, very much. And sometimes, of course, it’s not just that people have one system that they’re using all the time, but they may have one system they’re more conscious of, and therefore another sensory system that they’re not conscious of, but that’s profoundly influencing them. Let me give you an example…
This has been a very stressful year all across the world, and of course, sometimes what people experience is that they have a feeling of impending doom that something really bad is happening [unintelligible 00:30:12.20] “Oh yes, of course, there’s a pandemic, there’s all sorts of conflicts going on.” What they may not be noticing is they may be actually listening to things or they may be seeing things on their Facebook feed that constantly remind them of these problems. And it’s kind of like these inputs may not be in their consciously preferred system, but they actually have an effect. Sometimes it’s really important to make sure that you have space in your life where you’re not getting things visually and auditorily about what’s going on in the world, but actually focusing on what you enjoy, and a sentiment of anchoring again, of deliberately reminding yourself of experiences visually, auditorily in your body, where you feel really good.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So the way you described Virginia Satir using it is perhaps when they’re in the midst of something and being able to reconnect with that bond and that love. Are there other ways people can use that anchoring?
Richard Bolstad: Yes. Some of the things we do automatically, without officially knowing that it is anchoring, and that includes actually having photos that you’re carrying around with you, that are pleasant to look at… And actually intentionally looking at those photos and just allowing the feeling to flood through your body. Actually listening to the voice of your partner in a positive tone, and intentionally playing back that voice at other times. Also, noticing when they hold you, when they touch you, at times that felt really good, how powerful that is.
Sometimes people actually accidentally anchor themselves kinesthetically as well into a positive state. I remember one time my wife and I were having a conflict and we were in the middle of that argument, and suddenly I reached out and touched her shoulder, and she said “Oh, my goodness.” I didn’t know what had happened; she suddenly remembered something, and she said “When you touch my shoulder, I just remember that you love me.” So it’s just an accidental anchor. But once we understand that, we can actually set up those anchors so that we can remind ourselves of that feeling.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, because John Gottman talks about the ratio of 20 to 1, and that’s in conflict, right? And then — or I forget… Do you remember the ratio? Because there’s one for conflict and one for just normal…
Richard Bolstad: The research has been changing on that… So he said that what he found was overall that the ratio was around 5 to 1 in couples who were going to do really well. In couples who were not doing well, the ratio was at 0.8 to 1, which means that they almost had as many nice things they were saying and doing with each other as negative things. So that’s why they thought it was okay. Couples often think “Hey, I say lots of nice things to you. What’s up.” And it actually needs to be, as you say, a lot more. It needs to be around five times more, rather than equal.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And yeah, as Gottman talks about too, this contributes… And I wonder if the NLP and the anchoring and what you’re describing and where people are putting their attention in conflict highly influences the override, the sentiment override of negative or positive. And if we’re paying attention to anchoring or deepening in our understanding of these channels and building those bonds and that rapport – that just seems immediately to start to shift to the more positive.
Richard Bolstad: Absolutely, yeah. So there are a lot of other things in this NLP field that are useful to enhance that positive emotional override, of course. And one of the things that’s really effective, and I think links in as well with that research, is an idea in NLP that everything someone does, at some level has a kind of positive intention. Now, that’s not a researched, evidential thing; it’s just saying that’s a useful belief.
In John Gottman’s research, he found that when a couple actually gets along well, they have almost delusional ideas that the other person is kind of like them… And even from research, they’re just a different person. But when a couple is not doing well, they have a delusional belief the opposite way; that this other person is broken, and they’re nothing like me.”
So it’s a really useful theory, we say in NLP, to have the idea that everything that a person does must have a positive intention, and to be curious about what were they trying to do behind what you’re seeing them do; what is the positive intention. [unintelligible 00:35:08.14] is even more important than what you actually do. So in NLP we emphasize this idea of finding that for anything that’s happening, what were you trying to do behind it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, I love that. I talk about the quality of the question; our mind gets working on that, versus “Why are they such jerks?” It’s a very different question. I love it.
Well, is there anything else you wanna share about NLP and couplehood? I know that this really impacts relationships across the board, and I know we’re narrowing the focus today on couples, given the show, but is there anything else you feel like you wanna offer in today’s conversation?
Richard Bolstad: I think one of the other things that is really important to bear in mind is understanding that what happens non-verbally is at least [unintelligible 00:36:03.15] what happens verbally. The traditional 1950 is saying about this, that 93% of our communication is nonverbal things. So what NLP has done is understand that there’s a structure to those non-verbal things. So there’s kind of a syntax, it’s organized; it’s not just accidentally that we do stuff nonverbally and the other person guesses what’s going on.
So yeah, I’d encourage people to have a look at the things that I’ve written, but also the things for example that Leslie Cameron wrote in the early NLP field. She was working specifically with couples… And learn about these very precise little details, like breathing in time with someone. These are things that John Gottman discovered, but he doesn’t actually teach people, usually. You need to learn how to breath in time with someone and synchronize more, and then your brain will actually synchronize with them more.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Is that an example of structuring the non-verbal?
Richard Bolstad: Yes, it is exactly that… So we can actually choose — people are often afraid that if I copy the other person, they’ll think I’m mimicking them. But we’re always doing it anyway…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, we’re doing it naturally. Well, and too, I think it’s a common recommendation to notice when we’re feeling some tension, or defensiveness, or difficulty, to notice, “Am I folding my arms? Am I turned away? Am I rolling my eyes? What is it that I’m doing that’s perhaps even contributing? Can I deliberately open up my posture, try to lower my shoulders, soften my jaw, look with soft eyes, those types of things?”
Richard Bolstad: Yeah. And this happens even when a person is intending to do things positively. One of the things I’ll notice is sometimes in a couple, non-verbally, one person is leaning back, and the other person is leaning forward – the person who’s leaning forward is passionately trying to communicate something, and they think that they more they lean forward, the more in connection they are with the other person. But that’s not always true, of course. Sometimes it just feels like they’re in the opposite position – one person is trying to get space, and the other person is inundating their personal space.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: This is so rich. Well, I encourage for people listening, if this resonates, to check out Richard’s work, and your books, and what you have to offer. How can people get in touch with you and what you’re teaching?
Richard Bolstad: Our site is at transformations.net.nz. Nz is from New Zealand.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful.
Richard Bolstad: There are a whole lot of articles on that site, there are a whole lot of free audios they can download, things like that.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. And you do workshops?
Richard Bolstad: I do. Now, of course, my work is online, in different timezones, but yeah, you can find that out on that site as well.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. And you have your books… Do you still work with people directly?
Richard Bolstad: I do. It’s probably not a sensible thing for me to say that from here, because I’m doing so m much training, [unintelligible 00:39:30.18]
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. Wonderful. Thank you so much for spending your valuable time with us and sharing about your work and the impact of using NLP in relationship.
Richard Bolstad: Thank you very much, Jessica. It’s been great.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s interview. If you’re relatively new to the show, I wanna encourage you to check out a free guide, “Shifting criticism into connected communication.” This can be found on today’s show notes, DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and there you’ll find today’s episode, again, 245, “How to build more rapport in your relationship.”
In the show notes, at the bottom, you’ll see a section titled Mentioned, and you’ll see the free guide, “Shifting criticism into connected communication”, which is a side-by-side comparison of what can be a critical tendency, and then what can be more constructive, using requests, and helping your partner understand what you’re needing. I’m giving you lots of examples and language to implement.
Then from there, if you’re interested, you’re gonna be getting an email sequence, a series of emails offering more information that also give you an opportunity to engage in learning and transforming this tendency, and shifting out of criticism into connected communication through a course. Then you’ll have more access to that in those emails. There you’ll also find links mentioned, as well as the show notes for today’s episode, again, with Richard Bolstad.
Thank you for listening, and until next time, I hope you take great care.
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