Using Self-Talk to Improve Important Relationships by Charolotte Wellen

                          

I teach at Murray High School, the first Glasser Quality Public High School in the world. Our school is based on the ideas of Dr. William Glasser, a genius who has developed a system of learning how to get along with one another that actually creates a joyful school environment, even with students who have been designated “at risk of dropping out or of graduating below their potential.”

As a Murray teacher, I have developed many methods of using Choice Theory with my students and the result has been that my students and I come to love one another and enjoy working with each other every day. When we have conflicts, we have a system to work them out. We don’t stay miserable, or nurse hurt feelings. We just mediate and go away feeling good about one another again.

One of the most important benefits of living in a Choice Theory environment, is that these ideas don’t just stay in the world of work. Once we begin to “think in Choice Theory,” it becomes a part of the way we look at the world.

I have found that the longer we live in a CT environment, the more difficult it is to maintain the usual external control behaviors that we use, even with those we love, whether in school or outside of school.

A good example of that would be that I came downstairs at my house one morning and found that the perfectly clean kitchen that I had left the night before had been completely trashed by my beloved husband, who is a writer and composer, and who had stayed up all night long working. He'd fixed himself a meal and left everything everywhere. My first thoughts were, "Darn it! I just cleaned this kitchen! Why is he so thoughtless and selfish as to believe I'm just going to come in here and do it again?! Why didn't he clean up after himself? What does he think I am, his slave?  Why am I allowing him to treat me like this?"

If I had continued to think along those lines, I probably would have done the dishes in anger and when he got up, we'd have had a fight about that, with me feeling completely abused. I would have blamed him and attacked him and that's how our day would have gone. Glasser would say that I was using the seven disconnecting behaviors to destroy my relationship with my husband.

Luckily, I'd been learning CT/RT/LM at Murray, so I was able to pause long enough to get another thought process going. I thought, "Hmmmm.... Let me use some CT/RT here. First off, do you love your husband? Yes. Do you have lots and lots of good reasons for loving him? Definitely! Do you want him in your life, exactly as he is? ... Yes.... Okay. Do you think that if you leave these dishes here, he won't clean them when he gets up? You know he won't complain at all that you didn't do them. He'll do them when he feels like it. In fact, that's why he didn't do them before he went to bed. He was tired and he didn't feel like it. Is that evil? No. Is that selfish? No. That's just getting what he needed. In fact, if I leave them here now, it'll be because I don't want to do them now either. Am I evil for that? My mother would probably think so, but I don't. :-) I just don't want to do them, just like Paul didn't.

“So, what is my problem this morning? Did I think that by cleaning the kitchen last night it was going to stay perfectly clean for all time? Hah! That would be nice, but it was doomed to be dirty again the next time one of us used it, obviously. So, now, here I am on a Saturday morning, looking at a filthy kitchen. Who says I have to clean it? No one. Only me. I'm doing a number on myself here. I am a free woman who could get in the car right now and take myself out to a marvelous breakfast if I want to. I could drive to California and start a brand new life this morning, if I want to. I could do ANYTHING at all.

“If I'm feeling like I don't want to face Paul's dirty dishes in the kitchen, I can give myself permission to just leave them here for him to do when he feels like it. If neither of us EVER feel like it, we could sell the house and leave the dirty dishes here for the next people. Hah! We could, if we wanted to.

“So, can I let go of being angry about Paul leaving the kitchen dirty when he went to sleep? Yes. Can I good-heartedly leave them myself and go do something else today? Or would I prefer to get to work and get this kitchen cleaned up again, so Paul doesn't have to do the dishes when he gets up and so he can come down to breakfast in a clean kitchen. What do I WANT to do? Either choice is good if I can do it with love in my heart, rather than blame, anger, and frustration."

I can't tell you how much that conversation with myself improved our relationship in a thousand ways and is still improving it. You can probably imagine how grateful Paul was to have a clean kitchen and a happy wife who didn't say, "How could you have done this to me?" but who instead said, "I love you. Did you get a nice sleep?" No mention at all of the dirty kitchen and not a single bad feeling about it because I'd thought it through and it was a gift I wanted to give with love in my heart. I felt great and so did he. Relationship connected, not disconnected.

This type of thought process is what Choice Theory and Reality Therapy are all about. I would say that 100% of my relationships are better because of all the CT/RT/LM I've learned here at Murray and I send a hearty, “Thank you, sir!” to my beloved Dr. Glasser!