Alan E. Fruzzetti > Quotes

“It is common to hear people (especially counselors or therapists) say things like “feelings are always valid.” What this usually means is that if a person feels a certain way, he or she feels that way for a reason. The feelings may be in reaction to faulty data, but the fact is that the person feels what she or he feels, wants what she or he wants, thinks what she or he thinks. It just is what it is.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“In contrast, when someone we love fails to understand us or fails to accept us, it is frustrating and disappointing.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“The central idea in this book is that highly aroused, negative emotion—dysregulated emotion—is the core problem for high-conflict couples and that there are specific skills partners can learn to manage their emotions effectively, which in turn makes effective communication (accurate expression followed by understanding and validation) possible. With enough practice, conflict can be transformed into closeness and couples can achieve the closeness, friendship, intimacy, peace, and support that brings us joy and reduces our suffering.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“validation between partners is the communication of understanding and acceptance”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“if we are able to describe the situation, what we want, what is happening, and legitimize the emotional process even when we do not like it, typically our emotional arousal will start the return toward a lower state of emotional upset and eventually back to normal emotional arousal”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“But, imagine instead of flying off the handle and invalidating the person you love, that you slowed down, let go of judgments, took a minute to bring down your emotional arousal, and tried to be mindful of your partner and your genuine goals. Then you validated your partner.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Conversely, a person with low emotional sensitivity can sometimes have a really hard time intuitively understanding what another person is feeling. This person may need to have a lot more explaining and more direct and specific requests in order to be emotionally supportive and responsive. Low emotional sensitivity can leave a spouse or partner feeling misunderstood or even lead to falsely (but understandably) believing that the other person doesn’t care about him or her.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“It is important to note that destructive engagement does not necessarily start this way. It is so named because this is where the conversation ends up. In fact, one or both partners may start out reasonably calm and emotionally regulated, with clear awareness of their good intentions, their commitment, and their love for one another. But without the ability to stay regulated in a difficult situation, if the conflict cannot easily be resolved, one partner (and soon after, the other) will become increasingly upset and cross the line into ineffective behavior, or stop describing what he or she wants accurately, stop listening with empathy, and so forth. Sometimes the damage is minor, sometimes it is major.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“The central idea in this book is that highly aroused, negative emotion—dysregulated emotion—is the core problem for high-conflict couples and that there are specific skills partners can learn to manage their emotions effectively, which in turn makes effective communication (accurate expression followed by understanding and validation) possible.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“And, finally, how others respond to us—particularly people we are close to—shapes the direction of our emotion in very important ways. Certain responses, such as understanding and validating our experience, soothe our frayed emotional edges, but others, such as criticizing or invalidating our experience, are like salt in an open wound in our hearts.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Your high arousal also fuels negative and judgmental thinking, which further fuels negative emotional arousal—a vicious cycle.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Couples who have had a lot of disagreements and regularly have invalidated each other typically develop a virtually instant alert, a kind of hair-trigger sensitivity to even the possibility of the other partner invalidating them.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Notice how your voice tone affects the voice tone of the person you speak to. Change your voice tone and see how it changes the voice tone of the other person (you may have to demonstrate the change a few times before the other person matches you). When your level of negative emotional arousal is low, notice how much you love your partner, notice your commitment to your relationship, and notice the things you both want from your relationship, such as companionship, friendship, support, and understanding. Notice that you are in the same boat together: you sail or sink together. Every day remind yourself about how you are connected to your partner: “Your happiness is my happiness, and your unhappiness is my unhappiness. When I take care of your needs, I am also taking care of my own. When I treat you with love and kindness, I am taking care of myself also.” Notice how your mood affects others around you, and vice versa. Before saying something to your partner, even in an easy, nonconflictual situation, ask yourself, “Is this going to make things better or worse?” or, if you prefer, “Is this going to get me what I really want in the long term?” Practice this one as much as possible, even several times per day. Notice how empowering it is to be able to choose how you”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“How High Emotional Arousal Affects Your Relationship There are many ways that negative emotional arousal affects your relationship, both directly and indirectly. For example, it may lead you to overreact in some situations, and perhaps even to underreact in others. This, in turn, makes it more difficult for your partner to respond in understanding, soothing, or loving ways: he or she simply doesn’t have accurate information on which to base a response. So, even if your partner wants to respond in a loving way, and doesn’t have his or her own negative emotional arousal to deal with (which is unlikely), it makes the job harder.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Thus, being dysregulated is not the same as being upset. You can be upset and still be quite able to make effective decisions, hold your tongue, or otherwise “control” yourself—manage to act in ways that help you achieve a better relationship, a better life, rather than simply escaping an unpleasant (or even awful) situation by doing something that hurts the other person, escalates the conflict, or, in general, makes things worse in the long run.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Unlike the other patterns, in the engage-distance pattern, there is an imbalance between the partners: one moves one way; the other goes in a different direction. That is, one person wants to discuss or pursue a topic and be together, but the other person, at least in that moment, does not want to discuss a topic further or perhaps even be together and instead seeks some alone time. What makes this pattern particularly tricky is that the engager or distancer can start out doing so in either an effective, constructive way or a more destructive, aversive, or avoidant way, but regardless, the pattern ends up being a disaster (Fruzzetti and Jacobson 1990).”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Well, refusing to continue to fight to the death (of your relationship) is hardly surrendering. Rather, if defeating your partner is also self-defeating, then stopping the fight is both showing the courage to do what is needed to survive and the courage to engage in self-preservation without harming your partner.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Thus, big reactions (high reactivity) can communicate more clearly what a person is feeling, but also can result in the person sometimes reacting too quickly, getting upset or even dysregulated before all the information has become available. This can sometimes be counterproductive, of course: if reactivity had been lower, the person’s response might have been quite different and more productive.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Sometimes we can understand how someone feels a certain way, even if that particular reaction is unusual or even not really valid in other ways. For example, some partners have had negative experiences in previous relationships that leave them overreacting or underreacting to their current partners. In these situations, your partner’s feelings may be valid (make sense, be legitimate) because of their prior experiences, even though they might not be as legitimate purely in response to the current situation.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Mutual Avoidance Pattern In a mutual avoidance pattern, partners dysregulate each other. That is, when one partner experiences something negative and starts to get upset beyond a certain point, the other perceives the rising emotion and starts to spike emotionally as well. Then, each person, cognizant of the other’s high negative arousal and potential for dysregulated responding (ineffective, invalidating, getting angry, and so on), avoids bringing the issue up at all. Of course, problems that can’t be discussed can’t be solved. And when partners feel relief when not talking with each other, an avoidance pattern can start easily. Closeness fades, even though active conflict (arguing, fighting), per se, may be infrequent.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“Of course, it is painful when your partner verbally attacks you. Recognize that by responding in kind, you are almost guaranteeing more volleys in your direction, the negative cycle will continue, and you will find no peace.”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation

“In contrast, when someone we love fails to understand us or fails to accept us, it is frustrating and disappointing. When that failure to understand and accept us turns into invalidation, and she or he tells us that we are wrong, should not feel or want what we want, and so on, it is very, very painful (Iverson and Fruzzetti 2006; Shenk and Fruzzetti 2006).”
― Alan E. Fruzzetti, The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation