Speaking and Communicating Podcast

This podcast focuses on improving your communication skills both professionally and personally

>> Robert Sandleila: Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I am your host, Robert and Laela.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Ah.

>> Robert Sandleila: If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are, uh, crucial for your career growth and leadership development. Now, in this exciting month of May, we have an amazing lineup of guests for you. On Mondays, our special guests will be helping us with our inner communication. On Wednesdays, we have public speaking experts helping us with becoming better public speakers. And on Fridays, our guests will be showing us how to reach global audiences. So stay tuned. Share these episodes with those who will benefit from them and log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Gina Simmons Schneider is a psychotherapist with a very interesting background

Now let's get communicating.

>> Robert Sandleila: Today we are joined by Gina Simmons Schneider, who is a psychotherapist with a very interesting background. She has worked with troubled youths. She has worked with so many different scenarios that are what we consider dangerous. And she's here to talk to us about how her work can help us individually and as a society. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Gina.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Hi, Alberta. It's a pleasure meeting you. Thank you for inviting me.

>> Robert Sandleila: M. It's my pleasure to host you today, truly. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the show. Please give us a little bit about yourself.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Well, like you said, I am a, uh, psychotherapist. I'm also author of a book called Frazzle Brain, teaching people how to break free from anxiety, anger, and stress using advanced discoveries in neuropsychology. So how the brain interacts and how we can improve our well being. And I also am a corporate trainer and an executive coach. And I coach people in particular on how to manage really difficult relationships, conflicts, and emotions. My coaching practice deals with sort of the hard interpersonal communication issues that people might be struggling with at work, whether it's with a dangerous colleague or a bullying boss or a really difficult work group situation. So those are the kind of consulting work that I do.

>> Robert Sandleila: Yes.

You used to deal with troubled youths as well, which were considered dangerous

Uh, speaking of the word dangerous, would you like to tell us a little bit more about how you get started? Because when I saw your profile, you used to deal with troubled youths as well, which were scenarios that were actually considered dangerous.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Yes. I started out really, um, volunteering on a suicide prevention hotline, and we had a clinic, and we actually. The first dangerous encounter was with a homicidal man that chased a woman into our, uh, clinic. And, uh, we hid her, and he trashed the office and threatened everybody. And we called the police, and he had weapons too, um, that he was threatening to use. That was one of, like, the first real scary, dangerous thing that I, um, was faced with. It all worked out. A lot of it had to do with the training that we had on how to talk people down off the ledge and how to, um, diffuse really volatile situation. So we had had good training, and I think that was really helpful to me in my entire psychotherapy career to have a lot of suicide. And part of the suicide training is also homicide training, because what you don't think about, really, when you think about suicide is that suicide is homicide of the self. Right? Right. So people have to be also in such despair and also full of the desire to kill someone, namely, um, themselves. Right. So some people are both suicidal and homicidal, but it is a dangerous kind of situation when someone is in that level of despair and desperation. So that training was really helpful from there. I worked with kids who were teens who were in a youth home for emotionally disturbed youth. The cottage that I was in, they all happened to be sex offenders. Youth sex offenders, usually teens who had molested younger children or had committed some kind of a sex crime. So our job was really to supervise them in a 24 hours school environment with counseling and ongoing, um, support. Even though we were dealing with teens who had come from extremely troubled environments, most of them had come from violent homes themselves or some type of severe deprivation themselves. When they came into this group home situation, it was the first time many of them had had responsible adults looking out for them and holding them accountable for behaviors. Right. Certain kinds of behaviors. So it was really eye opening to see someone come in. I remember one young, uh, man in particular. Uh, he was 15 years old, and he was 6ft tall, this long, lanky, thin boy, but he was a lot taller than myself and most of the other people that worked there. And he had been, uh, raised by a drug. His father was like a drug lord, and they drove Rolls Royces and had weapons. And father had, uh, positioned his son as his right hand man and bought prostitutes for his 15 year old son and degraded the mother. The mother was seen as inferior to the son and, you know, raised with a lot of drugs, not really much education. And so his parents get arrested and go to prison. And this boy is then put in this 24 hours school or residential treatment program. It was so when he first came in, he was like a wild animal. He was like mister drug kid kingpin in charge of everybody. And he was quickly disciplined. And when the children would get out of hand, we had a padded room and four big guys would take them to the padded room, and they could freak out in this padded room and not hurt themselves or anyone else. And when they calmed down, then they were allowed some privileges and allowed back into the cottage. It was a, uh, culinary therapy, where really the. It's a therapeutic environment. So everything about the environment is designed to be therapeutic and to train them to behave in normal society, right? And so I watched him come in as almost like a wild animal. Within six months, he was the sweetest, most helpful. You know, he got to be a boy again. He got to be a kid, and he was one of the most helpful and sweet young people in, uh, the whole unit. So it was interesting to see how much environment shapes behavior. And so much of the problems that we see behaviorally in society have a lot to do with the environments people find themselves in and the resources or the lack of resources that they have from there. I went into working, um, with incarcerated youth for the probation department. So I, um, ran programs for youth that were in juvenile detention centers and una hall. I worked for a while in girls rehab facility, and some of these girls say this is the safest I've ever felt, you know, being incarcerated. It was the first time they had people looking out for them where they had regular. Three regular meals a day. They weren't in fear. They could go to sleep without being afraid that someone might attack them in the middle of the night. So that really woke me up to the fact that there are some children that live with so much insecurity, chaos, violence, that being incarcerated is a better place for them, and it's the first time they've really been treated well. That was really, um, eye opening experience. And then from there, I went into private practice and working in other juvenile diversion programs where we would try to divert youth away from crime and into, you know, educational programs and jobs and those kinds of things. And that was fun, very fun work and very successful. We had a program with the police department, and, uh, the police would take these first time juvenile offenders, demand that the whole family be involved. And so we came in and educated the family and the teens on what a life of crime looks like. And then we had felons from prison who came out of prison, would talk to the kids about, this is what a life of crime looks like, and you have a choice now. You don't have to go down that pathway. Um, we did family counseling, and what we found is that the recidivism rate for these offenders started, uh, out within the first year. 65% would reoffend but after the program, it went down to 5%. So it was a significant impact in reducing juvenile crime because the family got involved and they had family counseling, and they learned different ways of coping, and they were also connected to services that they needed, which helped divert these kids away from crime. So that was very exciting. And then I went into private practice. Uh, we were trained in critical incident stress debriefings, like in the eighties and nineties. There were a lot of workplace shootings, workplace violence, and we were looking at workplace, trying to find some way of helping this problem. So we ended up doing a lot of debriefings after workplace homicides. So we would go in afterwards and help counsel the people, the survivors, and help them really be able to go back to work, because for many people, work became then a place of, uh, fear. We worked a lot with their employers and employees to help reduce the stress of all of that. And after doing that, we really decided that prevention was much better. So that's why we really stepped up our conflict management program. So that's why we really look at a lot. When you analyze what happens in a lot of these workplace shootings, you have low level conflicts that escalated and that were mismanaged. And we may also have people who are in so much desperation and they don't have resources to make other choices, and that becomes the choice they make. That, of course, is so harmful. So with the workplace violence prevention, uh, we found that really training managers on how to manage people effectively, how to manage anger, their own anger. And the anger erupts in the workplace. Mhm. That we've really seen an increase in people coping better, fewer of these violent encounters.

>> Robert Sandleila: It's so sad when you hear the stories about those kids, especially the ones who say prison is actually warmer than home. But when you make also the connection, kids grow up and become the adults who are then in the workplace. If they've been through so much conflict and these environments, that's when you have the grownups at work who don't know how to handle conflict.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Exactly. And that's what we do in our anger management, conflict management workshops and trainings, is we will role play with people and we will take real problems that they're dealing with that cause them stress in the workplace. And then we will teach them, um, different kinds of coping skills and different ways of thinking, thinking about those conflicts so that they feel like they have a broader range of responses instead of just, you made me mad. I'm going to get mad at you. You know, you're an obstacle to what I want, I'm going to push back. Instead of just that kind of reflexive reaction, we teach people how to be reflective and empathetic. And as soon as people can have empathy for the other person's perspective, their ability to negotiate with that person increases dramatically. So even if somebody seems crazy or extreme, if they feel that the person they are yelling at or talking to harshly is empathizing in some way, has some, um, sympathy or some interest in their feelings, often there will be this sort of arc, and then the person will calm down, and you can start to have a real conversation. We teach people techniques and how to do that, both how to manage your own heart rate when you're feeling that stress or fear when someone's mad at you or behaving in a way you think is irrational, how to navigate that whole thing and then get to the point where you can negotiate something that's going to work for you and hopefully be a win win for both parties.

If we show caring, that is often the most calming thing in an argument

>> Robert Sandleila: Certainly, if we could all learn win win strategies, basically, there's so much that we can solve. Because when you think, if a person is attacking, a lot of the time, we always think, I'm just defending myself. Gina is the one who attacked. I got to attack back, you know?

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Exactly.

>> Robert Sandleila: I got to protect myself. I have a responsibility to myself. If she's attacking me, I'm also coming with my own punches. And that's how we are usually with anything. It might not be physical, but with any disagreement, any miscommunication. That's our first go to.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Right. We get defensive, and our body ramps up the cortisol, the stress chemicals. And that makes us sort of write a script of, now we're in a fight, and I have to defend myself. And so that's the story in our head. And so what we teach people is, you could have a different story going on in your head. It could be, this person is very distressed. I don't have to try to change them. I can try to show that I care, and that might help them feel less distress. We can disagree with what somebody believes is true. And still, if we show caring, that is often the most calming thing. In a way, if we're giving attention to someone without attacking them, we're showing them with our behavior that they matter. And that's a universal need that all humans have. We need to feel like we matter. Somebody believes that what we're saying matters. A lot of times we need that feeling more than even agreement. Right. We don't necessarily need people to agree with everything we say, but if they treat us like what we say matters, there's a calming feeling of connection there.

>> Robert Sandleila: So the validation we seek, it doesn't come from them agreeing with us, but them making us realize that we matter.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Yeah. That you're listening to someone attentively without pushing back or arguing or denying what they're saying. You're treating them as if they matter. That has a calming effect on us. So a lot of times, people don't want to listen. The thing I see with married couples a lot, because I do a lot of couples therapy, and with couples, you'll often see one person getting very upset about something, and the other person thinks the quickest way to get them to calm down is to explain that what they're upset about is really not that bad. It's like, oh, you know, like they. Maybe they're upset about all this money got spent. You know, where did the money go? And the other person is wanting to explain, well, the money went here, here, here, and here. And these were all things we agreed to. It, uh, just looks shocking right now, and you don't need to worry. And so they think that if they speak to the facts of the argument, that the argument will go by faster. But the actual fact of the matter is, if we speak to the emotional need for the person first, not the facts of the argument, the details of the argument, but the you matter part of the argument might be something like, oh, it sounds like you're really upset about this. You must be really worried about money right now. What's, what's really bothering you? That must feel terrible, you know, listening to the person's emotions and showing that person that you care about how they feel first. And then when they start to feel a little bit calmer, then you can say, well, I just wanted to let you know that we had already talked about these things, and it does look sort of temporarily shocking that we don't have that money now. But we. These were all planned expenses, so don't worry. We're going to be okay, you know? Um, but if you start with the.

>> Robert Sandleila: Arguing of the facts, you nullifying what they are feeling at that moment, and.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: The person who's emotional will escalate because they're not feeling heard. People will say this over and over, you aren't listening. You aren't listening. They'll repeat themselves. And the other person is going, I'm hearing you, I'm hearing you. But they're not talking about the emotion. They're talking about the issue. So the emotional need is really the most important thing, if we can attend to the emotional need of the person who's distressed first, we're building rapport, and it often soothes that person enough to be able to hear other facts and other things that might actually help resolve the issue.

Sometimes workplace violence has to do with domestic violence that has stumbled into workplace

>> Robert Sandleila: So are you saying that most likely those who come to the workplace and are guilty of workplace violence? Usually it's the emotional need of not being heard.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Well, workplace violence, it's complex, and I don't want to simplify it to just one little fact like that. But what we have seen, when we do an anatomy, um, you know, sort of an autopsy of what happened leading up to a workplace violence situation, we often find low levels of conflict not properly addressed, that escalate over time. We often find that. I'm not saying that's true in 100% of the cases. Sometimes workplace violence has to do with domestic violence that has stumbled into the workplace. Someone's spouse is pathologically jealous and goes after the alleged person having an affair with their partner. And their. Those are things that do happen, uh, where domestic violence can stumble into a workplace. But when you have workplace violence that arises from workplace conflicts, it's often the low level conflicts that aren't properly addressed that escalate. And sometimes what has to be addressed is maybe the person does have some anger management problem, and they could be referred to anger management or counseling or get some additional support before the argument or the issue escalates and escalates. Sometimes we've seen it where problem employee will be not properly dealt with. Problem employees, maybe that people are a little scared of because the person is odd. Maybe they have some strange, angry responses to things, so they just don't know how to deal with it. So they just don't deal with it. Maybe they pawn that person off to a different department.

>> Robert Sandleila: Yeah. To get rid of the problem.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Yeah. And then that just keeps going and going. And what we recommend is, if you really have somebody that's disturbing at work, call in at association of threat Assessment Professionals, develop a plan, talk with HR, work with that person and getting them some support and some help, like with their employee assistance program, work with the parties involved. In other words, show that person, whatever their issue is, that they do matter to the organization, and that can often go a long ways to preventing somebody from coming violent. But a lot of times, people just want to get back to work and ignore the problem or kick the problem down the road and not really deal with it. So dealing with it is at lower levels of conflict is always better.

>> Robert Sandleila: It does sound like it's a human reaction to just postpone it or say, you know what? You're not going to deal with it in the short term. We have things to do. We have deadlines. We'll deal with it later. But I can understand where that is coming from.

First, try to understand what upset person's issues really are first

Now, would you please give us some strategies on how to de escalate situations, be it just a personal disagreement, if the other person has raised their voice, or really getting worked out?

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: I think, uh, the first, the thing is to really try to understand what the upset person's issues really are first before trying to communicate anything. Our communication is always going to be more effective the more understanding that we have. It's counterintuitive, though, to let somebody just keep yelling at you, of course, especially if you think you can quickly explain something away and they'll be fine. But once somebody's that worked up, if they're very worked up and angry and they need to give a speech, you know what it is you're doing that's upsetting them or whatever the situation is, it's much better to try to listen attentively without judgment. And we teach people also how to do deep breathing while they're doing that to calm themselves down, because it's sort of like our animal brain gets really activated when we're angry. It's like animals respond to how we say things, not what we say. Right. So if you're trying to call your dog and you're going, come over here, you ugly, uh, creepy, rotten, no good dog, come here. You know, the dog will wag its tail and come on over, even though.

>> Robert Sandleila: You use what's ugly and creepy.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Yeah, but if you say, get over here, you beautiful dog, you know, the dog's just gonna, you know, take off, run away. When someone's angry, their anger, their animal brain is very alert to threat. So if we can lower our nervous system arousal with deep breathing, with a calm, non judgmental, kind expression on our face, like, I'm interested in you, like, you matter, your feelings matter. Sometimes even saying, well, what you're saying really matters, I want to hear you. I want to understand that in saying that, that creates an atmosphere of safety for the other person, because typically underlying anger is a feeling of being threatened. Right? So we want that animal brain to feel less threatened, to feel more comfortable with us. Now, if it's an interpersonal relationship, we're probably, our heart's going, you know, and we're probably feeling revved up and we want to yell back, we feel misunderstood or we feel mistreated. In that moment, and we want to defend ourselves. But if we can suppress that for a little bit, we can hold that back and think a little more strategically, like helping myself understand this person is going to help me negotiate and resolve this conflict later. And that's really true for even global conflicts, the better we understand an enemy, right? If we understand what they're thinking and what's motivating them and what their biggest fears are, diplomacy is going to be more effective. We're going to be able to find nonviolent solutions to problems if we actually understand our enemy better on a global geopolitical level. There's a great book by George Kolrieser called hostage at the table, and he was a hostage negotiator. And, um, he talks about using some of the same principles for hostage negotiations in the workplace. When you're dealing with hostility from co workers and bosses and things like that, that the same sort of rules of negotiation are applicable. And if they can work in a life and death situation, when someone has a gun to your head, it could probably work in a typical workplace, right? Uh, when the stakes are high and one of the first things hostage negotiators do is they talk in a really calm voice and they'll say, hey, what can we do for you? Are you thirsty? Do you need a pizza? Can I bring you a Coke? What do you need? I'm here to help. They really try to establish a sense of just basic human trust that I'm interested in what you want. I'm interested in understanding you. And it's very effective, because at a core human level, we all want to feel again like we matter and like we're understood, right?

>> Robert Sandleila: So they don't come with, hey, we want that person. Give us the person back. If, uh, this is what I want, the winning situation is, let me establish first what it is that you need, and if I can provide it for you, let me hear you before I then tell you what. I'm, um, hoping that this deal is going to get me at the end, so I must start with establishing how I can help you.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Yes. And the reason is also a selfish reason in that situation, because the more information we have, the more knowledge we have about what that person needs, the better our negotiation strategy is going to be. Operating in the dark, where you don't really have any idea what somebody wants, or you don't have any idea what's motivating that person. You're just sort of stabbing in the dark. You have no idea what to offer. That might be a uh, good bargaining chip for negotiation. And the same thing in our close interpersonal relationships. A lot of times people look at the surface argument, you know, like, I'm so sick of you, you know, putting your shoes on the kitchen table. How many times have I told you that I hate. You hate it when you put shoes on the table and the other person is defending themselves. I just forgot. I'm sorry. I was coming in, my hands were full. I'm going to clean it up, you know? And now you're in a back and forth argument. Right. But if you listen to the person, you know, I'm so sick and tired of you putting your shoes. If the other person were to say, oh, that must be really frustrating to tell me over and over, and here I still did that. That must felt. That must feel terrible. I'm so sorry you feel that way. I'm so sorry. I mean, how angry is that person gonna need to stay about that thing, right? They feel heard. They feel understood. They feel cared about. So I tell people, you can save hours of arguing pleasure by going straight to the emotional need. How? Um, people need to argue. They like it. But if you go straight to the emotional need that the person is expressing, sometimes you don't always know it from the words they're using, because underneath that anger about the shoes on the table, there might be some other burden that person is carrying that they need to be able to talk about. And they're targeting the shoes as the object of their scorn, when maybe there's something even more going on underneath that. And unless we show an interest and we have an open mind and ask questions about what's going on, this must be upsetting. Tell me about your day. Unless we show that interest, we might never even know that person had had a, you know, near miss on the freeway, and they're really scared about something else. And. And then the last straw was the shoes on the table, and that just set them off. Right.

>> Robert Sandleila: So, um, that would set off anyone, for sure.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: I don't like it. That's. I wouldn't like it. But, you know, these are the things that people fight about when they live together.

>> Robert Sandleila: Yes, that's absolutely right.

Part of deescalating conflict involves calming down your own nervous system

Gina, any last words on how to de escalate conflict, especially personally, and which will then translate into the workplace as well?

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Part of it is slowing down your own nervous system or reaction to the conflict kind of calming and managing your own emotions first before you try to resolve a conflict with someone else. The reason for that is you're just not going to be effective if you're really hot and the other person's really hot, and now you're both just flamethrowers, you know, throwing heat at each other. So we teach people a lot of strategies, like deep breathing, like telling yourself, I can handle this. I may not know what to say or do right now, but I can find a good solution to this problem. Kind of talking yourself through the ability to wait, to pause, to be patient, and not try to quickly resolve it when you're already really aroused. Nervous system wise, your nervous system is really ramped up. When we are that ramped up, uh, in terms of our feeling upset emotionally, our thinking becomes very narrow, and we're not creative in problem solving, and we're not very good at negotiating or thinking outside the box. And our thinking is very narrow and.

>> Robert Sandleila: Selfish and self focused, back to back, defending myself again.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Um, and we get so focused on ourselves that we miss important information that could help us negotiate if we're not calmer. You don't need to be super calm, but just calm enough to listen, calm enough to wait before you try to speak. And so we teach people actual calming strategies, deep breathing strategies, and different ways of thinking that are more empowering, that make you feel like you're not a helpless victim of this angry person, that you have other tools available that you can employ when that person calms down. Those kind of tools are very, very helpful.

>> Robert Sandleila: Absolutely.

Gina Simmons Schneider has written a self-help book called Frazzle Brain

And may I ask you to tell us a little bit more about your book?

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Yes. Frazzle Brain. Uh, so, Frazzle brain is available wherever books are sold. It is a self help book for people who are trying to manage anxiety, anger, and stress. Came up with the term frazzle brain because, um, most people describe feeling frazzled these days. There's a lot of strife and coming, uh, out of COVID people are still quite stressed. And so frazzled brain is that state where you're feeling this sense of urgency, irritability, pressure, and your head is kind of foggy, and you just feel a lot of distress. And so there's a lot in the neuropsychology research that teaches us, really, how to intentionally calm ourselves down and find peace and resolve some of these issues. So I invite people to read it. It is not sciency. It is written for everyday readers. You do not have to be a neuroscience geek to get the message from the book. And it's designed to be really user friendly, and people are really enjoying the calming relief they're getting from it. They're getting nice feedback.

>> Robert Sandleila: So I appreciate that awesome stuff. Uh, from Freszel Brain, a book authored by Gina Simmons Schneider. Uh, Gina, thank you so much for sharing these strategies today with us, uh, of resolving conflict. Very, very helpful and much needed.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Thank you so much, Roberta. I really appreciate you having me on.

>> Robert Sandleila: My absolute pleasure. And before you go, please tell us where we can find you on the socials and where to find the book as well.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: You can find me@frazzlebrain.com and all my social media links are there. You can find all of them. Um, I'm on all of them, pretty much. Not on TikTok, but LinkedIn, uh, Facebook, Instagram, yes. But frazzlebrain.com is a one stop place where you can read more about the book and you can find my social media contacts. I also have a blog at, uh, psychology today called Frazzle brain, and I write a lot about, uh, helpful tips on all kinds of psychology topics so people can follow me there. And there are links there, too, on my website.

>> Robert Sandleila: Excellent stuff, uh, frazzledbrain.com. gina. Simon Schneider, the psychotherapist who helps us de escalate conflict and is a trainer author as well. Thank you so much for being on our show. This has been an absolute pleasure.

>> Gina Simmons Schneider: Thank you, Roberta. My pleasure.

>> Robert Sandleila: Thank you for joining us on the speaking on Communicating podcast. Once again, please log on to Apple and Spotify, leave us a reading and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on the show that will be of benefit to you. We encourage you to continue to get communicating and let us know how communication skills continue to improve your life professionally and personally. And stay tuned for more episodes to come.