One Phrase That Can Stop a Fight in Its Tracks

Episode Summary of “One Phrase That Can Stop a Fight in Its Tracks”

We’ve all been there…that moment in a conversation where your heart starts pounding, your voice gets a little louder, and suddenly you’re saying things you know you’ll regret the second they leave your lips. It’s a heavy, lonely feeling when a simple disagreement turns into a “communication crossfire”. If this sounds familiar, I want you to know you’re not alone. These moments are often less about the bill that didn’t get paid and more about a defensive cycle that pulls us away from the person we love most.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing one powerful, simple phrase that acts as an anchor to help you hit pause, lower the emotional temperature, and move back toward the same team

What You’ll Learn:
– When Conversations Go Off the Rails
– The Physiology of a Fight: Why We Lose Control
– The Power of a Shared Goal
– De-escalation in Action: A Practical Example
– Building Muscle Memory for Connection
– Moving from “Enemy” to “Teammate”

Don’t forget to check out our free 10-week relationship email course. This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it.

Free Relationship Pattern Assessment

Many couples assume they have a communication problem when they’re actually stuck in a relationship pattern that keeps creating the same conflict.

Take the free Relationship Pattern Assessment to discover what pattern may be keeping you stuck and learn what to focus on next.

👉 https://pages.communicateandconnect.com/relationship-quiz

Episode Transcript for “One Phrase That Can Stop a Fight in Its Tracks”

This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual couples and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families. To learn more about our services, visit www.communicateandconnect.com.

Welcome to the Communicate and Connect podcast for military relationships with your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go rate review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes.

We also really want to know what it is you love about our podcast, and if for some reason you’re not loving it, we want to know that too because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships.

You’re listening to episode 73, One Phrase That Can Stop a Fight in Its Tracks.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Hey there. Welcome back to the Communicate and Connect podcast. You are listening to episode 73. One phrase that can stop a fight in its tracks.

So I’m excited to be here sharing about this. This is just me today and I think that, we can all really relate when fights seem to escalate and we can’t figure out where they’ve gone wrong, why they’ve gone wrong, and how to get back on track with our partner.

So oftentimes with fights. They can get escalated. Oftentimes there’s like a ton of body reactions that happen, like your heart pounding, your voice getting louder, and then all of a sudden you’re saying things that you don’t really mean that you know you are gonna regret the moment they come out of your mouth.

if this is you, this happens to a lot of people, so you’re not alone. But imagine if in that moment you could actually hit pause and instead of walking away upset and in anger, you could use this one line to just change the whole process and change the whole energy of the conversation and help the two of you get back on track.

So here’s the line. The line is, “I don’t wanna fight you. I want to understand you.”

This is something that can really help. It can disarm, sort of defensiveness because this is what often happens in couples is that something gets said and it kind of comes out critical somehow, or it comes out as an accusation even when people don’t mean it to.

Somehow in the communication crossfire, it just doesn’t land well. And then almost all of us go into defensiveness. And so if you notice that both of you are starting to get defensive, this is the phrase you can use. I wanna understand you because what this is communicating is that you are having shared goals with your partner.

And it says like, I wanna be with you. I wanna understand you, instead of kind of a defensive response, which would most likely be conveying to your partner that you think they’re wrong and that is just gonna lead to more defensiveness and escalation and conflict between the two of you.

The other thing that this can help is part of what happens when couples are fighting especially when they’re both getting into this defensive mode, is that their nervous system is starting to escalate. That’s what’s going on when you also feel the strong physiological reactions in your body, like your heart rate.

Some people start feeling hot, some people feel really tense, get very tense muscles. And so what we’re doing also by saying, I don’t wanna fight you, I wanna understand you, is giving a moment of pause to the conversation to just allow everyone’s bodies to calm down for a moment and kind of reset.

Instead of a defensive comment, which would escalate the fight mode and more and more nervous system activation. This sort of pause can help us try to activate a connection mode where we join together back on the same team. And then the next thing is that what it really tells your partner is it tells your partner that they matter more to you than being right.

That this is not about who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s about us coming together, us being a team, us trying to understand each other and get through this together. So this is all important because it helps build emotional safety. And when partners feel safe, they can listen to each other, but when they feel attacked, they really can’t.

And so this one line can lower the emotional temperature and bring safety back into the room. So I wanna give you an example just to help make it more applicable to your life, to something you might be experiencing with your partner.

So let’s say that your partner forgot to pay a bill and you might kind of naturally start with, well, why didn’t you just handle it? That question and the tone of my voice could make it feel like I’m accusing my partner. And so then they might fire back with, well, you always think I mess up.

And now the fight’s going right? Now both of us are feeling charged, the adrenaline’s going, but right here, you would imagine pausing right here and saying, wait, I don’t wanna fight with you. I wanna understand you. And this can reroute the conversation because now both of you are reminded that we’re not trying to get into the blame game here, but what we’re actually trying to do is trying to stay connected.

This isn’t easy, especially when you’re flooded with emotion and the last thing your brain wants to do is slow down. And that’s why practicing this phrase before conflict can really help. Especially if you can practice it, you know when things are just like a tiny bit intense. You can even practice it just kind of randomly as you go throughout your day with your partner.

But you wanna practice it because it does help build up the muscle memory to use this phrase as an anchor point to interrupt the conflict and help the two of you get back on the same page and be a team again. And ultimately you end up training your brain to start reaching for connection.

And rerouting away from conflict and away from control, and who’s right to how can we be together and get through this together? So important takeaways from today is that every couple fights, but when you stop seeing your partner as the enemy, you can start seeing the real problem, which is usually the blame game.

It’s this defensive pattern that keeps pulling you apart and using this one simple line, I don’t wanna fight you, I wanna understand you. This can be your way back to each other. So try it this week. You know, maybe write it on a sticky note and put it somewhere. If you have a journal or a note, notepad journal sort of thing on your phone, you can keep it in your phone..

But the more you say it, the easier it’s gonna become to use it and to start getting calm and reconnected again instead of having more chaos and more conflict. So if you do end up trying this out, I’d love to hear how it goes. You can message us on Instagram, you can email us, you can comment on any of our social media posts, but I would love to know, how it helped if you end up trying it.

Alright, have a good day and I’ll see you next time.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, please take a second to go rate review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes. To sign up for our Free 10 week relationship email course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it.

While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy, and it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one.

Until next time.