Wiretap - Other Peoples' Problems

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Conflict-resolution expert Misha Glouberman answers listener calls to help solve their problems. Plus, a body-language expert diagnoses relationship issues with a mere glance.

It's summer, and it's going to be a hot one in Canadian politics. I'm Catherine Cullen. Join me and some of CBC's best political reporters as we bring you all new summer programming, focused on everything from negotiating with Donald Trump to Canada's climate goals, to the future of the Senate, and more. We'll talk to the chief of the defense staff and a top senator. We'll visit the Maritimes to learn about the future of energy production there. Catch the House Saturdays wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein on CBC Radio One. Today's episode, Other People's Problems.

2.30 p.m. I'm flying to Colorado on business, and my plane leaves in a few hours. And rather than anticipating the state's mountains and waterfalls, I'm focused on my phobias, arophobia, arachnophobia, Colorado phobia. According to the internet, there are poisonous spiders in Colorado, and unlike Peter Parker, who became a unitarded ubermensch because of his spider bite, I'm imagining mine as yielding a prolonged hospital stay involving hives and stomach cramp, 3 p.m. In the cab to the airport, I distract myself from anxiety by staying in the moment.

I concentrate on the back of the driver's head. He has red dots on his neck. I wonder if they're contagious. 3.1 p.m. Does everyone else worry they'll make the cabby feel like they've no confidence in him if they buckle up? I believed in you, I'll whisper, as the two of us lay on the hood of the car amid shards of windshield glass. 3.07 p.m. My cell phone rings. It's Josh.

You know when you're eating a slice of pizza, he asks, and you can't decide whether to fold it or not, and then you do fold it, and then you regret it immediately, but with the cheese all stuck together, it's just too late to unfold, intimately, I say. I feel that way about having broken up with Alice, he says. I shouldn't have folded. 3.20 p.m. I'm at the airport, and Josh is still listing his woes,

as I get my ticket, check my luggage, and walk toward security. I am no longer thinking about turbulence, altitude-related illness, or even desert spiders. I'm focused on Josh. Sometimes listening to someone else's problems helps eclipse one's own. Maybe that's why the good Lord created other people's problems in the first place. After a time, you start to see the world around you

as just a swirling ocean of other people's problems. This is Dr. Vincent Singleton, a Colorado research psychologist who catalogs and diagnoses the problems of others. Dr. Singleton is an expert at decoding body language and is able to read symptoms of mental unwellness that are invisible to the untrained eye. And sometimes, to escape the clinical setting,

he'll sit in the park, observing people's behavior from a distance. I asked if I could tag along during one of these sessions and record his observations for the radio. You have to spend a lot of time here, which I do, hours every day, studying, considering. making notes. So why don't we just take a look around

and maybe you could favor us with some observations? Absolutely. What about that couple over there sitting by the tree? If we look closely at this situation, you can see there's a lot of touching, a lot of smiling and radiate a kind of joy. And what I think we're seeing here is a relationship close to its conclusion. But I mean, you just said that they're radiating a lot of joy? But there is a large amount of negativity being pressed to. back here in the way that she's holding that handbag for instance quite close to a chest i think that's her

way of saying back off essentially um if you look at the boy he's um just now and again his eyes dart off to the side that's a repressed terror that we're seeing there and looking for an escape route and i think they're both putting up a very successful front for each other but i wouldn't give this relationship more than a couple more weeks i mean to the common observer to me it looks like they're just kind of enjoying an afternoon to get like in fact actually look right now that she's kind of laughing well but look at the look at the boy for instance you see he's eating chips there now he's offered her chips several times but the way that he's offering the chips the way that he thrusts them towards her essentially trying to push her away he's almost using that bag of chips as a proxy for his own emotional distance

and watch how he brings it down now do you see that that's almost a guillotine like movement he's trying to sever this relationship. That's amazing because, I mean, truly, like, to me, it just looks as though he's offered her a corn chip. Yes, to the untrained eye, that is how it would seem. What about, let's take a look at the, um, uh, that couple over there, uh, seated by the grass. Right, well, we've picked an elderly couple here and that's interesting. If you look at the way that they were sitting down a moment ago, you saw them sitting down.

And you saw how the lady was holding the man's sleeve. That seemed nice, yeah. It was kind of like a sweet moment. What it suggested to me was that she was the dominator in this relationship. She was repressing him. She was trying to control him. Again, I think this has been a very unhappy relationship. Really?

I wouldn't have thought that. This is the curse I live with every day, seeing the reality beneath this fantasy that we call life. Over time, I think anyone can develop this skill. For instance, what does your first impression of this couple? tell you about them oh that that couple over there okay uh she's kind of swing your legs back and forth and he's kind of smiling and in a what seems a very open kind of way I think it's kind of I don't know it looks like the blossoming of young love to me it appears the tragic end of a

relationship in its last stages of disintegration it I mean really these kids can't be more than like 10 11 years old yes and that is what is sad this these things do happen at a very early age. They're laying the foundations for further unhappy relationships. What about, what about that couple over there having that heated conversation? He's kind of a large bodybuilder kind of guy. That's right. He's trying to keep the part of himself in shape that's available to him. What's not available is his cold emotional core. Almost brutish, classic conduct disorder, I think. Somebody very much lacking in social grace is spitting on the floor, punching his palm with his fist as he speaks to his goal.

Now, to me, that is a classic symptom of an Edipol complex. Edipol as in like he wants to have sex with his mother? Picture a kitten pawing at its mother's teat. It's the same kind of gesture. The pounding? That's right. It's almost like he's trying to milk his girlfriend, trying to pump the milk of affection from this girl

who clearly cannot provide what he's seeking. That is very as too. If you could just keep your voice down, I do like to maintain a wall between myself and the subjects. objects. Right, right. Yes, sorry. But yes, as I was saying, look at the way that he's, and thrust him back his shoulders and cracking his knuckles, the absolute... Look at the way that his shoulder kind of... Maybe you shouldn't be pointing at least. Right, sorry.

That's fine. Anyway, I was saying, in the way that his girlfriend's turned away from him, she senses his fallacy. Oh, it's, look at that. Its girlfriend is just turned on her heel and kind of stomped off. Pointing to a minimum, yes, I think that the fallacy has been revealed to her there. She has seen him for what he really is. Oh, and he's pointing at us, which is kind of confrontational. Would you say kind of dictatorial? I would say that, yes. He's walking over here.

He is walking. Why are you looking at me like that? He's an expert on. Well, perhaps it's time to move on. Should we perhaps be moving back? Oh, no, no, we were just having a discussion. It was an unrelated matter. We were terrible.

Sorry, I didn't mean any harm at all. Get out of here. Okay, okay, we're going to good, thank you. It's one thing to point out of but another people's problems, but another to actually try to fix them. In a bid to give a little something back, we recently set up a wiretap helpline for people to phone in with their problems, problems that we would try to resolve.

For help with the task, we enlisted Misha Globerman, a conflict resolution expert who runs workshops that teach people how to negotiate their interpersonal troubles. Part of what's fun about it is that the range of application is enormous. Like the principles through which people negotiate international peace treaties down to like the principles through which like a roommate squabble might get resolved. Like a lot of those principles are the same principles.

So let's check out our messages and see what we have here. Okay. Hi. is Hannah Graves. I am a first year in college, and the first person that I met when I started college was a foreign exchange student from France, and we began friends. Her name is Emma. She was really into our friendship. She would introduce me to everyone that we met as her best friend. And she would basically, if anyone were to talk to me or to post anything on my Facebook wall, she would ask me who they were and be weirdly jealous. When I was going to do community service work over spring break, she was upset at me for not planning to do something that's her for spring break, even though I was doing community service work.

and basically I want to break up with Emma as a friend and I don't know how to do that. So, Misha, what advice would you give Hannah? I guess there's a couple of things that strike me in Hannah's call. One thing is that I'm curious about the nature of her friendship with Emma and this friendship that she wants to end because sometimes what happens is that people are so averse to conflict that they'd rather just like end a situation completely

than deal with the problems. So it might be the case that, you know, what she sort of says in her friendship with, Emma is I have this person I'm friends with. We became friends. There's this problem, this problem, this problem. So how do I stop being friends with her? And one thing that I would think is to say maybe, and of course, like I don't want to, you know, we have to talk to Hannah and see, but is to ask her, hey, if Emma were still around, like, is there stuff in her friendship you value? If you didn't have these problems, would you want to be friends with her? And if the answer is yes, then the thing is like,

oh, might you actually be able to become a person who can address the problems within your friendships rather than become the person who ends friendships when problems come up in them? So you're drawing a distinction between the relationship, qua relationship, and the problems. Yeah, I guess. Did I just use qua correctly? I think you were actually using qua. I thought you were just making noises at my mouth. Passing the time between one word and another.

Quah, quah. But I think that, like, one thing to understand is, like, every interpersonal relationship has problems in it. And the best friendships are going to be the friendships where, when probably, come up, you can actually address them and work them through. And so what would be some of the tools that you would, what would you send her in there with if she did want to try to salvage? I would say there's a few things. I think there's a few things that you would say.

Like, I think one thing is that when you're talking about a relationship that you want to salvage, I think it's really important to, like, begin by stressing to the other person that, like, you do value their friendship, because that's something that you both share. So in any sort of conflict like that, if you can start off with a shared purpose rather than starting off with where you disagree. So you don't say, hey, I want to have a conversation about how you suck. But if you start off by saying, listen, your friendship means a lot to me, and I want to figure out ways to continue our friendship. And there are some problems I think we're having.

I want to talk to you about them. You have to get the other person to agree and say, yeah, that's a good idea. I want to do that too. And just generally, I mean, in a nutshell, why do you think it is that we tend towards conflict avoidance? It's painful. I mean, it's painful and, you know, it's hard. It's not fun. We want people to like us.

We want to like other people. We don't want to cause other people bad feelings. We don't want people to be mad at us. Like, most of you want people to like us and be happy about us. And when you talk to someone about a problem, you have the opposite experience of all that. If you're absolutely loving your summer read and don't want the book to be over, your experience doesn't actually have to end when you finish reading. I'm Matea Roach, and on my podcast bookends, I sit down with authors to get the inside scoop behind the books you love. Like why Emma Donoghue is so fascinated by trains

Or how Taylor Jenkins Reid feels about being a celebrity author You can check out bookends with Matea Roach wherever you get your podcasts All right, let's move on, let's listen to the next message, here we go Hi, my name is Jacqueline Harris I was issue There's this thing that this turtle does that I live with It's my roommate's turtle, and it does this thing where it'll stand in front of reflective surfaces for hours on end, and it'll do this mating dance, or it'll stare at itself, and list itself up, and sometimes it falls into the mirror, and I don't know what to do. Like, does it think it's socializing?

Should I put more reflective surfaces up, or should I take them away because it's obsessed with itself? with turtles that it doesn't have access to, or is it vain? I don't know. Is this turtle a vain turtle? Sometimes I'll catch him in front of my bedroom mirror dancing. And I don't know, is it cruel to take the mirrors away, or would it be more cruel to put more around? So he's walking around with 100 turtles.

Anyway, maybe you have some insights. Thank you, Watertown. So, I mean, on the surface, it sounds a little silly, and it sounds like it's about a turtle, but I feel like it opens up onto broader existential issues, you know? That's interesting. Why do you think that? I mean, it seems to me as though she's asking a very essential question about how to be in the world. You know what I mean? Do you allow people their denial if it makes them happy, or do you have a responsibility to set them straight,

even though that might be painful? Right. And also, I mean, the thing that struck me is you all. don't know what's going on in people's heads, you know, so like she described the turtle as being obsessed. Like I'm like, I don't know that you know that the turtle's obsessed. So I think a lot of the time we see other people's outer actions and we sort of imagine that we know what's going on inside of them. So we'd go to the turtle and say, hey, I want to talk to you about the fact that you're so lonely and obsessed with meeting other turtles. But that's not an observation. That's your interpretation. So you can point to the specific thing. You say, hey, I notice that

you're looking in the mirror quite a bit. And in some case, you might just say, I wonder what's up with that and maybe they'll tell you and maybe it's what you think or maybe it's something else or maybe they tell you something what you think isn't true and you can challenge that but but really being very clear that like you say this is my theory of what's going on is what it looks like to me do you think there might be some truth to that you know rather than just going in and saying i know the truth let me tell it to you so just again like capping off the whole literal turtle thing you think she should just leave the mirrors and i think i think she'd do whatever she wants because it's a turtle oh if only human problems were that easy to

resolve, huh? Well, for a lot of people, they are. I mean, if you just don't care about it. Tyrants. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's hear what else we have. Yes, my name is Patrick Harris. I'm calling the wiretaps helpline today from California. I need some help with conflict resolution I have with a friend. I have a friend, female friend, and the conflict we have is that she tends to associate a very negative connotation with the phrase, have a good one. And I'd like, you know, a wiretap point of view is. to one, if she's just out of line on her point of view, and then, two, if she is right, how come more people don't know about this other than her? Thank you.

So on the surface, this might seem like another silly question, but if you think about it, these are the kinds of little disagreements that over time can end up festering and, you know, becoming kind of divisive. Okay, so here's what I'm going to imagine is he says to a friend, have a good one, and she says, ah, that phrase is such a stupid, bad phrase. Why does everyone use it? it sucks. And then he's like, you're wrong. Like, have a good one. It's a perfectly normal phrase. Like, people use it all the time. And then she's like, it's stupid and here's what's wrong. It sort of doesn't

matter. What matters is that like he says that to her and she doesn't like it. And within the realm of that relationship where it's like, I don't like that phrase. Okay, I won't say that to you. That seems like a really easy solution to me. But does someone have a right to tell someone that? No. Okay. Here's an important thing. So here's a really important thing in conflict. But in any situation, we all have desires and no one has a right to force other people to act on their desires. But we have opportunities to satisfy other people's desires. So I'm not saying that she can say to him, I hereby order you to never use this phrase with me. But I think that she says, look, I don't like this phrase. And for some reason, when I hear this phrase, it upsets me,

it doesn't seem very costly to me to imagine that he could just avoid using that phrase with her. Now, the thing, what makes it hard is if you do what they're doing, which is that if you make it into a debate about, is this phrase objectively a bad phrase or a good phrase, that's, you can have a debate about that. And then you think someone's going to win that debate and that's going to solve the problem. But it's an unwinnable debate. But if what instead you allow is, look, it's normal and reasonable for different parties to see things differently and have different opinions. And the question is, how do you, how do you coexist, given that you have different opinions rather than trying to sort of objectively figure out which one's right and which one's wrong? You never suggest someone have a good old-fashioned fist fight to resolve something like this. Do you always feel that it could be resolved with words? No, I think words are usually pretty good. Let's listen to another one. Hey, Jonathan, this is Ron Carroll and Lethbridge. And Jonathan, my problem is a small problem.

I was married quite young, just turned 19 the week before. and I was married for six years when my wife left me for my younger brother. Things were said that night when I found out, which is 35 years ago, so I'm 59, and my family basically disowned me, and I haven't spoken to my brothers, Perry or Gary, since that time. So they refuse. I've asked many times, and in the heat of the moment, I probably, I probably did say things that I re-read it, but, you know, 35 years is a long time not to see your family.

So that's the story. I can't believe he introduced that as a small problem. I was going to say the same thing. That, yeah. I'd be interested in knowing, my sense is there have been some past attempts to reconnect that haven't worked so well. I mean, that's, I think, what he said. And if that's the case, I'd be interested to know. more about those. My guess is that what very often happens then in those kinds of things is that

people then start to get into the conversation about who's to blame for what and that makes it hard. And it's so tempting though to have that conversation because it feels so good to be right. Yeah, except it almost never works. No. And that's exactly the fantasy. So that's exactly right. The thing that happens in all of these things is that's exactly right. The fantasy we have going into a conversation like that is like, oh, I'll talk to this person and I know in my head what the truth is. Like, I know that I was in the right and they were unreasonable. And if I just talk to them, I will persuade them to see things my way and everything will be so much better. And that makes perfect sense, except for the fact that the other person is thinking pretty much

the exact same thing. So if you come into the conversation, you're both trying to do that, you have a conversation where two people are trying to persuade, which also means there are two people who are specifically trying not to be persuaded. And then pretty soon, both of you are like angry at each other. And you're like, oh, this person is just no wonder we're in this problem. this other person's on a reasonable jerk, they're totally unpersuadable. But that's the, if you think about it, the only way that a conflict is going to get resolved is if people are able to see things differently. So to whatever degree you can actually cultivate in yourself the ability to be willing

to see things differently and to have your mind changed, that's the real core of getting better at this stuff. And it's really, really, really, really hard to learn. But that's the process. Like you can gradually get better at this and it's part of what makes it fun to, you know, be alive and to mature and it's something that you can actually enjoy getting better at over your life.

Thanks for coming in, Misha. Thanks so much. Not all problems can be resolved with mere words. Sometimes problems require a man of action, a loud, annoying man of action. Howard? What are you doing? Hey, John?

I'm a zany clown. Here's my got my one-man band. Howard. Okay, let's get serious. Yes, please. There's an organization called Clune Sans Frantier, which is Clowns Without Borders. You've joined Clowns Without Borders. Yes, I have.

You've gone through the whole interview process to be a member of Clowns Without Borders. In a manner of speaking. So you're not, in other words. You're telling me I have to be officially certified to be a clown. And first of all, I did some research, and they have Borders. They're not clowns without Borders. They do have Borders. Oh, is that so?

They go to other countries and they entertain children, and they do fundraising and stuff. But would they come into the studio? No, no, of course not. They go to hospitals and they do... The idea is that you're supposed to spread joy in merriment wherever you go. Joy. I go everywhere. Corporate meetings and prisons. Wait, hang on one second. You're going to show up as a clown to penitentiaries.

That's the plan. And you think that's going to be well received. Why would it not be? Burst in, entertain, spread joy. I'm just having a hard time imagining this scenario. So I'm in the prison yard, doing some bench pressing, tattooed all over. You've had a bad day. You've just been refused parole. You just found out your old lady, cheese.

cheated on you. That's when I come in. I'm like, hey, Mr. Cranky, what's going on there? You got a bad case of the prison blues? Looks like someone needs that frown turn upside down. I'll whip up my trusty animal balloons. So I'll blow up the balloon.

Okay, let's pretend you're a prisoner, okay? Okay, let's. What can I make for you, Mr. Prisoner? Make me a balloon shiv. You want a puppy dog? So how long have you been in the stir? Fifteen years. Wow, that's a long time.

What did you do? I killed a clown. I've died plenty of times on stage. Poor, Chris. Howard, that's going to pop, Howard. Hold it again. You're really, you're pushing it. And one more time?

You shouldn't be doing that. And... Howard? Yes. Get out. I'll go I got something in my I said it's stuck in my tooth here

if I just pull the side over there is my tooth Howard I'm not going to pull a paper ribbon out of your mouth okay I don't know I should have pulled

I just pull this out I got it just gristle from a smoke wheat sandwich from lunch okay Howard I really need you to leave now so I get you want me to go but I think you'd have to admit

we had some fun here I do I will not I don't have to admit that I don't know to go see Sir Stuart McLean he would really enjoy this You know what? I think that would be a great idea. You think so? As a matter of fact, he's just down the hall, recording in the studio.

He's a spirit of joy. You know, two weeks ago, we went for sushi, and he was telling me. Who's we? Me and Sir Stuart McLean? No, you, and why do you keep calling him Sir Stuart? Because he is. He's been knighted. I don't think he's been knighted. He was knighted by the Governor General of Canada.

What do you mean you were going for sushi? I've gone for sushi several times in his place. I've never gone for sushi with Stewart. On Wiretap today, you heard Martin Fibers. and Howard Chakowitz, you also heard Misha Globerman, who can be contacted for his conflict resolution services at MishaGloberman.com slash negotiation. Wiretap is produced by Mirabirdwintonic, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. Special thanks to Jason Boychuk and all the people who phoned in to the Wiretap helpline.

Hi, Wiretap. Hi, Jonathan. Hi, Jonathan. I am calling the Wiretap Helpline because. because I think my cat might be depressed. My dog Sally won't walk with me. I had a dog stuck in my head for nearly a decade. I'm holding in the secret that I just have so much trouble opening oranges.

Maybe the issue is also with my husband who made me too good as a dad. My hands get all sticky. I just don't know how to get over him. Flushable cat litter. The only problem is reading on the train makes me motion sick. I have no tolerance for small talk. My dogs were barking and the neighbors called the cat. neighbors called the cops.

That's life, I guess. Could you help me up? Thanks a lot. Thanks. Bye-bye now.