Common Errors During Dialogue
Common Errors Made During Writing Letters
- Blaming your spouse for your feelings
- Bringing up the past
- Saying “I feel that…” or “I feel that you…”
- Not using a feeling
- Not describing your feeling
- Justifying/Explaining reasons for your feeling
- Using the words “why” and “because”
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Common Errors Made in the Shared Dialogue
- Not using prime time or prime place
- Wrong atmosphere to begin and not entering dialogue with openness
- Not picking a question ahead of time
- Arguing about the question
- Not setting writing/dialogue time
- One is not prepared at dialogue time
- One is not writing the entire writing time
- Commenting during the exchange of notebooks
- Not reading letter twice (once from the heart and once out loud)
- Correcting errors in your spouses letter
- Non-verbals while reading your spouses letter
- Arguing about who starts verbal dialogue first
- Letting interruptions occur during writing/dialogue time
- Jumping back and forth on each others feelings during dialogue
- Saying, “You shouldn’t feel that way” or “I didn’t mean to do or say that”
- Judging your spouses feelings
- Using your own response feeling to get off track
- Not picking a question for the next dialogue time
- Getting upset and stopping the dialogue by walking out
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Go to the next journaling exercise: Listen Quote
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*Journaling exercises written by Cort Curtis, Ph.D, used with permission.
