Dealing with the Elephant in the Room: Moving from Tough Conversations to Healthy Communication

Not only is the author knowledgeable, but this book is packed full of great word pictures to help you understand the material. My husband and I are truly benefiting from this book and I will be sure to keep it close and read it multiple times. Highly recommended!!

Rarely when reading a book do I feel so conflicted about the advice. One part of me knows the author is right, but the other part of me is resistant to going back to the old-fashioned way of doing things.Maybe it is because this book was published eight years ago before technology was all pervasive. These days you are likely to have several relationships in which you communicate mostly online with a few phone calls on your cell phone. You are either texting your friends and relatives or your husband insists you keep your cell phone close by in case he calls or texts. OK, that might just be me but I've texted my husband when he's in the same room or out in the car sitting outside talking to one person on one phone while texting me on the other. It is a different world I tell you!So I guess my point is that this book is dated in some ways already and the author prefers communication face to face. Which is fine if you have that luxury and a lot more time. I personally, after 50, feel that time is running out or going by faster. It is a good day if my husband and I find time to eat dinner together and watch a Hallmark movie. As far as deep conversations go, usually that only happens when we are in the car on weekends.I would also disagree with the author that email is less deep than face-to-face communications. As an ambivert I feel very comfortable sharing my thoughts in email and have three close friends I tell everything to. We all basically function as support systems for each other. It is comforting to just talk about life and what we are doing or going through each day. The author only talks about introverts and extroverts and completely doesn't talk about people like me who can be a mixture of both!But what struck me most about this particular book was the idea that when you say yes to something, you are also saying no to everything else in that moment. This was a great realization for me and helped me make a point to a friend who wants me to sit around all day watching videos he chooses. If only I had the time to live that fantasy life!!!There are also some comments about not sharing everything with a person who is a friend. Basically the author is saying don't gossip, but I think he doesn't realize what a pressure relief valve it is to have a best friend to tell everything to. Plus in my religion we are supposed to tell people our faults as a way of purifying ourselves and being real. If something upsets me I totally tell my friends about it. If something delights me they are the first to know too.So while I found a lot of great nuggets of truth in this book, the advice is doing to work for you more with face-to-face relationships, much more than with friends who communicate with you in the technology driven world. There just isn't advice like how not to get into arguments in email!!!There are some funny and cute quotes throughout the book that were worth reading and on page 171 I laughed out loud.In the meantime my husband says I talk about Siri like she's a real person! She is! She is! I even thanked her the other day and she gave me a beautiful reply! I just got a new cell phone (I had one years ago) so have entered that alternate dimension of technology everyone else has been in for the past 20 years. To me technology makes my world go around and I love the friends I have because of being online. While it would be nice to go to dinner with my friends they all live far away and some even on different continents. The most we can do for now is a zoom call or talk to each other on our Bluetooth headphones.~The Rebecca Review

Found some suggestions that may be helpful

I love this book and strongly recommend it. This is full of practical ideas that really work. Gave to all of my kids for Christmas.

Book is a book