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Separate Facts From Feelings

Knoxville News Sentinel
Susan Alexander, January 18, 2010

We all know the facts.

The U.S. unemployment rate is currently at 10 percent.

Whether you have health insurance or you don't, the cost of getting prescriptions and treatment goes up every year.

If you happen to have a kid in college, you can count on that expense climbing every year, as well.

Many of our incomes aren't growing. Raises have been suspended by some companies as they deal with the recession; other companies have cut workers' salaries.

That all adds up to stress. Stress on family budgets. Stress on marriages. Ultimately, stress on divorce courts.

David Cunningham is with Landmark Education, an organization that teaches people how to improve their relationships and careers. Cunningham runs seminars that work with people in all areas of their lives and gives them new tools to help them deal with their problems.

Recently, finances have been one of the biggest problems families have faced. Cunningham [addresses ways] to make sure money doesn't come between couples or disrupt family relationships.

He teaches that it's important to separate facts from the feelings we add to them.

"Literally, 1 percent of the quality of life comes from our circumstances; 99 percent comes from what we add to them. People add a lot to the basic facts about money," he says.

For instance, fact: Our family income is down 5 percent from last year. Tuition is up 10 percent.

But to those basic facts, we add our own ideas: My company mustn't value me or they wouldn't have cut my salary. Or, we aren't keeping up with our relatives who are buying a new car or taking a big vacation.

Cunningham suggests a process to find a clearer perspective on the situation.

Step 1: Get the facts clearly stated as facts. On one sheet of paper, write down the facts: My 401 (k) went down this much. Our income is this much. Our expenses are this much. If someone is unemployed, this is what he or she is doing to look for work.

Step 2: On a second sheet of paper, write down what you add to the facts: We are embarrassed by not doing better. We're bad parents because we're not providing for our kids. You should be working harder to get a job. You don't seem interested in finding work.

"It's really important to separate those things out," Cunningham says. "When people separate the facts from what they add to them, they can see the part they added is really added. And that's where all the conflict comes from."

Step 3: Working together, come up with things you can do to improve the situation: We won't go out to eat this month. We'll make sure we turn out all the lights when we leave a room. We'll have a night once a week on which we'll send out resumes and do job searches online.

"Be sure to include the kids," Cunningham says. "They can clip coupons or get excited about saving money.

"When a couple comes up with things they can do together, it pulls them together."

Cunningham also talks about hurtful things we sometimes say to each other. He recalled a husband he'd worked with who had a new plan to work out a problem in his marriage, but his wife met his solution with, "I'll believe it when I see it."

"At least half of communication is in the way we listen," Cunningham says. "My advice for him was to listen to her, because it was important to her to be heard. He didn't have to respond to what she said. But just hearing it gets them back into communication, versus walking away separated from each other."

He says nothing brings a relationship back together faster than appreciation.

"It can be for simple things: 'You made the bed.' 'You poured me a cup of coffee.' Every time you acknowledge in an appreciative manner what someone has done, two things happen: One, you really do appreciate him or her more. And two, he or she has the experience of being appreciated, which makes them want to communicate more."