Lifelines: Anne Chilton on cross-communication

Q: I HAVE fallen out with my best friend. She took something I said the wrong way and now avoids me, and I don’t know how to get things back to how they were. We have known each other for 30 years and have always been there for each other.

Her son has been having problems with his partner and my friend said she had tried to talk to the girl and had been told to mind her own business. My friend was upset and I said maybe she wished she hadn’t said anything at all. She thinks I thought she was interfering, and walked out. We haven’t spoken since.

A: It sounds like you were trying to be supportive of your friend and somehow the wires got crossed. This is often a problem when we try to communicate: what we say is sometimes heard as something very different.

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Your pal had tried to help the situation in her son’s relationship and was rebuffed. She felt raw and upset about this and maybe expected you to be supportive of what she had done. She then misinterprets what you were saying and it hits the parts of her that are already hurting.

Now there is a tangle of communication between the two of you that started off with good intentions. The upset seems somehow to have been passed on down the chain. Everyone was trying to be helpful and ended up feeling bad. The real difficulty now is that everyone is waiting for the other to do something to make things right. This is the way family feuds start.

Someone has to make the first move to say sorry – that doesn’t mean saying sorry for what you said, it’s about saying sorry for causing upset that was not intended. Go to see her, tell her how sorry you are and that you didn’t mean to upset her. You have been friends for a long time and it would be a shame to risk losing that over a few misunderstood words.

GREEN DREAM

Q: I am trying to get my parents to take more responsibility for the way they live. Since I went away to university and have got involved in all sorts of community eco groups, I can see how wasteful they are. They don’t recycle as much as they should or have enough awareness of how the way they live impacts on the world. They have done some things but it isn’t enough.

I am passionate about stopping the destruction of our planet and have recently become a vegan. My parents know this, yet they continue to waste things. I get so angry with them for not caring. How can I make them change?

A: The problem here is that because you feel they are not taking this issue as seriously as you, you think they’re not interested at all. This leaves you feeling upset and angry. Your parents, on the other hand, maybe think that whatever they do it’s not going to be enough; they end up feeling criticised, which leaves them upset and angry.

We all have things we feel passionate about, and often we find it difficult to understand that others might not feel the same way. You say your parents already make some effort towards a more sustainable lifestyle, just not as much as you would like. I wonder if you could approach the subject in a slightly different way by thinking about what your parents do that is good, then looking at small things they could do to build on that. Changing completely to a vegan diet might be too big a step for them. Maybe you could encourage them to have a meat-free day a week.

When we want people to change, it’s often better to praise them for what they have done rather than criticise for what they haven’t; tiny steps towards change are better than no steps at all.

• Anne Chilton is joint head of professional practice at Relationships Scotland