You’re stuck in an argument. Maybe it’s the same fight you have every few weeks. Maybe it’s a standoff where nobody budges. Maybe someone goes quiet and passive-aggressive instead of saying what’s wrong. All three have the same root cause. You’re arguing the facts, and no one’s talking about what’s happening underneath the words. Whatever’s happening emotionally is what’s keeping the conversation stuck. You’re arguing the facts, hoping that’ll help, but it doesn’t because you’re focusing on the wrong thing. We connect through feelings, not thoughts, and until someone names the feelings, the facts just keep circling. Today I’m giving you my two-step process to shift this dynamic, so you can start connecting instead of going around in circles.
9-min read
Introduction
Every conversation, and especially every disagreement, has two layers happening at once, but only one of them usually gets talked about. The first layer is what you’re saying. It’s the content, the facts, the evidence, the specific topic you’re discussing or arguing about. The second, more important layer is what’s underneath, what psychologists sometimes call the process. What’s underneath is what’s really going on between you: the power struggle, the resentment, the anxiety, the jealousy, the insecurity, the fear of not being heard. You’re focusing on the content: explaining, justifying, explaining again, trying different words, but it’s not moving the conversation forward, and you’re just feeling more and more frustrated (and so are they).
Focusing on your words, instead of the feelings driving them, is like pulling the battery out when a smoke alarm goes off. You’ve stopped the noise, but the fire’s still burning. Arguing the facts or getting someone to acquiesce might stop the noise in that moment, but it doesn’t put out the fire. Hence, you have the same fight again, or that person becomes passive-aggressive later, and it’s because the feelings haven’t been resolved.
The other person will be upset in some way, but instead of talking about how they feel, they go cold, or agree to something they don’t mean, or make a comment with an edge to it and deny the edge if you call it out. Nobody ever says, “Hey, what’s happening here?” And that’s exactly what’s keeping you stuck in these circular disagreements that seem to have no end. The resentment builds, the same low-grade friction keeps showing up in different forms, and nobody’s talking about the thing underneath it. Nobody’s talking about the feelings, the unconscious (and sometimes conscious) motivations driving the conversation.
Virginia Satir, often called the Mother of Family Therapy, spent years listening to how people communicate under stress, and she named four patterns people fall into when their self-esteem feels threatened.
- Blaming: One person gets loud and blames.
- Placating: Another goes quiet, agrees to everything, and seethes later, which is where a lot of passive-aggressive behavior comes from.
- Computing: Someone else turns into a lawyer, laying out the facts and evidence like a closing argument.
- Distracting: And someone else cracks a joke or changes the subject to get everyone off it entirely.
When you start identifying what pattern someone is in (including yourself, of course), you can see that they’re unknowingly playing a role, and that role is what’s leading the conversation. This is what I mean when I talk about what’s underneath: the thing driving your interaction.
What’s Happening Underneath the Argument?
Every message you send does two things at once. It gives information, and it says something about how you’re relating to each other right now. When that second part sounds like contempt or dismissal, it doesn’t matter how right the first part is.
Communication researcher Paul Watzlawick wrote about this back in the 1960s, and it’s still true today. Every message has a content layer and a relationship layer, and the relationship layer decides how the content gets heard. You can be completely right about the facts and still lose the exchange, because what landed was “you don’t respect me” or “you don’t care about my feelings.” That’s what the other person is reacting to, not the facts.
Or picture a parent telling their teenager, “You were supposed to text me the second you got there.” The facts are accurate, a missed text. But if what the teenager hears is “you don’t trust me,” that’s the layer they’re going to fight, not the timeline. This is why arguing harder never works. You’re trying to win on content, but the disagreement is happening on the relationship layer, and words about the facts don’t touch that. Feelings do.
Why Does Naming It Out Loud Feel So Strange?
Naming it out loud feels weird because you were probably never taught to do this outside of a therapy room. Out here in the real world, it’s basically a social rule you’re not supposed to break!
Group therapists have a name for this move: instead of arguing the point, you name what’s happening between two people in the room, out loud. It’s called a process comment, basically naming the underneath out loud, and psychiatrist Irvin Yalom pointed out that outside a therapy room, this is close to forbidden. Nobody does it at the dinner table. That’s exactly why it feels so strange the first time you try it. You’re breaking a rule nobody wrote down, and everyone still follows it.
So, I’m telling you right now, the first few times you do this, it’s not going to feel smooth. It’s going to feel like you just said something a little too honest out loud. That’s normal, and it’s also the point.
What Do You Say?
I know you’re asking now, “How exactly do I do this, Abby?” There are two steps you need to make.
Step #1: The Interruption
The first move isn’t a clever line, it’s an interruption. You have to stop the conversation before you can change it. There are many ways to do that, and you’ll need to find what works for you. But here are a few ideas to get you started:
- “Hey, can we stop for a second? I think we’re in a power struggle right now.”
- “Wait, let’s pause. Something else is going on here.”
- “Hold on, I don’t think this is really about the facts anymore.”
- “Can we stop? I feel really far away from you right now.”
If the other person’s gone quiet instead of arguing, it still works: “You’ve gotten quiet, and I don’t think that’s really about what I said. Can we talk about what’s going on instead?” Any version does the same job. It interrupts the content and names what’s underneath instead.
Step #2: Naming It
Once you’ve stopped, the second step is finding the feeling underneath. One of my favorite questions for this is to ask, “What are you feeling right now?” Ask the other person, or ask yourself; either one works.
I want to give you a warning here. Most people will answer that with a thought, not a feeling, which is exactly how hard this is. You’ll hear “I feel like you’re not listening to me,” or “I feel like you always do this.” Or they might say something like, “I’m just trying to get you to understand what I’m saying.”
Those are all thoughts, not feelings, even though some answers start with “I feel.” Keep asking. “Okay, I hear you, but I’m asking you what you’re feeling right now.” You’re looking for one word: angry, scared, hurt, embarrassed, abandoned, rejected, alone. Stay with it until you get there, because this is the key to the whole thing. In my experience, once people name a feeling, it’s like their guard comes down and they often exhale or sigh. (There’s actual brain research behind why this happens: when people put a feeling into words, brain scans show the amygdala, the brain’s alarm system, calms down almost immediately.)
Naming the feeling doesn’t just describe what’s happening; it changes what’s happening in your body. It’s like they’re finally there in the room with you instead of reacting in the moment.
A few other ways to ask the same question:
- “What’s happening for you right now?”
- “What’s the feeling underneath this?”
- “If you had to put a single word on it, what would it be?”
Some of my favorite questions ask about the relationship directly, not just the feeling.
- “Are you feeling loving toward me right now?”
- “Are you feeling connected to me right now?”
- “Do you feel happy right now, in this conversation?”
- Speaking to your supervisor, it might be, “Are you feeling happy with me as your employee right now?”
When people get up in their heads and start spouting the facts or doubling down, you’re dealing with people reacting, not acting. They’re on autopilot and not really there in the conversation with you. At that point, they’re trying to win at something, and you need to connect and get back to the present moment. This two-step approach gets you there.
I also want to give you a heads up that sometimes the other person will deny the feeling that’s obviously right there. You might say, “You seem really angry right now,” and they say, “I’m not angry, I’m just trying to make my point.” You don’t have to argue that. Just reflect what you’re hearing: “It sounds angry to me. I can hear it in your voice. Can you try saying that to me in a different way?”
Yet another move you can make (because I love you and want to give you a ton of options and some flexibility here) is to ask them to trade a statement for a question. “Can you ask me a question instead of telling me something right now?” “What are you trying to understand?” Or go bigger: “If you could ask me one question right now to understand what’s happening between us, what would it be?” That question alone tends to slow everything down, because it asks someone to get curious instead of getting their point across.
This works whether you’re doing it with your partner, your dad, your best friend, your sister, your boss, or your kid. Stop first. Ask what’s underneath second. Stay with the answer until it’s a real feeling, not a thought standing in for one.
Check Yourself
Obviously, none of this works if you’re not checking your own behavior. If you’re not mindful and in the here and now during these interactions, you’ll also be on autopilot, going toe-to-toe in the argument. It’s critical that you work on your mindfulness skills consistently so you can catch yourself when it’s happening and get the train back on the tracks.
Therapy-to-Go Bundle
- The Circle-Breaker Script Sheet: What to Say When a Conversation Won’t Move Forward
- Which Role Do You Default To? A Self-Scoring Guide to Your Stress Pattern
- Journaling Prompts: Finding the Root of Blaming, Placating, Computing, or Distracting
- Circle Breaker Tracker: A Bird’s-Eye View of Your Pattern Over Time
- Catch Yourself Before You Get Pulled In: A Worksheet for Interrupting Your Own Pattern
References
- Satir, V. (1988). The New Peoplemaking. Science and Behavior Books.
- Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J., & Jackson, D. (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. W.W. Norton.
- Yalom, I., & Leszcz, M. (2020). The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (6th ed.). Basic Books.
- Lieberman, M.D., Eisenberger, N.I., Crockett, M.J., Tom, S.M., Pfeifer, J.H., & Way, B.M. (2007). Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421-428.
