Tess Brigham: Communication is key when dealing with annoying
roommates. And today I'm going to teach you and talk to you
about the three most important things to keep in mind to be
able to have effective communication. For all the best
tips and tricks and advice on mental health and life and love.
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm here every single
Thursday. If you don't know me, I'm Tess Brigham licensed
psychotherapist and board certified coach, and I'm here to
help you today talk about roommates. roommates, right. I
think everybody has at least one nutty roommate story. And I know
for myself, that I had great roommates, and not so great
roommates and roommates that really were tough and
challenging to deal with. But I will say that, you know, some of
my best friends that I've ever had my entire life, we're
roommates, people that had no idea never met them before.
Until, you know, we decided to move in together in a city and
we became fast friends. And you know, one of the things that's
really hard about once you leave college and high school is
making friends and roommates is a great way to do that. So I do
always encourage people, obviously, you want to check
them out. First, you want to go with your instincts and your
vibe and your gut about the situation. But being able to
meet a lot of people your own age and live together is a great
way to build new relationships. So but what do you do if you
have the annoying roommate, and maybe the roommates aren't even
that annoying, it's just a few things that they do that really
irritates you? Well, today, this is what we're going to talk
about, I want to teach you the three most important things that
you need to keep in mind when communicating with a roommate.
So I want to give a little bit of a bonus tip here in the
beginning, which is this, a lot of times I'll tell clients, you
know, communication is key, you have to be able to talk to
people about how you're feeling. And the first thing they'll say
to me is but I don't like confrontation. And the thing is,
is that it doesn't have to be a confrontation, if you walk into
a conversation, thinking this is going to be a confrontation,
this is going to be a fight, it could easily lead there. What
you want to do is you want to focus on intention, what is your
intention when you decide to go and talk to this person? Okay,
so that's really important. You can communicate with people you
can share with how you feel with someone else, you could disagree
with them. And it doesn't have to be a huge fight. It doesn't
have to be a confrontation. Okay. So tip number one is this.
It's all about timing, timing is key for everything, right? You
don't want to rush to the roommate, right? when they get
home from work and be like, you did this, you did that right?
And that's not going to work, it's just going to put them on
the defensive and get upset. So what you want to do is you
really want to think through, what is it that I want to
communicate with them? When do I think is a good time? You could
either even give them the heads up and text them and say, hey,
there's some things I want to talk about. You know, do you
have time tonight or tomorrow? Okay, great. Let's figure it
out. You know, give them a heads up about what set about so
they're not feeling caught off guard, that you're just kind of
coming at them with that. So timings everything. If there is
a particular incident that happened, something specific
timing becomes even more because you don't want to wait till
three weeks later to say something. You want to say
something within 24 to 48 hours from that incident. It doesn't
have to happen right in that moment. But it does need to
happen within a certain time period after the moment. So that
that way your roommates not going Wait, what did I do three
weeks ago? What huh? Yeah. All right. So timings number one to
tone, tone is everything. Right? How we say things to people, our
tone is really important. So my tip for you is come at it from a
place of curiosity, not the you did this, you did that you're a
slob. This bothers me that bothers me. Much more of, you
know, I'm really curious about what happens for you. You know,
we all agree that we would each do the dishes on our designated
night and I noticed that a lot of times, you're missing that
night, is it not a night, good night for you? Let's talk about
what strategize what, so that you can be successful. Curiosity
is much better and always lightens people up, they don't
feel so defensive. And they're not jumping to it. And sometimes
you might discover that they didn't know that that was their
day, or they were confused about the chore chart, or, you know,
they see you know, they see where they're out when they do
the dishes is clean, and maybe you don't see it that same way.
So it's really important curiosity. And number three is,
this is an old standby when it comes The communication but it
is vital. I statements. I feel I'm sad, I'm frustrated. I'm
this not you're a slob. You need to clean up after yourself which
is I get really frustrated when I come into the bathroom and all
the towels are wet. And I want to talk about how what can we do
differently? Do we need to get more towels? I'm frustrated when
I come home from work. And the dishes from the breakfast and
breakfast are still on the sink. It just kind of you know, it
makes me feel like I have one more thing to do. The the eye
fields are really important they put people put their guard down.
And we all know what it feels like when someone comes at us
points at us and says you you you write I have a great video
that might help you. If you're someone who struggles with
talking to people or setting boundaries. It's called stop
people pleasing and set boundaries you can find it here
in my channel. And that's it for today. If you like this video if
you have someone in your life that you want to share it with
please do spread the word. And if you like this video, give it
a thumbs up, put a comment below and even better subscribe to the
channel. Alright, I'll see you next time. Bye bye