Communication Elixirs

By Nancy Landrum, MA

In Communication Elixirs, the second volume of her Love Potions for Healthy Relationships series, Nancy Landrum delivers a collection of simple, yet powerful communication skills that will raise all of your relationships to higher levels of understanding and satisfaction. She clarifies why some communication patterns result in relationship dissatisfaction or failure and teaches how to listen and speak in ways that significantly increase the chances of a loving connection. Communication Elixirs adds practical, useful ingredients to your love potion, guaranteed to help heal old wounds and build confidence in your ability to create and sustain healthy relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496944597

Nancy Landrum, MA

Nancy Landrum has written a series of transformational books that deliver gigantic wallops of insight. Each volume in the series covers a particular ingredient present in a healthy relationship. These powerful truths will demystify how healthy relationships work. Her wisdom is harvested from a passionate, lifetime search for the secret to loving and being loved. The examples from her years of relationship coaching make reading these volumes engaging as well as inspiring. Each chapter ends with perceptive recipes to help the reader add that particular ingredient to his or her love potion.

Book preview

© 2014 Nancy Landrum. All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Michelle Owens of Stratatomic

Illustrations by Nancy Landrum

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/06/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4459-7 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

LOVE POTIONS SERIES INTRODUCTION

Preview: COMMUNICATION ELIXIRS

Chapter 1: WE JUST CAN’T COMMUNCATE!

Chapter 2: WHERE TO BEGIN?

Chapter 3: PAINT BY NUMBERS

Chapter 4: FEELINGS ARE SCARY

Chapter 5: WHY SHOULD I?

Chapter 6: LEVELS OF LISTENING

Chapter 7: PERCEPTION CHECKING

Chapter 8: LISTEN TO UNDERSTAND

Chapter 9: RETURN TO KINDERGARTEN

Chapter 10: ALL BY MYSELF

Chapter 11: DANGER! CURVES AHEAD!

YOU ARE INVITED…

Introduction: SAVORY SAFEGUARDS

ABOUT NANCY’S WORK…

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DESCRIPTION of the Series: Love Potions for Healthy Relationships

Nancy Landrum has written a series of transformational books that deliver gigantic wallops of insight! Each volume in the series covers a particular ingredient present in a healthy relationship. These powerful truths will demystify how healthy relationships work. Her wisdom is harvested from a passionate, lifetime search for the secret to loving and being loved. The examples from her years of relationship coaching make reading these volumes engaging as well as inspiring. Each chapter ends with perceptive recipes to help the reader add that particular ingredient to his or her love potion.

In Communication Elixirs, the second volume of her Love Potions for Healthy Relationships series, Nancy Landrum delivers a collection of simple, yet powerful communication skills that will raise all of your relationships to higher levels of understanding and satisfaction. She clarifies why some communication patterns result in relationship dissatisfaction or failure and teaches how to listen and speak in ways that significantly increase the chances of a loving connection. Communication Elixirs adds practical, useful ingredients to your love potion, guaranteed to help heal old wounds and build confidence in your ability to create and sustain healthy relationships.

Other Love Potions for Healthy Relationships Volumes:

Season the Pot: The powerful role of unconscious beliefs in determining the quality of our relationships. Copyright 2013

Savory Safeguards: Strategies for managing strong emotions as well as a creative problem solving process.

Pungent Boundaries: Determining healthy limits for your own and others’ behaviors in relationship to you.

Successful Solutions for Stepfamilies: Stepfamily dynamics require unique strategies in order to be successful for the parent, the step-parent and the child(ren).

Sweeten the Potion: The transformative power of adding thoughtfulness, love languages and romance (when appropriate) to your relationships.

Elegantly Bottle Your Potion: A view from the top; what grand purposes relationships serve in our growth as human beings.

COMMUNICATION ELIXIRS REVIEWS

What a gem! Through my work I have read tons of books on Communications and Relationships, so I can say with confidence that Nancy Landrum has done a masterful job of presenting the best research-based communication practices in a way that anyone can understand and implement in their most important relationships.

Dennis Stoica, Founder of Healthy Relationships California, a non-profit dedicated to making relationship education available to all Californians and co-founder of the National Association of Relationship and Marriage Education.

Nancy and Jim got help, now you can too (and couldn’t we all use help with some of our relationships). Learn from a pro. Using personal examples Nancy offers you clear and concise guidelines to (re)orient your emotional intelligence compass. Read it, use it, enjoy it and talk about this material with others. This stuff works!

Bill Coffin, Former Special Assistant for Marriage Education, Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services

It is so very hard to learn skills from a book because there is no way to practice effectively. Landrum’s use of multiple practical examples and her easy-to-do practice exercises put this relationship skills book in a class by itself. She has found a way to include what other authors leave out. This makes her book especially valuable—for both those who learn on their own and those who may need extra practice after a class.

Mary Ortwein, LMFT. Co-author of Mastering the Mysteries of Love and multiple adaptations of that program, Founder, IDEALS for Families and Communities, Frankfort, KY

Nancy cuts to the chase to build healthy loving relationships with fabulous communication tools, and real life examples that resonate with me. Page by page, I learned new information and gained understanding that hit the nail on the head over and over again.

Teri Gault, CEO, www.theGroceryGame.com

Dedication

Jim Landrum

It was in the laboratory of our struggling marriage that we learned these powerful skills that transformed our relationship and my life. Ultimately our longings for loving and being loved were fulfilled beyond our wildest imaginings. I miss you every day. 1938-2005

I am grateful beyond words to:

Every twosome who has welcomed me into the sacred space of your relationship as a teacher or coach. Witnessing how these skills have healed wounds and nurtured your love continues to inspire the passion of my life.

Erica Massey. You are an avid student of good communication skills and are committed to healthy, loving relationships. Thank you for your generous gift that is covering the printing costs for Communication Elixirs.

I am humbled by your generosity and so very thankful for your support of this vital message.

Mary Ortwein, LMFT. You co-authored Mastering the Mysteries of Love (MML), a curriculum teaching the highly researched and validated Relationship Enhancement communication skills developed by Dr. Bernard Guerney, Jr. at Penn State. Although Jim and I learned many skills similar to MML’s while saving our marriage, teaching MML gave clearer structure to what we’d learned. Thanks to you and IDEALS, Inc. for permission to share some of the improvements I learned from MML.

Dennis Stoica. Your passion for helping marriages flourish led to the founding of Orange County Healthy Marriages Coalition, and then California Healthy Marriages Coalition, now Healthy Relationships California. (www.RelationshipsCA.org)

Thank you for giving me permission to use the Experience and Falling Leaf Diagrams in this book.

LOVE POTIONS SERIES INTRODUCTION

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T he definition of potion is: a drink or draft reputed to have medicinal, poisonous or magical powers. In this series, potion refers to any ingredient that influences the quality of a relationship. Many of us, without intending to, have contributed potions to our relationships that cause those relationships to be somewhat distasteful, unsatisfying, bitter, or even dangerous.

Being in a healthy relationship is somewhat like savoring a warm, flavorful concoction when coming in from the cold. Each ingredient or spice alone may taste flat or even bitter, but the combination of ingredients makes a tasty, healing, and satisfying potion. I believe it’s a universal desire to enjoy healthy relationships that fulfill our longing for loving and being loved.

Research has provided ample supporting evidence that satisfying relationships are medicinal by contributing to health in many areas of life. Just a few of the areas include physical and mental health, longevity, educational and financial levels achieved, job productivity and stability, and general life-satisfaction. In addition, a stable, loving relationship between a child’s parents has been proven to contribute positively to physical and emotional health, school performance, educational level reached and the success of a child’s relationships in adulthood.

The Love Potions for Healthy Relationships series is based on the potent ingredients found by my late husband Jim and me when we were searching for help for our failing marriage. In addition, I found these ingredients to be essential in relationship with my children and with every other significant relationship I enjoy. Other ingredients were incorporated as I navigated a painful, but ultimately rich journey with a drug-addicted son.

You can focus on one ingredient at a time, and while you learn about it, think about what flavor it may add to your relationship. Then, if you choose, add it to your own Love Potion and move on to another ingredient. The books do not need to be read in their original order. Pick up the one that sparks your interest and dive in.

From personal and coaching experience, I know that each ingredient can be integrated into the most disturbed relationships with amazingly positive results. Some of the ingredients you may find easy to add. Other ingredients may require far more effort and persistence, stretching you to your limit. But by adding each of these ingredients into your relationships, my hope is that you, like me, will strengthen loving connections and build the healthy relationships for which we all long.

Caution: Not all relationships can be made healthy. We ultimately have control over making only our half of a relationship as healthy as possible. In some cases, you may continue to love someone, but must eliminate or limit your contact with that person. A potion for these strategies is covered in Pungent Boundaries.

There is, however, a mysterious dynamic that often is the result when one person is willing to introduce healthier ingredients into a relationship. The other person frequently responds positively. Just as anger usually begets anger, healthier loving is often reciprocated in kind.

Healing is every bit as powerful and transforming, however, when it only happens within yourself. The potions in this series will help you develop healthier relationship skills. And the healthier you are, the more apt you are to attract healthier persons into your life and be sensitized to recognize persons who are less prepared for a healthy relationship.

Each volume includes examples from my personal experiences as well as stories of others whom I’ve coached or taught. Pertinent quotes are added from gifted thinkers whom I respect.

Every chapter ends with questions to stimulate your thinking or exercises to help you incorporate