The Harm of Hijacking the Conversation to Air Out Your Own Frustrations: Episode 265
EmPowered Couples with The Freemans
Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman
5.0 • 589 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2022
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you never had that feeling of being perplexed and thrown off guard when you tried to bring something up to your partner? You might have had a recent upset, an event that you were frustrated by, or another emotion that you needed to express to your partner. Within a few seconds your partner dumps all their own upsets and frustrations at you; even going as far as to compare how their pain is worse than yours!
This is an "emotional hijack" that makes the conversation all about them and leaves you feeling stunned, caught off guard, that it's unfair, and even selfish of them. What makes matters worse is that you had a positive intention to communicate openly and often vulnerably with them. After this, why would you even want to bring up anything in the future?
In this episode you will hear about the reasons this dynamic happens and what is really going on for them to take over your conversation. Then you will hear 2 things that can be done differently so that you do not lose faith and trust in each other to be able to express yourselves without you feeling hijacked!
Resources For Your Relationship:
As a listener get $50 off The Communication Mastery Bundle course for you to be better at both the speaker and listener role, as to not hijack important conversations with your partner! At checkout use the code: 50bundle
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Empower Couples podcast. We're here you get modern, non-boring relationship |
| 0:05.6 | advice for you and your partner to communicate like pros, fight smarter, and stay in the same |
| 0:10.6 | team no matter the challenge that you face. I am one of your host, Erin Freeman. And I'm |
| 0:14.7 | Jocelyn Freeman, but you all just know us as the Freeman's. And this episode is about the harm |
| 0:19.1 | of hijacking the conversation to air out your |
| 0:22.6 | own frustrations. And when you hear the word hijacking, maybe you thought of your favorite |
| 0:26.7 | movie where they take over a bus or a plane. Something that happens forcefully to thwart the |
| 0:33.7 | initial intention of whatever it was. Exactly. And we've heard this several times three, four, we took note of it. |
| 0:40.5 | Like whenever I'm hearing these themes and sessions, I'll write them down on my notepad |
| 0:44.4 | because Aaron always sends the notes to couples. |
| 0:46.8 | And we kept hearing this over and over again. |
| 0:49.8 | And Aaron, do you want to kind of paint the picture of what couples describe? |
| 0:53.9 | Yeah, it was really interesting how much we heard this on the sessions. |
| 0:57.3 | And so it must be happening out there. |
| 0:59.9 | So we needed to talk about this dynamic, this pattern where one partner brings up an upset that they have. |
| 1:09.0 | And it could be, yeah, a negative emotion, an experience they're having, a disappointment, |
| 1:14.7 | some frustration. |
| 1:16.1 | So they bring that up. |
| 1:17.3 | And then the other listens for roughly 15 to 20 seconds and then just dumps out all of their |
| 1:26.4 | frustrations or compares shares where they have disappointments |
| 1:30.9 | and upsets and all of a sudden this causes the original partner which will hear in this episode |
| 1:37.1 | called the speaker they feel hijacked they feel this is unfair it's almost selfish that I brought this up and now you're taking over the |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.