Jo: I appreciate what you're doing, I think you just gave me a different perspective. Have you? I don't know. Give me a hint.

Jo: I think you did. Well . . . hmmm ... it just seems different now. It doesn't seem like rejection any more; it just seems like they're trying to tell me something different.

I don't know, I haven't even found out what it is we're working with here yet. You can't change yet, it's too soon. How could anything change that quickly, with just mere words, when I haven't even figured out what it is yet?,,. Does it matter?

Jo: No, but it changed. It changed,

It doesn't matter at all.

Jo: It doesn't matter to me what you said, or how you said it, or whether you knew what I was talking about. Something that you said just changed it. Somehow I don't feel like I'm going to have to confront any more.

Boy, have you got a surprise coming.

Jo: Well, I mean not confront anymore about the kind of thing I've been talking about.

Oh, there are other things that you confront about. Well, you could just do it randomly! That's what I do. Then you don't have to worry about whether it works or not.

Jo: Well, if I get overcharged for something, or get poor service or something, I'd confront.

Is that a way to continue to get good service in a restaurant?

Jo: It's a good way to get good service a lot of places.

Let me ask you another question. I'm not really picking on you. You're just a good focal point to get other people unconsciously. Did it ever occur to you to make people in a restaurant feel so good, before they served you, that they'd have no alternative but to give you good service . . . ?

Jo: I don't understand. . . . Somehow I lost that somewhere.

It always amazes me that people go to a restaurant to have a human being wait on them, and then don't treat him like one. Having been a waiter, I can tell you that most of the people who go to a restaurant treat you very strangely. There are a few people who come in and make you feel good, and that compels you to spend more time near them — regardless of whether they tip more or less. There is something about being around somebody who is nice to you that's more attractive than being around somebody who isn't nice — or who isn't even acknowledging that you exist.

Have any of you pretended with a child that he doesn't exist? Most kids will freak. Imagine being a waiter and having a room full of people doing that to you. Then someone treats you like you're not a machine, but a human being, and makes you feel good. Who would you hang around with more? One way to get good service in a restaurant is to treat the waiter well first, so as to make him want to treat you well.

The other alternative is to coerce him and make him feel bad enough to give you what you wanted, and expected to get without having to go through all the trouble of being nasty about it. If you do that, not only do you have to pay your bill, but you have to taint your own experience as well. Most people never think about that. Why should they go to a restaurant and be nice to a waiter? They should get good service automatically.

People often think of marriage in that way, too. "You should have known that." "I shouldn't have to tell him; he should do it automatically." And if he doesn't, that means it's time to get angry, intense, and force him to do it. And even when you win, what do you win? High self–esteem?

Man: An opportunity for your spouse to get even.

I've had a lot of people do that to me. I decided to take it up, and deliberately start getting even ahead of time! How many people have to get "even" when you do something nice to them? I'm not asking about whether you are nasty or nice; that's Santa's job. The question I'm asking you is, "Have you ever considered being considerate ahead of time?"

Woman: Yes, my strategy for a restaurant is to ask the waitress what she suggests is the best on the menu, and she'll pick out a selection. I look at that and suggest that she could make sure that it's fine, and the steak's not too small. I also ask her name, and talk to her by name.

So, yes, you've considered being nice, and actually attempted it. Like everything else in the world, it doesn't always work. But how many of you never even considered it when things weren't going well, or before things weren't going well? Why would a waiter go all the way down to a restaurant every night to give someone bad service, when they make their living by tips? Did you ever stop and consider that, Jo?

Jo: Yes, I did.

And you confronted them?

Jo: Well, I considered it, but I wasn't able to be as pleasant as I thought I should be. I wasn't able to be very agreeable when I was really disgusted. I wasn't able to change how I acted.

"She should have done it first anyway," right? Then you wouldn't have had to be disgusted, and had difficulty changing that.

Jo: Well, that's the way it seemed then. It seems very different now.

Now let's back up to the beginning. When we first started talking, Jo wanted to be more competent at being unpleasant. If you really heard what she was saying, it was, "I want to be able to stand up for myself and grumble and gripe more thoroughly." Nobody in the room heard her say that when she first talked. If they had heard it, they would have tried to teach her how to be more nasty. Think what an "assertiveness" trainer would have done with that! I have a new name for assertiveness training. I call it "loneliness preparation."

In contrast, I ask questions to learn how to have someone else's limitations. If I can learn how it works, then I can change it any way I want, and it will still work, but differently. You can't make a valid judgement about a process unless you know what it is, and you can't realty know what it is unless you try it.

So I thought, "OK, Jo can't grumble and gripe. Where is it that she can't, because I want to learn how to not do it there?" I started asking her questions: "When do you do it?" "What is its purpose?" "Who do you do it with?" My questions go backwards in time. Starting with the problem, I backed up the process she goes through. When I backed her up far enough, she got to the place before she grumbled and griped, and before she even felt any inclination to do it. That is the place where she can go around it. If she takes the next step, the "problem" starts happening. But if she steps over to the side, she can go somewhere else that she likes better.

Jo goes into a restaurant, sits down, gets bad service, feels horrible, confronts the waitress, gets good service later and still feels bad. I asked, "Did it ever occur to you when you go into a restaurant and discover who your waitress is, to make her feel good?" She said, "I can't do that after I feel bad," and she's probably right. OK, why not do it right away all the time whenever you go into a restaurant, so you never get a chance to feet bad? That question directs her attention to an earlier time, when it's easy to do something different, and it also gives her something very specific to do differently.

Here's one you've all done. You come home feeling realty good. As you walk in the front door you see the living room is a mess, or someone forgot to take out the garbage, or you see that something else equally absolutely essential to your happiness is awry. You get angry inside, and frustrated; you suppress it and try to not feel angry and frustrated, but it doesn't work. So you go into therapy and you say, "I don't want to yell at my wife." "Why do you yell at your wife?" "Because I get frustrated and angry." Most clinicians will say, "Let it all out; express yourself; yell and scream at your wife." And to the wife they'll say, "Isn't it all right if he yells and screams at you? Can't you let him be himself?" You do your thing, and he'll do his ... separately. That's nuts,