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Robert S. Collins

@robert_s_collins

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Therapist • Army vet • Author • Husband & dad
I help people understand why humans do what they do.
📕 Calculus of Connection — coming soon

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Conversation is a game of catch. A one-word answer drops the ball. Asking question after question without ever sharing is holding it while the other person stands there with empty hands.

Next time someone tells you their boss was on a warpath, don’t just say “that sucks.” Match the feeling. Ask what happened. Ask what it means for them. Listen for the throwaway line like “eh, it pays the bills,” and use it to ask what they’d rather be doing.

Then tell them yours.

That’s the step almost everybody skips, and it’s the one that turns a good listener into someone people actually want to talk to.

Follow me so it finds you. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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8 days ago

Nearly all men say intervening matters. When researchers asked what they actually do, about a third said they usually step in.

That gap isn’t ignorance. Men know. The gap is that being the guy who says something costs you, and most of us would rather pay nothing.

The guy who makes it weird. Who says something when a friend is steering a drunk woman toward the stairs. Who doesn’t laugh at the joke. Who ends up a little outside the group because he wouldn’t go along.

Here’s the part worth sitting with. Yes, saying something will cost you some closeness with those guys. But if you actually believe what they’re doing is monstrous, you were already alone in that room. You just hadn’t said it out loud yet.

This one’s ours to carry. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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12 days ago

Three things to watch for, and not one of them is a question you ask.

Quizzes don’t work here. Anyone who’d hurt you already knows the right answers, because he’s heard them his whole life, same as you have. If he passes, you haven’t learned anything except that you can relax, which is exactly the wrong outcome.

So watch instead.

How he talks about women who aren’t in the room. What happens to him when you say no to something small. And the one almost nobody thinks to check: which women have actually shaped the way he thinks.

That last one can’t be faked. Nobody picks up a favorite female author on the way to a date.

This isn’t a full picture and it isn’t a safety plan. It’s three things to pay attention to alongside what you already sense. Your gut usually gets there first. This just gives you something to point at. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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13 days ago

Why is there always a group chat?

Nobody texts seven friends about something that was actually about her.

A huge amount of male sexual behavior isn’t about women at all. It’s a performance for other men. The status transaction is happening between the guys, and she’s the currency they’re trading.

Which is why “respect women” doesn’t work as advice. They’ve heard it. For them it’s a slogan with nothing underneath it.

The thing that actually interrupts this is one guy in the group saying something out loud. The peer group built it. The peer group is the only thing that can take it apart. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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15 days ago

When I was younger I thought I had to be interesting to be liked. Great stories, five instruments, been everywhere.

Then I learned people love talking about themselves, so I got good at asking questions and being genuinely excited about the answers.

Both of those worked. Until they didn’t.

Some people light up when the attention lands on them. Some people relax when it moves off. Run the wrong one and a conversation goes nowhere with somebody you actually like.

Dog people and cat people. I’m still working this out, so tell me if I’ve got it wrong. by @robert_s_collins

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18 days ago

Somebody tells you they’re anxious and you say “don’t be anxious.” Somebody’s upset and you say “calm down.” Something awful happens and you say “at least you’re alive.”

Nobody does this to be dismissive. They do it because the emotion in front of them feels like a hot potato, and the only options they can see are get rid of it or hand it back.

Usually it traces to a house where big feelings weren’t tolerated, and nobody ever modeled sitting with one. And underneath that, a lot of us learned that caring means doing something. So staying quiet while someone hurts feels like doing nothing, which feels like not caring.

Here’s what it costs, though. People don’t announce that they’ve stopped bringing you things. They just bring you less. And the quiet is easy to mistake for everything being fine.

You don’t have to fix the feeling. You just have to still be there while it moves through them. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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20 days ago

The best compliment I ever got wasn’t said to me.

Somebody told my wife what they thought of me, and she told me later. It landed harder than anything said to my face ever has, and it didn’t cost the person anything.

That’s one of five phrases in this reel. The rest are things you can use today. Tell someone you were thinking about what they said last week. Greet the same person the same excited way every single time until they can count on it.

The last one is the one I built a whole book around. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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22 days ago

Four things to say in the moments nobody prepares you for.

Someone compliments you. You do something embarrassing in front of people. Someone you care about is going through it. Someone turns you down.

Most of us fumble all four the same way. We deflect, we explain, we fix, or we get hurt out loud.

Here’s what to say instead. The last one is the hardest and the most useful. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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25 days ago

I made a reel about defensiveness. Then somebody pointed out something I’d left out, and I got defensive about it.

Chest warm, face flushed, and I immediately went looking for research to prove I was right instead of finding out whether I was. A defensive Turducken.

Here’s the part worth knowing. Gottman’s people ran a study where they interrupted couples mid-conflict and had them read magazines for half an hour. When they came back, heart rates were lower and the conversation actually went somewhere.

But the break only works if you genuinely stop. If you spend it building your case, you’re still flooded, you’re just flooded in a different room. Which is exactly what I was doing.

The twenty minutes isn’t for coming back with a better argument. It’s for getting quiet enough to notice what was true in what they said.

So here I am. They were right. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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a month ago

You can make anyone defensive. It doesn’t matter how mature they are and it doesn’t matter how right you are.

Researchers at Flinders University found that defensiveness isn’t a personality type. It’s what anybody does when their sense of being a good person is under threat. And here’s the part that should bother you: it goes up when the person feels judged or rejected.

Which means the sigh, the look, the “here we go again” isn’t a reaction to their defensiveness. It’s the cause of it.

The fix is order. Let them be a good person somewhere before you tell them where they weren’t. taken in Atlanta, Georgia by @robert_s_collins

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