Oh I can relate.
The point of the exercise is to help you to develop empathy for the other person’s point of view. Once you neutralize your own reaction into one of empathy, you can then curiously engage with the “stimulator” instead of reacting to the overt message. You can see the emotional needs they are trying to meet by their bad behavior, and seek to help them fill that need in another way, one which also fills your own needs.
I’ve started studying with an NVC coach and last night I learned something very cool.
One of the underlying premises of NVC is that you are focusing on your own need for connection to the person you are speaking to. All the tools and techniques just serve that purpose. If someone is getting super anxious with emotional language, it’s important to figure out a way to talk to that person in a way that keeps him talking and calm.
When I first got into NVC, what I really liked about it is there is a way of speaking about your needs and making requests to get those needs met, a way to take two sides and find a middle ground without hurting each other. I like that it doesn’t see it as two sides in conflict but instead two sides in communication, even if that communication is painful.
One of the big insights in it is that when people are wounded, hurt, and feeling attacked, they are not likely to really engage in productive communication. They will lash out and defend themselves.
The goal is then to take it to a level of calm and peace. Only then can there be a real communication.
If you are speaking to someone and feeling attacked, they have a “trick” where you self-empathize. You observe what needs of your own are not being met at that moment (love, affection, fairness, empathy, for example) and then you mourn that you cannot get your needs met. You feel sad. But that’s okay.
This didn’t make me so happy. It felt like just giving up me getting my needs met, which, you know, was the whole point!
But I learned last night, oh, there’s a whole LIST of needs. So, you focus on the ones you can get met at the moment. Connection, kindness, trust, for example. It’s not like toss your needs in the trash can. It’s like, shift to these other needs and focus on those. See what you can do because at this moment, the other things aren’t happening. To me it took from a losing situation to a winning situation.
When it’s better to say nothing at all, mostly copypasta from Inc.com:
When you’ve asked a question. ‘When they asked for advice, what they really meant was, “Let’s fast-forward to the part where I tell you what I think, instead.” Don’t be like them’
When the other side misunderstands (and you don’t have a duty to talk). You don’t always have an obligation to correct someone else’s mistakes. You can recognize someone’s made a typo instead of going on for six statements about the typo.
When you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
When you need someone else to get the credit. “As President Harry S. Truman once said, you can accomplish just about anything if you don’t care who gets the credit. Sometimes, that means staying quiet just long enough for someone else to think of your solution and propose it as his or her own.”
When you are bragging, as opposed to sharing. If you find you’re leaning toward the latter with the things you talk about, maybe it’s time to be quiet.
When your comment is more about you than the other person.
When you want someone else to grow.
When you are clearly boring people.
When someone’s expressions of hurt, fear and pain are merely intellectual, philosophical exercises for you.
I’m sorry if I’ve offended you or anyone else here.
The block button usually works for me.
I’ve been following this guy Edwin Rutsch on YouTube. He is doing Empathy Circles with people on different sides of political spectrum. Here he is in a conversation with the former Google employee who was fired for his memo on gender differences in the work place. It’s a good modeling of the Nonviolent Communications process.
I have no clue what empathy circles are, but I’m not gonna empathize with this dudebro. I would have fired him too. First, for going out of his way to create a hostile work environment, second, for making his employer look like an asshole for employing him once this hit the media.
I can sympathize. I had what I thought was a good friend at work for a number of years, whom I now strongly suspect is a psychopath. I look back and see so many signs, especially how I was able to help them get ahead. When things got tough at work (a move to different work site, among many other things), this person abruptly “put our friendship on hold.” Clearly I was no longer worth the trouble.
ETA missing word.
I wonder if this is because a certain amount of sociopathy is a needed job skill; that is, a need to keep a certain amount of distance between someone with an awful problem, in order to not get overwhelmed by the enormity of it. Perhaps this is how such people see the job as something they could do, while others are turned off by it. Another possibility that, if not a sociopath to start with, they have to learn such “skills” to do their job, and it might carry over into tests that measure degrees of sociopathy (whether or not they turn it off when dealing with friends & family).
On the other hand, I worked as a non-clinician with some surgical residents many years ago, and a few of them were obviously outright psychopaths, IMO.
Sorry for not using whatever the current terms are for such people.
One of the things I think they show is that it’s not that valuable to simply dismiss someone. Sympathy is not the same as empathy. Watch the video - they aren’t agreeing with him, but are allowing him and all sides to be heard.
It’s possible for both to be true: he should have been fired, but also society should provide a route toward rehabilitation.
(But also: I probably won’t watch the video because it would be inappropriate at work, and my only home internet is the worst-possible phone I can live with.)
One of the things that I think they all express well is that he’s not likely to actually change his mind until he feels his viewpoint is listened to. One of his big frustrations is he feels that as a white male he is being attacked and not allowed to voice his own opinion. I’ve heard this from other Trump supporters. Once he is listened to, he is taken out of defense mode and then a real conversation happens.
There really are a lot of people that equate hearing out your POV to endorsing it. It’s deeply weird and this really is the best approach to it.
Oftentimes, those who cannot consider your POV have a need to not, for reasons they may not even be aware of. It can feel threatening to try to identify with someone going through something you realize maybe would be a good call for your own self. Much easier to shut it out and protect an ego than it is to open it to possibilities.
Listening to the whole video, what really comes across is how very young and impressionable he is, and how unformed his own real opinions are.
And let’s not forget that Damore’s vileness is not confined to gender:
I have, on any number of occasions reminded white males that, uhm, we really we got the first, second and third words in already and to please remember that sometimes we get disrespected because we possess privilege we didn’t individually seek - but we have it - and we can use that to soothe our hurt fee fees when someone treats us bad about it.
I will gladly dismiss sexism, racism, and all other bigotry out of hand, and anyone who uses bigotry like it’s the linchpin in their fucking argument also deserves to be dismissed out of hand.
TV;DW
Some sides don’t need to be heard. According to Okrent’s Law, “the pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true”. Giving equal air time to valid statements and total bullshit only makes people think that the bullshit isn’t total bullshit after all, and there’s some truth to it.
Also, I don’t need to hear “but… but… think of the poor oppressed upper-middle-class white cis hetero male!” If we don’t hear his voice here, we’ll only hear it… literally everyfuckingplace else.
…aaaaand here it is, almost verbatim:
Gah. Those poor white males. You know what’s more like being attacked than having infinity minus one opportunities to voice your shitty opinions instead of an even infinity? Being actually physically fucking attacked by the likes of these gentlemen.
Young? He had a senior-level position at Google! This wasn’t some high-school kid. Also, he got thrown out of graduate school for doing the same type of shit he did at Google. He didn’t learn his lesson then either.
They are unformed because his bullshit is never challenged. He’s surrounded by dudebros who have the same shitty unformed opinions, or at the very least disagree but don’t have the balls to stand up and challenge him. Someone needs to tell him he’s full of shit, or better yet, show him.
So here is a problem, because right now his name and opinions have been heard by more people than will probably ever notice any aspect of my existence, and the only attacks have been in reaction to his own. Either his frustrations aren’t based on reality, which makes them hard to mollify, or they’re something else.
I’m sorry to reply without watching your video, but I wanted to note this seems to be the common theme from articles trying to understand this side. We’ve all heard: they’re furious at being excluded by the people who aren’t excluding them. The whole thing is based on a false narrative they’re being sold. That’s serious, and needs addressing; but does asking them to echo the lie one more time help?
Making someone feel heard isn’t about giving that person a platform for their opinions. It’s about allowing people to know that they are important enough to be heard, and once they get over that sense of being belittled, then they can open up and listen to the other person. It takes them out of the defend and attack mode. And vice versa.
Marshall Rosenberg worked to mediate many conflicts between groups where there was all kinds of ingrained racial and tribal conflict. These methods are for conflict resolution, not debate.
