Communication – Kinky Poly

Worksheet – How to make and share a polyamorous pizza!

Kinky Poly Danny — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 15:20:40 +0000

This is a worksheet I made for talking through the various aspects of a kinky or poly relationship. The idea is to get as clear as possible on what everyone wants and doesn’t want just like when ordering a pizza to share. Every relationship is it’s own combination pizza and you can order as many pizzas you want with as many different people that you want to share them with.

This poly-pizza worksheet is a great way to knock a relationship out of any unspoken gray-areas to get everyone on the same page with the same intentions.

Enjoy! ~Danny

Download worksheet: [ as a pdf ] or [ as a jpg image ]

My Book On Amazon

Kinky Poly Danny — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 20:04:11 +0000

This book is the refined version of my Communication 101 series of articles.

Here’s a link to my book on amazon.

My Safe Play Event Agreements:

My Rope Safety Checklist:

My tiktok channel @dannyburbol

Com101 – Ask For What You Want

Kinky Poly Danny — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 23:01:42 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

In my previous article, I talked about How To Make Things Right which is also a big part of A Genuine Apology. In this article, we’re going to bring everything together to finally ask for what we want.

Article Contents

The whole point of this series is to be able to ask for what we want and get it in ways that benefit everyone. This is very possible to achieve but often difficult and messy in practice since our ego likes to sabotage us and pull the wool over our own eyes every step of the way. On top of that, other people’s egos are doing the same thing to them. This is why so much of this series has been focused on techniques for understanding and overcoming the human ego. When all the humans involved are centered and working together, we can simply make our request known and seek the types of outcomes that will benefit everyone. In this article, we are going to apply all of the tools we have learned so for. Let’s start by taking a moment to bring some of these tools to the front of our minds.

How Far We’ve Come

This series broke down this type of conversation into 4 parts, (1) getting our head right, (2) creating a safe space to talk, (3) holding space for each other, and then (4) taking the steps that will benefit everyone by agreeing to something or nothing. The hurdles we overcame to get here were numerous, but necessary.

In “Part 1: Getting Clear with Ourselves,” we learned to respect our emotions and our ego. Emotions are real, even when triggered by a pile of assumptions and misinterpretation. We learned the benefits of calling a “timeout” the moment anyone’s emotions are above a 2 out of 10. We found safe ways to feel our emotions and let them out by seeking space and doing something like crying in a private place or screaming into a pillow. We learned the power of taking deep breaths to slow our pulse which will then get our emotions under control as well.

We learned how the stories our brain likes to make up become our reality. We explored our emotional dashboard to find it packed with warning lights that are made up of core emotions. These primary emotions are chemical signals that our body uses to alert us of our unmet needs. We learned that our brain makes up stories as it tries to figure out what to do about the warning lights on our dashboard. These stories are usually based on assumptions and misunderstandings that interpret our core chemical emotions into secondary emotions. These interpreted emotions, and the assumed stories behind them, are then treated like facts by the primitive parts of our brain, even though they are not facts. We learned how our ego does whatever it can to “be right.” Once the story which was built on assumptions is created, our brain does what it does best, it finds what it is looking for. Like looking through a tinted lens, we view the world through a type of tunnel vision where we fun more and more false evidence to prove the flawed story our ego already decided is fact. When left unchecked, our ego gets into the driver’s seat and takes the wheel.

We found techniques to uncover the core emotions behind the interpreted ones so we may dismantle the flawed stories that created them. We outlined “timeout” and “self check-in” practices that would allow us to pop our ego out of the driver’s seat. We use these tools as early as possible. We do it before our ego has a chance to push all its assumptions and faux feelings onto others in the form of blame.

We learned that core emotions are chemical signals. These signals are our bodies’ attempt to alert us of an unmet human need. We merged a few resources together to create a list of human needs that are grouped into categories that depend on each other. At the bottom are the needs to survive, as we rise through the categories, we find the needs to thrive. We took a moment to realize that a major part of achieving happiness in our life is having our needs met. Knowing this, we can respect our own needs and the needs of others by simply scanning Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness. Armed with this knowledge, we can simply identify our unmet needs and take action to get them met in healthy ways.

The short version is, emotions are real, but our ego will make it very difficult to distinguish between core signals and the interpreted emotions it made up as a knee-jerk reaction to whatever is going on around us and in our head. Before having a conversation, we need to get our head straight and master our emotions by respecting how our ego works.

The tools and phrases we learned to tame our ego start with, “timeout. My emotions are more than a 2 out of 10.” We take time and space. We slow things down. We feel our feelings and express our emotions in safe healthy ways. We breathe through our emotions. We acknowledge and validate both our experience and our emotions. Once calm again, we do a self check-in to ask ourselves the question, “does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events?” This is how we catch our ego in the driver’s seat. We describe our core emotions with simple words like “sad”, “angry”, and “scared” because these are the chemical signals that don’t involve blaming others. When we drop the secondary, ego-interpreted, emotions like “abandoned” and “unheard”, we can drop the blame our ego was trying to pin on other people.

With our head on straight, our ego back in the passenger seat, and the steering wheel firmly back in our own hands, we can begin “Part 2: Creating a Safe Space To Talk.” This is where we learned how to setup the space needed to have a safe-ask conversation in. This included learning and embodying safe-ask culture while also learning to enforce boundaries that repel punish-ask culture. The key to happiness is recognizing our unmet needs, not the “needs” our ego created using assumptions. Then we get our true needs met by sharing them in safe spaces with safe-ask people while also enforcing our boundaries with people who might be infringing on our needs and our happiness.

We learned how a boundary is a commitment to ourselves that defines how we will act in various situations and the types of behaviors we will not tolerate, participate in, or interact with. We learned that boundaries are not demands or obligations we place on anyone else but rather a commitment to ourselves about our own actions and who we allow in our space. We do no harm, and we take no shit.

We learned how to say “no” and receive a “no” as part of our conversation around boundaries and being a safe-ask role model. We discovered the power of simply saying “no” and not engage with manipulative people or people who have poor communication skills. We learned how to identify these types of people. We also learned how to identify people worth having safe space conversations with. We learned how a conversation where everyone embodies safe-ask culture and focuses on outcomes where everyone wins is a healthy way to get everyone’s needs met.

We began setting the boundaries needed to create a safe space and keep it safe. These boundaries included, “if it’s not a good time for everyone to talk, I will reschedule,” “I am responsible for me, regardless of you. I will let you be responsible for you, regardless of me,” and “I don’t tolerate or participate in disrespect.”

Once our conversation begins, holding space comes first. In “Part 3: Holding Space For Each Other,” we learned how to take turns holding space with our “pass the mic” technique. We learned the power of everyone taking a “timeout” to get their own ego and emotions in check. Then having everyone come together to express themselves without blame or judgment. We found the power of active listening and walking in another person’s shoes through to completion. We learned how to short circuit the ego and simply listen to each other for the sake of really understanding everyone’s point of view. We do this first, not last. We do this before an argument, not after everyone is finally too worn down to continue arguing.

We learned what to share when we have our moment on the mic while everyone is holding space for us. We share our experiences, our expectations, and our realizations. We recognize everyone’s good intentions and efforts. We share our core needs and not our ego’s version of our needs which are built on assumptions.

We learned how easy it is to find mutual understanding once everything is out in the open and everyone simply hears each other without judgement. We learned how apologies and solutions are often a natural part of holding space as it gets everyone on the same page.

We also talked about the Catch 22 of Communication which is that we must communicate to get our interdependence needs met, but we all have an ego that will directly sabotage us every step of the way. Our ego doesn’t want interdependence, it wants to make demands and receive compliance. It doesn’t want understanding, it just wants to be right, and it doesn’t want to be questioned about it.

In “Part 4: Agree to Something or Nothing”, we saw what happens after we are complete with taking turns holding space. We started with a walk through how to give a genuine apology because that is usually needed once everyone finally sees the entire situation and understands how their own actions hurt others. We talked about “how to make things right” both as the final part of an apology and as a completely separate way to talk through struggles.

We learned how to accept a situation with “it is what it is.” Then we recognize how everyone has needs and we are all responsible for getting our own needs met in healthy ways. We talked about how to regain our individual power and start with an “everyone-wins” solution by asking how everyone can get their needs met on their own. Then we played a game of “everyone wins or no deal.” This game takes our outcomes from “everyone-wins on their own” to “everyone-wins by offering to help each other out in ways that respect everyone’s boundaries.”

We learned an easy and effect way to negotiate using offers only and following any offer that doesn’t work for us with something that will. We also took a moment to discuss how “the fortune is in the follow up.”

Every step of the way, we express our appreciation and gratitude. We are thankful for the other person. We are thankful for being heard. We are thankful for discovering our unmet needs. We are thankful for a chance to strengthen our relationships. We are thankful for a change to heal and grow. We are thankful we have the tools to receive our ego and our emotions with grace and love. We are thankful for our ego’s and its lifelong mission to keep us safe from harm, real or imagined. Ultimately, we are thankful for the situation that triggered this chain reaction and gave us an opportunity to improve ourselves, our relationships, our situation, and our happiness.

Surfacing an Unmet Need

Finally, we find ourselves here, ready to ask for what we want. We have already identified that we have a core need that is not being met. Now we are going to share that unmet need and make a request for help.

Below are all the steps involved to ask for what we want. Notice that we’ve already done everything except step 2.

Here are the steps to ask for what you want:

Get our head right. Call a “timeout” if we have to. We don’t need the other person to do anything. We need to identify the core signals that are lit up on our emotional dashboard and then identify the core needs behind them that are not being met. (All of Part 1.)
Make a request for a safe space to hold space. We say, “I’m struggling with something. Can you help me? Is now a good time to talk? Is this a safe space? Can we take turns holding space with the mic?”
We set up a safe space to talk or schedule a time to talk in a safe space. (All of Part 2.)
In the safe space, we follow the steps for “how to make things right”: (All of Part 4.)
1. We always start with hold space through to completion. “Can we start with taking turns holding space by passing the mic?” (All of Part 3.)
2. We recap, acknowledge, and accept everything so far. “This is what’s happened, it sucks, but we’re all in it together. It is what is it is.”
3. We recognize everyone’s needs. “Don’t tell us what you don’t need, tell us what you do need.” Then, “can we all agree that we all have needs and we all want everyone’s needs to get met?”
4. We regain our individual power. Rule 2 of “everyone wins or no deal”: “What if everyone else was in another country and totally unreachable for a few months. How would you be getting your needs met today?” From here, each person’s solution can be greatly improved if everyone chooses to continue.
5. We shift to curiously abundant ideas. “How can I?” and “How can it be done?” instead of “I can’t,” and “it can’t be done.”
6. Logistics, coordination, and negotiations are handled with rules 3 and 4 of “everyone wins or no deal”: offers only and when declining an offer, respond with something new that will work for us. Include follow up steps.
7. Always end with gratefulness. This is one of the many things that keeps our safe-ask culture alive, our relationships healthy, and our lines of communication open.

To ask for what we want, we take everything we’ve done so far and add the right words to kickoff the conversation. This is accomplished in step 2 from above: “I’m struggling with something. Can you help me? Is this a safe space? Is now a good time to talk? Can we take turns holding space with the mic?” This is not an example of what to say but rather exactly what to say. The pauses for responses between the questions are the only variations.

We don’t start a conversation about what’s wrong or what we want, instead we make a request to hold space. Once we are holding space, everything will be brought out into the open and everything will become clear. Not only will we surface our emotions, our situation, our struggle, our unmet core needs, but we will also surface all those things for the other people involve. That’s the part that changes everything. When we’re holding space, everyone else’s experience is equal in importance to our experience. It is often orders of magnitudes easier to get our needs met after everyone has taken turns holding space to completion and everyone’s needs are summarized clearly. Don’t ask for any specific outcome until after that happens.

The words in step 2 from above were chosen carefully, so let’s look at them for a moment.

Kicking Off the Conversation

Our intentions are to respect and overcome our own ego and to respect how the other person has an ego as well. However, we make no attempt to overcome their ego or get them to do anything. That’s their job, not our job. We take ownership of our needs, emotions, actions, and our ego while they take ownership of those same things on their side. We trust them to do their job and we may remind them of their job, but we don’t do their job for them. We are not responsible for regulating their emotions or getting their needs met. It is not our job to make them see our side if they don’t want to. It is not our job to try to get them to do anything they don’t want to do. It’s our job to embody safe-ask culture.

We are making a genuine request. A request is just like an offer, it can be turned down with no penalty or punishment. A request is an invitation not a demand. We make no attempt to overcome or work around their ego or emotions. If our intention is to try to navigate their ego or try to get them to do anything for us, we are stepping into the land of manipulation. We have higher standards than that. We have a commitment to ourselves to not be that type of person. If they are too emotional to talk to us, we call a timeout. If they don’t want to talk to us or don’t want to help us, they don’t have to. If they don’t want to work with us, they don’t have to. They are free to walk away, and we are also free to walk away and simply find someone else who actually does want to work with us. Someone who is a “hell yes!” to helping us get our needs met.

We start with “I’m struggling with something,” to communicate we are feeling something. We say, “can you help me?” to make it clear to both them and to ourselves that we are not about to make demands. This is a request, not a demand. They can say “no” without penalty because we are a safe-ask person, and we got our head right before we even turned to this person to start communicating our struggle.

With those 2 sentences, we have made our current state known and a request for help known. Notice we have not talked about our actual emotions or the actual situation just yet. These are not fill-in-the-blanks phrases. We are struggling with “something”, and we don’t say what that is yet. We need help and we haven’t said what that is yet.

We are simply communicating that we are struggling without blame and asking for help without placing demands on others. Compare this to walking up to someone and saying, “why can’t you wash the dishes when you’re done with them?” Instead of opening with an attack and blame, we open with vulnerability. We’ve already surrendered to the fact that they don’t have to do anything and we are not going to make any demands. We didn’t come here to start a war. We came here to suggest taking turns holding space.

“Is now a good time to talk?” We make it clear that we want to talk, and we want to do it when they are ready. This is a request for their full attention either now or in the future. We don’t start delivering our emotions or needs to someone who is not committed to giving us their full attention and we don’t demand they drop everything to give us their full attention right now. They might be in the middle of a crisis or struggle of their own. We are making a request to interact with them when they are ready to receive us. That means they are calm, ready to listen, and we have their full attention.

If they don’t have time for us or are unwilling to work with us, we simply go get our needs met somewhere else. When we set the intention that no one owes us anything, we free them of obligation, and we free ourselves of expectations. Without those types of expectations, it’s easy for us to shrug off a “no,” in favor of getting our needs met in other ways by with other people.

“Is this a safe space?” This question makes a request for a safe space and gives us a moment to verify if the other person knows what a safe space is. We can ask a boundary question or two to see where they are at regarding safe-ask culture. Do we need to take a moment to walk through the safe space boundaries from the article, “Creating A Safe Space To Talk”? Do we need to checkin with them about the safe conversation agreements from the article, “Safe Conversation Agreements”?

We are also asking ourselves this question as we say it out loud. Are they a safe person to be having this conversation with? Have we considered if they are an A, B, C, or D style personality type from the article, “Identifying Who We’re Talking To”?

“Can we take turns holding space with the mic?” We make a clear request for the type of communication we want to use, and it gives the person an idea of the kind of time commitment we are asking for. Asking for the type of communication we’re looking for is extremely powerful.

We could have skipped this step of identifying and confirming the type of communication we are looking for. We could have just walked up to them and started delivering a stream of words. What communication type would we be using if we did that? Would we even know? Would our emotions be too high? Would our ego be in the driver’s seat? It’s likely our ego would be using whatever default communication style it uses to express its stories of blame and shame. What’s worse, when we just start a stream of words, we don’t know what kind of communication they are going to assume we are trying to deliver. They may think we came over here for an argument, to make accusations, or to nag at them. We greatly increase our chances of getting the communication we want by directly asking for it.

Notice that each of these questions will land better when they include a pause for the other person to reply. Since these are all requests, if the other person says “no” to any of them, we can respect their “no” and get our needs met elsewhere. If we feel this person owes us, must do something for us, or we find ourselves upset by them saying “no,” that means we did not make a request, we were trying to make a demand. We may have recited the words in step 2, but we didn’t embody the intentions behind them. That’s on us. Our intentions are the problem, not the other person. We need to call a “timeout” on ourselves, go back to step 1, and do a “self check-in” to get our head right. For more details on that, see the tool “Sit with it and Refocus on Me” from the article “Emotionally, Where Am I At?”

It may come as a surprise but we don’t ask for what we think we need right out of the gate. We don’t say, “can you do the dishes more often?” Instead, we start with the intention to communicate our struggle and listen to their point of view before making any attempt to do anything about the situation. Yes, we probably want them to do the dishes, but wanting them to do anything means our ego is already involved. We no longer let our ego drive our conversations with attacks, blaming, or making demands. The antidote for that is to make a commitment to listen to them before asking for anything further. It’s the idea that maybe we don’t know the best answer yet because we don’t know both sides of the situation.

Asking for what we want or need starts with a request to understand both sides. This must be our honest intention. We need to be very sure we are not starting with blame or judgment.

What to Talk About

What topics do we start with when we have the mic and the other person is holding space for us? We talked about this in the article, “What to Share and Why.”

Here is a summary of that again:

Share simple things, gently.
- Share one thing at a time and share nothing else.
- State everything, “from my point of view,” and as a camera would have recorded it.
- Omit blame, shame, criticism, judgment, and obligation or call it out. “My ego is making up a blame story about…”
Share our experience.
- “I feel ____.” Core chemical emotions only.
- A timeline of facts (not interpretations of them).
- What went right.
Share our expectations & realizations.
- Acknowledge our own expectations and assumptions compared to what really happened.
- “…I now realize _______, and I didn’t know that at the time.”
Recognize everyone’s efforts and good intentions.
- Thank everyone for their efforts often.
Share our needs and declare ownership of them.
- “…my need for ______ was not met and my needs are my responsibility, not anyone else’s.”
- “…I have a boundary to share, and my boundaries are my responsibility, not anyone else’s.”
After all the items above, share whatever is still standing in the way of us feeling complete on this topic.

Keep it simple, for example: “I’m frustrated and a little sad. I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated with the situation. I noticed the dishes in the sink. I’m hungry and I want to make dinner. From my point of view, I thought we made an agreement about dishes in the sink being washed by 8pm? So, I’m just checking in to see what’s up? Are we doing the 8pm thing or do we want to revisit that agreement?”

When frustrated, it’s very helpful to specify, “I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated with the situation.” This helps both parties recognize that we’re not here to blame or judge. We are here to hold space.

Rather than launching into a request that someone must honor a prior agreement, we start with small facts. We tell them a core emotion we’re experiencing that doesn’t involve them. “I’m frustrated,” and “I’m hungry,” are facts, not blame or judgments. We give them a clearly observable facts, “notice all the dishes in the sink.” Then we let them know we’re checking in and we plan to work with them either way. Planning to work with them either way holds true to our commitment to make offers and request but not demands. We get a short message out, we let them demonstrate they understood it through the process of holding space, then we pass the mic. We listen to them rather than try to push our point of view or solutions.

It is worth noting that before we initiated the conversation, we paused and did a self check-in with ourselves to recognize how we were upset and what was behind our ego’s assumptions and stories. Yes, we were upset by the dishes, we were upset that we thought we had an agreement, and we were upset by the other person. However, we took the time to get our head right. To catch our ego in action, we already asked ourselves, “does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events?” We realized, what we want is dinner. We realized we are simply hungry. We are frustrate to have unexpected obstacles standing in the way of getting that need met. Being hungry doesn’t involve the other person. We share that intention. Then we share the observable fact that the dishes aren’t clean as we were expecting. We are upset because we had expectations that did not line up with the reality of the situation.

There’s a million reason why the other person might not have done the dishes. When they take their turn on the mic, we can hear their side of the struggle. They may also say, “you’re right. I got distracted. I’ll do them now.” That would be a case of the solution becoming obvious as soon as the judgement-free situation was made known and everyone was on the same page.

Rather than focus on the act of doing the dishes, we focus on the facts, our expectations, and then making an offer to adjust our expectation by adjusting the prior agreement.

If expectations and intentions have changed, we will be acknowledging “it is what it is” in the first couple steps of “how to make things right.” Then we can start talking about how we can find a solution that benefits everyone.

Again, it was never about the dishes. What we wanted was to be heard (holding space) about being hungry (a need) that has an unexpected obstacle in the way which involves some interdependence. We communicate all this within safe-ask culture.

It’s completely counter intuitive but the key to getting what we want is to not ask for a specific outcome. Instead, ask the other person if they can hold space with us. After we share our needs and hear their share in return, we simply ask, “can you help me with this?” It’s not, “can you do the dishes,” that’s a specific outcome. Brainstorming possible solutions comes later. We say, “I’m hungry. There are dishes in the sink. Can you help me?” Again, we are requesting the type of communication we’d like to use. With everyone on the same page, we are now requesting help before we start listing possibilities or specific actions.

If someone doesn’t want to help us, or is combative, then we are simply talking to the wrong person. What’s our solution if no one was around to help us? Consider this interaction a “no deal” and act on the solution that works for us and doesn’t involve them. If the person we live with doesn’t want to work with us to get our needs met, we can find someone who does. We can find a living situation with a higher caliber person for example. Maybe we should be talking to a real estate agent. They would probably be very happy to help us.

Be sure our intentions stay in the realm of “everyone wins.” Ensure our actions after hearing someone doesn’t want to help us continue to embrace safe-ask culture and not punish-ask culture. If they don’t want to help us regarding being hungry and finding dishes in the sink, make sure a plan to move out is an “everyone wins” plan and not a plan to punish them for having different opinions than ours. We may feel hurt, but any attempt to hurt them back is abuse. We may exercise a boundary and choose to move out as a way to protect ourselves and our needs as long as we ensure the intentions behind our actions are pure and not vindictive.

Helping Without Strings

For those of us who are “recovering people pleasers,” like me, we must remember that it’s to everyone’s benefit for someone to say “no,” when we are not at our best or in the best position to help. When someone says, “I’m struggling with something. Can you help me,” we might feel the urge to drop everything for a person in need. That’s a wonderful thought, however, it doesn’t honor ourselves, our priorities, or our situation. It also puts our relationship with this person at risk as it may result in resentment building over time without even realizing we’ve chosen this path.

For many years I was under the false assumption that when someone asks for help, we should do whatever we can to help them. I had a couple of crossed wires in my head. One crossed wire said, “no one ever helped me, so I’m going to be the one who helps others. They will appreciate it so much that they will love me and help me in the future.” Another crossed wire said, “I’m a patient and generous person. When I’m patient and generous with others, I’m showing them how much I care.” I later learned that this is that classic “nice guy”, people pleaser, approach.

People pleasing starts with good intentions but quickly turns into an unspoken agreement that the other person knows nothing about. It silently signed people up for future expectations and obligation to help me and love me. I was creating these unspoken expectations inside my head. The more I “helped people” the more I put them into an unspoken debt. The day they seemed to be “taking too much” and “not returning the favor,” I’d find myself very upset. The thing is, they never agreed to anything. I offered my help as if it was a gift, but it wasn’t. I was to blame for my unspoken expectations and the disappointment that would inevitably follow.

A gift is a gift with no strings or obligations, not today nor in the future. If I was attaching strings and obligations, that means I was actually attempting to manipulate them. I was pretending I was giving them a gift but I was really putting them in a debt they didn’t even know about. That is one of the ways people pleasures, nice guys, rescuers, and toxic empaths manipulate others. It’s all under the banner of being a good person, but it’s still a manipulating attempt to get love and attention. Don’t do this.

We need to get our heads right when we say “yes” to helping someone or when we make an offer to help someone. If our help is a gift, then make sure it stays that way. On the flips side of that coin, if we don’t like to ask for help and don’t like to accept other people’s help, is it possible that it’s because we don’t want someone to pull us into an unspoken agreement for future expectations and obligations? Is it because we expect them to do what we do to others when we people please in the hopes that it will result in love and attention? Do we avoid asking for help because we don’t want to find ourselves in any unspoken debt.

People pleasers, we need to change our ways. I recommend starting a practice of being very clear about what we expect in return for our help before we start helping someone. If it is a gift, say, “this is a gift and I expect nothing in return. Not now. Now in the future.” We say that to release them from any obligations, but we also say it to force ourselves to hear it and commit to it.

Furthermore, I highly advise getting into the practice of not giving our time and energy away for free ever again. Simply be upfront and say something like, “I’ll do it for a ‘thank you’ and a high five,” or “maybe we can help each other out here. What if I help you with your project today and you help me with my project tomorrow? What do you say?”

What if we’re on the other side of the people pleaser situation? How do we insulate ourselves from the people pleasers’ unspoken expectations and future disappointment? What if a people pleaser is offering to help us and we don’t know they are a people pleaser? What if they have the best of intentions, but they are actually going to end up creating an unspoken agreement in their head that we now owe them appreciation or something in the future. To address this, we can quiz them ahead of time on the nature of the help and if it’s really a gift or if their help has strings attached.

We can say things like, “hold on there. I don’t expect you to help me for free. Before we start, how can we ensure this situation benefits both of us?” When someone offers to help and says, “no worries,” or “forget about it,” we can clarify, “Okay, so I’m hearing that you are offering this as a gift. Am I hearing that right? I need to clarify that it is a gift with no strings because I’ve had a relationship go sour because someone in the past offered to help me without any compensation only to find out they felt like I owed them something and they never actually told me they felt that way. So, I’m just checking in, is a ‘thank you’ and a high five really going to be enough for you?”

If a “yes,” is a gift, make it clear to both people. If a “yes,” has some conditions and an agreement attached to it, make it clear to both people. As a general practice, try to always bring the topic up and agree to exchange at least a “thank you,” a high five, or a hug. Don’t wave off situations where it’s no big deal to give our help for free or accept someone’s help for free. This is the perfect moment to practice. Practice our negotiation technique of “everyone wins or no deal.” Practice our boundaries. Practice when the stakes are low and the risk of repercussions from a miscommunication are also low. Then, when the stakes are higher or the situation is more urgent, our skills will already be honed.

A Declined Request for Help

When someone says “no” to our requests, we respect it and thank them for their honesty. We talked about this at great length in “Boundaries Keep Us Safe.” In the negotiation game “everyone wins or no deal,” from the article “How to Make Things Right,” we focused on staying curious and abundant while looking for solutions. All of those topics apply here. With that said, I’d like to take a moment to again address the struggles of people pleasers and interacting with them. This includes how hard it is for a people pleaser to say “no”, why they absolutely should say “no” often, and how unfair it is to be on the receiving end of a people pleaser who says “yes” when they are really a “no”.

As a recovering people pleaser, I’m far too familiar with the reality of people saying “yes,” when they want to say “no.” I did this most of my life. I was literally afraid to tell people, “no.” Childhood trauma had me convinced a “no” from me would risk upsetting or provoking the other person into retaliation or revenge. This fear of punishment is a clear indicator that I grew up in a punish-ask culture. Now that I’ve turned the corner on most of that, I’d like to share as much as I can with the people pleasers who are struggling to say “no” and the people who find themselves trying to work around people pleasers who seem to keep saying “yes” and then getting upset or grumpy about it later.

In the same way a “yes” with a couple of clear conditions can be a benefit for everyone, a “no” can also be a benefit for everyone.

Again, I used to think, “no one ever helped me, so I’m going to be the one who helps others. They will appreciate it so much that they will love me and help me in the future. Also, I’m a patient and generous person. When I’m patient and generous with others, I’m showing them how much I care.” I used to use that to say “yes,” and unconsciously attach strings to the yes, but I also used that to completely trick myself into feeling good about avoid saying “no” out of fear of punishment.

As people pleasers, giving away our time and energy without even considering the idea of possibly saying, “no,” is an approach that leads to being drained of our time, energy, and resources. We find ourselves in situations where our cup is completely drained, and we are still trying to pour from that empty cup. It’s no wonder some friends disappear and hide at home for weeks at a time. Not only do they need to recharge, but if they don’t talk to people, they can’t be pressured by any requests that they won’t be able to say “no” to. The people pleaser projected the pressure to say “yes” into requests. With this projected pressure, requests and the idea of requests can create anxiety for them. Even if the person making the request doesn’t think they are applying any pressure, the people pleaser probably feels pressure.

The majority of a people pleaser’s struggle is imagined. Good friends will happily accept and respect a “no.” The question is, is the people pleaser surrounded by people who respect a “no” or have their coping skills and patterns from childhood made it far too easy for people who use punish-ask culture to hang around? There’s the dilemma. The fear of saying “no” starts in the people pleaser imagination. Then their habits involving that fear attract and allow punish-ask people to hang around. They literally turn the imagined fear into a physical reality. The people pleaser is probably surround by punish-ask people that are consistently validating all their reasons to hide, avoid, and not rock the boat.

If this sounds like you, I strongly recommend rereading the article on “Identifying Who We’re Talking to”. Realize that you’re probably not an A type communicator yet and start identifying the skill you need to practice to move in that direction. At the same time, start identifying the A, B, C, & D personalities around you. Intentionally create space in your life for the A caliber and intentionally distance yourself from all the others. If you can’t say, “no, not today,” without the other person hitting you with a bunch of emotion, guilt, or blame, then get rid of them.

Not only are we allowed to say, “no, not now,” it’s to everyone’s benefit when we do. Safe-ask people will thank us for our honesty and go about their day with any issue. When we choose to help with draining situations while we are already drained, we are much more likely to do a bad job or have a misunderstanding. We are also more likely to feel taken advantage of and feel resentment. If someone tries to give us feedback or says our help wasn’t good enough, we are more likely to get upset about it. We are not really helping others when we are too tired to do a good job or we are being too cranky to work with. We don’t help ourselves when we put our own priorities and needs at risk by putting other people’s situations first. Sacrificing for others doesn’t build love, it builds resentment.

Nobody wins when we say “yes,” when we want to say “no.” Eventually, it will catch up with us. However, when we are at our best and everything in our life is thriving, we are much more likely to be able to help others in fun synergistic ways, especially if we use the techniques from the last section to make sure everyone wins when we say “yes” to a request.

A few easy ways so check-in with ourselves before saying “yes” or “no” is to ask ourselves, “am I at my best right now?” and “am I a ‘hell yes!’ for this?”

I used to do the opposite. I would ask myself, “do I have the spoons for this? Do I have the time, energy, resources, and space for this?” That’s the wrong end of the energy spectrum. Instead of asking, “can I give a little more,” ask, “is my cup overflowing?” Only give from an overflowing cup.

Only give when we have an abundance of spoons. Only give when our life is caught up. We do not have to help everyone who asks. People worth having in our lives are adults who handle their own responsibilities and will not abandon us when we can’t help them all the time. If they do get offended by our “no” and disappear on us, good. They were not a safe-ask person. We do not have to get sucked into other people’s sense of urgency or latest crisis just to keep them around. Let those people show themselves out.

Furthermore, we can have boundaries that protect our inner peace and our calm environment. We can say, “I’d love to, but I don’t have the spoons right now. How about tomorrow evening,” “No, I’m focused on something else right now. How about Tuesday at lunch,” “No thank you, I don’t want to get involved. I wish you the best,” or “No thanks. We spoke about this already and I’m no longer offering to be the person you come to with these things. This is a boundary. I need space and I need distance from you and these types of situations. Please find someone else both now and in the future. I wish you the best.” All of those phrases use our negotiation technique of declining an offer and then responding with what we can do, even when all we can offer is, “I wish you the best.”

Bringing It All Together

A request is an offer people can say, “no,” to without punishment. When our needs are not being met, our request is to take turns holding space in a safe space until everyone’s needs are out in the open. After holding space, the next request is for help without a specific outcome in mind.

Helping people is the land of the people pleasers. Don’t get caught in unspoken obligations or expectations by checking in for genuine gifts and everyone wins outcomes. Speak everyone’s intentions and expectations out loud before accepting help or taking any actions to help. If you are a people pleaser, “nice guy”, or rescuer, check-in with yourself around all interactions involving “help.” Don’t pour from an empty cup or a low cup, pour from an overflowing cup.

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Previous article in this series: Com101 – How To Make Things Right

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

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Com101 – How To Make Things Right

Kinky Poly Danny — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 19:08:28 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

This Article’s Table of Contents:

Acknowledge and Accept the Situation As Is
Recognizing Everyone’s Human Needs
Each Individual Reclaims Their Power
Exploring Curiously Abundant Solutions
Negotiation & Coordination
The Game: Everyone Wins or No Deal
What About Follow Up?

What better way to follow our previous article, “A Genuine Apology,” than with an article on how to make things right. Apologies are not the only time we communicate to make things right, however. Any stressful, urgent, emotional, or difficult situation might call for a need to make things right. This is because someone’s, or everyone’s, needs are being met. For example, we might have a friend or coworker approach us with a situation that has nothing to do with us.

The difference is that with an apology we are learning about our own contribution to the situation, expressing ownership, and expressing our remorse before any attempt to make things right. Ownership and remorse are two things our ego tries to resist doing at all costs. When we are just having a conversation to make things right with someone, it might have nothing to do with us so remorse, ownership, and our ego, may never come into play. The lack of our ego’s involvement is why listening to and talking though a friend’s completely separate struggle is often much easier than listening to a friend’s struggle in relation to us.

This article is going to take a deep dive into the steps involved with making things right for both apologize and when outside the situation. We’re going to gloss over “holding space through to completion” because we’ve already talked about that in great length in previous article such as, “Holding Space with a Mic,” and “What to Share and Why”.

Here is the flow of our how to make things right conversation:

Always start with hold space through to completion. We always hold space first. We take a walk in their shoes using active listening, clarifying questions, and statements that demonstrate what we’ve heard so far. When we’ve walked in their shoes long enough, we will be able to understand and validate their point of view, their experience, and their emotions. We do this until they verify that we got it right, we heard them, and they are complete.
Recap, acknowledge, and accept everything so far. “This is what’s happened, it sucks, but we’re all in it together. It is what is it is.”
Recognize everyone’s needs. We take a moment to find out what everyone’s unmet needs are. “Don’t tell us what you don’t need, tell us what you do need.” Then, “can we all agree that we all have needs and we all want everyone’s needs to get met?”
Regain our individual power. We recognize that no one is obligated to do anything, and we are solely responsible for getting our own needs met in healthy ways.
Curiously abundant ideas? We shift our mind into a perspective of being curious and abundant about possible solutions that benefit everyone.
Next steps? We get into the logistics, coordination, and negotiations involved with making things right. We also consider future follow up.
Always end with gratefulness. This is one of the things that keeps our safe-ask culture alive and our lines of communication open.

The super short version? Hold space, recap the situation, then say, “this is the situation. It sucks, but we’re all in it together. It is what it is. What do you need? Can we all agree that we all have needs and we all want everyone’s needs to get met? How would you get your needs met if no one was around to help? Okay, let’s start there. Now, what can we do together to get everyone’s needs met in better ways? Okay, what are our next steps and how are we going to follow up with each other on those steps? Wow. Thanks everyone, this was amazing. You are amazing.”

In this article, we’re going to focus on steps 2 through 7. I’m also going to sum up most of those steps with a game I like to call, “everyone wins or no deal.”

Acknowledge and Accept the situation as is

Let’s say we just held space and now everything is out in the open. Maybe it’s a disaster, a surprise, or simply no big deal. Either way we recap and acknowledge it. Then we accept it openly with the phrase, “it is what it is.”

I learned this phrase from a friend who was an art director at the time. It was his job to handle random problems on his team as well as between other departments and his team. He would often tell me the latest ridiculous stories from his week over a beer. He had all kinds of struggles walk through his door, panicked people, angry people, crying people, and even people threatening to quit on the spot.

All his stories had the same three beats. 1. He held space for them to understand the situation. He was great at staying judgement free while he did this. That would almost always calm them down. 2. There would be a turning point where he would shrug and say, “yup, this situation sucks. Unfortunately, it is what it is. So, what do you need and what can we do next?” 3. Then they would do something or nothing.

This phrase, “it is what it is,” seems like magic, but it only works when it comes after holding space, giving a solid recap, and acknowledging the situation. “Yup. This is the situation. It sucks and we’re all in it together.” Only after that can we say, “it is what it is,” to openly accept that the situation is not going to change itself and no one is going to come rescue us. We are going to have to bend or do something different. How? By asking what everyone’s needs are, “what do you need and what can we do next?”

Here’s an example. “(Holding space.) What I’m hearing you say is, your house was ripped to pieces by a tornado, and your cat is missing. (Walking in their shoes and validating their experience and emotions.) Wow. No wonder you’re distraught. That sounds devastating and heart breaking. (Checking in, is holding space done?) Is that the whole thing? Are you complete with this share?” When they are complete, “(Recap and Acknowledge.) Okay. Your life’s been destroyed or swept away. This situation is terrible. It’s downright a disaster. Now here we are, in the middle of this disaster. (Accept it.) It is what it is. (Needs.) What do you need? (Personal power.) How would you get these needs met if no one was around to help? (Ideas and Next steps?) What can we do next? Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for trusting me with this.”

It is amazing how often the other person is simply “complete” and doesn’t need anything further. They just needed to be heard without judgement and now that need has been fulfilled. Surprisingly, they might say, “okay, I’m good. Thanks for listening,” and they walk away. Sometimes, all we need is to tell someone about our worries so we can stop worrying about it. Holding space lets us simply get it all out; get all the emotion out. When it’s clear that our words have been received correctly and the other person actually gets that, “the situation sucks”, a big sigh of relief washes over us. Our emotions settle. We find ourselves becoming calm again. The secondary emotion of feeling heard is amazing. It’s a form of connection and intimacy.

After feeling heard, someone might literally say, “okay, I’m good. There’s nothing you or I can do about it today. It sucks, but it is what it is. Thanks for listening.” There is acceptance. We surrender to what is as we realize, “we might not have to fight this. Instead, we can bend.”

Another situation where we might agree to do nothing is when we agree to disagree. Again, it still helps to first recognize, “it is what it is.” For example, “(Recap and acknowledge.) Okay, it sounds like we both disagree on this and we both have no intention of changing our minds. Good to know. I’m glad we got that out in the open. (Accept it.) Well, it is what it is. We disagree and we’re not going to change our minds. (Needs.) Aside from that, what do you need? (Personal Power.) Can you handle this without me? (Ideas?) What can we do next? (Next steps?) Should we agree to disagree and get back to being friends? Should we agree to disagree and just not discuss this topic with each other? (Gratitude.) Well, thank you for having this chat with me. Thank you for your honesty and your patience.”

There’s a freeing moment where we realize we don’t agree and that’s okay. We don’t agree and we don’t have to fight to change each other’s minds anymore. In fact, a great boundary phrase is, “timeout. I’m not interested in changing my mind at this time. If I do want to discuss this in the future, I’ll let you know.” We can also do that in reverse as a check-in, “timeout. I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m just saying we have different opinions and that’s okay.”

After acknowledging and accepting the situations, if we do realize there is more to do with this conversation, we can move on to getting everyone’s individual needs out in the open.

Recognizing Everyone’s Human Needs

Everyone has the same human need to survive and hopefully thrive. We have a list of those needs in Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness from the article, “Signals Are Unmet Needs”. Here is that chart again:

Recognizing aloud that everyone has human needs, and everyone deserves to have their needs met, can do wonders for calming a situation down. Many times, this is at the core of our disagreements and misunderstandings, people have needs that are not being met, they are trying to get those needs met, and it’s just not working or no one is listening. Then things escalate due to human emotions and human ego.

Things escalate when it appears no one cares about our needs. Things escalate when it appears our needs are going to continue to not be met. Things escalate when someone else is getting extra focus for getting their needs met while we are denied the same curtesy.

Pause and start from, “okay, we all have some needs that are not being met and we all want to see everyone’s get their needs met. Can we agree on that?”

Go around and get everyone’s unmet needs out in the open using the hierarchy of happiness. (There is a more detailed breakdown of the needs in each category in the article, “Signals Are Unmet Needs.”) We are not talking about solutions right now and we remind people of that intention. Avoid letting people go on and on about what they don’t need. That is negative, sounds like blaming, and goes nowhere productive. If someone does say what they don’t need, gently lead them back to the focus. “Okay, I hear what you don’t need. Can you tell me what you do need? Can we all focus on that?”

With everyone’s needs very simply spoken, it often helps to summarize everyone’s needs and then recognize, “it’s my responsibility to get my needs met without hurting or obligating others. I would appreciate any help you might be willing to offer though.”

For example, here is a recap of everyone’s needs and a declaration of individual power. “John’s needs recognition for his work both now and in the future. Jenny needs to be able to eat when she’s hungry. Bill needs to regain his time and autonomy. Let’s also recognize that it’s our own responsibility to get our own needs met without hurting or obligating others. We are all free to go get our needs met elsewhere. No one is obligated to help anyone. Any offers to help each other would be just that, offers.”

Each Individual Reclaims Their Power

After the recap of everyone’s needs and a declaration that we are each individually responsible for getting our own needs met, many times, the solutions will reveal themselves. Just getting everyone’s needs out in the open and everyone recognizing how it’s no one else’s job to fulfill their unmet needs can be a huge mental shift that unlocks all the, now obvious, solutions.

For example, if Jenny has a need for food because she’s hungry, she gets to meet that need in any respectful way she chooses. She gets to choose her actions. She does not get to choose someone else’s actions. She doesn’t get to demand that it’s Bill’s job to cook for her without Bill’s clearly expressed agreement. Even if Jenny and Bill had a preexisting agreement around Bill cooking for her, Bill is free to say, “this agreement is not working for me. If we can’t find a solution that works for both of us, I’m going to have to withdraw the offer.” Notice Bill’s wording here, “a solution that works for both of us,” and “withdraw the offer.” He is making it clear that he’s looking for something that works for everyone, or he will say, “no deal.” In fact, he can just say, “everyone wins or no deal.” He’s made it clear that his participation in the current agreement is an offer and not an obligation while also advocating for the other person’s beneficial outcome. (We will explore this more in the game “everyone wins or no deal” in one of the upcoming sections.)

Sometimes people will insist that there was a prior agreement which creates an obligation. They use words like, “but you promised.” This might have been true in the past. By this point, the other person should have already given a genuine apology on the impact of that broken agreement. However, things are clearly not working for everyone, and it is what it is. Now is the time to recognize, “what we have been doing isn’t working. What we’ve been doing has created a misunderstanding and pain.” Then we can begin to take steps towards finding something that works for everyone, or decide to withdraw our offers and get our needs met elsewhere while wishing everyone here the best.

It’s important that no one is withholding an offer out of spite or revenge. Lets not stay in relationships with people who do that to others and lets not allow our ego to turn us into the type of person who would purposely do harm to others. Instead, have the group callout offers and agreements that are not benefiting everyone, and dissolve them in favor of finding better arrangements. These will be the intentions behind the game, “everyone wins or no deal,” in a future section in this article.

Again, “anyone can walk away at any time. The only thing keeping you here is your choice to be here and seek a solution that benefits everyone.” That’s a lot of carefully chosen words and carefully crafted intentions. Recognizing everyone is free to walk away can be a wonderful moment of no obligations or expectations on anyone. It is made very clear who wants to work together and who wants to get their needs met elsewhere.

It’s also a great thing to remind everyone that the solution might be outside the people currently in this discussion. Are we even the right ones to help each other fulfill these specific needs? For example, Jim may offer to fix Beccy’s car, only to realize, this is beyond his level of experience. Beccy may be upset that Jim said he could fix the car and now he can, but it is what it is. Beccy needs her car fixed and Jim can’t do it. So, they each ask themselves, “what do I need and what can I do next?” Sadly, Jim needs to move on from this project and can’t offer any more time or energy. Beccy needs to be able to get to work every day and her car getting fixed is a roadblock for that need. Beccy can get her own needs met by finding a ride, taking a bus, or calling a cab. She has the power to get to work without the car, at least for a while. Next, with Jim’s offer off the table, Beccy realizes she can look online for a mechanic, ask her circle of friends if anyone knows a good mechanic, or ask if one of them can fix her car. Jim can offer to ask his friend circle these same questions and pass on Beccy’s number, if she wants. Beccy can decline the offer with no penalty or punishment because it’s a genuine offer, not a demand.

If there is not an obvious solution, a powerful step is to take a moment to have everyone ask themselves, “How would I get this need met if no one else was around to help me?” For example, all the other people in the conversation are vacationing on Mars for a few months and can’t be contacted. If we each take everyone else out of our own personal equation, what would we do about this situation? How would we go out and get our needs met? It is often surprising to find out that it’s not really that big of a deal. We were just stuck on the idea of getting our needs met by these specific people.

It can be powerful, and freeing, to speak aloud what we would do if we were to go out and get our needs met on our own. It can also be freeing for the other people involved to have all that obligation lifted off their shoulders. When everyone looks around and acknowledges how we each can, in fact, do this alone, we recognize ourselves and each other as being powerful.

The group frees each other, and everyone has a solution to start with. This “everyone handles their stuff separately” solution is probably not ideal, but it’s a possibility. It’s a start. If everyone walked away from each other right now, everyone would have a way to go get their needs me. From there, people can begin to brainstorm and make offers to help each other with better solutions provided they have the spoons and the bandwidth to do so.

This type of perspective shift will turn someone’s offer to lend us 15 minutes of their time from being seen as stingy to, “I can handle this myself, but if you want to offer fifteen minutes of help, that would be a bonus! Thank you! Thank you for your time!”

“How would I get my needs met if no one else was around to help me?” This question is great for breaking out of solutions that create dependency and obligation on others. It’s great for recovering our individual power and releasing our expectations of others. Even our interdependence needs don’t have to be met by the exact people in the current conversation. Once we recognize this, our mindset moves from thinking “solutions are scarce” to a place where solutions are abundant and everywhere. We stop being attached to that one specific outcome in favor of a vast number of possibilities.

This mind shift all boils down to the powerful question, “How would I get my needs met if no one else was around to help me?”

Exploring Curiously Abundant Solutions

Curious questions are a great way to knock our mind out of thinking small, getting stuck on one specific outcome, and defensive posturing, in favor of seeing a world full of abundant possibilities. Curious abundance is what we are looking for and the right questions help us make that shift. Our brain is always thinking and processing so why not give it something constructive to focus on? Rather than letting our brain spin on how something “can’t be done”, why not ask ourselves, “how can it be done?”

The practice of asking the right questions that consistently nudge everyone’s brains out of unproductive thinking and shifts them in to into place of abundant possibilities is the key to becoming unstoppable. Here are a few of those types of empowering questions.

“How can I?” and “How can it be done?” These questions will shift people’s minds out of “can’t” and into “can.” Those negative statements are self-fulfilling prophecies. Remember, everyone’s ego wants to “be right” at all times. If someone’s brain decides we can’t do it or it can’t be done, our ego is going to treat that like a fact and then do everything it can to “be right” about this “fact”. This was one of the key topics of the article, “Stories Become Our Reality.” Another great mind shift here is to realize aloud, “obviously it can be done because people all over the world are doing it every day. How do they do it? Knowing people have already done this, how can I get this need met too?”

“What if”; “what if it already was?”; and “what would it look like if…?” Every roadblock and dead end can be turned into a “what if” question. “What if we did have the time, money, energy, resources, etc.? What if we already had the missing piece?” When someone says, “I don’t know how,” ask them, “but what would it look like if you did?” Sometimes we’re stuck on one piece of the puzzle, and we just can’t look away, but what if we could? What if this part just worked? What if we can just skip it and go to the next piece instead? What if the thing that is holding us up simply wasn’t? This leads us to the next great question.

“What would it look like if it were easy?” This question pops people out of looking for all the hard ways of doing things or being convinced the only path is a difficult path full of time-consuming work. What would be easy? Who would this be easy for? What tools would make this easy? If we could pull a big lever labeled “easy,” what would it do? Again, if billions of people do this every day, what are they doing? What would it look like if it were easy?

“What if we changed our surroundings?” Would it be easier if we changed our location? Are we simply standing in the wrong room? Baking a cake in the bathroom seems as hard as showing in the kitchen. What would it look like if it were easy to bake or easy to shower?

“Who would this be easy for?” Sometimes we’re unconsciously considering all the hard paths because we simply lack a skill. We are attaching obligations to a specific person because they have the skills and we “need them” to do something for us. No. We don’t need a specific human; we need a specific type of human. There are literally billions of humans out there who have the skills and who want to help us get our needs met. Is that type of human even present right now? Let’s find that type of person or let’s follow their lead and take some of the same steps they would take.

“Great, we have another possibility. What if we set this one down for just a second and ask ourselves, ‘what else? What’s another way?’” Sometimes we’re on the right path of curious abundance but the solution we don’t know we’re looking for is two steps further down the road. Set the current solution down on the path long enough to take another step towards the one that will work for everyone in the end. We can always come back to this one and pick it back up again.

“Can we do it in reverse?” When we’re stuck on one specific step in the solution, this opens doors from the other side. “What if it were easier to do it in reverse?” I’ve seen this question redirection entire teams of people. For example, a department could be banging their heads together saying, “how on earth are we going to build a battery capable of running the engine we’re build from scratch?” and then shift to, “wait, what if the battery was already built? Instead of spending all this money on building our own, what if we just buy a battery or license the technology? How much time and money would that save us?”

Asking all these questions and doing all this curious brainstorming will eventually lead to solutions or at least a good direction. The next step will be logistical questions, details, coordination, and that big scary word, “negotiation.” Let’s do some mind shifting magic on the word “negotiation.”

Negotiation & Coordination

Negotiation is incredibly simple when viewed through the lens of “everyone wins”. Many of us might think about negotiation as something a car salesperson does to “trick us” into buying an overpriced car that we don’t need. Our mind may fall into thinking it’s us verses the salesperson as we take a defensive stance to actively try to “not get screwed.” This is win-lose or lose-win point of view that leads to that same style of thinking, action, and results. Remember, (from the article, “Identifying who we’re talking to”) if anyone loses then we are flirting with outcomes where everyone loses. Lets not play that game and lets not play with those types of people. Lets play a totally different game of “everyone wins or no deal”. This works with A, B, C, and D caliber people (also from the article, “Identifying who we’re talking to”). Of course, communication always works best with A caliber people.

The game is simple and to introduce it we can simply ask, “How about we play a game of everyone wins or no deal?”

The Game: Everyone Wins or No Deal

There are 4 rules.

Rule 1: Everyone wins or no deal.
Rule 2: Everyone answers the question: “What if everyone here was in another country and totally unreachable for a few months, how would you be get your needs met today?”
Rule 3: Offers only. No threats. All offers can be declined freely with no penalty. Threats are “no deal” because they are not an “everyone wins” outcome.
Rule 4: If anyone declines an offer, they must say, “Thanks for the offer. That doesn’t work for me. What would work for me might be something like…’ and then they say something new that would actually work for them.

It would be really wonderful if the other people involved each bought-in on this game. When everyone actually wants to play this way, real synergy emerges quickly. If someone doesn’t want to play the game, then they don’t have to. They can opt-out of the offer to play with no penalty from us. It just means they picked “no deal.”

On our side, we are not upset by people who decline the offer because we already asked ourselves the question in rule 2. We already know we can get our needs met, regardless of other people’s involvement. Earlier in this article, we already found an “everyone wins” outcome when we all asked ourselves what we would do if no one else was around. Rule 2 means we all start this game as winners and now we are trying to solve the puzzle of creating an even better outcome for everyone.

Rule 3 and 4 are etiquette agreements that increase our chances of hearing each other’s words and consistently taking productive steps forward. Rule 3 sets a safe space and declares a safe-ask culture. (See the article on “Safe Space Culture” for a refresher on safe-ask culture.)

Rule 4 is one of the most simple and effective negotiation tips I’ve ever learned. When saying a “no,” immediately follow it with something you are a “yes” to, then negotiating doesn’t feel like negotiating because no one is passively stonewalling and shooting down everything the other person is saying. It goes from a tug of war full of “I want, I want,” to a menu full of offerings that we need only pick a suitable selection from. Rule 4 also has some added language to constantly remind everyone about how we are all only using offers and offers can be declined freely without penalty.

Rule 4 reminds me of a wonderful moment in the movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” where the pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, says, “the only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’t do.” Rule 4 is a focus on what we can do rather than getting lost in all the things we can’t do.

“What would work for you?” This is a gentle way to enforce rule 4. As we realize many ideas and solutions don’t work for everyone, the group can get lost in trying to suggest solution after solution with one person who has take on the role of shooting down every idea. Devil’s advocates and negative Nancys are not welcome in a game of “everyone wins or no deal.” Shift out of that by saying, “okay, it sounds like this won’t work for you. I hear you. Can you tell me what would work for you?” That’s a little active listening and a redirecting question. From here, we let them tell the group rather than the group trying to read their mind. This can also be great when combine with questions from the last section. For example, “What if we did have the resources, what would work for you?”

One of the keywords in rule 4 is the word “new.” When declining an offer, we say something new that would actually work for us. Repeating the same request over and over again is not productive and is a “no deal.” If this happens, try saying, “okay, it sounds like none of my offers will work for you. I hear you. The request/offer you keep repeating doesn’t work for me. It sounds like we’ve landed on ‘no deal,’ unless you’d like to suggest something different.” Remember, we don’t have to engage with difficult people. We have boundaries. If they don’t want to work with use for everyone’s benefit, we can simply declare “no deal,” wish them the best and then go find someone who wants to help us get our need met.

What I love about the “everyone wins or no deal” game is, from this moment forward, everyone has been empowered to enforce any of the rules. Anyone can say, “everyone wins or no deal,” at any moment. Now everyone gets to gently, yet firmly, assert the same boundaries and intentions.

Underneath the hood, this game is actually just a series of boundaries being spoken in a fun way. That means we can start playing the game without anyone else knowing we’re playing it. This comes in very handy when we are faced with a manipulative or aggressive person who is trying to push us into negotiating their way. Without even alerting them to the game, we can introduce them to the rules one at a time by stating them as the boundaries they actually are.

For example, lets say someone wants something from us and they are making demands. We respond with any of the game’s 4 rules. We start with the one that makes the most sense in that moment. Then we become like a broken record that has an assortment of phrases which enforce that boundary. We don’t introduce another rule until they are respecting the boundaries we’ve shared so far. We might say, “timeout. I’d like to work with you on this. Just to let you know, I have a personal rule, either everyone wins or no deal. Everyone wins, or I’m not having this conversation.” If they respond with a threat, give them rule 3 as a boundary, “No deal. Threats are not an ‘everyone wins’ solution. I only participate in ‘everyone wins’ outcomes.” We can’t collaborate with them until they choose to collaborate with us. Until then, we make not attempt to collaborate because it would go nowhere.

As long as they continue to not play nicely, we continue to be a broken record of assorted boundary phrases. We don’t rush to introduce more rules, rather we repeat the rules introduced so far with slight variations to the wording, “I don’t work with people who make threats,” “everyone wins or no deal,” “threats are not an ‘everyone wins’ solution,” and “okay, no deal. I’m walking away now.” We do not stand there and let a difficult person continue to be difficult. We inform them of a specific boundary. We repeat the boundary 3 to 5 times using variations on the wording. Then we warn them that we will end this conversation if they can’t respect our boundary. Finally, we say “no deal. I’m walking away now,” and we walk away.

When they agree to start respecting our “everyone wins or no deal” boundary, we can start working with them. The first thing we do is ask them rule 2 with genuine curiosity. “Let me start by asking you this, if everyone here was in another country and totally unreachable for a few months, how would you be getting this need met today?” This is to get them to see their own power over the situation while also recognizing how our involvement in the situation is a luxury for them and not an obligation for us.

Of course, they may not be excited about the question, however, we can become a broken record on that too. We can also walk them through the scenario slowly. “Hold on. I can’t help you until I understand your situation and your options. Imagine for a moment. I’m just in another country, what would you be doing about this without me?” We can stay with them and encourage them if they default to “woe is me” style helpless answers. “Are you saying you’d be helpless without me? I don’t believe that. You seem powerful and capable to me.” Once they’ve answered the question from rule 2, we can call out their power. “Awesome! That solution is not ideal, but it’s a start. You can handle this without me. Now, lets see if we can collaborate on finding a better solution that works for everyone.”

Next, we introduce rule 4. We may have already been saying the phrase from rule 4 this whole time, but now we can make it a collaborative effort. “How about we take turns making suggestions and if a suggestion doesn’t work, we respond with something new or different that might actually work instead of just shooting each other’s ideas down over and over again?”

We can walk difficult people through our boundaries one at a time until we either have an everyone-wins solution, they walk away, or we declare “no deal” and we walk away. The whole time, if we are in the mindset of playing a game to see how everyone can win, we won’t allow ourselves to get sucked into an argument or any salesperson style negotiation. While they are being hostile or emotional, we get to calmly play our game of “everyone wins or no deal.”

In many situations, rule 4 and a little active listening is often all we need. When we are interacting with a person who is making a request from us, rule 4 will often just handle the situation without even telling the other person about the rule. “Okay, I hear your request for (whatever they just requested). That’s not going to work for me, but you know what will work for me? (Offer something new that could work.)” With rule 4 alone, we can easily defend our time and our energy as we work together to find a solution that benefits everyone. If they don’t follow our lead, we can make a clear request for everyone to use rule 4. This might lead to introducing the other rules one by one.

Regardless of introducing the game upfront or one rule at a time, here are some great questions to keep everyone on track while negotiating and coordinating together.

“What if we don’t have to benefit everyone today or at the same time?” Sometimes we simply can’t do both things at once. Sometimes we can’t go on that business trip and make it to little Timmy’s baseball game because both are on the same day. What if we take Timmy to the batting cage a few days before the game so he knows we’re rooting for him? Will something like that meet Timmy’s need for love and support even when we are out of town during the game?

“What if we flipped a coin?” I’m blown away by how many “problems” I’ve seen get solved with this question. In half the cases, peoples’ minds seem to jump right to the final solution the moment the coin flip is suggested. On the other hand, many people realize the detail being discussed is not that big of a deal and it petting to just pick something and be done than be at a standstill. Sometimes people realize we’re talking about picking between two similar paths to the same place when we could stop talking and start walking. Sometimes we’re so caught up in whose way is “more right” that we just need to stop talking about it and do something. It’s a realization of, “we can spend another 2 hours talking about it, or we can just spend 5 minutes and be done already.”

“What if we take turns?” Everything about the coin flip also applies here. Sometimes a solution doesn’t happen all at the same time. “Both of our needs are valid. How about we do your thing today and my thing tomorrow?” We can also agree to flip a coin today and then start taking turns from there.

As a final step for negotiations and coordination, ask, “does this benefit everyone?” This is a check-in with ourselves and the group to make sure we didn’t just get all wrapped up in inventing a win-lose solution on the banner of “everyone wins”. This takes us back to our underlining commitments to be a great communicator who doesn’t settle for solutions that don’t benefit everyone.

What About Follow Up?

When negotiations and coordination are wrapping up, ask everyone, “how do we all intend to follow up on the completion of these action items?” If we walked away without setting intentions around following up with each other, there is a chance many things could fall through the cracks.

There is a saying, “The fortune is in the follow up.” Most people don’t know how to follow up, don’t perform the action of following up, or are actually afraid to follow up. (That’s me. I’m “most people.” It’s because I was raised in a punish-ask culture.) As part of wrapping up and recapping action items, create a clear safe-ask way for everyone to ask about and communicate progress. For example, “Can we all agree to drop a message in our group chat by noon every day with the status of our personal action items until everyone’s items are complete? If we forget to do it, can the first person who remembers send a message that says, ‘hey everyone. How about that noon update?”

When everyone is in agreement about how to follow up, do a round of gratitude. Always end with gratitude. That’s one of the things that keeps our safe-ask culture safe. Thank everyone for playing the game all the way through to “everyone wins” or “no deal”. Now everyone can start taking action to get their needs met regardless.

Every time the follow up steps reveal that someone has finished an action item, be sure to thank them. When we do this, we transform the follow up from a nagging, “are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet,” to, “I can’t wait to show everyone what I just finished!”

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Next article in this series: Com101 – Ask For What You Want

Previous article in this series: Com101 – A Genuine Apology

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

My Safe Play Event Agreements:

My Rope Safety Checklist:

My tiktok channel @dannyburbol

Com101 – A Genuine Apology

Kinky Poly Danny — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:25:27 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

In my previous article, I talked about the catch 22 of communication which explains why miscommunication is so common. As part of resolving miscommunications, the need for apologies surfaces. Let’s not miscommunicate the apology too.

This is a meaty article. You may want to bookmark it or text it to yourself. Here’s a table of contents for how we’re going to break down this topic.

This Article’s Table of Contents:

The Soul of An Apology
Words That Are Not An Apology
Calling Out Inadequate Apologies
Finding the Words for a Genuine Apology
How to Ask for An Apology
Refusal to Offer or Accept an Apology

Apologies are one of the many things about communication that sound simple and obvious but can fall apart in practice. This is because an apology is not a script that can be followed to somehow “fix” a situation or someone’s feelings. It’s not a transactional conversation where they say, “I’m sorry,” and we suddenly feel better. How many times has someone rolled their eyes at us while apologizing, or said, “I’m sorry,” through grit teeth? How many times has someone given us a long flowery string of sugarcoated words that are no more than a showy attempt to disguise the fact that they are not sorry in the slightest?

The Soul of An Apology

Genuine apologies are intentions, not words. An apology without genuine intentions behind it is like a blues song with no soul, it’s just words.

If we did an internet search on “how to give an apology,” we would find plenty of scripts and four step guides that sound like instructions for two robots. “1. Say, ‘I’m sorry.’ 2. Explain what happened. 3. Receive forgiveness.” No. People are not robots and if we’re explaining what happened then we are definitely not apologizing.

Apologies are when we communicate our understanding of how our actions impacted other people’s experience in a negative way as well as our commitment to ourselves to do things differently in the future. It’s a communication we make after we learn a lesson from an unfortunate situation. This unfortunate situation has changed us on the inside and we intend to show the world that change on the outside with our future actions. From there, we share these intentions and inquire how we can make things right with the people we’ve hurt both now and in the future. The soul behind the words of an apology is that we have wholeheartedly decided to do something differently. We’re apologizing because we’ve decided to be better, not because we’re trying to appease anyone else. We’ve had a shift inside us. We’ve learned a lesson and we are committed to a change in our own lives because of it. Only then is the apology genuine. The apology is not just words, it’s letting the other person know we have experienced an internal shift and a course correction because of an unfortunate interaction that included them.

A genuine apology is very close to saying, “thank you for this lesson that I didn’t know I had to learn. I now see how my actions impacted you and hurt you. I am sorry. Now that I’ve learned this lesson, I won’t let this happen to you or to anyone else in the future. How can I make this right for you?”

An apology has 3 main parts, listen for understanding and our lesson, express our understanding and remorse, make things right for them, and gratitude.

We can break that down into smaller steps.

(Part 1) (Step 1) The first part of an apology is to hold space for the other person until they confirm we have demonstrated a full understanding of what they experienced, how it would have felt if we were in their shoes experiencing it, and what we contributed to that painful experience. That is a combination of every article in this series so far.

If holding space for them is not part of our apology, it is doubtful that they will feel heard or understood. Can we really expect anyone to accept and apology when they don’t feel heard or understood? We might not even be addressing their actual pain. We are probably making assumptions and apologizing for random things other than what actually hurt them. If they don’t feel heard, they will not, and should not accept our apology because our apology is not genuine. An ingenuine apology of this nature was never for them, it was to satisfy our own ego so it can continue to always be “right.”

As part of holding space, the second step occurs, (Step 2) we experience a real and internal shift. This part doesn’t involve the other person because it happens completely inside of us. However, this step is often impossible without hearing the other person’s experience firsthand. The other person is crucial; they are often the catalyst. At some point, we experience an “ah-ha” moment of understanding. We suddenly get where the other person is coming from, and we legitimately feel their pain. I call this the moment when “our lesson is revealed.” We hold space until the other person is complete and until our lesson is revealed.

If our “lesson” is somehow making it okay to blame the other person, then it’s not a lesson. Things like, “the lesson is, you’re too emotional,” “I see now, you can’t handle rejection,” or “the lesson is, you suck at communication, ” this is just our ego trying to fool us into believing we have nothing to learn here by making it the other person’s fault. That needs to be a big red flag to ourselves that our ego is in the driver’s seat lying to us and trying to trick us into learning nothing. Every misunderstanding is an opportunity for us to gain new insight about ourselves and how to interact with the world around us. Don’t let our ego twist and pervert this opportunity as “they are the problem.” Instead, we could be asking ourselves, “What unfortunate actions did I contribute to this, and what could I have done better?”

It’s not the other person’s job to convince us we have a lesson to learn, it’s our job to find it. Odds are, the insight will just click for us and when it does, it can transform the whole situation from a negative to positive. If it doesn’t click for us naturally, then we need to be curious and ask more clarifying questions. We need to actively pursue what we could have done better for our own benefit. The lesson may be that we have to make an eye-opening, life-changing shift in our behavior, or it can be the opposite. It might not be all about our behavior and instead, it might be all about how we see the world around us or the people in it. This shift in perspective might be what creates an obvious need for us to change how we interact with people and with the world. We may learn something new about the person in front of us that warrants us shifting our behavior to respect them properly.

Just because the lesson clicked for us doesn’t change the fact that we hurt the other person. Sharing our lesson may or may not be appropriate or even received well by the other person because it’s our lesson, not theirs. Our lesson is a blessing for us, but our shift in thinking and the change in our behavior that will inevitably come from that shift has nothing to do with what the other person might need right now. On top of that, just because we learned a lesson doesn’t mean the person we hurt will listen to or believe our commitment to behave differently. We must be okay with that. We have to set expectations that release them from any obligation to trust us. We will be different because we learned a lesson that will improve our life and how we interact with others. They are free to not believe us today and instead observe our consistent future actions that will demonstrate the shift in us today. Either way, our shift is not enough, it is for us, not them. We must address their pain, their unmet needs, their broken expectations, and we must do it to their satisfaction, not ours.

Once we’ve held space to completion and our lesson has been revealed, (Part 2) (Step 3) the spoken apology begins with a recap of what holding space taught us: their experience, a walk in their shoes, and validating how they felt.

After we recap our full understanding of their point of view we need to (Step 4) acknowledge our actions and how we created pain for the other person, then (Step 5) say, “I’m sorry” and mean it from the bottom of our heart.

Saying “I’m sorry,” is a bare minimum. However, let’s not stop there. If we’ve held space and genuinely put ourselves in their shoes, we will likely have more words that express our remorse. Let’s not go on a tangent, over embellish, or make it all about us. Instead, just let our remorse out in our own words. A little later in this article, I will go into more detail about which words can turn into pitfalls. For now, take comfort in knowing, if we are speaking from our heart because we understand how we’ve hurt them and we truly regret hurting them, then they will feel that connection at the heart, even if our words stumble.

Next, we need to (Part 3) (Step 6) specifically find out how to make things right from the other person’s point of view. We made a commitment to ourselves to behave differently because we’ve learned a lesson, but that’s not enough. That’s for us. An apology is not about us. What do they need to repair the damage we may have done to this relationship and to them personally?

Often times, holding space, learning a lesson, acknowledging our actions, and letting our heart express our sorrow, is everything the other person needed. However, we still ask, “what do you need to make this right?” If they are already complete, they will tell us. It can actually be quite a relief to hear them say something like, “you already have. I’m good now. Thank you.”

However, there will be many times that they need something specific. They may need us to replace or repair something physical to make things right again. Sometimes they need to hear a very specific phrase or commitment from us. Sometimes making things right involves repairing the damage we’ve done to their emotional safe space. Sometimes we need to make a round in our friend circle or coworkers to clear up the damage we’ve caused to their reputation. What they need to “make things right” may not be obvious to us. This is why it’s so important to ask them what they need.

We will explore asking for what we want or need in an upcoming article. For now, remember to keep the focus on what people do want and do need instead of talking about what they don’t want and don’t need. If we ask, “how can we make this right,” and the person we hurt is responding with a list of things they don’t want, try gently asking them, “instead of telling me what you don’t want, can you share what you do want?”

As they make their need known to us, we will do our best to embrace their requests and make things right. We will do our best to respect them and their boundaries. We will also use our boundaries to make sure their request is a reasonable one. If they’re request sounds more like they are taking revenge, then call a timeout because we clearly missed something before this moment. Maybe we didn’t hold space properly. We didn’t learn the right lesson, we didn’t truly walk in their shoes, we used poor wording when we apologized, or there’s just something else that is not right for the other person. Use our active listening to clarify and ask them what we missed. “Hold on. Timeout. Based on the request you just made, I feel like I must have missed something. Can we backup a little bit? Can you help me understand what might be still missing for you?”

Once we understand what we can do to make things right for them, (Step 7) we recap the action items and then we take action to change our behavior both now and in the future. Our apology is not our words but our actions from this day forward. Imagine if we walked away having a miscommunication right at the very end about the exact items to started taking action on and we did something other than what they were asking for. Recap and verify the action items. Say something like, “based on what we just talked about, I will (recap the actions I will take to make this right). Did I get that right?”

This whole experience becomes a blessing in our lives that allows us to grow and build stronger connections. We become a better person because of this unfortunate event, and through healthy communication, right up to the end, this relationship is strengthened.

Finally, (Part 4) (Step 8) we thank them for the opportunity to improve this relationship. Many other people may not give us opportunities like this. Many other people may have decided we are wrong or bad and not worth having a conversation about what’s troubling them because they don’t see us as worth it. Some people may not have the time or energy for these types of conversations and simply never reach out. They could have ghosted us or started a smear campaign against, but the person in front of us didn’t do that. They talked through it with us. Pause and recognize that. They showed us the actions of a healthy, emotionally mature individual. Thank them for being this type of person. Thank them for taking the time and energy to talk through this with us. Thank them for believing we might come to an understanding together and then actually doing it.

Here’s a recap of the intentions behind a genuine apology or the soul of an apology:

Part 1: Listen for understanding and our lesson

Hold space for them until they confirm we have demonstrated a full understanding of what they experienced, how it would have felt if we were in their shoes, and what unfortunate actions we contributed to their experience of pain.
Continue to hold space until our lesson is revealed, and we experience an internal shift. We stay curious with ourselves and ask, “If this is an opportunity for me to learn a perspective-shifting lesson, what would that lesson be? What unfortunate actions did I contribute to this? What could I have done better?” It may be a lesson about ourselves, life, people, how to treat others, or about this specific person. Regardless it’s our job to find our lesson.

Part 2: Express our understanding and remorse

The spoken apology begins with a recap of what holding space has taught us: their experience, a walk in their shoes, and validating how we would have felt the same pain that they felt.
Acknowledge our unfortunate actions and how they created pain for the other person. Our reasons why have no place here. Our actions hurt them, acknowledge it.
We say, “I’m sorry” and we allow our heart to express that remorse without making it all about us.

Part 3: make things right for them

We ask, “what do you need to make this right?” with the intention to embrace their needs as a priority.
Recap the action items to verify everyone’s on the same page and then take action to address their needs and change our behavior both now and in the future. Our apology is not our words but our actions from this day forward. We get one step closer to becoming our best self because of this unfortunate event.

Part 4: gratitude

Thank them for talking through this with us. Thank them for this opportunity to improve this relationship and improve ourselves with a new life lesson. Again, we get one step closer to becoming our best self because of this unfortunate event.

I believe, when our intentions and our heart are in the right place, most of the words will simply come to us naturally. However, I’d still like to walk through some of the dos and don’ts of the actual words we might choose.

Here is an infographic style recap of the soul of an apology for personal use. Feel free to save, print, and share with friends, coworkers, and loved ones.

Words That Are Not An Apology

I’m going to keep this short and to the point. Here are examples of phrases that are not apologies, how each phrase is likely to be receive by the other person, and why the phrase lands wrong. Final, I’ll give an example of a better phrase to try.

Key: “What’s said.” àO “What’s Received.” The reasons why. à@ “Try this phrase instead.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” àO “I don’t care about you or your feelings,” “I’m not interested and I’m not listening,” or “you shouldn’t feel that way.” Invalidates someone’s feelings and doesn’t show any interest or empathy for the other person or their situation. à@ “It sounds like you are saying you feel _____ and _____. Did I get that right? Can you help me understand better? (Then start active listening.)”

“I’m sorry you misunderstood me.” àO “You’re wrong. I’m right. This is all your fault. I’m not listening anymore.” Blames the other person for the miscommunication and then shrugs responsibility. It takes two. It’s both people’s responsibility to clear up communication, starting with us, not the other person. à@ “It sounds like my communication about this wasn’t the best since we’re having a misunderstanding. I’m wondering how I could improve my message. Can I try a do-over? What if I said it more like…”

“I’m sorry but…” àO “I’m not sorry because…” The word “but” instantly negates the words, “I’m sorry.” Everything else sounds like excuses that shrug responsibility and blame. à@ “Based on everything you just told me about how this went down from your point of view, (recap their point of view), that does sound hard. It makes sense that you would feel (the way they described). I would feel that way too if I was in your shoes. I’m sorry for (my actions that hurt you). I’m starting to see why we had this unfortunate misunderstanding. It looked different from my point of view because I didn’t know everything you just told me. Are you complete? Can we pass the mic so I might share what happened from my point of view, knowing it will be lacking the insight you just shared with me?”

“I already said I was sorry.” àO “I’m still not sorry.” If someone is trying to talk through something after an apology was made, then that means things are not resolved for their point of view. Whatever was missing from the apology last time is still missing. Saying, “I already said I was sorry,” when the last apology was somehow incomplete, will not magically fix the last apology. Something is missing or lacking. à@ “Timeout. I must have missed something important. I thought we already talked through this part and found a resolution. Does it feel incomplete for you? Can you help me understand what I may have missed that left it feeling incomplete for you?”

“What about that time you…” àO“You do it too, so I’m not apologizing.” This is an attack and a deflection of responsibility by blaming the other person for an event that is cherrypicked from the past. à@ “Timeout. I’m feeling myself getting defensive. I need a 10 minute break so I can hold space for you better.”

“Look what you made me do. It was your fault that I…” àO“I’m blaming you for my big emotions and my big reaction and I’m taking no responsibility for this.” This is a deflection of responsibility by blaming the other person. We are all responsible for our own emotions, actions, and emotional reactions. à@ “I didn’t realize it at the time, but the situation triggered some unexpected emotions in me, and I was being reactive. My emotions and emotional reactions are my responsibly. It’s also my responsibility to work on healing my own triggers so my past traumas don’t spill onto the people around me. I’m sorry. My reaction was exaggerated and uncalled for.”

“I apologize for whatever happened.” àO“I don’t care about whatever it was. I don’t care about you or your feelings. Here are some words to shut you up.” This demonstrates that the person has not taken the time to understand the situation and has no intention to listen. A genuine apology will tend to be more specific about exactly what went wrong. à@ “Based on everything you just told me about how this went down from your point of view, (recap their point of view). That sounds difficult and painful. It makes sense that you would feel (the way they described). I would feel that way too if I was in your shoes. I’m sorry for (my actions that hurt you).”

“Mistakes were made.” àO“It’s your fault too and I’m not apologizing.” This is a deflection of responsibility by minimizing one’s hurtful actions. à@ “I see now how (recap of my actions) hurt you. That makes sense. I would be hurt too if someone did that to me. I’m sorry.”

“Okay, I apologize. I didn’t mean to trigger you.” àO“I don’t need to apologize because you’re too sensitive. It’s your fault for overreacting.” This is a deflection of responsibility by attacking and blaming the other person. à@ “I see you are upset. Can you help me understand what you are experiencing?”

Calling out inadequate apologies

When someone gives us an apology that doesn’t feel genuine, we don’t have to accept it and we should not accept it. This is a boundary, “I don’t accept apologies that are ingenuine or don’t make proper amends for the harm done to me. I callout apologies that feel ingenuine and offer a do-over. I express what needs must be addressed to make amends.”

Before we jump straight to boundary enforcement, one thing to consider is that perhaps they are unconsciously resisting because we also need to apologize, and we haven’t done so yet. Sometimes apologies are a two-way street where one person apologies for something small and it unlocks something in the other person to also apologize for something small. With those two small things out of they way, someone feels like they can apologize for something a little bigger until the back and forth walks through all the items both people need understanding and amends for. That’s a valid experience.

When it comes to taking the path of sharing and enforcing a boundary around an inadequate apology, we will find ourselves considering the caliber of person (A, B, C, D) from our article, “Identifying who we’re talking to”. Here’s a quick look at the chart from that article again:

If they’ve already proven to us that they are an A type person, then we can work with them and be fairly direct about identifying what’s missing for us. If they are a B type person, we might tread carefully while assuming they have good intentions. If they are a C or D, we may want to stick with a firm boundary that includes short descriptions of our core feelings and core needs only as to not leave ourselves open to interpretation or having our words twisted against us.

Like all our boundaries, we start with gentle reminders and gentle enforcement. When we gently call out that it felt insincere, we don’t elaborate or educate. We’re not trying to make them wrong, we’re simply trying to bring awareness to a feeling we are experiencing. Simply call out the feeling the insincere apology create in us with as few words as possible. We covered many of these reason with the phrases in the last section. Their insincere apology might feel like blaming, defending, attacking, deflecting, minimizing, disinterest, invalidating, vague, placating, and lack of ownership for one’s contributions.

When we call out what’s missing from the apology with an A or B style person, we can do so knowing their intentions are to actually apologize. It might sound like this: “Hold on, timeout. I appreciate that you just said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Something about it didn’t feel genuine. On my side, I seem to be receiving it more like an attack. Can we try a do-over?” Being able to speak about how we might feel attacked or blamed is amazing when both people have built enough trust and practice to be that direct with each other.

An A or a B style personality might also happily walk through some of the steps for a genuine apology with us. For example, “I’m not sure what’s missing. Would you be willing to walk through the steps of an apology to make sure we didn’t miss anything? Can you recap what message you received from me when you were holding space? Can you tell me what it would have felt like for you if you were walking in my shoes? Would you be willing to tell me a little about which actions you feel you contributed to this unfortunate situation or what you wish you had done differently? Maybe we can retry the step where we talk about what we could do to make this right for me.”

Since their intentions are to figure out how to apologize, it’s okay to stumble a little together until we ultimately find all the pieces of the apology. However, we respond very differently with someone who doesn’t seem to have any intention of a genuine apology. We let our boundaries do most of the work.

If we are interacting with someone who is a C or D, we are probably already feeling defensive and should not try to elaborate or explain. If someone is being manipulative or combative with their insincere apologies, we don’t have to accept the apology and we don’t have to explain why. Manipulators and bullies often try to make it our problem that we are not accepting their ingenuine apology. They will attempt to bait others into longer explanations so they can redirect their efforts to picking apart our words. Don’t play their games. If they don’t want to give a genuine apology, there will be no convincing them or pointing them in the right direction so don’t even try. Simply become a broken record, “something is missing for me. I just have this weird gut feeling. I just don’t feel right yet.”

In the case that this person is okay with hurting us, not making an attempt to understand us, and also giving us insincere apologies, will may have to accept the person and the situation for what it is and enforce our other boundaries accordingly. This often means we will limit their access to us and our space as we are responsible for keeping ourselves safe both now and in the future.

When we take any action to enforce a safe distance from someone, it would be wise of us to take special care to check-in with ourselves first. Our own ego will want to sneak in little forms of retaliation and label that actions as “enforcing boundaries.” If our response is to hurt them in any way, we are not enforcing a boundary, we are attempting to take revenge or bully them into compliance and an apology. That escalates the issue and shows the world we seek lose-lose solutions. If we are seeking lose-lose situations, then we’ve miss one of the main points of this series, which is to only seek outcomes that benefit everyone and reject and walk away from all win-lose or lose-lose outcomes.

In some cases, it’s no longer about calling out an ingenuine apology but rather, “why do we keep ending up here?” Sometime we reach a point where we are no longer interested in apologies from this person. Maybe our trust is broken beyond repair, maybe they have a pattern of hurting us even though their apologies are genuine, maybe they have manipulated us with apologies in the past, maybe they are accident prone, or whatever the reason, we simply reached a point where won’t consider an apology anymore. That would be our choice. If we are in this position, we may want to check-in with ourselves to make sure there is a concreate reason for this decision that is not simply our ego getting the best of us or convincing us that the other person is “bad” so our ego can be “right”.

A concreate reason would be a boundary violation that has reached a level where apologies from them no longer hold any meaning. We would fall back on the articles on boundaries for how to enforce these boundaries. It is possible to gently and firmly let someone know, “I hear your apology. Unfortunately, we’ve reached a point where I’m no longer interested in apologies. I’m no longer okay with being part of this pattern we are in. I have a few boundaries I’m going to be enforcing to prevent this situation from occurring in the future.”

Finding the words for a genuine apology

With the dos and don’ts of the last section fresh in our minds, let’s put together a script for an apology.

Before we get to the actual words, here is a quick recap of “the soul of an apology” from earlier in this article. An apology has 3 parts, listen for understanding and our lesson, express our understanding and remorse, make things right for them, and gratitude. We can break that into smaller steps. (1) Hold space to understand their experience, walk in their shoes, and validate how we would feel the same way if we were in their shoes. Continue to hold space until (2) our lesson is revealed. Then (3) we begin the spoken apology with a recap of what holding space has taught us: their experience, a walk in their shoes, and validating how we would have felt the same pain that they felt. (4) We acknowledge our unfortunate actions and how we negatively impacted them, not our reasons why. (5) Say, “I’m sorry,” and allow our heart to express that remorse without making it all about us. (6) Ask, “what do you need to make this right?” (7) Recap and verify the action items and then take action to address their needs and change our behavior both now and in the future. (8) Thank them for talking through this with us. Thank them for this opportunity to improve this relationship and improve ourselves with a new life lesson.

Now let’s add real words to these steps.

First, (1) we hold space, and we walk in their shoes until we can validate how they feel. This starts with active listening, asking clarifying questions, and repeating back what we received to demonstrate we heard them correctly. Phrases like, “If I’m hearing you correctly, it sounds like you’re saying…”; “correct me if I’m wrong, what I’m hearing you say is…”; and “I’m curious about this one part. Can you help me understand better?”

Holding space will shift to walking in the other person’s shoes and validating their experience. Phrases like, “I can see now why you felt that way. If I was in that situation and someone did that to me, I would feel that way too.”; and “It make sense that you felt (the way they described feeling). I would feel that way too if I was in your shoes.”

Holding space continues as we stay curious and internally ask ourselves, “if this is an opportunity for me to learn a perspective-shifting lesson, what would that lesson be? What unfortunate actions did I contribute to this? What could I have done better?” We do this until (2) our lesson is revealed.

(3) “Based on everything you just told me about how this went down from your point of view, (recap their point of view), that sounds difficult and painful. It makes sense that you would feel (the way they described). I would feel that way too if I was in your shoes.”

(4) “I see now how (describe my actions and my choices) impacted you and hurt you.”

(5) “I’m sorry and (allow our heart to express that remorse.) I hurt you and I feel terrible. That is not how I want to treat people.”

(6) “What do you need to make this right?” Then go back to active listening.

(7) “Based on what we just talked about, I will (recap the actions I will take to make this right). Did I get that right?”

(8) “Thank you for taking the time and energy to talk through this with me. Thank you for this opportunity to improve our connection and our friendship. I really appreciate you and this friendship. Thank you for this chance to learn a new life lesson.”

How to ask for an apology

Our approach to an apology started with holding space to really understand the person before we began our spoken apology. Holding space is the first step. Without holding space, we might apologize for the wrong thing or accidently come off as being insincere. We slowed everything down, gained real understanding for the other person’s experience, and then we apologized for what we contributed to their experience.

What if, instead of saying, “I demand an apology,” we start by asking someone to hold space for us? Jumping straight to our need for an apology is the opposite of everything we’ve learned about overcoming the ego and not blaming others. Let’s start with, “is now a good time to talk?” Then we can ask them to take turns holding space with us. Odds are, if they hold space for us, they will realize an apology is in order. At the same time, when we hold space for them, we will probably realize how things looked from their point of view and realize we might also owe them an apology too.

A lot of times, apologies just happen as part of the deeper connection that comes from holding space. The apology comes out as part of active listening because it demonstrates our understanding of how our actions have hurt them. In theory, when we are holding space for someone, we are focusing on hearing their message and not sending our own message. Still, an apology will often fall out of our mouths as we hold space because suddenly, we get what happened from their point of view and we feel terrible.

If this happens, don’t consider the apology “wrong,” just because we’re in the middle of the holding space process. Apologies are often part of the validation process when holding space. At the same time, don’t let the mic get pulled out of someone’s hands. If we start going on and on about our side, our story, and how sorry we are, we’re not holding space anymore because we’re not making it all about us. Make a small comment, a small apology, and an offer to give a full apology at the end. This might sound something like, “oh wow. I didn’t realize that. Oh, I’m so sorry. When you’re complete with sharing, and I understand more about how things unfolded for you, I’d like an opportunity to apologize if you’d be open to it.”

We talking about the apologies that surface in the middle of holding space because sometimes people won’t feel “complete” with their turn on the mic until they get an apology. This makes sense as the apology demonstrates a next-level understanding for what the person was sharing and validates their experience and their emotions. For these reasons, a small apology and an offer to give a full apology when holding space is complete may be the only specific type of communication that can be slipped into the act of holding space as an acceptable exception to the rule. All other forms of communication would be much more successful if treated as a separate step after everyone is finished holding space.

Returning to the topic at hand, “how to ask for an apology,” we start with a request for the other person to take turns holding space and if the apology does not surface naturally, we can request it as part of what we need to feel “complete.” For example, “Thank you for hearing me. I feel like you’ve heard my whole message, and at the same time, I don’t quite feel complete yet. If you’re open to it, I feel like I need an apology for (the specific unfortunate actions that have already been discussed).”

We can also request an apology as a follow up item after everyone is finished holding space or as group activity after holding space. Sometimes it can be wonderful to get everything completely out in the open and then transition into a separate round of apologies.

Refusal to Offer or Accept an Apology

If we find that we are afraid to apologize or afraid to ask for an apology, we are probably surrounded by the wrong type of people. When we have the right, A caliber, people in our life, apologies are genuine and abundant. People who are A caliber understand how we’re all human and we all make mistakes. When our circle is full of this type of person, everyone will want to improve communication and relationships and become better humans. These are the type of humans who are grateful for the opportunity to take steps to make things right with those they’re accidentally hurt.

At the same time, the ideal case of being surrounded by A caliber people is not always the case or the situation. If someone doesn’t want to apologize, we must remember, that we are better off recognizing and accepting that this is their choice. Their actions and choices show us what type of person they really are. As a final step in having our request for an apology denied, take a moment to verify what they are doing. Make it clear to them how we received them and make sure we are all on the same page. “Okay, I feel I’ve shared why I feel hurt and that part of what I need to make things right for me is an apology. What I’m hearing you say is, you are not going to apology. Is that correct? Do you need time and space to process all this? Are you saying you’re not apologizing today or not ever?”

Perhaps emotions are higher than we thought, and we need a timeout to reschedule this conversation after everyone has had a little more time and distance from whatever created the misunderstanding. Checking in with them to confirm what type of “no” they are expressing can create a moment of understanding or reveal something they need before they can apologize.

If they don’t want to work with us for a way to “make it right,” that is their choice, and we will respect it. Remember, we already held space with them and they understand they’ve hurt us with their unfortunate actions. They understand they’ve hurt us, and for whatever reason, they are not going to apologize. There’s our lesson. It’s a lesson about this specific person, and perhaps humans in general. The lesson is, this person doesn’t apologize for things like this. We may have to ponder more on whether this is a human thing or just this person. Perhaps this person simply doesn’t know how to apologize, doesn’t know how to regulate their emotions, or doesn’t know how to manage their own ego. We may never know what it is but, it is what it is. Maybe we can ask a trusted circle of A caliber people for a reality check on our own ego and if we are the one who is out of line.

Either way, we verify and accept their choice rather than push them for an apology that they are never going to give. We can now adjust our expectations of them and our distance to them. Even if we did somehow successfully push them into giving an apology, a forced apology is not an apology. That would only create more animosity and damage the relationship further. We would be using the behaviors of a bully or a manipulator to get our way. What would that make us? Maybe someday things will change, until then, we will adjust our distance to them based on the choices they just verified they are making.

If they confirm that they are not interested in finding resolution with us or making things right with us, we thank them and respect their decision. “Okay, I hear you when you say you are not going to apologize, that’s your choice. Thank you for letting me know. Thank you for your honesty. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.” We let go of our expectations and we embody the safe-ask culture we discussed in the article, “Safe Space Culture.”

I understand that we are in the middle of a moment where we feel we need an apology. It sounds outrageous to say, “okay. Thanks for your honesty,” as if it was no big deal. We are hurt. We’ve expressed that hurt. Now they don’t want to apologize for hurting us? That sounds infuriating. Again, we need to check our ego and our expectations. Yes, it’s infuriating to know they are okay with hurting us and not apologizing for whatever reason. At the same time, we just learned a huge lesson about what type of person they. They just did us a big favor by telling us who they are and how they intend on treating us in the future. Remember that reframe, they just did us a big favor by hurting us today, rather than hurting us in a bigger way in the future.

Here’s another way to look at it. Let’s say we lent someone $10 and they didn’t pay us back. Then, when we specifically asked them to make things right by paying us back, they said “no.” We could become infuriated or we could thank our lucky stars we only lend them $10 and not $10,000. Learning what type of person they are at the low cost of $10, is wonderful. We thank them for the lesson and set a boundary that will keep us safe when it comes to interactions with this person. We will simply never lend them money again. When they come back one day and ask to borrow money again, we simply say, “oh, no thank you. I don’t lend to people who don’t pay me back.” Our goal is to listen for and learn our life lessons as soon as possible and at the lower price points. Every time we do, we save ourselves a much bigger and more expensive lesson somewhere down the road. Rather than be enraged over $10 today, we can be thankful we will never be enraged over $10,000 because this person broke our trust today rather than somewhere down the road. If we want to take that a step further, we can watch people who don’t pay our other friends back, and learn the same lesson without ever lending out our own money.

Now do that same thing with identifying people as A, B, C, or D type communicators. Actually learning a life lesson from a small misunderstanding with a C or D caliber person today is priceless compared to finding ourselves in the middle of a big misunderstanding with a C or D communicator. See it as a victory because it is. It’s an even bigger victory if we can learn this lesson by observing our other friends’ interaction and without being in the misunderstanding, without lending the money. Be grateful.

For reasons unknown to us, they don’t want to make things right with us. Now we know. Maybe from their point of view, we are the toxic one. They might think we are the one who is unsafe or manipulative. Let’s not forget to explore and process that. Let’s check-in with ourselves and our A caliber friends. Whether that’s true or not, pushing them for an apology will only prove them right. Sometimes the only way we can show someone we respect them is to accept them as is and accept the situation as is. Sometimes all we can do is to give them the space they are asking for and wish them the best on their journey while we get back to doing our best on our journey.

Regardless of who is right or wrong, who is toxic or not, whose emotions are spilling over, who ego is making up stories, or who will or will not apologize, we have to accept everyone for who they are today and where they are on their life’s journey. We have to accept the situation as is if we’re ever going to learn from it and move forward with a life lesson.

We have to accept that sometimes an apology will never come because sometimes that’s what two people needed to experience to inspire the next step of one or both of their life-journeys. We have to accept that sometime our trust cannot be repaired and sometimes their trust cannot be repaired. For whatever reason, sometimes an apology is not enough or will never happen. As we will see in the next article, the situation is what it is. We must accept everything as is and take our next step on our own journey for our growth and wellbeing while also respecting that they are on their own journey with circumstances and choices we will never understand. We must respect that they are on a different path than us. They will learn different things than us and their lessons will be revealed to them at a time that is perfect for them, not us.

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Next article in this series: Com101 – How To Make Things Right

Previous article in this series: Com101 – The Catch 22 of Communication

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

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My Rope Safety Checklist:

My tiktok channel @dannyburbol

Com101 – The Catch 22 of Communication

Kinky Poly Danny — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 22:38:53 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

In my previous article, I talked about what to share when communicating. This time I want to talk about why communication seems like such an obvious thing but ends up being so hard to do successfully.

We have interdependence needs, that is a fact. The catch 22 of communication is that we need communication to make interdependence work, but our animal instincts naturally set us up to fail before we even open our mouths to communicate. The “emotions” we “think we feel” around those interdependence needs create conflict, because our ego is inventing stories, assigning blame, and tricking us by pretending we’re working with simple core emotions when we’re not. All the “emotions” in the “interdependence” category of human needs from Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness are secondary emotions. That means these “emotions” are our brain’s interpretation of core emotions as seen through a lens of assumptions. These interpreted emotions are full of blame and set our communication up to fail.

So far, in order to separate the core blame-free emotions from the blame-filled interpreted emotions, we’ve been asking ourselves the question, “does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events?” (That’s from the tool, “Sit With It: Refocus On Me”.) The catch 22 is, our interdependence needs will always involve other people and our ego will attack those very same people.

Here is Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness, from the article, “Signal Are Unmet Needs”:

The bottom 3 categories are more likely to involve needs that surface as core emotions. These are signals on our internal emotional dashboard that we described in the article, “Emotionally, Where Am I At?” Just to name a few, these are emotions like: sad, mad, glad, scared, surprise, disgust, hungry, tired, bored, exposed, or pain.

It’s obvious that when we need something simply like food because it will create a simple emotional signal like hunger. Unfortunately, even with simply signals like hunger, we still must navigate our mind as it tries to figure out what to do about it. Our ego slips in and attempts to assign blame to the situation while identifying a way to resolve the unmet need. We might have to take a moment to sort out our thoughts before we say, “I’m starving because you, you, you,” instead of, “I’m starving. I need food. I’m going to eat a snack. Do you want some too?”

The interdependence category is much harder to navigate. All of these needs involve others, so it’s much more likely that our brain will attach blame to the people around us instantly. Odds are, we’re feeling blame-filled interpreted emotions when we have an unmet interdependence need. We must put more effort into digging deeper, passed the interpreted emotion, to uncover the core chemical signal of the primary emotion in this category.

We naturally want to communicate our interdependence needs to get the world around us to change. Our ego fools us into believing we’re simply communicating our needs and emotions, but we’re not. Instead, we blame, shame, criticize, judge, and create obligation on others. It’s a constant issue. How do we get our interdependence needs met if we can’t talk about them? What do we focus on?

We focus on digging down passed the interpreted emotions and to the core need and core emotions. Like we’ve been doing with all our other needs, we only share the blame-free core needs and core emotions. We only share these things for the sake of understanding each other, not changing, convincing, or obligating each other. We are simply trying to get on the same page. This is what holding space is. This is why holding space comes first. This is why holding space does not include problem solving or solutions.

If we are not problem solving, we are not suggesting anyone has to change. Everyone gets to share what is going on in their world, from their point of view, and no one is asking anyone to do anything. Asking or implying that someone needs to do something before everyone is on the same page of understanding often creates conflict. It’s saying, “I need you to change your ways because I’m unhappy,” rather than saying, “I’m unhappy. I need understanding.”

This is also why talking to someone outside our current situation tends to yield better results. Since they are outside the situation, our ego is not attacking them with blame or obligating them to do anything. We share the details of the situation with this outsider without pushing them to change in order to meet our needs. Of course, sometimes this outside person will attempt to jump right in and try to fix things for us which may or may not lead to a healthy resolve. Regardless, our ego is not focused on them as being part of “the problem,” so they are simply easier to talk to and they are more likely to receive us.

A focus on solutions before understanding, skips a step. If we skip holding space, there will often be a conflict that will not be deescalated until holding space finally happens. How many times have we found ourselves in a day long, month long, or even year long argument where we finally ended with an “ah-ha” moment of understanding. “Oh! Is that all?! Why didn’t you say that in the first place? I get it now. This isn’t a problem at all.” It’s like the conflict resolves itself once we’re all on the same page.

Why have the “ah-ha” moment of understanding last when we can do it first? How? We do it by getting on the same page first, not last. We do it by starting with the step of holding space for each without blame. That sounds simple and obvious, but why don’t we just do that naturally? It’s because our brain has fooled us into thinking we are communicating for understanding the whole time were blaming and talking about our versions of a solution, but we’re not. We are not communicating for understanding, we are giving orders and we’re not trying to understand the other person at all. We are unconsciously communicating in an effort to try to get the other person to change. At the same time, their ego has fooled them into thinking that they are communicating to get us to understand, but they are not. They, too, are communicating to try to get us to change. Everyone is pushing the reasons why the other person needs to do something for us to be happy and have our needs met, yet no one is listening.

It’s not a conversation if no one is listening. Instead, it’s two independent monologues competing for the spotlight. Each person has a mic and they are increasingly ramping up the volume to be heard over the other person’s mic. We’re all so busy with our important message that no one is actually listening. It’s the opposite of getting on the same page, it’s the opposite of understanding each other. It’s born from our human brain’s natural tendency to invent stories on why our needs are not being met and then charging ahead to get our need met using blame rather than pausing to get everyone on the same page first.

Our survival instincts are things like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Notice that holding space isn’t one of our survival instincts. Our ancestors didn’t hold space with angry bears to survive. Interdependence with animals that could kill us wasn’t a thing. Survival and survival responses came first. A heavy-handed need for our children to do what they were told in order to survive those random wild animals came next. As a species, we relied on dominance, obedience, and codependency to survive. Humanity is maturing across the ages and our species is discovering a need for complex social structures that revolve around interdependence. We’re no longer just banding together to survive the next bear attack or an attack from a neighboring tribe. We’ve reached the need for a social structure that revolves around interdependence for all to thrive rather than dominance and obedience for just our own tribe to survive the next attack. In the same way an individual human is slowly walking up Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness, so is humanity.

We, as a species, are finally smart enough to see past communicating to survive at someone else’s expense. We are discovering how to communicate so we can all thrive together. Creating safe spaces and holding space for each other rather than leaning on ancient instincts to dominate and push for obedience are a couple things that sets us apart from the wild animals our species once was. However, we still have an echo of those wild ancestors inside us in the form of our ego.

Our ego doesn’t want to take a moment to listen and hold space. Our ego is the animal inside us whose goal is to survive by reacting and overreacting. Our ego wants to skip the “understanding each other” step. Our ego wants to jump straight to fighting the world to keep ourselves safe and get our needs met. Our ego wants to make others change right now for our comfort. Our ego is shortsighted and willing to damage our relationships to do it.

To get our interdependence needs met, we need to share our needs and not our ego’s agenda. To get our interdependence needs met, we need to listen to the other person’s needs and not their ego’s agenda. It’s not easy, but it possible. We must have the wisdom to strip out blame both before we speak, and as the conversation is unfolding. We must have the courage to hold strong boundaries with our own ego and with the other person’s ego. If we can’t do that, we will end up having our inner wild animal provoking and reacting with their inner wild animal. Listening to understand the other person is not on the agenda for anyone’s ego.

Communicating our needs for the sake of making them known to others is very different than communicating our needs in a way that obligates the other person to change in order to meet our needs. If we get everyone on the same page first (taking turns holding space), and then brainstorm solutions that work for everyone, that will most likely be a healthy conversation. If we go straight to solutions and skip getting on the same page, that will most likely be an unhealthy conversation full of blame and obligation. This unhealthy conversation pushes for a polarizing outcome of compliance or rebellion. Either way, it will damage the relationship and might burn a bridge altogether. However, there is another solution, we might resolve the situation by stopping the unhealthy conversation and starting to listen to understand each other.

If only we could communicate our actual needs and emotions upfront. Unfortunately, all of the “emotions” we “think we feel” in the interdependence category of human needs are secondary emotions that involve blaming other people. I say we “think we feel” because our ego has stepped in and starting thinking before we realized it. Our ego is trying to interpret our core emotions, figure out what’s wrong, and figure out what to do about it. Our ego starts with the core emotions that are creating warning lights on our internal emotional dash board and then it makes up a story full of assumptions to try to figure out those warning lights. It interprets those core chemical signals into secondary emotions that are based on a story that is most likely a warped, exaggerated version of reality and may even be completely false. “I think I feel” and “I feel like” are big red flags that someone is sharing an interpretation of a core emotion and not the core emotion itself. These “feelings” are fabricated interpretations of core signals that attach our happiness to others and their behavior. These are “feelings” with build-in blame and expectations based on a bullshit story our ego made up. Almost all of the “feelings” in the interdependence category of human needs will be a blame-filled variation of, “you let me down.”

The human ego tries to share secondary emotions as if they were facts, rather than an interpretation of the facts based on assumptions. When we do this, we are blaming. If we share any secondary or interpreted emotions without calling them out as such, then our ego is in the driver’s seat, and it is doing things that will attempt to get our needs met by damaging relationships.

Part of the catch 22 of communication is that our emotions are real, valid, and not up for debate. Even these secondary emotions are real, valid, and not up for debate. The fact is, we feel something. We are feeling emotions. Even though these emotions are based on a fabricated story that may not be real, the resulting emotions are still real. We need people to respect that our secondary emotions are real, regardless of what triggered us. We also need to respect other people’s emotions, regardless of what triggered them. A great way to do that is by stripping out the story from the emotions to uncover the core signals behind it all, then sharing that instead.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we do. Our ego jumps straight to pushing our secondary emotions, pushing blame, and pushing for obedience not understanding. It’s very hard to validate someone’s emotions when they are combine with a bunch of blame and obligation. An attempt to validate their emotions might accidently come across as validating their fabricated story, their blaming attacks, and their unhealthy communication style. This is why people such down or go toe to toe with each other. No one wants to submit to having a made-up story about how terrible they are simply dropped on them, and if they do, that means they’ve given up or been beaten into compliance. That’s not understanding, that dominance and submission.

Our ego is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that will guarantee the other person will not understand our needs, will stop listening to us, will resist what we are saying, and will resist helping us get our needs met. Our ego just wants to be right, and it doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process. Our ego is damaging the relationship in an effort to make it’s bullshit story right. After our ego has provoked the other person’s ego into reacting, we get the results we are looking for. We get to fool ourselves into believing that the other person is the problem. Whether they cave and become obedient to our demands or they resist us, our ego gets the “confirmation” we were looking for. They were the problem all along and we were “right” in blaming them. They “let us down.”

Instead of letting our ego sit in the driver’s seat, we must share all our true core chemical emotions before sharing any secondary emotions and the secondary emotions must be clearly called out as such. The other person did not let us down. We set our expectations wrong. We let ourselves down.

The core chemical signals behind most unmet interdependence needs are sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. We likely feel disappointed for not getting what we expected. Our brain wants to blame the disappointment on the other person rather than recognizing we disappointed ourselves by holding onto expectations that did not come to light. Rather than blaming and saying, “you let me down. You didn’t meet my needs,” we could be saying, “I’m disappointed and upset. I’m sad and angry. I had expectations that were not met. I got my own hopes up and set myself up for disappointment. I’m disappointed and upset with myself for doing that. I’m sad and angry with myself for putting myself in this position. My brain and my ego are trying to blame everyone else for this disappointment. However, managing my expectations is my responsibility. Managing my emotions is my responsibility.”

This is a huge distinction that is very important when we are talking about any “emotions” that seem to be coming up because of any need in the interdependence category of Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness. We are responsible for managing our expectations, managing our assumptions, managing our made-up stories, managing our emotions, managing our reactions, and managing our ego. The other person didn’t let us down, we let ourselves down with the wrong expectations. Then we let ourselves down a second time when we let our ego take the wheel and try to blame everyone else for the expectations that we mismanaged.

I call this The Catch 22 of Communication, humans need interdependence and interdependence requires communication of needs, however we humans don’t tend to communicate our needs by default. We tend to communicate the results of our ego’s bullshit story based on assumptions and unmet expectations. We tend to communicate all this in the form of blame, shame, criticism, judgement, and obligation. Doing so hinders healthy interdependence and instead pushes for the unhealthy alternatives of compliance and codependency.

The very nature of communication is to interact with other people. Communication is a necessity for happily integrating with others for the sake of interdependence. Interdependence is a wonderful way for all of us to get our needs met and thrive. However, sharing secondary emotions will destroy relationships and our chances at interdependence. Furthermore, it will give our ego a bunch of self-fulfilling prophecies about how the person we just attacked was the problem all along. Our ego provokes them, damages the relationships and then concludes, “see, I was right. It’s their fault.” Either we get the obedience we wanted through blame, shame, criticism, judgment, and obligation, or we get resistance and a fight. Either way, we get validation that the other person was the problem. Either way, we damage the relationship. Either way, our ego gets to “be right.”

There is a saying, “would you rather be right or be in relationships?” That is a direct challenge that we can ask our ego.

Our ego will use big emotions to manipulation us and others in an attempt to always be right. It will use manipulation on others to get them to comply or drive them away. This often has an underlining thread of blame, shame, criticism, judgement, and obligation. These attempts to manipulate with big emotions can look and feel like: weaponized anxiety (using their fears to control us), loudly playing the victim (using sadness, anger, shock, outrage, shame), temper tantrums (using anger, shock, being offended, our sense of embarrassment), bullying and harassment (using anger, fear, shame), showering us with guilt and shame (attacking our honor, our word, or our character), spotlighting their pitiful circumstances (using sadness, crying, pitifulness) or even being overly sexual and loving (using love or desire against us).

Our ego attempts to manipulate them, but it also is manipulating us. Our ego tricks us into believing we need to get our interdependence needs met and this one person is the only person who can do that for us. Our ego is trying to trick us with a scarcity point of view of the world. It gets us to believe that if this one person doesn’t do what we want, then we won’t get what we want at all, and they must be the problem. They must be a bad person and we are better off without them. Our ego tricks us with scarcity and blame. Our ego manipulates us into thinking we are justified when we blame, attacked, and destroy a relationship with someone now that our brain has labeled them as “bad” and “the problem.” Our ego manipulates us into thinking we are right, we were always right, nothing is our fault, we don’t have to change our behavior, and we are better off without them.

The other person was never our enemy, our ego is our enemy. Our expectations, our assumptions, our interpreted emotions, and the very words that fall out of our mouth are all our ego destroying our chances at true interdependence. At the same time, we are not the other person’s enemy, their ego is their enemy. (For a wonderful dive into this topic, I highly recommend Ryan Holiday’s book, “Ego Is the Enemy.”)

To combat our ego, we can remind ourselves that we live in abundance, not scarcity. We can remember that we live in a world full of billions of humans who can help us fulfill our interdependence needs. For example, when we feel “abandoned,” our ego wants to run away with that secondary emotion and project blame on the one person who it wants to believe has abandoned us. Our ego wants us to believe this one person (or group) has left us and is denying us the attention we crave. Our ego wants us to believe only that one person can fix this feeling of abandonment for us so they must comply. However, when we begin to separate the core emotions from the blame by asking ourselves, “does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events,” we can uncover the core emotions of sadness, fear, and surprise. We can realize some of our interdependence needs that are not being met are our need for attention, consideration, praise, conversation, safety, and love. We can get those needs met from many sources. We can let our need be known and then simply ask for volunteers rather than place demands on specific people.

Letting our ego hold on to a secondary emotion like “abandoned,” gives our power away and places our happiness in someone else’s hands –a very specific person’s hands. Pausing to realize we are in need of attention, consideration, praise, conversations, safety, and love, means we can pick up the phone and call anyone in our network to get those needs met. It takes our power back without obligating that one person that our ego is focusing on to do anything.

When we hold space without blame, we are simply announcing our needs, announcing how we are taking responsibility for our needs, and we are not creating obligation for the people we’re talking to. “My need for attention, consideration, praise, conversations, safety, and love are not being met. It’s my responsibility to get my needs met, not yours.”

Our ego does silly things like deciding our partner must go to a concert with us so we can be happy. However, digging down we might find out that we want to go to the concert because we have a need for connection, and we invented the concert as a way to get that need met. We might also discover, our connection with our partner is feeling a little distant lately. We invented the need for a concert outing to reconnect and we obligated our partner to go when we could just turn to them and say, “hey, I’m feeling disconnect. I’m feeling a need to connect. Would you be interest in creating some time for us to connect? If not, I’ll call around and maybe have coffee with a friend or something.” We create no obligation, and we state how we can get our own interdependence needs met because we live in a world of abundance.

This is how we defeat our own ego. We recognize that an unmet interdependence need does not obligate any specific person to meet that need for us. Instead, we remember that we live in a world of abundance and there are many volunteers out there who would happily be a part of fulfilling our interdependence needs. That is how we drop our expectations and the blame that comes with it. That is how we take back our power from our ego. It’s not a “pretend the blame doesn’t exist” step, it’s a shift in thinking. We shift from ego-driven scarcity to a point of view that is centered in abundance.

With all this said, I’d like to bring us back to a couple of our previous Safe Conversation Boundaries and Safe Conversation Agreements, from the previous articles, “Creating A Safe Space To Talk,” and “Safe Conversation Agreement”. I’m going to list all of these boundaries and agreements and highlight the ones that exist to attempt to combat the human ego, both our ego and their ego.

Summary of Safe Conversation Boundaries:

If it’s not a good time for everyone to talk, I will reschedule. (Addresses big ego-driven interpreted emotions and how everyone’s ego might be expecting to be right before the conversation begins.)
I only have difficult conversations if everyone is ready and willing. (Addresses everyone’s ego might be expecting to be right before the conversation begins.)
I don’t tolerate or participate in yelling, etc. (Addresses how everyone will feeling big ego-driven interpreted emotions and we will not let anyone’s ego be in the driver’s seat.)
I am responsible for me, regardless of you. I will let you be responsible for you, regardless of me. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to blame and obligate others for fulfilling one’s happiness.)
I am responsible for myself and my own happiness. (Addresses our own ego’s attempts to blame and obligate others for fulfilling our happiness.)
I will keep myself safe at all times and I will call a timeout to do so. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to fight and bully to get what it wants.)
I don’t compromise or sacrifice. “Everyone wins” or no deal; I don’t allow anyone to lose. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to survive and win, even at other people’s expense.)
I use The Golden Rule. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to make itself more important than other people and pushes to survive and win, even at other people’s expense.)
The boundaries I declare will be about my own behavior and don’t obligate other people to do anything. (Addresses our own ego’s attempts to blame and obligate others for fulfilling our happiness.)
I don’t tolerate or participate in disrespect. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to make itself more important than other people be discrediting them and pushes blame to win.)
I respect privacy and I will only have private conversations with people who have proven to me they know how to respect privacy. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to discredit people in front of other groups to win.)
I only participate in calm, blame-free emotions. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to us blame to win.)
My feelings are never up for debate, nor are anyone else’s. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to be discrediting others to win, as well as makes a declaration the ego’s interpreted emotions are still real emotions that must be identified and validated independently of the story everyone’s ego will make-up.)
I will not tolerate or participate in criticism, etc. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to blame and discredit others to win.)

Summary of Safe Conversation Agreement:

One person is on the mic at a time, everyone else holds space. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to not listen so it can’t discover it was wrong.)
We take turns with the mic, and everyone is guaranteed a turn. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to silence and talk over others so it can’t discover it was wrong.)
We will declare and clarify the type of communication we are seeking, preferably, before sharing anything. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to skip ahead to making demands or assumes other people are making demand that must be resisted.)
Invitations only; no expectations, obligations, or demands. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to blame and making demands and how our ego will assume a position of scarcity and how other must do things for us.)
No trying to fix anything or anyone. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to skip past holding space and assumes it is already right.)

Can you see now? Our struggles to communicate has nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with the human ego.

The Catch 22 of Communication is that we must communicate to get our needs met, but we all have an ego that will directly sabotage us every step of the way. Our ego doesn’t want interdependence, it wants to make demands and received compliance. It doesn’t want understanding, it just wants to be right, and it doesn’t want to be questioned. We have a natural human need for interdependence, but our human ego is so busy trying to keep us safe in the name of “survival” that it actively attempts to destroy our chances at interdependence.

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Next article in this series: Com101 – A Genuine Apology

Previous article in this series: Com101 – What To Share And Why

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

My Safe Play Event Agreements:

My Rope Safety Checklist:

My tiktok channel @dannyburbol

Com101 – What To Share And Why

Kinky Poly Danny — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 23:28:12 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

Just to get you on the right page, I’m in the middle of talking about holding space. This article is about “what to share and why” when someone is holding space for us. You can hear more about holding space in my previous article, Com 101 – Holding Space With A Mic.

Sharing sounds nice. Being heard sounds nice. However, expecting someone to listen to us involves a commitment to share healthy things in healthy ways and avoid sharing things that will not be productive or just plain ruin our chances of being heard. We start with not sharing things in a manner that would make us want to stop listening if someone else used that same approach or tone on us. That might sound a lot like The Golden Rule because it is.

When involved in holding space, regardless of which side of the mic we’re on, we greatly increase our changes of being heard if we don’t blame or criticize the other person. These things don’t improve the situation and tend to directly compete with the other person’s ability to listen and understand us. Blame, shame, criticism, and judgment will push people out of listening mode. These things provoke people into arguing louder or to stop listening altogether.

For techniques on working through blame and criticism before sharing our experience with others, revisit the article “Emotionally, Where Am I At?” which introduces the tool, “Sit with it: refocus on me.” Before attempting to share our point of view with others, specifically ask ourselves the question, ““does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events?” This question is from the “Just me?” step of that “Sit with it” tool.

I’m not saying, hold back information. I’m saying, share the same information without blame, shame, criticism, or judgement. Blame, shame, criticism, and judgement are the equivalent of trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it. We think we’re trying to put it out, but we’re using the wrong tools. We’re escalating and attacking when we need to be deescalating and listening. We need the equivalent of a steady stream of water on a fire for as long as it takes to change the situation. We need to say, “hey, there’s a fire here. Let’s put it out together. Great job, high five! Okay, now let’s figure out what happened and how we can do better in the future,” and not, “what did you do!? This is all your fault!”

We’ve talked about not sharing blame and criticism many times in the previous articles. Rather than repeat all that here, let’s move on from what not to share and ask the question: what do we intentionally share, and why?

High-level of things to intentionally share

As part of the previous article on taking turns holding space, there were a few suggestions on what topics to talk about when it’s someone’s turn on the mic. I’m going to share some insight on why those specific topics were suggested. Here are those suggestions again. I’ve added bold text to show the focus of each item.

Notice that they all start with the phrase “from my point of view,” on purpose. They all end with and share nothing else, on purpose.

Great things to share are:

“From my point of view, I feel ____ (1 or 2 core, chemical emotions only) about (the main topic),” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, this is the timeline of events as a camera would have recorded it,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, the things that went right were ______, ______, and ______. I want to recognize your efforts in those things going right and say, ‘thank you’ for that,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, my expectation/assumption was that _____ would happen and it turned out _____ happened instead,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, my need for ______ was not met. It’s my responsibility to get my needs met without hurting or obligating others. I would appreciate any help you might be willing to offer though,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, I now realize _______ and I didn’t know that at the time,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, I have a boundary that wasn’t known or wasn’t respected which is ________. It’s my responsibility to get my needs met without hurting or obligating others. It’s my job to share and enforce my own boundaries. I would appreciate any help you might be willing to offer though,” and share nothing else.
After talking thought all of the items above, continue to say, “from my point of view,” and share whatever is still standing in the way of us feeling complete on this topic. Keep it short. Share one thing at a time and share nothing else.

If we simplified all that, it would be:

Share simple things, gently.
- Share one thing at a time and share nothing else.
- State everything, “from my point of view,” only.
- Omit blame, shame, criticism, judgment, and obligation.
Share our experience.
- “…I feel ____.” Core emotions only.
- A timeline of facts (not interpretations of them).
- What went right.
Share our expectations & realizations.
- Acknowledge our own expectations and assumptions compared to what really happened.
- “…I now realize _______ and I didn’t know that at the time.”
Recognize everyone’s efforts and good intentions.
- Thank everyone for their efforts often.
Share our needs.
- “…my need for ______ was not met and my needs are my responsibility, not anyone else’s.”
- “…I have a boundary to share, and my boundaries are my responsibility, not anyone else’s.”
After all the items above, share whatever is still standing in the way of us feeling complete on this topic.

If you want a cheat sheet for tricky conversations, print out the list above and write people’s initials next to each item until it’s clear everyone has addressed and shared each of these topics. If you want to collect your thoughts and practice sharing without blame before having a conversation, write out your answers to all the items above and then double check them for blame, shame, criticism, judgment, and obligation. Then adjust your answers until you are ready to share your perspective with others. Better yet, here’s a 1 page pdf that’s easy to print.

Again and again, these emotionally charged conversations come down to a person attempting to share what the world is like from their point of view. They are attempting to be understood and get their needs met. They are attempting to share what they are experiencing now, what they were experiencing as things were unfolding, and how their needs were not met. Quite often, communicating is an attempt to get our needs met by telling others about them.

When we have a need that is not being met, as part of the urge to be understood, we often unconscious include blame, shame, criticism, judgement, and obligation. It’s not the whole message, but it’s part of the message. Humans unconsciously do it because, unfortunately, it works. Blame, shame, criticism, judgement, and obligation are fairly effective at pushing others into compliance; not understanding, compliance. Another way to say that is, humans often use bully tactics on each other to get their way. However, it’s a very shortsighted way to operate since it often damages the relationship and will make future moments of trying to get our needs met with this person less likely to happen. Pushing for compliance rather than sharing to understand each other’s point of view is unhealthy communication. It falls directly into our definition of unhealthy communication since it damages the relationship. This is why we keep coming back to a focus on communicating our experience and our needs without blame, shame, criticism, judgement, or obligation.

What do we share? We share our experience, our expectations, our appreciation for the other person and their efforts, and our needs. We declare our needs and boundaries are our responsibility, not anyone else’s.

How do we share it? We share it without blame, shame, criticism, judgement, or obligation.

Successfully Sharing Our Experience

To successfully share our experience without blame, obligation, or attacking others, (1) we consider our internal, emotional dashboard and we let the other person know which signals are lit up for us, and nothing else. Next (2) we share the timeline of events that unfolded from our point of view. We share this without allowing any of our brain’s made-up stories, interpretations, or assumptions to sneak into our message. We went into great detail about these things in the articles: “Emotions Are Real,” “Emotionally, Where Am I At?” and “Stories Become Our Reality.”

The summary here is, we only share the emotions that are functioning as core chemical signals to create warning lights on our emotional dashboard. We don’t share our brain’s interpretations of those chemical signals, which are also known as secondary emotions. We also don’t share the stories our brain or our ego made up about those chemical signals on our dashboard and our secondary emotions.

The first step, sharing only the signals on our emotional dashboard, sounds like this: “I feel ____.” When done correctly, that blank will either be a primary emotion behind one of our needs in Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness, or it will be one of our six core chemical emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. I recommend digging down to the six core emotions and expressing them first. Then slowly building up to how those emotions got interpreted and why they became certain secondary emotions.

When done successfully, we will share an emotion that doesn’t have blame hidden in it. Whether we share blame-free emotions or we accidently use a blame-filled emotion, our emotions are never up for debate. For more details on how to share without blame, see the article “Holding Space with a Mic,” and the heading, “Sending a blame-free message.”

It would be very wise of us to pause and recognize when we’ve used a word that is basically blame masquerading as an emotion. Those types of words will only attack the other person and make holding space difficult for them. For example, “I felt unheard and abandoned,” are not core emotions. They are interpretations of fear, surprise, and sadness, that project blame. It would be wise to call out these interpreted emotions as soon as the words fall out of our mouths. “Wait. Hold on. My brain and my ego are making up stories and trying to blame others. Let me start over and dig deeper for the core chemical emotions I’m feeling. I feel sad, scared, and surprised. Everything else was my brain’s interpretation and knee-jerk reaction of those feelings.”

Do we still feel unheard and abandoned? Yes. Are those interpreted emotions valid? Yes. These interpreted emotions are part of our experience. However, they are going to land better with ourselves and with others when we dig deeper and speak the core chemical signals behind them instead. The next article, “The Catch 22 of Communication,” will dig into interpreted secondary emotions and how the “interdependence” category of human needs in Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness is full of secondary emotions that tend to set our communication up for failure.

So, for step one, just share the core feeling and nothing else. Everything else will only muddy the water and possibly alter the message. “I felt sad and scared.” “I felt joyful at the beginning and then I felt surprised, scared, and angry about halfway through the night.” Those are both great examples.

As the next part of sharing our experience, (2) we share a timeline of only the facts from our point of view. We go out of our way to only share facts as they would be shared by a diligent reporter or a video camera’s recording. We don’t share our brain’s interpretations, assumptions, judgements, opinions, or stories unless we call them out as such and the call out is before the share.

Here’s the difference. This would be a story full of assumptions, judgements, opinions, and blame: “you always make a huge mess in the kitchen, and I end up cleaning it up. Then I feel taken advantage of.” Compare that to, “hold on, that’s the BS story my brain is trying to convince me of. Let me start over and pretend I’m a video camera reciting just the facts. I was hungry last night. I went to the kitchen to make myself some dinner. I couldn’t start my dinner because the counter was covered with dishes that were not mine and all the pans were dirty already. I had to clear the counter and wash two pans before I could even start making my own dinner. By that time, I was hungrier and also frustrated. This is not the first time this has happened to me in our kitchen.”

Again, the goal for holding space is to take turns understanding each other’s point of view. We share the core emotion and the timeline of facts. It’s not about trying to make a request or convincing the other person to change any of their behaviors.

Successfully Sharing Our Expectation & Realizations

Calling out and sharing our expectation and assumption will often show how and why we were letdown as well as what we contributed to our own emotional reactions.

“I’m not trying to blame you or tell you what to do. I’m just saying, I walked into the kitchen and my expectation was to make a quick meal. I wasn’t expecting a spotless kitchen, I was just expecting at least one clean pan, one clean cutting board, and enough counterspace to make something. I was not expecting to have to do someone else’s dishes and cleanup before I could even start making my own food.”

What is great about calling out our assumptions and expectation is that it leads to realizations about the situation. “I now realize that this has happened more than once. I now realize it only bothers me when there are no clean pans, no clean cutting boards, or no counterspace. I’m also realizing that I haven’t said anything to you about it before and there’s no way you could have known. I guess I was expecting you to already know what my level of “clean” looks like or to read my mind or something and that’s not realistic. I realize, I should have said something sooner, but I wasn’t sure how to. I realize I’m trying to tell you right now, but I don’t know if I’m doing a good job or not.”

Recognize Everyone’s Good Intentions and Efforts

When we need to talk to someone, it’s often about something we don’t like or something we would like to change. To the other person, this can come across as focusing on the negative, attacking, and demonizing. With a message like that, it can be very challenging to not defend oneself instead of just listening. Taking a moment to also recognize the other person’s good intentions and efforts can really help them receive our message as purely sharing information and that we’re not trying to attack them, make them wrong, or get them to agree with us.

It’s very important to continue to recap only the facts of their good intentions and their efforts and not allow ourselves to pretend we know what they are thinking or put words in their mouth by speaking for them. Don’t say things like, “I know you’re tired after work, and you intend to clean up in the morning before you leave.” No. Those are assumptions. Never attempt to tell someone what they are thinking or feeling. Just ask them and they will tell you. Don’t use, “I know you _____.” That is our brain making up stories. Now the other person may feel a need to defend themselves and they may find it harder to just listen and hold space. We put all this effort into creating a safe space and getting everyone to hold space for each other, let’s not throw it all away by projecting our assumptions onto others and acting like we know what they are thinking and feeling.

Instead, callout assumptions as part of the previous step of sharing our experience, “I know you’re tired after work. –wait. Sorry. I didn’t mean to speak for you. I’ll let you speak for yourself when your turn comes around. I often assumed you are tired after work, and I assume that you intend to clean up in the morning because you often do clean up in the mornings.” An even better approach, we can site a fact, as a camera would see it, that tells why we are operating from an assumption. For example, “from my point of view, you tell me you are tired after work two or three times a week. I was operating under the assumption that you were tired.”

However, there is more impact by skipping the assumptions all together in favor of recognizing their efforts and thanking them. “I just want to pause and recognize that you often clean up all the dishes and start the dishwasher before you leave for work in the mornings. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate your efforts on those mornings. Thank you for doing that.”

I’m not saying, you should simply omit the negative topics. The phrase, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” is terrible and will lead to a life of no boundaries or unenforced boundaries. Instead, “If you can’t say anything nice, share only specific facts and uninterpreted observations.” This means the less than desirable topics are shared in the previous step where we walked through the timeline of facts from our point of view.

Successfully Sharing Our Needs

Next we share our natural human needs, specifically, the needs that are not being met. As part of that, we always state how we are solely responsible for getting our own need met. That sounds simple, but it has a few pitfalls to watch out for.

First of all, we need to be careful not to make a request or tell anyone to do anything. “I need you to ____,” is never okay. That is not sharing a natural human need, that is making a demand and disguising it as a request for a need. This is manipulation and obligation. Unconsciously or not, we are trying to manipulate them into meeting our needs. They are not responsible for our needs or getting our needs met. Only we are responsible for our needs and getting our own needs met.

Instead, we list the most basic human needs from Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness and we don’t direct it at the other person or obligate them to meet any of the needs. In fact, we announce how it’s our responsibility to get our own needs met. We say something like, “I have been neglecting my need for rest. I need to get enough sleep each night so I can function at work the next day. It’s my responsibility to get my needs met without hurting or obligating others. I would appreciate any help you might be willing to offer though.”

Making this little announcement is a declaration of our intentions and a reminder to both them and ourselves that we are not making demands on anyone and it’s not their job to meet our needs. If they were having any anxiety about how our situation might get pushed onto them or turn into an attempt to manipulate them into doing anything at all, this statement will help release them from that. This is very useful when the other person was raised in a punish-ask culture, and they are unconsciously worried about this whole safe-space thing falling apart any second now.

This declaration of “it’s my responsibility to get my needs met without hurting or obligating others,” is great to help us catch ourselves when our monkey mind or our ego have slowly creeped into our think. It keeps us honest and on the path. In the middle of saying these words, I’ve found myself thinking, “oh wait. Crap. That’s totally true. I was just starting to have expectations for them to change. I’m going to drop these obligations and hit the ‘reset’ button on my expectation, right now.”

Expecting them to change in any way puts unneeded stress on both parties. It stresses them because we are unconsciously telling them what do to or telling them they are wrong and need to change. On their end, they feel like they are be being attack with blame, shame, criticism, judgment and obligations. They will naturally defend themselves. Expecting them to change puts unneeded stress on us because now our mind is in a state where it has completely forgot we are an adult who can go do whatever makes us happy at just about any point in time. Instead, we’re stuck in a victim attitude honestly believing we can’t be happy until the other person does something specific. We are stuck believing we can’t have what we want and it’s all their fault. We have given all our power away. Take it back by releasing the expectation that anyone is obligated to do anything for us, our needs, or our happiness.

When this really clicks, we will be able to look at someone and say simple things that express exactly how we feel, exactly what we are going to do about it, and everyone else is invited to join us but they can always say “no” to without any negative repercussions. We naturally find ourselves saying things like, “Hey, I love you all. I’m not having fun here today. You’ve done nothing wrong. I guess I’m just in a weird mood. I going to change my surrounding and flip the script for myself. I’m going to go for a walk around the block. You’re welcome to join me if you want, but no pressure.” With this attitude, we simply accept people for who they are and we let them be. We also accept ourselves and our current state and we know we have the power to do whatever we want to change our state.

While we are on the mic and people are holding space for us, we don’t ask for or talk about any kind of solution. We say, “I would appreciate any help you might be willing to offer though.” We are making it clear that we are open to an invitation if they choose to offer one, but we are not demanding they help us. This reminds both parties that no one is obligated to anyone here. Invitations only. We also don’t talk about solutions at this time because that step comes later. Solutions come after everyone is on the same page. We make sure everyone involved gets a chance to share and be heard on the mic, and then solutions often present themselves without much effort.

For example, “I need you to make sure at least one pan, and one cutting board are clean before you leave the kitchen,” is skipping ahead to solutions and making obligations and demands. Instead, only state the need with no involvement from anyone else. “I need to be able to make myself dinner when I’m hungry.” That is a simple human need that would apply to just about any human, even the person we’re talking to.

This may also be the time to state a boundary as part of making our needs known. Boundaries also don’t obligate anyone to do anything. They are a clear statement of the actions we will take in various situations, regardless of the other person. To recap the article, “Boundaries Keep Us Safe,” the steps for creating a boundary are (1) defining a boundary, (2) make an agreement with ourselves, (3) make the boundary and our intended actions known, and (4) taking action on boundary violations. Sharing a boundary while on the mic would be step 3.

Summing it up and passing the mic

Our message might have been a little messy or out of order, but we take one step at a time and we allow our listeners to confirm they heard us correctly every step of the way. Once we’ve shared and confirmed our emotions, our experience, our expectations, our assumptions, our realizations, our appreciation, and our needs, we probably made some discoveries along the way. Our message may have shifted slight since we first started talking. We might want to share one final short message to sum it all up and make it clear to both us and our listeners what our final landing spot was with all of this talking.

“I was hungry and frustrated. I couldn’t make myself dinner because I didn’t have clean dishes or a clean surface to work on. I recognize you often clean up in the mornings and I thank you for that. I need to be able to make myself dinner when I’m hungry.”

Notice how we used “I” statements that didn’t blame the other person. The only time we used the word “you” was to recognize their efforts and thank them. We didn’t use words like “always” or “never.” We didn’t obligate them to do anything or ask them to change or fix anything. We simply shared our point of view and our needs, then stopped. When this summary message is complete, we can pass the mic and hold space for the next person.

As a Listener

As part of holding space, we can also listen for and encourage the speaker to share their experiences, assumptions, and needs. We can walk the same list of items and check-in with the speaker to ensure nothing gets skipped.

For example, the speaker may say they are complete, even though they never specified their unmet needs. We might ask a clarifying question, “okay, I’m hearing you say you are complete, but I just want to check-in first, did you have any unmet needs that you wanted to share, are you good on that topic, or did I miss something on that item?”

Demonstrating how we want to make sure they get a chance to share fully and that we are paying attention to them will further confirm to them that we want to hear and understand them fully.

In the next article I’ll be talking about what I believe to be “The Catch 22 of Communication.”

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Next article in this series: Com101 – The Catch 22 of Communication

Previous article in this series: Com101 – Safe Chat vs Safe Travel

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

My Safe Play Event Agreements:

My Rope Safety Checklist:

My tiktok channel @dannyburbol

Com101 – Safe Chat vs Safe Travel

Kinky Poly Danny — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 17:51:45 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

In my previous article, I talked about holding space with a mic. I want to zoom out and look at the high-level picture of what’s involve with having a safe space conversation before getting too deep into the actual conversation itself.

Let’s say, I want to plan a trip. There’s a lot involved with something like that. I figure out where I want to go and why. I might get some friends involved. We need tickets. We need to actually get to the airport and get on a plane. If everything goes well, we’ll get where we wanted to be, but if something goes wrong, like bad weather, the plane might land early. In which case, we’d have to get a new flight booked and keep trying to get to my destination.

That’s a lot, right? There is a lot involved with traveling and a lot more involve with traveling with other people. If you’ve traveled, you know this already. It’s all obvious to a seasoned traveler, but if you’ve never gone on a trip like this before, you might be in for a surprise as you discover just how much effort it takes to get to your destination and just how much more complex it gets when there are other people involved.

A safe space conversation with someone is just like traveling with someone. Let’s walk through what I mean by that. I’m going to just stick to travel for a second.

I realize I want to travel. I ask myself where do I want to go? I ask myself why? Why is this place important to me? Why do I want to go? Then I ask myself, who do I want to share this with?

First of all, look at all the dead end in that picture. I’m trying to find someone that I want to travel with who also wants to travel with me. I ask myself if they are good to travel with? I mean, are they trustworthy with something as big and complex as travel? If the answer is “no”, “not really”, or “I don’t know”, then I’m probably not even going to invite them on the trip. Well, if my answer was “I don’t know,” I might invite them on a smaller, safer, less risky trip. Maybe a weekend road trip, but not a flight to another continent or anything like that. Why is this? It’s because I want to have a good time getting to my destination and being at my destination and I don’t want to invite someone who’s going to ruin that.

If I ask myself, “are they good to travel with?” and I find myself saying, “hell yeah,” then I can put the offer out there to invite them. “Hey, I’m going on an adventure. Do you want to travel with me? I’m not saying it will be easy, but the results could be life changing.”

What I’m really asking is, “do you have the desire to overcome all the obstacles involved with travel, and do you want to do that with me?” They might say, “nope. Thanks for the invite, but I’m a ‘no’.” That’s totally okay for us. That’s a good thing. If they don’t want to be on the trip, they would probably be a nightmare to be around anyways, so I say, “Okay, cool. Thanks for letting me know.” They just saved me a bunch of time, energy, and frustration by saying, “no, thank you.” If I gave them a true invitation with zero expectation of them saying yes, then I will be thankful when they say “no”.

If I get all bent out of shape because they said, “no,” that’s on me. That’s my fault for having expectations and projecting those expectations onto them. If I’m bend out of shape, it’s because I didn’t truly make it safe for them to say “no.” In that case, I would be even more thankful they said, “no” because that means they were strong enough to stand up to my expectations and enforce their boundaries for the benefit of both of us. They took a risk telling me “no,” because it might trigger a reaction from me. Perhaps I’m not the safe-ask person I thought I was. This twinge of being let down because they said “no” helps me realize I had expectations wrapped up in this request. It’s even more important that I say, “thank you for your honesty.” Yes, I’m letdown, but I’ll handle my emotions. In the meantime, part of being a safe-ask person is thanking them for their honesty so I can be safe for them today and encourage them to be honest with me in the future. Then I take a timeout with myself, and I get my head straight before I make this offer to anyone else.

On the other hand, they might say, “yeah! Thank you! I’d love to travel with you! Let’s do it! Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for sharing this with me.” They want to be there with us, and they know they are signing up for some work to make this happen.

The next question is, “do we both have the resources for this trip?” Sure, we want to do it, but can we successfully follow through on this or are we just lying to ourselves? Do we have the time, the energy, the experience, passports, and visas? Do we have the necessary vaccinations? Do we have the funds?

If we have all these things, then we can get tickets. If we don’t, we need to separately work on ourselves and our individual situations first. We can try something together when we are both better prepared.

With tickets in hand, we go to the airport together, we go through the security checkpoints together, we get on the plane, and we strap in.

Then the plane takes off! We’re doing it! We’re on our way!

If something goes wrong while we’re in the air, like bad weather, the plane will land early. In which case, we would go through the process of scheduling another flight that will get us there. We would probably be booked on our next flight before we even left the terminal or walk back through a security checkpoint. We would be delayed, but we would still have a plan for getting to where we’re going.

Regardless of if this is the first flight or an alternate flight, if everything goes well, we will have a happy landing at our intended destination. We’ll unbuckle, get off the plane, go back through the security checkpoints, and we’ll exit the airport. Life will be full of exciting new possibilities because we overcame what it took to get here.

Let me put that all together in one picture:

In the first part, we realize we want to travel, we ask ourselves “where,” “why,” and “with who?” All of that is Step 1. That’s getting clear with ourselves, what we’re feeling, and why we’re feeling it.

Step 2 is a vast amount of setting up a safe space and ensuring it’s safe. It starts with a safe person to share our experience with and a safe, doable plan to actually have the experience. Then we go to an airport, where we can safely fly together. When everyone walks through that same security checkpoint, we’re ensuring we’re in a safe environment. The plane takes off form a safe space and it lands in a safe space, even if we hit bad weather and land early.

Step 3 is the flight. It’s actually the smallest part of that picture. Can you see now why this series has spent so much time talking about creating a safe space and keeping it safe? Even if we’re in flight and something goes wrong, we can make an emergency landing in another safe airport.

When we’re all done flying, we go back through the security checkpoint, we go back through the airport, and then we’re free to go have an amazing time in a new place because we made this trip happen successfully.

Compare that to having one of our safe space conversations.

Step 1 is we get clear. We ask ourselves, “what do I want,” and “what am I feeling?” We feel it for what it is. We sit with it. Then we ask, “why am I feeling this? Who or what is my monkey brain trying to blame?” We’re getting our head straight before we get anyone else involved. What are our feelings, wants, needs, and unmet expectation? We get clear. We strip out blame and expectations. Then we go find someone to share our experience with.

Who do we want to share this with? Are they a good person to share with? Are they trustworthy or not? When we find the right person, we make them an offer with no expectations. “Hey, I have this thing and I’d like to share it with you. I’m not saying it will be easy, but the results could be life changing. Do you have the desire to overcome all the obstacles involved with me sharing this? Do you want to hold space for each other?” They can say, “no, thank you,” because we’ve gone out of our way to get our head right and not have expectations wrapped up in the invitation.

If they don’t want to have a conversation with us, they would probably be a nightmare to talk to anyways, so we say, “Okay, cool. Thank you for your honesty. I’ll find someone else to talk to.” I’ll go get my needs met elsewhere. No harm, no foul. That part can be hard sometimes, but remember, we got our head straight before we even gave them the invitation.

They might also say, “hell yeah. Thank you for trusting me with this. Thank you for sharing what’s going on.” From there we know we want to have a conversation together, but do we have what it takes to do it successfully? Do we have the spoons to do it? Do we have time, and the experience? If we do, we schedule a conversation, which is the “buying tickets” part.

Again, if we don’t have what it takes to do this successfully, we need to separately work on ourselves and our individual situations first. We can try again when we are both better prepared and have more experience with these things.

After we “buy tickets” to this conversation, we get together to have the talk. What’s next? No, we don’t just start talking. We walk ourselves through the security checkpoint first. We go through all the safe space boundaries. It might be slow the first couple of times we go through this checkpoint, but the more we do it, the quicker and easier it will become. After we make it safe for everybody, we strap in and start our conversation.

Step 3, the flight is the conversation. This series breaks the conversations into two pieces; holding space, and then whatever naturally comes next. We start with holding space because getting on the same page, listening to each other, clarifying, understanding each other’s experience, understanding each other’s point of view, validating, empathizing, –all of these things come first. We also take great strides to do it all without blame.

Once we’ve finished taking turns holding space for everyone, we do whatever naturally comes next. We might find apologies are in order. We may see some low hanging fruit type solutions, or we may decide to put our heads together to actively work on a solution that benefits everyone. We also may decide to do nothing at all. It amazing how sometimes no further action is needed. The action that was needed might have been to get on the same page. In other cases, we may agree to disagree or agree that we can’t help each other with this specific topic today, and that’s okay too.

If something goes wrong, we can have an emergency landing by calling a timeout. We land in a safe space with our timeout. We might even do a check-in, in mid-flight to realize, “oh, we don’t have to land, we’re just doing a little course correction. We’re good now. Let’s keep going.” If we make our emergency landing, we’re still in a safe landing place. In the same way we scheduled our next flight before leaving the airport, we schedule our next conversation before leaving our safe space.

At the end, we unbuckle, we leave the safe space together, and now we’re back out in the world where we have all of these exciting new possibilities because we overcame what it took to get here; we had this safe space conversation together.

Now I’m literally going to swap out the words on the diagram to show this:

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Previous article in this series: Com 101 – Holding Space With A Mic

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

My Safe Play Event Agreements:

My Rope Safety Checklist:

My tiktok channel @dannyburbol

Com 101 – Holding Space With A Mic

Kinky Poly Danny — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 23:31:34 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

In my previous article, I talked about safe conversation agreements to have a conversation one. And now, we’re finally here. The main event for all these communication articles: taking turns holding space. This includes a prop to help us along, a microphone.

The most powerful communication tool I’ve discovered is to take turns holding space for each other. It can be initiated by simply asking for it. “Can we try that thing where we take turns holding space for each other?”

Unfortunately, holding space is nuanced and not everyone knows how to do it. To make matters more difficult, situations and emotions constantly ebb and flow, guaranteeing that everyone will have times when they are simply incapable of holding space for others. On top of all that, people are human, and humans make mistakes. Not everyone knows what it means to holds space. People have different ideas of what it means. It’s possible to agree to hold space and then not follows through with it. When the situation isn’t right or someone doesn’t know what they are doing, agreeing to hold space might actually be an agreement make a giant mess fueled by the best of intentions.

No problem, just say, “hey, let me educate you on how to hold space.” No. Never do that. That would be a complete disaster. I once had someone who was upset and yelling at me say, “what do you want from me!” I yelled back, “I just want you to hear me with active listening!” Then, in the middle of a heated moment, I’m trying to explain active listening. If life was a TV show, the studio audience would have been laughing their heads off at us. It was a total disaster, but it was a disaster with a great lesson: trying to explain new communication styles when people are already emotional does not work –not even a little. Trying to educate someone who is upset comes across as condescending. Instead of coming across as a plea communication that will help everyone, they will likely only hear, “you’re doing it wrong,” “you’re not good enough,” and it will escalate them further.

Again, call a time out if people are yelling. Don’t attempt to hold space or introduce new tools when emotions are above a 2 out of 10. Instead, breathe, do a self check-in, go for a walk around the block. Use all the tools we talked about in Parts 1 and 2. Move forward when people are calm.

Rather than educating about holding space, a great alternative is to introduce a simple prop with some simple rules attached to it that allow people to instantly get on the same page with the process. The prop itself is an interrupt pattern. It’s like a timeout and a “wait, what’s this?” Curiosity is the opposite of anger and fear. If the other person is curious about the prop and the rules, it’s worthing sharing the idea. If they are not curious, then stop because they are not in a receptive state and now is not the time.

In the chapter about “Receiving someone’s ‘No’,” we used the analogy of one person being on stage with a microphone while everyone else is sitting in the audience actively listening. Taking turns with an imaginary mic is a way to quickly get people on the same page for holding space.

I want to caution that the microphone is not a “talking stick.” In theory, a talking stick is an object where whoever is holding the stick gets to talk and everyone else gets to practice their active listening. In practice, just the name “talking stick” gets confusing because active listening involves talking, but if we don’t have the stick, we’re not supposed to talk, right? That’s confusing. Some listeners will just not talk because they don’t have the stick and they think those are the rules. I’ve also seen people not realize that active listening involves talking and then silence anyone who is asking clarifying questions with, “hey, it’s my turn to talk.” Some people may give the stick away to let someone share some active listening style words but now they’ve unintentionally given away their turn. The next person starts taking their turn in the spotlight while the previous topic is left half explored and unresolved. In many ways, the name “talking stick” doesn’t embody the tool’s intentions. The intentions seem to be more of a “topic stick.”

I’ve also seen people try to improve the talking stick by using a ball or stuffed animal. The idea being, if you have the ball, you can talk, and the ball is supposed to pass around the group quickly. This would allow conversation to flow while encouraging people to not talk over each other. Throwing a talking stick is a bad idea, hence the ball or stuffed animal. Come to think of it, having a stick in a group of people who might have heightened emotions also seems a little questionable to me. “Here’s a potential weapon. Now go talk it out like responsible adults.”

There’s still plenty to be learned from the talking stick and the passed ball techniques. One person talking at a time is helpful. One person’s topic in the spotlight at a time is helpful. Active listening is helpful. Taking turns for talking and taking turns with topics is helpful. Ensuring a topic is complete before moving on to the next person’s topic is helpful. Ensuring everyone gets a turn, even if our topic isn’t 100% complete, is helpful.

Combining all these with safe space boundaries is how my microphone analogy was born. The mic is a “topic stick,” and only one person speaks into it at a time. The person who holds the mic gets to share their topic until it is complete. They give others a chance to speak into the mic, but it doesn’t leave their hand until they are ready to pass it.

What The Mic looks like

If we were to sit outside the experience and watch a few masters of this style of communication, we would see that it looks a lot like people getting to know each other. Someone mentions growing up in California and everyone tunes in and asks questions about it. “Jenny grew up in California,” is the topic for a few moments and people ask Jenny clarifying questions to better understand what it feels like to grow up in California. “What were the schools like?” “Were you by the beach?” “Isn’t half of California a dessert?” When everyone understands what it was like to grow up in California from Jenny’s point of view, Jenny might ask, “What about you? Where did you grow up?”

Jenny was on the mic sharing a message and everyone else was active listening. When Jenny was complete, she passed the mic. Hopefully, everyone will get a turn to share something on the mic and all of these relationships will be strengthened as a result.

It’s so easy when the topics are light, everyone is relaxed, and everyone actually does want to get to know each other. It’s also easy when the topics aren’t up for debate. “Jenny grew up in California,” and “Billy’s favorite color is yellow,” aren’t up for debate. These are moments of information delivery only and they are from a specific person’s point of view. It’s not a push to challenge or change anyone else’s mind. It’s just a message that allows others to learn a little bit about someone.

“Getting to know each other” is simply information sharing and receiving without challenging any of the information. Again, it’s easy when it’s light and relaxed. When emotions, struggles, urgency, situations, and differences of opinion get involved, this style of conversation often changes. Now we’re challenging each other’s information and pushing our information on others. Suddenly it’s a debate or an argument. Holding space is a commitment to sticking to the “getting to know each other” and each other’s point of views without challenging it” style of information sharing. This is the reason why one of our safe conversation boundaries is “my feelings are never up for debate, nor are anyone else’s.” Debating anyone’s feelings means we slid out of the commitment of only information sharing and receiving without challenging.

Holding a prop mic helps everyone stick to that “get to know you” style of communication. The goal is to use an imaginary microphone until everyone in the conversation has such great default habits that no one needs a prop to hold space anymore. The goal is to look like that group of friends who are causally getting to know each other even though the situation might be tense, and the topics have a bigger impact.

How to take turns on the mic

Pretending to hold an invisible microphone. Tap it with your other hand and say, “testing, testing, is this thing on? How about we take turns with the mic?” A pen also makes a great prop microphone.

The mic is not, and should not, be a two-way conversation. It’s one-way information sharing without challenging the information. This is a conversation where the person on the mic is delivering brief and an important message and everyone else is focused on active listening to understanding the message correctly. Successfully sending a clear and quality message is the responsibility of the mic holder. Demonstrating the message that’s actually been received is the responsibility of the listeners. A back and forth of clarification happens until everyone has confirmed the message has been received without misinterpretation. Then the next person gets to share a message.

The person with the mic is trusting everyone else with the responsibility of knowing this important, often vulnerable, information. They are also trusting everyone will put their energy into maturely receiving the message despite humans being imperfect creatures who must use words, an imperfect medium. The audience gets to ask some questions to make sure the speaker has been understood and the message has been delivered correctly.

When I say active listening, that’s what I mean; asking questions to clarify the message being sent, making statements that repeat back the message for clarity, and demonstrating we received and understood the message. As part of clarification, an active listener can, and should, request a smaller chunk of information at a time. “Timeout. That’s a lot. I’m a little lost. Can you simplify the message or break it into smaller pieces?” To ensure everyone is understood, they may ask, “do you feel heard,” and “are you complete?”

It is very important that everyone understands the intentions are for everyone to get a turn with the mic. Then it’s just as important that everyone does, in fact, get a chance on the mic. When it’s clear that everyone will get a chance to speak without being challenged while everyone else just listens and speaks to demonstrate understanding, suddenly there is no reason for anyone to raise their voice or argue. There is no reason to talk over each other because everyone knows they will be heard. This is not a debate or a fight. Everyone agrees; we are going to take turns listening to each other and everyone will get a turn.

Ensure everyone does, in fact, get a turn. Use a timer if needed. If “taking turns on the mic” accidently becomes “everyone gets a turn on the mic but me,” expect people to decline offers to communicate in the future. Expect them to say, “this doesn’t work.” If time or energy runs out before everyone gets a turn on the mic, schedule a follow conversation before ending and then move mountains to make sure it happens. People who don’t get a turn will either fall back on yelling and arguing to be heard or give up on communication and stop talking altogether.

Sending a blame-free message

To take a turn on the mic, the person with it gets clear with themselves, then delivers the simplest accusation-free message they can. This means they need to get back to core emotions and drop all the second level, interpretations of emotions. This means they need to drop blame. This means they need to start most sentences with, “from my point of view,” and “in my opinion.” This means they don’t say “you, you, you,” and they don’t use absolutes like “always” and “never.” They need to stick to the facts and be specific; not the assumptions that their monkey brain, aka the ego, has decided are facts, but the facts as they would be recorded by a diligent reporter or a video camera.

When this “drop the blame and list only the facts” step finally clicks, arguments tend to dissolve and the situation begins to take care of themselves. When we it happens, we will often discover we are not in an argument or a misunderstanding with the other person, rather we are in a misunderstanding with ourselves. Our reality and our point of view have been hijacked by our monkey brain, aka our ego. Our ego has burning desire to always be right and never change by blaming everyone and everything around us for our discomfort so it’s view of reality doesn’t have to change. Our ego’s false assumptions and false conclusions turn in to blame and then our monkey brain wants to argue with everyone else about those false conclusions that our ego is treating like facts. Another word for that is “projection.” Our ego wants to project our false assumptions on to everyone else and argue with them until they change because they are clearly the one ruining our experience.

Meanwhile, their ego is pulling the same money brain BS on them too. Their ego is making stuff up. Their ego is trying to shut out all outside information and persuasion. Their ego has a burning need to be right and wants everyone else to change so it can be. Their ego is their greatest enemy just like our ego is our greatest enemy. We are emotional creatures who sometimes think. We are not two humans talking, we to monkey brains demanding to be right at any cost.

Our greatest battle in life is not with our enemies, not with our loved ones, but with ourselves. We think we’re having a fight with someone who is standing between us and our happiness, but it’s not the other person standing in our way, it’s our own monkey brain’s false assumptions and need to blame. They think they are arguing with us, that aren’t. They don’t even hear us when their ego is in the driver’s seat. Dropping blame is a life-long battle against our own ego. Our loved ones are probably not our enemies, our ego usually is.

How many times has an argument suddenly dissolved for us because of some “ah-ha” moment where we finally understood one critical piece of information that made the whole situation suddenly not a problem anymore? How many times was that information right in front of our nose? How many times was the other person trying to share that information, but we basically had our fingers in our ears while interrupting them with our side of the story? Yet our ego fought every step of the way to not hear any information at all. It tries to shut down any outside influence that might contradict its false assumptions, false narratives, and false conclusions. Our ego is hellbent on making up stories and creating blame that allows it to always be right and never change. It wants everyone else change not us. It thinks our view of the world is perfect and everyone else must be wrong.

Our ego would rather be right and be alone forever than consider the possibility of being wrong, being an imperfect human, and staying in relationships with other imperfect humans. We can be right, or we can be in healthy relationships, we can’t have both. That’s how interdependence works. Our ego would rather be right and alone. Our own ego is our most cunning enemy, not the other person. Dropping blame and criticism is the secret weapon for interdependence, communication, and happiness.

Why do we have that “ah-ha” moment at the end of a big argument? Why wait to the end of a battle to finally discover what information we’re missing and drop the blame. Why not start there? Why not take dropping blame and challenging ourselves and our own ego as a first step, not a last step? I tell you why, because it’s hard and our ego doesn’t want us to do it. Our ego wants to protect us and our view of the world. Our ego wants fight with everyone, not listen to them. We can defeat our ego’s intentions by stripping out blame and listening to others. We can do it faster and without battling our loved ones, if we make that our first step, not our last step.

This is why Part 1 of this series was all about getting our head straight. We have a mic in our hand, we have everyone’s undivided attention, and we have their agreement to active listen, what are we going to say? Are we going to hand the mic directly to our ego, our monkey brain? Are we going to provoke them? Are we going to attack and blame everyone? That would destroy this moment we so painstakingly created where they want to understand what we’re going through and they don’t plan to challenge us. It’s our responsibility to deliver a non-threatening, gentle, factual, message and not a bunch of blame, opinions masquerading as facts, false assumptions, false narratives, blame filled emotions masquerading as facts, criticism, judgements, attacks, over reactions, or how we’ve jumped to a bunch of conclusions that we then treated as fact.

This is a big responsibility. This is a battle we will be fighting with our ego for the rest of our lives. We will not get it right and that’s okay. We are going to be honest about where we’re at in our unhealthy verses healthy communication journey and we are going to do our best. We’re going to be honest as we speak and make it clear that in this moment, we’re fighting out ego and trying to deliver a blame-free message and it’s not working so well. We’re going to trust that we picked the right people to hold space for us, A-style communicators. We going to be open to gentle reminders and corrections from them. We are going to expect to give calm clarifications when people ask us for them. We’re going to remember that requests for clarifications are not attacks. When we hit a snag, are going to ask for a do-over. We are going to simplify our message if it’s not being received for any reason. We are going to thank everyone for their efforts and support every step of the way.

Tipping the Mic

Unlike the talking stick, it’s clear that active listeners will be talking too. Other people will indicate they want to do some active listening with a clarifying question or a summary statement to demonstrate understanding. This could be a natural pause in the conversation and a small inhale of breath that everyone unconsciously notices and makes space for, or it could be someone visually raising their hand.

When others are speaking as part of active listening, the person with the mic simply tips the pen or invisible microphone forward to them so they can share it. The mic gets tipped forward but not passed. It looks much like a news reporter interviewing people on the street. The mic never leaves the reporter’s hands. They never hand their show over to someone else. Tipping the pen forward says a few things to everyone in the conversation. It says, “I’m taking a question or comment. It’s your turn to talk and I won’t talk over you. I’m still holding the mic. It’s still my turn and my topic.”

The person with the mic can pull it back to themselves if they need to clarify something or try a do-over with sending the message altogether. Then they can tip the mic forward again and invite that person to demonstrate how the new information was received.

The speaker can also tip the mic forward and slowly sweep it across all the listeners to signal, “I’m open to your thoughts. Now’s a good time. Does anyone have any questions? How is this landing for all of you?” Some of us talk with a lot of pauses and silent processing. This can be confusing for others who don’t want to interrupt or have been accused of interrupting in the past. Tipping the mic forward is a strong signal to relieve that type of anxiety and encourage thoughts when we are ready to receive them.

The speaker also can pull the mic back if the other person starts monologuing, storytelling, or going on any tangents. They can be polite and direct as they tip the mic back and say, “hold on, I think we’re getting on a tangent here. The message I’m trying to share is…” They may also gently quiz the other person, “hold on, what was my message again?” After these minor course corrections, the speaker can tip the mic out again.

Everyone Keeps the Space Safe

In addition to sending messages or receiving messages, everyone gets to enforce safe space boundaries. “Hey, we agreed on no yelling or criticism.” “One second, is that a fact, an opinion, or an assumption?” “Is that a fact the way a video camera would have played it back?” “Is that a core, chemical emotion, or is that blame masquerading as emotion?”

The listeners can also reenforce the blame identifying phrases the speaker may have left out. For example, the speaker might say, “All of you abandoned me at the event,” which is the ego stealing a moment on the mic. Then a listener might say, “okay, what I’m hearing is that, from your point of view, it felt like we all abandoned you at the event.” By simply recognizing “from my point of view” was left out of the speaker’s original message, it’s much easier to receive, reflect back, bring awareness to the blame, and dissolve the assumed blame. The speaker will often realize they left out the phrase and then use it in their clarification, “yes, from my point of view, all of you abandoned me at the event. So, hold on. Do-over. I found myself all alone at an event where I didn’t know anyone. That I couldn’t find any of you. From my point of view, I felt abandoned, and I assumed you all abandoned me. I’m not saying you abandoned me. I’m saying I felt that way at the time and I was scared, sad, and alone.” There’s the real, blame-free, message, “I was scared, sad, and alone.”

With that little message sent and received, the next step of the overall message will surface. It might sound something like, “Yes. I was scared, sad, and alone. I couldn’t find any of you.” Then everyone would reflect back this new information. After a few rounds of clarification and reflection with blame stripped out, the underlining message could be uncovered to be something like, “I was scared, sad, and alone. I couldn’t find any of you. My abandonment traumas were kicking in and affecting my perception of the situation and my judgment. I’m not proud of my actions and reactions. I was scared. I don’t want to be scared like this in the future.”

Everyone gently looking for an removing blame with rephrasing helps put everyone on the same page. The speaker is recognizing they played a part in blaming others and acting as if their assumptions were facts. They can recognize that emotions were at play and clouding their view of the situation. The listeners don’t have to defend themselves from what would have been considered an attack in a debate or an argument. Instead, they reenforce the agreements and the scripts for holding space with a mic. Free from having to defend themselves, the listeners can recognize the speaker is struggling against their ego right now, just to deliver a blame-free message. The listeners can also recognize the speaker was struggling at the time everything went down and what it must have felt like to be in that struggle. We can all recognize the human condition in each other and sympathize because we are all doing our best with these often-emotional monkey brains we all have.

On The Topic of Topics

I’m going to call the main topic of the conversation, the main event. Just like a rock show, it’s the reason we’re all here and everything about being here is supporting this main event. There is also, one main event. There may be some opening acts and some getting ready for the main event, but there is only one main event.

Stick to one supporting topic at a time or one aspect of the main event at a time. It’s very helpful to declare the main event as a group before starting. “Okay, today we’re talking about how things didn’t go so well on Tuesday night, right? Are there other things we need or want to discuss? Oh, we want to talk about the dishes, too? How much time do we have? One hour? Okay, we’re going to pass the mic and talk about Tuesday night for 45 minutes, then spend 15 minutes on low hanging fruit. If we need another sit-down to continue talking about Tuesday night, we will schedule it. We’re going to save the talk about the dishes until we all sit down for a check-in tomorrow so it’s a separate discussion. Is everyone onboard for that?”

Less is more with these types of conversations. When we take our turn, it’s very helpful to stick to the main topic or pass because we’ve already shared our thoughts on this. Just because one person got to share their perspective about Tuesday night, doesn’t mean it’s okay to start talking about the topic of the dishes. Finish the main event as a group. Close the discussion, then start a new discussion for a new main event when everyone has the spoons for it.

Notice, we set aside time to talk about low hanging fruit and possible solutions at the end. Brainstorming solutions and problem solving are not part of holding space. They are topics and communication styles to engage in after holding space has finished. We might use passing the mic as an easy structure to continue to talk without talking over each other, but there’s a clear distinction between holding space until holding space is done and then switching to whatever the group feels needs to come next.

It’s very helpful to break a topic into smaller pieces or sub-topics. For example, “How about we pass the mic around once and just say, I feel ____ about Tuesday night and nothing more. Just one or two emotions.” Now the sub-topic of “how everyone feels about Tuesday night” is clear and out in the open. If everyone took the time to confirm they heard correctly, then everyone’s emotions will also feel heard. That’s progress because, emotionally, that’s one more thing everyone is now on the same page about.

On a side note, starting with a quick round of “I feel ____ about the main topic,” is a great place to start because it shows who might need the mic first. When two people shrug and say, “I feel indifferent about Tuesday,” and two other people say, “I’m feel hurt and sad about Tuesday,” it’s clear who should be first in the lineup.

Great sub-topics to focus on are, “from my point of view…”:

“From my point of view, I feel ____ (1 or 2 core, chemical emotions only) about (the main topic),” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, this is the timeline of events as a camera would have recorded it,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, the things that went right were ______, ______, and ______. I want to recognize your efforts in those things going right and say, ‘thank you’ for that,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, my expectation/assumption was that _____ would happen and it turned out _____ happened instead,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, my need for ______ was not met. It’s my responsibility to get my needs met without hurting or obligating others. I would appreciate any help you might be willing to offer though,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, I now realize _______ and I didn’t know that at the time,” and share nothing else.
“From my point of view, I have a boundary that wasn’t known or wasn’t respected which is ________. It’s my responsibility to get my needs met without hurting or obligating others. It’s my job to share and enforce my own boundaries. I would appreciate any help you might be willing to offer though,” and share nothing else.
And/or share whatever is standing between the way we are feeling now and us feeling complete on this topic.

When the holding space conversation is over, agree to leave incomplete topics in the safe space. They do not have to ruin everyone’s interactions between now and the next scheduled “pass the mic” conversation. It’s possible to say, “okay, we’re ending now. Clearly, we’re not done talking about Tuesday. We’re going to talk again tomorrow. Can we not let this ruin our day today or tomorrow since we know we’re going to come back and finish talking through this? What final things do we need to do to allow that happen?”

We can declare that outside this safe space conversation is another completely separate safe space. The same way we decide not to take work problems home with us or home problems to work with us. We can declare, “Hey, we are currently in a disagreement about this one topic. We are currently in the middle of talking thought it. We are not going to let it affect our awesome friendship between now and when we get to finish talking about it.” Then, follow through on talking about it. Don’t skip it our assume, “close enough.” Sit down, and check-in, “So, what is left to talk about? Or did we all discover we’ve pretty much handled it with our low hanging fruit changes.”

Primed Before The Main Event

Before a show, a sounds person will step on stage and speak into the mic, “mic check. 1, 2. 1, 2.” Faulty connections are found, and mix levels are set before the main act ever sets foot on stage. Actually, a whole different opening act comes out first. A warmup band or a warmup act do an actual performance with all the live equipment. Everything is tested and primed before the main event.

Our version of this is to check-in often and always start with something simple that no one can argue with to get warmed up. In a business setting, these are called ice-breaker questions and they sound a lot like “getting to know each other” questions. The speaker may go around the room and ask everyone to say their name and one thing about themselves like their favorite color or their favorite something that relates to the topic that is about to become the main event.

Warm up the group by having everyone send a message that can’t be argued with, like “my favorite _____ is _____,” or “when I was a kid, I liked to _____.” It’s going to sound like a simple “get to know you” moment, and it is. Make sure everyone receives the message correctly before passing the mic to try to another warmup question or to start the main event. If people can’t seem to get the process of sending and receiving a simply message like, “when I was a kid, my favorite food was waffles,” then the mic check just failed. Adjust, recalibrate, or reschedule the main event.

Do not continue on to big things when it’s clear the group is struggling to hold space with the little things. If the communication doesn’t pass a mic check, the main event will be a disaster.

Practice main events that are low risk, low stress, and low impact before attempting the topics that are a multi-year thorn in the relationship. We must work our way up to those topics. We have to earn it step by step with many practice performances. Like a rock band, we get good at playing practice songs together in the studio with lots of timeouts and do-overs. We get good at making our studio a safe space for everyone to learn and play together. Then we attempt a live performance in a small venue knowing that timeouts and do-overs can still happen. We get good at making the small events a safe space for everyone before moving on. The small events will teach us how to recover a little more quickly and effortlessly and the on lookers might not even realize there was a hiccup. Believe it or not, most bands do still screw up at giant live events, they are just so good at play right through the screwup and never halting the song that they don’t even consider it a mistake anymore. It’s just a little spicy live variation thrown in from time to time. It just flows and becomes all the things that make a live performance worth doing.

That is the goal. One day, our group is going to be able to hold space on any topic without a prop mic. It will be a live performance where everyone knows the scripts and the flow. Everyone keeps each other on the same beat and everyone gets a turn to shine. It elevates from the idea of a grueling hour long difficult conversation to a two-hour live jam session with your best friends that we look forward to every week.

We’re Done When

There are a few layers for what “done” means. There is successfully sending and receiving one message at a time, successfully sharing one topic to completion at a time, and everyone taking one turn at a time to share both messages and topics to completion. All of this happens until everyone feels like the need for someone to holding space for them has been satisfied or the time for talking runs out.

Sending a message is done when each listener has demonstrated they understood the message by repeating it back to the speaker and the speaker confirms they got it right. It’s important that each listener demonstrates their personal understanding, and the speaker works with them until they can repeat back a message successfully in their own words. It’s not enough for one person to get the message. Even though the speaker might feel understood because one person seems to get it, this doesn’t mean everyone understands. Don’t move forward until everyone demonstrates their individual understanding. This sounds like the speaker saying, “okay, yeah, it sounds like each of you received what I was trying to send. Thank you.”

Don’t allow anyone to use, “message received,” or anything similar. That does not demonstrate the message they received or if it’s the correct message. It’s a deflection that sounds like they are listening when they may not have heard correctly. Follow up with an encouragement to repeat back the actual message. “In your own words, can you let us know what message you’re saying you received?”

Once a message has been confirmed, the speaker may have another message that brings them another step closer to completing what they need to share on this topic. The group may decide to let the speaker send the next message or pause this person to allow another person to take a turn sending a message.

It’s important that the group works as a team to make sure everyone gets heard and everyone gets a turn to be heard all the way to topic completion. Sometimes that will be reigning in the naturally talkative people with a timer. Sometimes that will be giving extra space and encouragement for the naturally quiet people to process, think, and then speak. Talk about this as a group. Call a timeout if needed.

Don’t let any single person become the “rules enforcer” because the conversation as a whole will suffer. Shoot for a vibe of, “everyone wants everyone to contribute and get a turn to share so let’s all work together.” If it’s clear someone doesn’t have these intentions, call a timeout and revisit all the safe space boundaries and safe conversation agreements we’ve already discussed. Identify this person’s communication style and results style. Have they earned the right to be in this conversation with us? Holding space for each other is a high caliber offer reserved for high caliber people. If everyone is not on the same page with that, reschedule or don’t include them.

A specific person’s topic or sub-topic is complete when they confirm that it is complete. It will be a feeling of release that will wash over them. They will not only feel heard with their messages, but they will feel heard through and through. They will realize they don’t have another message to send on this topic and they can confirm aloud, “I feel complete with this topic. Thank you for hearing me.” This is a good time to pass the mic and let someone else share one of their topics.

If a person is not complete, they can still consciously choose to pass the mic. Sometimes that feeling of completeness doesn’t come and we can’t put our finger on why. Maybe we have a feeling of confusion or something just outside our mind’s reach. This is perfectly fine. We can simply call it out and pass the mic. “Okay, I don’t feel complete but that’s all that’s coming out. I think there’s more but I’m not sure what it is. I’m going to pause my turn and let someone else share. We can come back to me.” A lot of times, through hearing others’ concerns and points of view, we will have that last little thing that’s standing between inner turmoil and completion bubble to the surface. After the other person finishes their turn on the mic, we might find ourselves saying, “thank you. Everything you just said is what was missing for me. Thank you for bringing that up. Now that this part is out in the open, I feel complete with my turn, too.”

This conversation is done and complete when each person has confirmed they feel complete for all their topics for today. After that, the conversation may move on to other things, like apologies, next steps, or whatever suits the group’s needs.

This conversation is done and incomplete when the group runs out of time. This will happen. This is why it’s important to make sure everyone gets a turn on the mic. Work together to make sure everyone sends a short message right away when the conversation starts. Get the mic all the way around once with short, easy messages. Then aim to pass the mic around again with short message again. Shoot for getting the mic in everyone’s hands twice before the time limit might hit. Then, try to get to a stopping point where the last message is received, and everyone can reschedule to finish the talk. Also, it may be wise to pre-allocate an extra couple minutes at the end so the group may take a moment to switch communication styles to suggest and take a couple easy “next steps” based on what was uncovered today. It may not be a solution, but it may ease the pressure on the situation a little until the group can get together again.

Summary of Roles & Goals

“Pass the mic” is a way to hold space for each other. The aim is to pass the mic around and talk about one “main event” topic in a nonconfrontational, “get to know you,” style until everyone is complete with sharing about the main event topic. Then the group can switch to whatever style of communication is needed for the next step of the conversation. We aim to pre-allocate 25% of the time at the end of this check-in for that next step of the conversation, because that is not part of “holding space” and comes after holding space. When time is a factor, the aim is to get the mic in everyone’s hands at least twice and the messages people send can be shorter to facilitate this.

When on the mic, it’s the speaker’s job to:

Respect the time limit of 5 or 10 minute turns on the mic.
Get their head right aka Part 1 of this book. Tools for this include: timeout & check-in; breathe; strip out blame with the question, “does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events?” and checking in with our wants and needs using Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness.
Deliver a short, clear, blame-free message using phrases like, “from my point of view,” and “in my opinion.” Recommended messages are: sharing a core feeling and nothing else; sharing an account of a situation using only the facts as a camera would see it and nothing else; sharing one’s needs or misaligned expectations and nothing else; or sharing a boundary and nothing else. (See scripts in “On the topic of topics” heading above.)
To own their experience and take back their power from their monkey brain aka the ego. To turn, “you, you, you” into “I’m responsible for my feelings and actions. From my point of view, these are the series of events and the feelings I found myself feeling. I’m not blaming, I’m just saying that’s how my monkey brain was trying to blame everyone else at the time.” To turn absolutes like “always” and “never,” into specifics like, “for three nights out of the last five night this week, I found myself in a specific situation,” and “the last two times we were together, this specific thing happened.”
Respect the listener’s boundaries, the safe space boundaries, and the safe space agreements by not creating any circumstance where the listeners would need to remind us about those boundaries and agreements and by gracefully accepting redirection when they do.
Enforce the speaker’s boundaries, safe space boundaries, and the safe space agreements by gently reminding the listeners about these boundaries if any are crossed in the moment. Don’t let any single person become the “rules enforcer.” Everyone works together.
Allow others the space to active listen. Looking for someone who has a hand raised. Tipping the mic to others. Letting listeners ask clarifying questions and answering them gently. Letting them attempt to make statements that demonstrate understanding and gently rephrasing for them where needed. If someone is actively trying to understand, a speaker should never say, “you’re not listening,” say, “okay, that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’ll try to rephrase it better and simplify my message.”
Confirm when we, the speaker, feel understood by asking ourselves the question, “has everyone demonstrated they understand the specific message I’ve been trying to send?” It’s not enough to have one listener demonstrate understanding, everyone must take a moment to repeat the message back to the speaker.
Confirm when we, the speaker, feel complete by asking ourselves the question, “are there any more messages that I need to share for this topic?”
Offer to pass the mic when we feel a message is understood, or we feel complete, or the time limit is up. If the time limit is up, we confirm aloud if we do or do not currently feel understood and complete so there are no assumptions between now and our next turn on the mic.

It’s the listeners’ job to:

Mentally put their stuff aside and just listen to understand. Take comfort in the knowledge that they will get a turn to speak, and they don’t have to defend ourselves right now. Don’t take anything personally. This leads right into the next item.
Get their head right aka Part 1 of this book. Tools for this include: timeout & check-in; breathe; strip out blame with the question, “does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events?” and checking in with our wants and needs using Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness.
Respect the speaker’s boundaries, safe space boundaries, and the safe space agreements by not creating any circumstance where the speaker would need to remind us about those boundaries and agreements and by gracefully accepting redirection when they do.
Enforce the listener’s boundaries, the safe space boundaries, and the safe space agreements by gently reminding the speaker about these boundaries if any are crossed in the moment. Don’t let any single person become the “rules enforcer.” Everyone works together.
To gently ask for rephrasing of the ego’s language. “Timeout. I’m struggling to receive this message. There seems like a lot of ‘you, you, you,’ to me. Can I request a rephrase without the ‘you, you, you’.” “Can we pause, please? I’m hearing a lot of ‘always’ and ‘never’, can I request a rephrase? Can you be more specific and just list facts as a camera would record them?”
Reflect back the message that was received. “What I think I’m hearing you say is…” and “correct me if I’m wrong, you’re saying…”
Ask clarifying questions. Don’t assume anything.
Asking for simplification of the message when needed. “Timeout. That’s a lot. I’m a little lost. Can you simplify the message or break it into smaller pieces?”
Allow the speaker to speak and for others to have the space to active listen. Look for someone who has a hand raised. Listen to the clarifications others are receiving.
Check-in to ensure the speaker is understood with questions like, “do you feel heard,” and “are you complete?”

We’re done when:

Sending a message is done when each listener has demonstrated they understood the message by repeating it back to the speaker and the speaker confirms they got it right; not just one listener, every listener.
A specific person’s topic or sub-topic is complete when they confirm that it is complete.
If a person is not complete, they can still consciously choose to pass the mic.
Taking turns holding space is done and complete when each person has confirmed they feel complete with sharing all their topics for today.
Taking turns holding space is done and incomplete when the group runs out of time. This will happen. Bring it to a safe place to pause the conversation and schedule when it will be picked back up.

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Next article in this series: Com101 – Safe Chat vs Safe Travel

Previous article in this series: Com101 – Safe Conversation Agreements

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

Com101 – Safe Conversation Agreements

Kinky Poly Danny — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:03:16 +0000

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Here is the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

In my previous article, we created a safe space and invited someone into it. Remember this:

Next we are going to actual ly have the conversation. What does that look like?

The details behind actually having a “safe space conversation” is going to be in the remainder of this series. For the moment, I’m going to give a brief explanation and share some safe conversation agreements. I’ll give more details on how to achieve each item in the articles to come.

My vision of a safe space conversation: we respectfully take turns holding space for each other until everyone feels heard, understood, and complete. We don’t debate, argue, or try to convince anyone to think or do anything. We don’t skip ahead to some next step or next part of the conversation. After everyone feels understood and complete, the conversation might also be be complete, or we might have a second conversation to discuss ideas and solutions with the intention that everyone wins and no one loses or sacrifices. Again, we don’t debate, argue, or try to convince anyone to think or do anything.

My safe conversation boundary is, I only participate in safe space conversations. If it’s not a safe person, I don’t have the conversation by saying, “I’m not comfortable having this conversation with you.” If I’m in the middle of a conversation with someone who I feel is worth my time and energy only to discover the conversation is turning out to feel unsafe in any way, I will call a time out and site some of my safe conversation boundaries and offer the safe conversation agreements (listed below).

If someone doesn’t want to work with me to create a safe space to have a conversation, I don’t try to convince them to do it. I respect their choice and I stop the conversation by saying, “okay, you’re allowed to communicate in your style. I’m going to respect that your choice of communication style is different than mine. That also means I’m not comfortable continuing this conversation. You may want to talk to someone else about this topic and find a way to get your need met elsewhere.”

That sounds abrupt, but the point I’m making here is, we are not forcing anyone to do anything. It’s not a moment to start an argument where we try to force someone to do it our way. If they don’t want to cooperate for the sake of talking through something in a healthy style, that’s totally okay. Mentally and emotionally, we need to get our head straight so we can be okay with letting people opt out using their words or actions. We can’t just pretend it’s okay and we’re not going to try to convince them. We have to do the timeout & check-in style work to make sure we gave them a true offer and not a demand. We need to be so mentally and emotionally okay with it that we shrug our shoulders and say, “okay cool. Maybe next time. Well, good luck.”

We are respecting the fact that they are choosing to not have a safe space conversation and we are not punishing them for it because that would be manipulation. At the same time, we are protecting ourselves. We are protecting our time, energy, emotional wellbeing, and more.

If we are the ones who wanted to have the conversation with them because we have a need that’s not being met, we will simply go get our needs met elsewhere. Again, we don’t punish them, pout, or brood because that would be manipulation. Instead, we are grateful because the just saved us a bunch of time and we can go somewhere else. They are not the only human on this planet that can help us. In fact, there are an abundance of people who want to politely listen to us and help us.

If they are the ones who wanted to have the conversation with us but they don’t want to respect us with a safe space conversation, they are free to get their needs met elsewhere. We can remind them of that if needed. “I’m not participating in this conversation style (yelling, etc). You’re going to have to find someone else to talk to about this.” Then, become a broken record on that. Literally, do not participate and only speak words that make it clear you are not participating, especially if they try to provoke you. “I don’t participate in name calling, you’ll have to go somewhere else.” “I don’t participate in blame and accusations. You’ll have to find someone else.” “That sounds like a threat, I report threats to authorities. You’ll have to find someone else.” “I said no thank you. This conversation is over. I’m walking away now.”

I’ve often seen this approach to standing firm in our boundaries and opting out of all unhealth communication or interacts with unhealthy people as, “Do no harm. Take no shit.”

We are not forcing them, punishing them, or retaliating in any way. Again, they may try to provoke us with big emotions and threats, but we don’t do it back. We do no harm. We call out their unacceptable behavior, we don’t do it back, and we take no shit. “Do no harm” includes both them and ourselves. We do no harm to them by not participating in their behavior they are trying to initiate. We do no harm to ourselves by not sacrificing or compromising our boundaries or our standards.

Remember these from “Identifying Who We’re Talking To“?

“Take no shit,” means we don’t allow others to suck us into B, C, or D style conversations (see “Identifying who we’re talking to”). If someone is not going to interact in healthy safe-ask culture, we don’t have to engage and we don’t have to lower our standards to allow the interaction to happen. The phrase is “take no shit,” not “take a little shit to maybe get through to this person who’s disrespecting us.” We stand firm with every simple boundary we have and the consequences of not participating in the conversation. For example, yelling, “I don’t tolerate or participate in yelling. I’m going to have to ask you to lower your voice or this conversation is over.” We calmly and politely take no shit. Then we become a broken record and announce we are walking away.

Now we’re going to shift from “boundaries” to “agreements”. The idea here is, boundaries keep the unsavory people out and agreements are reserved for people we trust with more difficult things. Agreements are an invitation for a next level conversation with the people who have proven to use they are “A style” communicators; healthy conversations and everyone wins results. (Again, see “Identifying who we’re talking to” for more details on the 4 styles of communicators.)

I had a friend once say, “my boyfriend is the only person I choose to argue with.” She then went on to explain that the word argue, to her, meant she would set aside time and energy to talk through difficult things with him. She wanted to keep the relationship in good standing, and she wanted to keep this person in her life, so she was willing to have the difficult conversations with this person. Meanwhile, she doesn’t extend that kind of time and energy to others. I think a better way to say that would be, “I don’t participate in arguments. My boyfriend is the only person I choose to talk through difficult conversations with because I choose to have this person in my life. I choose to work together to keep this relationship healthy.”

What if we made the choice to never argue again? We can choose that. We can choose to have boundaries with people who want to argue and simply not engage with them. We can choose to not argue with people we love or are attached to. We can choose to have safe conversation agreements with the people closest to us. Honestly, good people will love the idea of safe conversation agreements because they would love to have a healthy relationship with us.

Toxic people will resistant the safe conversation agreements because they don’t want a healthy relationship with us. Those people just want us to obey them and do what they want. The idea of safe conversation agreements means they won’t be able to manipulate and use us anymore and they will absolutely hate that idea. Let’s get rid of those people. Let’s walk away from them. Let’s unfriend them. Let’s break up with them. Let’s divorce them. Let’s move out. Let’s find a new job and a new boss. Let’s find a new club or community to have fun with. Let’s take no shit from unhealthy communicators and people who don’t strive for “everyone wins” results.

Also, I just have to say it aloud, if someone doesn’t want to participate in our safe conversation agreements, we might want to check-in with ourselves and ask, “am I truly a safe space? How much of this person opting out is them and how much of it is me?” It takes two. Did we break their trust in the past? Have we apologized and shown them real growth in our behavior? If we’re blaming them, then the toxic one might be us.

Now, let’s move on to the actual safe conversations agreements that I use with only the best people in my life. Again, talking though things with us is a privilege that we don’t offer to just anyone. The offer is, “would you like to step into a safe space and then set up a few agreements so we can intentionally talk through things in health ways more often?” The first couple times I share these agreements, I call them experiments and treat them like experiments. We can’t fail if we’re just experimenting together and exploring new ideas. “Hey, I have an idea. Would you like to try an experiment with me? I heard of these safe conversation agreements that are supposed to help difficult conversations work themselves out in a healthy way. Want to try a couple out with me? We experiment and practice on something small or silly.”

Like we’ve discussed in previous articles, it takes practice. Don’t print this out, high five, and say, “we’re never going to argue again.” That will not magically work. Instead, print them out and commit to picking a reoccurring time to practice trivial topics while experimenting with one or two of the safe conversation boundaries (previous article, “Creating A Safe Space To Talk”) or safe conversation agreements below. For a list of silly and trivial practice topics, see the articles “Experimenting with ‘no’” and “Experimenting With Boundaries.”

List of Safe Conversation Agreements

Safe Conversation Agreement: Start with any or all of the safe conversation boundaries from the previous section, (see “Creating A Safe Space To Talk”). Simply read a boundary as a possible experiment to try. For example, “how about, no yelling, no criticism, and no one’s feelings are up for debate? How does that sound for an experiment? Want to start there?”

Here’s a quick summary of those boundaries:

If it’s not a good time for everyone to talk, I will reschedule.
I only have difficult conversations if everyone is ready and willing.
I don’t tolerate or participate in yelling, etc.
I am responsible for me, regardless of you. I will let you be responsible for you, regardless of me.
I am responsible for myself and my own happiness.
I will keep myself safe at all times and I will call a timeout to do so.
I don’t compromise or sacrifice. “Everyone wins” or no deal; I don’t allow anyone to lose.
I use The Golden Rule.
The boundaries I declare will be about my own behavior and don’t obligate other people to do anything.
I don’t tolerate or participate in disrespect.
I respect privacy and I will only have private conversations with people who have proven to me they know how to respect privacy.
I only participate in calm, blame-free emotions.
My feelings are never up for debate, nor are anyone else’s.
I will not tolerate or participate in criticism, etc.

Safe Conversation Agreement: One person is on the mic at a time, everyone else holds space. The job of the person on the mic is to share a short, clear, blame-free message, and then confirm when everyone has received it correctly. Everyone else’s job is to only listen to understand, ask clarifying questions, and then demonstrate what they think they heard until the person with the mic confirms each person has heard correctly. (How? See “Receiving Someone’s No” for more details on this style of actively listening to understand.) By default, we are holding space, we are not debating or arguing.

Safe Conversation Agreement: We take turns with the mic, and everyone is guaranteed a turn. We don’t go on tangents or monologues; ten mins per turn, tops. We will set a timer if needed. We don’t talk over each other or interrupt. If anyone needs to say something we raise our hand and the person talking will finish their sentence or thought and make room for us to speak or take our turn. This conversation is not over until everyone has had a turn to share their point of view, aka, a turn on the mic.

Safe Conversation Agreement: We will declare and clarify the type of communication we are seeking, preferably, before sharing anything. A few styles of communication request could be to ask for or offer to: holding space; share a struggle; a clarification; validation; direction; advice; suggestions; brainstorming; solutions; etc. If it’s not clear what style of communication is currently happening, we will ask for clarification. We will raise our hand and gently ask things like, “are you asking me to hold space, give my advice, or some other specific type of communication?” Other examples of communication we might ask for would include: “Can you hold space for me?”; “I can offer to hold space for you if you’d like.”; “Can I share a struggle, but not try to solve it just yet?; “Are you open to receiving suggestions or advice?”; “Right now, I’m focusing on trying to hear you and understand your point of view, I’m not ready to move into problem solving just yet.”; “Can I ask for a quick clarification on that?”; “Can I request a moment to please just listen (to my emotions, wants, preferences, or needs). Do you have the spoons to hold space?”

Safe Conversation Agreement: Invitations only; no expectations, obligations, or demands. Anyone can decline or say “no” to anything; questions, request, offers, what-if’s, suggested solutions, etc. No demands, “should’s”, mind reading, or demands disguised as requests.

Safe Conversation Agreement: No trying to fix anything or anyone. We don’t tell anyone what to do or what they “should” do. We don’t argue or debate. No advice, suggestions, problem solving or giving feedback unless the other person specifically asks for that style of communication or specifically consents to it. Again, by default, we take turns holding space and then make requests or offers that people are welcome to say no to.

Up next, we’re going to walk through how to get these agreements to actually work, starting with the ins and outs of “Taking Turns On The Mic.”

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

Next article in this series: Com 101 – Holding Space With A Mic

Previous article in this series: Com101 – Creating a Safe Space to Talk

Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.

Communication – Kinky Poly

Worksheet – How to make and share a polyamorous pizza!

My Book On Amazon

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Com101 – Ask For What You Want

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Article Contents

How Far We’ve Come

Surfacing an Unmet Need

Kicking Off the Conversation

What to Talk About

Helping Without Strings

A Declined Request for Help

Bringing It All Together

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

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Com101 – How To Make Things Right

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

This Article’s Table of Contents:

Acknowledge and Accept the situation as is

Recognizing Everyone’s Human Needs

Each Individual Reclaims Their Power

Exploring Curiously Abundant Solutions

Negotiation & Coordination

The Game: Everyone Wins or No Deal

What About Follow Up?

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

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Com101 – A Genuine Apology

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

The Soul of An Apology

Words That Are Not An Apology

Calling out inadequate apologies

Finding the words for a genuine apology

How to ask for an apology

Refusal to Offer or Accept an Apology

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

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Com101 – The Catch 22 of Communication

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

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Com101 – What To Share And Why

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

High-level of things to intentionally share

Successfully Sharing Our Experience

Successfully Sharing Our Expectation & Realizations

Recognize Everyone’s Good Intentions and Efforts

Successfully Sharing Our Needs

Summing it up and passing the mic

As a Listener

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

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Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

Transform your life with healthy communication tools by simply sharing this with someone you love or posting a link on social media. Get your friends talking about this and watch your life transform! You got this! ~Danny

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

What next?

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Com 101 – Holding Space With A Mic

Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!

This Article’s Table of Contents

What The Mic looks like

How to take turns on the mic

Sending a blame-free message

Tipping the Mic

Everyone Keeps the Space Safe

On The Topic of Topics

Primed Before The Main Event

We’re Done When