Update: I just got my pre-order page on amazon to turn this series into a book!
This is the Table Of Contents for this article:
We’ve all experienced what it’s like to share our less-than positive thoughts and emotions with the wrong person. Some people seem to receive our words and magically, our day gets better. Others seem to just make things worse. Occasionally, we’ll find someone who wants to go straight to war over anything we say, even if it’s not about them.
We will often have thoughts, emotions, wants, and needs that we will feel the urge to share. The first step in speaking up is to do all of the work we talked about in Part 1. We do a timeout & check-in to make sure we remove blame, fabricated emotions, and fabricated needs. We take the time to figure out the core signals on our emotional dashboard and the genuine needs behind those signals using Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness.
The second step is to identify if the surrounding situation is safe and person in front of us is safe to talk to. If we speak a clear message to them, how will they receive it? Should we even try or should we hit the eject button before we even start? To get a better understanding of this, let’s take a moment to talk about “ask culture” vs “guess culture.”
Ask Culture vs Guess Culture
On January 16th of 2007, the user jeffxl asked a simple question[1] in the “Society & Culture” section of Ask MetaFilter.com. They explained how “one of my wife’s distant friends has attempted to invite herself to stay with us, again.” The user and their wife were having a hard time telling the visitor “no” without being rude and they were seeking advice. This sparked many comments about what was rude or not and whether or not the distant friend was being rude by asking to stay.
Before the day was over, a user named tangerine replied to the question with a comment that started with, “This is a classic case of Ask Culture meets Guess Culture.”[2] Tangerine’s reply continues to describe the two cultures as such.
“In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.
In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept. […]”
The user goes on to describe how the two cultures will clash when they run into each other. Neither culture is right or wrong, they simply call out two very common assumptions: “it’s okay to ask for anything as long as you can handle receiving a ‘no’”, and “it’s not polite to ask people for things unless you know the answer will be a yes.” Both types of communication can lead to some healthy and unhealthy communication habits.
I’m going to take these ideas to their extremes to help tease out the healthy and unhealthy ways they can both be used.
Safe-Ask Culture
Let’s say, we have a very idealistic version of ask culture where there is never any negative consequences, judgement, or punishment for asking for something, sharing something, or being truthful. A question is never considered impolite, nor is a truthful answer. As a result, everyone says “yes” when they mean “yes” and “no” when they mean “no.” Everyone is safe to ask for anything and deny any request. When someone asks, “how do these pants look on me,” a truthful answer is always given and the person asking then says, “thank you for your honesty,” regardless of the answer.
As part of this, everyone expects to hear uncomfortable truths and be told “no” at times while also feeling free to share uncomfortable truths and say “no” to others. The word “no” is not a big deal and doesn’t create problems or spark arguments. The word “no” is simply respected. The word “no” is seen as a valuable part of a conversation that will lead to a better understanding of each other and allow everyone to figure out how to collectively get their needs met. I’m going to call this idealistic style, “safe-ask culture”.
Punish-Ask Culture
Now let’s make the opposite culture, a punish-ask culture. (Warning, this may trigger some readers.) In this culture, the asker is often punished for asking a question, sharing, or speaking the truth. As an added bonus, all responses are delivered as a put-down or a judgement. A few standard replies include, “don’t ask stupid questions,” “if you don’t already know, maybe you shouldn’t be working here,” “I’m offended you even asked,” “what’s wrong with you,” “you should be ashamed of yourself,” and “I’m never inviting you back over here again.” It’s just the way things works in this culture. Everyone can count on punishing replies when someone disagrees, is inconvenienced, or offended in any random way.
This punish-ask culture begins to describe verbal and emotional abuse. In this culture of abuse, people still must survive and get things done. People must find ways to get their needs met. So, they learn to anticipate each other’s moods and replies. People naturally start to fall into two patterns, the habit of making oneself small, and the habit of puffing oneself up.
Everyone aiming to be small learns to only ask for things that will be a yes, even if it still comes with a possible random punishment. They learn to pick their battles or tell people what they seem to want to hear. They learn to not ask for anything. They learn to want nothing from others and survive with less. They learn to avoid conflict, listen for people dropping hints, skirt around issues, and dodge questions so effectively that it begins to boarder on manipulation. They learn to suggest that a good idea was actually the other person’s idea and cross into the territory of actively manipulating.
On the other hand, many people in the punish-ask culture learn to be overly assertive and direct. They learn how to defend themselves, attack first, and are always ready for a battle. They puff up at any possibility of a disagreement. They embrace the idea that everyone punishes everyone all the time so just attack first. They subscribe the mantra, “get them before they get you.” They learn to skillfully argue, debate, and win. They poke holes in their opponent’s statements and character. They push their opinions as facts, silence opposition, and punish those who do not submit to their point of view. They believe it is acceptable to manipulate and bully people into getting what they want because that’s what everyone does. They learn to pull victories and compliance out of uncooperative people.
When we are not safe to ask a question, coping mechanisms and survival mechanisms are born. Can you see how this punish-ask culture begins to give rise to not only guess culture, but also avoidant pattern, anxious patterns, bullying, feuds, cold wars, and revenge.
All of this emerges based on whether or not people feel safe to speak. Again, I’m defining both ends of a spectrum from magically safe to consistently abusive and all I did was suggest “what if it’s always safe to speak,” and “what if it’s rarely safe to speak?”
When the safe-ask culture meets punish-ask culture (and the resulting guess culture, various bullying cultures, and insecure attachment styles[3]), communication gets muddy, to say the least. Safe-ask gets the shock of experiencing punish-ask and not knowing what do. They may get pushed into compliance in ways that leave their head spinning. Punish-ask doesn’t believe safe-ask is truly safe. The idea seems ridiculous to them. In fact, they’ve fallen for that trap before, and they won’t fall for it again. They know that no one is truly safe and people only pretend to be safe to use everything you say against you later.
Real life
Looking into what allows people to feeling safe enough to talk and be vulnerable is how I started to tease out which behaviors to consider healthy, and which to consider unhealthy or toxic. My approach is, anything that leads to someone not feeling safe to speak either now or in the future is what I am calling unhealthy communication.
In real life, in every conversation, we are constantly trying to figure out, “can I trust you with my words and emotions? Will you hurt me when you hear my words? Will you betray me with my words some day in the future?” Quite often, we don’t even know if we are about to have a healthy communication or an unhealthy conversation. We might not even know if we are going to be heard or if the whole thing is going to spiral out of control.
It seems obvious that we should only use healthy communication and only interact with people who communicate in healthy ways. Unfortunately, not all of us have experienced a safe space to express ourselves, or have difficult conversations in. Even if we have, the other person may never have experienced it. It’s important that both people have the same definition and expectations of how to hold a space safe enough to allow everyone to talk freely.
Odds are, we all have experienced interactions with people from all over this safe-ask to punish-ask spectrum. As we grew up and all through adulthood, the types of people we ran into resulted in us discovering and choosing many patterns and coping mechanisms for interacting with people. Everything from a naïve level of safety and trust for the world to a fear and mistrusted of everyone for survival. Plus, everything in between. Odds are, we found our own personal go-to spot on the safe-ask to punish-ask spectrum to view the world from.
Many of us come up with shortcuts. Some people say, “I treat people like they are safe until they show me otherwise,” other maybe say, “I treat people like the are unsafe until they prove otherwise.” Some strategies involve never trusting anyone, ever. Other strategies might include giving people the benefit of the doubt and then taking all our kindness and grace away the moment they disappoint us. Some people have a “flip the switch,” mentality where they are good to people who have flipped their switch into the safe mode and vindictive and mean to anyone who has flipped their switch into danger mode, even if it’s the same person they are talking to. There are even strategies that insist every person is a good person if you can look deep enough into their past and see them before they were hurt and forced to be mean to survive.
All of these styles, and many more, are out there. We can’t control that. We can’t control other people. Even if we did find a way to control someone’s thoughts and behaviors, it would only turn into an unhealthy relationship or the end of a relationship. The only person we can control is ourselves. The only communication we can control is our own. We can control the words we say, the environment we say them in, and the words we are willing to received. We can also control the words we don’t say and when we decide to remain quiet.
Is it safe to talk?
Before we can have a genuine conversation about something that is important to us, we need to figure out if the person in front of us is a safe-ask person or not, and if not, how far toward punish-ask are they? Furthermore, we need to ask ourselves if we are, indeed, a safe-ask person in this moment?
To make things even more interesting, the current situation going on around the conversation can drastically affect both parties emotions and ability to communicate. Safety will also change as someone’s energy levels and mood varies.
A safe-ask person is never safe every minute of every day. Yes, much of the goal with this series is to become as close to a safe-ask person as we possibly can. However, even if we intent on being 100% safe 100% of the time, it’s not going to happen. We are humans. We make mistakes. Situations happened. Emotions happen. Let’s start by admitting to ourselves there are no perfect communicators. Our loved ones will never be perfect communicators. We will never be perfect communicators.
All we can do is our best and our best changes from day to day, moment to moment. We need to respect that a safe-ask world is impossible and even if we are able to be a safe-ask person for a moment, we can’t do it forever, nor can anyone else. We need to forgive ourselves and each other for being human and then do our best from there. Then we need practice growing what our best looks like knowing we will never be perfect. Why? Because safe-ask conversations lead to true happiness.
Knowing we are all human and we all fall in different spots on the spectrum from safe-ask culture to punish-ask culture, what if we set an intention to strive to only have safe space conversation whenever possible? What if we set the intention to not engage with anything less than safe people and safe situations? Imagine if communicating with us meant we either have a safe space conversation now, a safe space conversation later, or we don’t have a conversation at all. What if we simply didn’t participate in arguments by politely excusing ourselves and scheduling a time to have a safe space conversation? This is possible.
Having a genuine conversation starts with getting curious and checking in with ourselves and the other person by asking, “can we have a safe conversation right now? Are the conditions good? Are we both even capable of a safe conversation when the conditions are good? Do we trust each other? Is that trust real and proven? Are all the little details needed for having a safe conversation present?”
That is a lot to ask someone, but it needs to be done. The same way we have learned to do a timeout & check-in with ourselves, we need to start taking a moment to timeout & check-in with others.
The phrase I like to use is, “Is now a good time to talk?”
Tool: “Is now a good time to talk?”
Say you are mad at your loved one for not doing the dishes? As you stomp over to give them a piece of your mind, ask yourself, “Is now a good time to talk?” Emotionally, where are you at? Do you need a check-in & timeout? If so, do it. Did you just save yourself and argument?
After checking in with yourself and getting your head straight, when you walk over to your loved one, ask them, “Is now a good time to talk?” Emotionally, where are they at? Do they need a check-in & timeout? If you engage with them right now, will it be an argument?
At the same time, when someone stomps up to you and starts talking about the dishes, ask yourself, “is now a good time to talk? Emotionally, where am I at?” Then ask them, “time out. Is now a good time to talk? On a scale from 1 to 10, where are your emotions at?”
Not only can you stop arguments before they happen, but you can halt them in the middle. “Timeout. Wait a second. Is now a good time to talk?” If both people’s emotions are not below a 2, it’s simply not a good time to talk. If someone is overwhelmed or shut down, it’s not a good time to talk. If someone is in a hurry, it’s not a good time to talk.
When is a good time to talk? We each get to decide when that is. If it’s not good for us for any reason, we get to say “no” and reschedule for later. If it is a good time for us, we get to check-in with the other person. If it’s also good for them, great, have the talk. If it’s not good for them, then we get to reschedule.
From this day forward, our intention is very simple, we strive to only ever have safe space conversations. If now is not a good time to talk, we don’t have the conversation, we schedule it for later. From this, the whole topic of “how to voice and hold our boundaries” comes into play. I will talk about boundaries in the upcoming articles.
At a high-level, here are the steps.
- Check if it’s safe for both people.
- Keep checking if it’s safe for both people.
- Call a timeout when it’s discovered to be unsafe for anyone.
- Reschedule the talk for later when it’s likely to be safe again.
- Do some emotional work on your own using the check-in & timeout steps.
- Start over with step 1.
These steps will be the first of the boundaries we will talk about learning and practicing. Many people will respect you when you say, “timeout. Is now a good time to talk?” Many people will actually thank you for doing so and be thankful to reschedule.
Some people may need to hear the “timeout” more than once. They may need to hear you say, “This is too heated for me. I’m not participating in this. I’d like to reschedule this talk for later. When would be a good time to talk?” Sometimes they are too emotional to hear the timeout the first two or three times. Also, some people grow up in various types of punish-ask cultures that don’t respect people’s first “no” or boundaries in general. Do your best to be firm and polite. Don’t hesitate to say “timeout” or “no” more than once. In my encounters, most people seem to hear me by the third time. Not because they are malicious, but because they are human.
In the moment of opting out of an argument, I use a three strikes policy. I let people know I need a timeout and I don’t want to talk three times without any lasting penalty. I assume they are caught up in human emotion and don’t even realize they are not hearing me. I’ve found a one strike policy is too harsh and doesn’t take into account that we’re all humans. A one strike policy comes across as very thorny and borders on punishing people before giving them a clearly spoken boundary. However, as we will discuss in later articles, boundaries do have to come with a statement of what actions we will take if our boundaries are not respected. Then we have to actually take those actions.
Eventually, you will encounter someone who wants to argue or debate and won’t take “no” for an answer. Tell them, “I’m not okay to talk right now. I’m going to walk away now. I’ll check-in with you tomorrow,” if it’s appropriate, let them know you value them and you love them. Then calmly walk away.
It’s important that you speak the words for what’s about to happen before it happens. It’s important that you tell them you will talk to them later and give a solid timeframe. Otherwise, walking away without explanation could result in them not realizing you’re walking away, and you may find them following you and continuing to argue. If you don’t give a clear timeframe for the next communication, you may trigger someone’s abandonment trauma. In that case, they may think you are never coming back and chase you, send you a hundred texts, or think you just ended the relationship. Say what you are going to do, then do, not the other way around. Get yourself safe and don’t hesitate to get help or get someone involve if you need to.
That last paragraph is a super condensed version of the type of things we are going to talk about in the next article, “Boundaries keep us safe.”
[1]https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-between-FU-and-Welcome
[2] https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-between-FU-and-Welcome#830421
[3] For more details, on attachment theory, check out Wikipedia or Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory
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 – Boundaries Keep Us Safe
Previous article in this series: Com101 – Choosing To Get Our Needs Met
Go back to the Table of Contents for Communication 101 series.
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