Strap In Everybody: We’re Telling The Truth
The dynamics of handling truth, building resiliency, and cultivating positive change.
Welcome to Conflict Confidential, a newsletter about people and problems, human (dis)connection, and conflict transformation. Right up top I just want to thank you so much for subscribing. I’m so grateful you’re trying out this newsletter with me.
Okay, let’s hit it.
It is hard to be in conflict. It consumes us, disrupts our personal flow. The drama is distracting, and upsetting. Collectively, in society, conflict can feel pretty impossible. Daunting. Heavy. We keep hearing about “speaking truth to power” and reckoning with hard truths. But what does it take for all of us (each of us) to be equipped to do either?
Telling the truth is an important first step in working through a conflict. There has to be a baseline of honestly sharing and receiving information. It seems simple enough. Yet sometimes truth feels like an amorphous concept.1 Sometimes truth is impossible to overcome. Sometimes we never even get that far. Depending on how we were raised, or how life is unfolding for us, we each approach dealing with truth and conflict in our own unique way. So is it even conceivable that collectively we can all address conflict and move through it together without a complete breakdown in communication? Not easily! Yet I do believe it’s possible.
But we gotta start somewhere errbody. We start with ourselves.
Recently there had been some crying going on in my household. We had a death in the family so my four year old daughter was seeing a lot more adult tears than usual. During that time my parents were visiting with us. My daughter asked my father, her grandfather, if he cries. Prideful old-school baby boomer that he is, he responded, “Papa never cries.” Careful not to bruise ego or be disrespectful, I knowingly smiled at both of them. “Papa sometimes cries.” I told my daughter, winking at her, “Everybody cries. It’s okay to cry.”
It’s important to me that my kid knows the truth that sometimes things are painful and it’s okay to be sad about it. I want her to be comfortable with uncomfortable things, like sad feelings. Or hard realities. I’d like for her to grow into becoming a happy adult who can handle even the harshest aspects of life. Because I am still learning how to do that myself.
I recommend a listen to this powerful and energizing interview with author and activist Annaliese Singhe. The interviewers, Dr. Bettina Love and Cassandra Love, are education activists. Right out the gate, the focus of the interview is on telling children the truth even if it’s hard. Specifically, to honestly teach children about our country’s history and our learned racial biases. The speakers insist that this is the only way to spark truly productive discussions about what the future could look like. It made me think about the challenges of truth telling generally, on a micro and macro level. So let’s start with the micro.
Honesty At Home
When I became a parent I was introduced to a parenting methodology called The RIE Method. A fundamental principle is to treat children with respect and see them not as clueless little kids, but as people. Because kids are people. That means being authentic with children, being honest in our interactions with them, and telling them the truth. (Age-appropriately, of course.)
So for example, an opportunity for honesty at home is when a child is nagging a parent to play with them but the parent doesn’t actually feel like playing right then. Directly and without cruelty or emotional fanfare, the parent could simply say, “I do not want to play with you right now. You can wait or find something else to do. I need to work / make dinner” (or, and this might not need to be vocalized exactly, I just want to sit here and scroll / stare out the window / not engage with any family for five freaking minutes.)
The parent, as the adult, should be prepared to handle whatever reaction the child may have to this disappointing information. This is easier said than done because kids, with their limited impulse control, might not accept the rebuff very well. So the child acts out, making it difficult for the parent to hold firm.
What happens then when instead of being honest the parent just gives in? The parent stops what they’re doing to get the kid to calm down. They reluctantly “play” with them, giving the kid what they think the kid wants. The “playing together” is obviously not an enjoyable experience, for either of them. The adult is annoyed, resentful, distracted, and the kid feels that emanating from their parent. It’s so unsatisfying to be on the receiving end of that kind of energy. The kid grows accustomed to a parent who is omnipresent but inauthentic.
This scenario applies to adult interactions too, in friendships and romantic relationships. Think about it- how fun is an interaction that is founded on obligation? It’s not. It’s annoying! And boring. If we’d rather be doing something else than spending time with the person we’re with, we’re not being authentic with that person. Maybe we’re not even being nice about it. And to be on the receiving end of that exchange makes us feel stupid and insecure.
There’s other versions too of how avoiding honesty plays out in relationships, and at home. To continue the parenting example, there’s the adult overreaction to the kid’s nagging (voice raised, sarcasm), anger (yelling, mean comments), manipulation (“if you do this then I will that”), coddling (over exaggerated consolation), passiveness (...nothing...), neglect, or violence. Or a combination of above, sending mixed-messages. The parent, of course, may themselves be unaware that their response is just a form of conflict avoidance, feeling unprepared or unwilling to deal with the fallout of confronting the issue head-on. Perhaps it’s just what the parent experienced in their own upbringing. Or they are overcorrecting from a different unpleasant parenting style that they were raised with. Either way, it’s natural for the kid to feel emotionally unattuned or even fearful of any of these responses.
A child that grows up unable to deal with small truths at home becomes an adult who can not handle bigger, harder truths out in the world. As adults, they react defensively to honesty with emotional responses ranging from aggressive anger or overwhelming sadness to complete withdrawal, denial, and numbing out. They have a low distress threshold. When confronted with hard reality they react in ways that are unhelpful. These adults are in relationships, are family and community members, and are sometimes in charge of other adults. We all know people like this. At times, it is us.
Truth Handling
Within a couple weeks of President Biden’s inauguration, the President’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was hitting the press circuit to answer questions about how the previous administration had addressed the Coronavirus pandemic that we’re currently all still living within. On the New York Times podcast The Daily, the interviewer asked Dr. Fauci about conversations with then president Trump at the start of the pandemic regarding the Coronavirus quickly spreading throughout the United States. Dr. Fauci described trying to explain the gravity of the situation. I’m paraphrasing here but it basically went like this:
Dr. Fauci: “The spread of the virus is very serious.”
President Trump: “Oh, c’mon, it’s not that bad.”
Dr. Fauci: “Uh yes, it is that bad and can turn out to be a real problem.”
President Trump: “But not that bad, right?”
Dr. Fauci: “No. It is very bad.”
President Trump was having a very hard time dealing with the truth! His reflex response was to minimize, deny the seriousness, proceed with a perspective of the situation that was not steeped in reality. This is not a political newsletter so you can draw your own conclusions about how a leader with that kind of relationship with truth led the American response to a deadly serious conflict.
In my job as a public defender I am often in the position of telling people bad news, hard truths. Cold-calling people to alert them their loved one has been arrested. Or telling someone through a grate (or these days through laptop screens) that they can’t go home tonight, or that unfortunately the person in the surveillance video looks a lot like them. It’s never a pleasant conversation. I am aware of the power dynamics in my role as attorney versus client. (In any conflict, power structures are often present, sometimes subtly, based on gender, race, socio-economic status, education, employment, family roles, etc.) This power dynamic informs how I share the truth. Careful, measured. Even still, I have to steel myself before sharing unpleasant information. Because when people hear a hard truth about their situation it is pretty common for them to respond harshly.
Experienced defense attorneys know the importance of giving people enough time to grasp what they’ve just been told. Best to let them feel through their emotions before moving on to the next part of the conversation. Personally, I try to give people some room to express their stress, sadness, or anger, and provide comfort where it’s appropriate, when I can, if I can. But sometimes it’s just about staying calm while they respond, even when I become the focus of their ire. Or not pushing them for a response if there is none. I don’t always land the dismount perfectly, I might be in a rush or totally misinterpret the reaction. But it’s become a skill that I am forever working on both in career and in life: responding to other people’s difficult reactions to my telling the truth. I’ve started to recognize what happens to me emotionally and how my body responds. I’m constantly adjusting my approach; it’s a practice. But I do my best not to let emotions escalate to a point where we no longer can continue speaking. When people are overly-emotional, they stop hearing. Fight or flight kicks in. There’s no quick way to get back to neutral. So the goal is to always keep the conversation going and emotionally balanced enough so that together we can somehow get to the other side.
It’s a skill to accept bad news as it is a skill to share it. Accepting the truth is a challenging but necessary and integral first step to reckoning with conflict, problem-solving, and moving forward productively. Getting stuck in our shame, denial, or being wrapped up in defensiveness is obstructive. Unease with conflict complicates team dynamics and hinders effective strategizing. It impedes social progress too. Visionary thinker and author of the thought-expanding text Emergent Strategy adrienne maree brown writes that “movements are in danger because we don’t know how to handle conflict or how to move towards accountability in satisfying and collective ways.” Organizer and conflict facilitator Yotam Marom cautions that “groups that don’t tell themselves the truth cannot form a winning strategy, and they are unlikely to be healthy and strong enough to actualize it even if they did.” If we want to collectively make real progress towards a better future for everyone then we need to actually start working through the conflicts. We must learn to talk in truth. We must also ready ourselves to listen.2
Although to hear a hard truth about ourselves or our beliefs can be painful and difficult to process, it is important for the other person or group in conflict to be able to share it. When a wrong has been done it needs to be named and acknowledged. Those who have been harmed need to be able to grieve their losses, to tell their stories, and to have their questions answered. Only then can the conversation move on to the next steps of accountability and resolution. Or if not resolution, then perhaps at very least the recognition of a shared struggle. These are not easy dialogues to be party to. But it is our human nature to want to be heard, be understood, so as to feel connected to our humanity. Conflict in personal and collective interactions is normal. Gotta be able to handle it. Or start to learn how.
Building Resilience
Of course, sometimes, conflict can be destructive. But generative conflict, a productive approach to conflict, can stimulate new possibilities, greater connection, and fuller expression. This process feels uncomfortable from all sides. It’s hard to muster the courage to tell the truth, and receive the blowback; it’s hard to hear the truth, and control our emotional response to it. But there is value in strengthening our ability to do both.
There is a silver lining to the child’s tantrum after being told “no.” It’s the processing of disappointment. To then also have a parent that can remain calm, unfazed, and accepting of the reaction, gives the child the space to feel safe with that hard emotion. The child can work through the feelings privately at home and then eventually move on. Like no big deal. They start to learn resilience. (But of course this ideal arrangement doesn’t happen for everyone, and even if it did it’s impossible for it to happen perfectly each time. In relationships we slip, we stumble. We err. But rest assured new opportunities for honesty in conflict will always emerge.)
Clinical psychologists have found that when it comes to emotional responses to conflict, perception comes into play. How resilient we are is based on how traumatic we perceive situations to be, and how negatively we respond. Building our resilience to addressing truth helps us move through conflict. Resiliency allows better control of those distracting, extreme emotions that cloud judgment and derail conversations. We each can learn to process our emotions so we’re more level-headed when confronting the core of a conflict. So we can then make amends if necessary, or better-strategize tough decision-making. Recognizing that everyone comes from a different point on the resiliency spectrum, we each likely have some room for growth. The good news is, if we start to better understand how our perceptions and emotions work together, we can learn how to recondition ourselves to have more positive, or at least more easeful, responses to conflict.
Some self-help: We cannot control how other people respond to us; we can only control how we respond to other people.
Here’s a helpful diagram about how emotional reactions work, content courtesy of brilliant psychotherapist Dr. Juan Peña:
Something happens, say we hear a hard truth. We experience a physiological reaction in our bodies as our brains fire off an internal response. We’ve all had those body tingles, or feel our stomach lurch or heart drop when we hear or see something upsetting. Then our conditioned thought patterns kick in - these can be focused inward (Ugh, I suck.) or outward (Ugh, she’s always doing this shit to me.) Then we behave: shutting down, storming off, shouting, spitting verbal venom, you pick your poison. (This behavior likely sets off the other person in their own emotional response and voila! Productive conversation over. And repeat.)
We can work on desensitizing our responses in a few different ways. One way is to feel through the physiological response - take a beat to feel what’s happening in the body, let it happen, and release it. Cry those tears if we need a cry. Focus on the heart rate increasing and breath through it. Little things like that. Another very helpful step is to reframe how we think about what is triggering us. There’s a lot to say about how to do this, it might need to be its own article. I’m linking some resources for techniques in the footnote below.3 But even just catching ourselves in a conditioned thought pattern is a good place to start. Examine the negative thought. Try out a different, more positive thought, or a kinder external output. From there we can try and change our behavior. We stay instead of run. Or we go for a run, instead of fight. Doing all this consistently and repetitively will eventually recondition us. We’re just animals, y’know. Science. Like exercise, we start by just doing it. And of course it’ll take time. But hey, who’s in a rush?
But Also Be Nice
At any stage of dealing with truth and conflict, try to invite in some compassion. We can have compassion for whoever we’re in conflict with; we can have it for ourselves. Compassion is sometimes hard to access, especially for those of us so very out of practice. But guess what? It’s free. It costs zero dollars. And although it costs nothing to have compassion, doing so yields huge return on investment.
But actually, more accurately, we do not need to “acquire” compassion. We already have it. Kernels of compassion are already inside all of us. For some of us the little seed is just taking root. For others compassion blossoms continuously, with some seasons more fruitful and some a bit scant. Let’s grab our gardening tools and tend to ourselves with nourishment and care. We can turn towards the light. We can grow.
Be compassionate with ourselves and with others as we maneuver through ALL THIS. We all come from different upbringings with different experiences, sometimes lucky, sometimes traumatic. We’re all living our lives, and some of us are having a harder go at it. So there’s no single perfect method to becoming better at handling conflict. We each have to find our own way.
We might try and remember ourselves as children. Channel them if we can. What we were taught about emotions and how the world works is within us, but it doesn’t have to be us if it is not serving us now. We can be the kid and the parent of ourselves. Be okay with the inner tantrum brewing. Be compassionate to our difficult feelings. Show love and encouragement for the good within us. Acknowledge the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Hold ourselves with kindness, extend a bit of grace. So we can admit we’re hurt, or if we’ve messed up. That is not to say we give ourselves a pass. But we can feel it through, the sadness, the shame, and then learn from our experiences, our mistakes. We can evolve. We can be strong for ourselves, and for others, as we move through conflict and tackle hard truths. That is how we can each at least try to do our own small part to change the conflict paradigm. So that we can walk through the dystopia of the moment and together build the world that we want.4
I love how Annaliese Singhe ended the interview that I mentioned at the start of this piece. In the context of racial healing, she proposed talking to that inner child that is within all of us. It’s a nice example for how we can speak honestly with ourselves even about the stuff that really hurts. Gonna close this thing out with a one minute clip of what she said.
Yes. Alright. Now go on and conflict with compassion, everybody. ‘Til next time.
Smarter people have written about what is and isn't truth in a post-truth, "alternative facts" era. This is not that article.
There is much to discuss about the space and timing for truth-telling. Assuming I’ll be diligent enough, there will likely be future posts expanding on this.
There are many methodologies for cognitive restructuring.
From the New Yorker article on Resilience I linked to earlier, pioneer of positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman found that training people to change their explanatory styles from internal to external (“Bad events aren’t my fault”), from global to specific (“This is one narrow thing rather than a massive indication that something is wrong with my life”), and from permanent to impermanent (“I can change the situation, rather than assuming it’s fixed”) made them more psychologically successful and less prone to depression.
Here is an overview of Dr. Seligman’s “ABCDE” method.
Start a mindful meditation practice.
A nice overview of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It may be helpful to check in with a therapist that specializes in CBT from time to time. Therapy can be a great opportunity to explore any negative thought patterns in a private just-you space and learn how to work through them. Now that everything is virtual, speaking with a therapist has never been easier. (If you’d like some help in figuring out how to find a good therapy fit for you I have some pointers. Feel free to reach out to me, of course I’ll keep it confidential.)
Words inspired by poet and media justice activist Malkia Devich-Cyril.
Well! I didn’t expect my first one to be this long. But it’s been a pandemic winter- lots of time for thinkin’. Thanks for reading (or even just skimming.) What’d you think? I’d love your feedback. Email me!
Little personal plug that next month I’ll be co-presenting at a year-long seminar series on restorative justice and criminal justice-adjacent topics. Get those CLEs lawyer friends.
Are you currently in conflict with someone? Do you kinda wanna passively-aggressively send them this post? Do it.
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