Bonus Episode - How to Master Difficult (Honest) Conversations

How to Master Difficult (Honest) Conversations

In this week’s episode of Finding Your Way Home, we delve into the art and significance of having honest conversations… Not only honest - but skilful, generous, connective and genuinely generative for deeper, fuller relationships. We all know that communication is critical to a “good” / “healthy” love life, work life, spiritual life. And so, listen in for the inside track on both how to receive someone else’s honest feedback, and how to give it yourself. I’m sharing what I have learnt from over 10 years in self-development - and, many decades longer in some impressively nuanced dynamics… Stay tuned for your blueprint on mastering the nitty gritty terrain of conversational truth. 

In today’s Mini, you’ll discover: 

• The power of consent, for the sharer and listener
• Identifying accurately ones' intentions and level of emotional balance for having a conversation - and what happens depending on these factors
• How to receive a person’s feedback or experience with neutrality (even when personally “touched”)
• Learning the courage to speak your own truth
• And most importantly - the framework, formats and sentences to use when trying to approach the topic, the “other” and a more meaningful relationship long-term. 

And stay with us until the end, for a little insight into what’s to come in next Season’s release - and what we have cooking behind the scenes at Finding Your Way Home. 

For more on Finding Your Way Home, including events and learning programmes:

 - Visit @ab_embodiment or www.ab-embodimentcoaching.org
- And if you've enjoyed the episode, remember to Subscribe and share it with a friend - you couldn't imagine the profound ripple effect of sharing what guides you with someone you love.
 
From my heart to yours listeners, 

A x

Transcript

Anthea: 0:14

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

1:04

Good evening, gorgeous creatures, and welcome to this week's episode of Finding Your Way Home. So I am coming to you hot on a really, really important topic in the realm of forming and forging deeper relationships in the realm of connecting to yourself in the realm of practicing as a therapist or a coach, or a counselor. And I'm, I'm touching in on it with you guys this evening because it is an area that I give a lot of support and guidance around in all of the work that I do. And I've probably never really been exclusively explicit in a podcast episode before about this particular theme. I'm being a bit teasing. I realize by giving it that much of an introduction, I wanna talk to you guys today about how to have honest conversations and in some ways. This particular theme encapsulates a lot of what we talk about here. So there is a blending in of all of the principles that you all know. This podcast, the Embodiment School, the retreats that I host, uh, the training that I run, the one-to-one work. A lot of the content that we explore. It really dived into how do we live in integrity? How do we identify and then live through our value system? How do we keep care of ourselves and others? The I and the we in equal degrees? And so what I wanna talk to you guys particularly about today is what does it mean to, and practically, how do we. Have conversations with other people that are speaking truth, where truth needs to be spoken, and doing that from the place of me, my experience as much as possible without agenda, without blame, Without really sinking into the territory of Mm. Past dynamics and little parts and all of the things that can really confuse the script that we end up speaking to another person. So I'm gonna start by just sharing a couple of sort of guiding principles and then we're gonna just explore from there. Some of you know that I was given a phrase about 10 years ago. Around whether to offer feedback. And that phrase was, is it loving? Is it honest? Is it useful? And that I wanted to aim to have all three of those metrics in place when I was given the consent to give somebody else feedback. So in this part of the conversation, what I'm really talking about is. What is it like and what are the context in which we should could share our perspective with another person in relation to something that is going on for them? That consent thing is probably the most fundamental piece of the puzzle. It's the first step that we have to get really practice at really understanding why is it that another person is coming to me? You can establish that in a really explicit way. But very gently, simply asking them, what is it that you feel that you need from me in this moment? What would really serve and support you? Would you like me here as an attentive ear? Would you like me here as someone to shine a lens and a mirror and what you're navigating? Would you like my perspective from the body and being that I am? Like what would really be useful for you? Today. What's really beautiful about that question is that most people do not come to share with another person with clarity on exactly what they're looking for. They are guided toward sharing by a deeper motive and a deeper need, and a deeper intention, whether it be to connect or whether it be to feel loved or listened to, or whether it be that they're feeling helpless and they really desire another person's. Opinion slash strength and holding, but a lot of us are not consciously aware of that when we explicitly make the ask or make the statement. So there's something really, really crystallizing about being asked and about asking that other person to come to some clarity. It's an offering that question. It's an offering for them to move beneath and beyond the story that they're telling you and to really think about kind of who is it? That is speaking the story and what is it that that person needs in this moment? I say, who is it that's telling the story? Because as you also know, a huge amount of my work centers on. In some ways validating all of the narratives and the scripts and the thoughts and the beliefs that run a mock through our brains, and also being a little bit light with all of those, not taking those as factual data, which is how most people interpret their thoughts and beliefs, being curious about them, being curious about the story that's being told, but having levity. And brevity and understanding that there is also an emotional or a wider witnessing or a wider being experience that sits separate from the narrative. I don't really subscribe to the statement, don't believe your thoughts on one level, I think that, that that slogan can feel really dismissive and I have certainly had to work through. Um. A preexisting tendency to dismiss myself or to distrust myself. But what I do think is sage in what it implies is that although our thoughts may be very convincing or although, although our perspectives may be very convincing, or although our perspective on an experience may be very convincing, nine-tenths of the time, it's gonna feel convincing'cause it's going back to a pre-existing narrative. It is going back to a preexisting perspective. We interpret the story as true because it feels as though it confirms things that we have previously believed to be true. And over time those things have become encoded in long-term memory, short-term memory, nervous system, soft tissue, and so we are recognizing the familiarity of the thing and taking that to mean that it is correct, factually representative. Which of course means that we end up entrenching ourselves more in the emotion that that experience activates. Again, believing that the emotion is true and the two things become a little bit chicken and egg. So when someone comes to you and they're sharing, it's not necessarily our place, even if we're a coach, to dispel the truthfulness of that experience or that story for that person. But it is really useful to know in what role and capacity does this person want me to receive? Because it may very well be that if they're coming to you understanding that there's something going on here, but looking for perspective, then there's some beautiful service that you can offer in asking with curiosity. Well, you know, this is what I hear. Does this sound like a good, accurate representation of what you shared with me? Okay. So if that's the case, this is what I experience from what you share. Bringing it into the eye is a really beautiful way of making it clear that you are not speaking for another person, that you are not taking any position of hierarchy, that your opinion is not more important than their opinion. But that what you are noticing inside of yourself is dot, dot, dot experience, or what you discover is arising within you in relation to your own experience of similar situations potentially is dot, dot, dot. Immediately that you do that. Of course, the byproduct is that you create connection with the person that's sharing with you. You become a we. So ironically, the I Statement shared openly with the other person in relation to their pickle and predicament takes you both into the WE space, especially when you offer your experience and your perspective as truly an offering rather than as something that they need to take on board. That is a question both of how we use our words. But more than that, the precursor to that is the energy and the intention that we are coming from. And so what becomes really important, if you notice, so let's say you've been given consent to give feedback. What becomes really important is to have a little moment of check in, to understand where am I coming from as I offer this? Do I have a motive here to change the other person's perspective? Do I have a motive here to, um, create an awakening for them? Is it, let's say this is the majority of the cases that I come into contact with and many of us do, is it that on some level, the way that they're seeing this or acting and it feels really uncomfortable? For me to be witnessing, is it uncomfortable for someone to share something with me, to share what I can see as a painful piece of suffering? And for me not to change it for them? Does it feel threatening to me on some level how they be in this moment? As in, does it impact me in some way, my peace of mind, my, uh, levels of energy, my boundaries? Or is it that. Being in the witnessing of or exposed to their pain is just painful in and of itself. And I'm using the word pain. It might not be pain, it might be frustration, it might be, um, aggression. It could be any number of things. Um, but the point remains that for us to understand what's coming up in me, that would guide me. To give feedback in a way that could be potentially forceful or could be, um, pushy or could be, um, manipulative or, or any of these things. You know, on some level, I guess what I'm asking you guys to do is if you're willing, slow down the clock so that there comes to be this slight pause, this slight time gap where we can really feel into the wider wisdom of what it is that we're sharing. And so that's where I come back to that statement of is it loving, is it honest? Is it useful? It is something that is loving and honest, might still nevertheless not be useful because the person involved and remember, that's our focus is the person involved. We might be coming from a loving place and we might be being honest in our feedback, but that might not be digestible for the person that we're speaking to. It might be that they can't even hear the love. That we are delivering the honesty with because where they're looking from is a vulnerable little piece inside of them that actually just wanted to be received and held and heard in its moment of challenge. Or it might be that that person has such a context where feedback was critical. That it's just really difficult for them to receive feedback and not to take it in a personalized, negative way. So much of what happens in communication is not actually about the words, it's about what both of us came to the conversation with. And it's about what both of us hear with much more than our ears. It's what our bodies read, it's what our identities are scanning for. Um. It's maybe the secret hope or longing in the relationship anyway. Oh, I would love it if the way that he or she came back to me was dot, dot, dot, dot. And so of course if they don't, then huge disappointment potentially. So I'm saying all of this, not so that we get into this horrendous, slightly constipated micronizing of every single conversation, every single time, but it's just to give a little bit of, of attention to the fact that conversations are important, especially important conversations. They're important and they merit being done slowly. There really is no harm in a conversation going more slowly than we're tempted to. Make it a lot of the time when it feels really propulsive to get a statement out. Then where that's coming from is really a space of fear and very likely an adaptive response, and again, very likely not me in my full age. So let's get back to that idea of is it loving, is it honest? Is it useful in giving feedback? So the other way of spinning two out of the three would be, well, it's useful and it's honest. But it's not loving. And as all of you will know, having been in inevitably conversations where feedback is offered, we have genuinely said yes to receiving feedback. Sometimes we mean it, sometimes we don't. And that's where we get to just become aware of our own codependent patterns. Did I really mean that I wanted feedback and relative to my experience of this person offering me the possibility of future feedback, is that gonna feel. Comfy, uh, yes or no. And if it's gonna be like that, let's say let's base our expectation on our experience. Am I really willing to hear them? Am I really consenting? Am I really being honest if I've been honest in what I've shared? Have I been honest in what I want? And then have I been honest when I said yes or no to the feedback? So if someone gives you feedback that lacks love. It's really tricky. If we are the one giving feedback and we are lacking in love, then we know that there's some kind of intentionality or something. Mm. I sort of wanna say shadow, but it, it sounds a bit naff to use that phrase'cause it's so overused. But let's say there's. If there's an a true absence of love, there's likely to be something more significant going on for me as the giver of feedback that isn't really to do with the other person and isn't really fair to lay on their door. And if I'm the receiver of feedback that has no love in it, it's unlikely that I'm gonna be able to make sustainable digestion or change from that feedback. We can absolutely use directness. If we're in the right space of mind, we can absolutely use directness for generative benefit. But it's reliant on you being in the right space and when you remember it again and again, it's reliant on you being again, it in the right space. And so generally in my experience, what I have found is if someone is rooted in a place of center and love as the listener. Then what they share, shared from their honesty, shared from their wider sensing of what's needed, shared from their truth, that that lands much, much, much more homeostatically for the other person. So I think that's what I wanna say on giving feedback. And I suppose the additional reminders would be, if not now, then later. So there's really, really no harm in just waiting, just giving a little bit of time for diffusion and giving a little bit of time for connection before solution. I was reminded of that today from this place of strategy. And intelligence and all of the prowess and skill that we have. So often we shift into solution. I want the solution that stops the pain or I want the solution that creates the game. Um, or both and, and, and yet connection again without the risk of overusing that. When is that not a good idea? Like in. Deep listening in. Deep sharing the connection is critical. The beautiful, tender, intimate connection between other people or the top line, surface level, sizzling, fun, flirty connection between two people. It's so deeply restorative. It's, it's so deeply life force. You know, I'm lucky in this era of my life. I have a ton of beautiful people in my space, like people that I colleague with, people that I learn from, people that I teach, people that I coach, people that I interview. Um, they're a really fucking phenomenal bunch of people and all of the different ways that we connect, that's what I live for. You know, my coach always knows when I'm in a slightly sticky space, if there's been too little self connection and other connection, because my mood dampens. Part of why I me as this form of me right now, it's all this podcast is because as I record each and every episode, I'm thinking about all of you guys. I'm feeling for you. I'm feeling right now as you listen to this, to the ears that this is landing into with a hope that. Some of these musings give you something and allow you not to feel that there's any downside of being in your own company.'cause even when you're in your own company, we're also all still connected. I asked a very good friend today who's also a, an exquisite practitioner. She works at a practice. I'll do a little shout out. She works at a practice called the Diora Clinic. Her name is Taj. She's a wise Witcher woman. She works in Harley Street. Um, and she is so much more than a cranial osteopath, but she's definitely attuned to that medium and, uh, she's become a friend as well as someone who my body adores to be seen by. And I said to her today, you know, is loneliness something that you experience? And she said. No, she's in her seventies. I think. She's like, no, I don't experience loneliness. Aloneness being aloneness. Yes, I experience loneliness. No. And I've asked many people that same question and depending on where they're at in their journey, and I've asked myself that same question, depending on where I'm at in my own journey, um, sometimes the, the belief of loneliness,'cause I am gonna call it a belief and the associated sense of, for me, empty space floating. Those are the two that come up for me the most often when I drop into Soma. Those things are very real and and very important. They also do have the capacity to be felt through relatively quickly, and that's why I say that loneliness oftentimes is a story. It's a harking back to a time when we have felt a certain way, but the loneliness story is, I am alone, which often for many people means I am not loved. I'm not thought about. Um, I am on my own in this. It's just me. I'm the only one that could understand, you know, those narratives become incredibly convincing very quickly. And of course, what goes hand in hand with them so often, and this is again, the chicken and egg, is that we are not talking about it. Whatever the thing is that we feel alone in, we're often not sharing about it. And if we are, we're sharing about it in a closed way as a fit, a complete or a, a past fact. I felt this way about this thing, then it's hard and scary for us to share honestly about how we feel and experience things in the present moment. And so that brings me to the second half of this. Which is about sharing, honestly, being the sharer that shares honestly. And I'm specifically talking there, not so much about sharing to an uninvolved person, something that's happened to you today or sharing to an uninvolved person a tricky, uh, interaction with another person. You guys know that I have some opinions about gossiping, um, and I have opinions about gossiping where it's. On some level, not usefully or lovingly intended because I just think it's not very good for anyone, including the person that's that's lighting the match. But I also have that line with myself because the less honest you are with the people involved, the more tempting it is to talk to other people about them. And so part of my desire in this evening's episode and I'm saying evening time,'cause as you guys know, I record these solos at the dus of night. Uh, it is pitch black outside. It's so dreamy. Um, just pre Halloween. Part of my intention in sharing this particular episode is in supporting us to all be more courageous in saying the thing to the person involved directly. Where it feels as though that would be a loving act for you and potentially for them. So let me just run through a couple of things and I'm gonna take off my coat because I definitely don't need to be wearing it right now in my, uh, somewhat heated flat house, actually, on my very beautiful bon charge heated blanket. So the first thing that I wanna underline here is. It's really important to understand where you are at in your level of attachment to the scenario when you are sharing. So if the proposition is, well, I'm gonna come toward a person who I've experienced some hurt around I, or some anger around, or some frustration around it, let's say there's some kind of rupture. Um, and I have a feeling that there's a conversation that needs to be had. What I have to understand is what is my intention in the sharing and how close am I to the feelings that that scenario brought up? And how attached am I to my perspective of the story or the experience? So an example would be, have an argument with a loved one. Uh, believe that they are incorrect. In what they did or what they said, or how they viewed it, feel angry and upset. And so all of those things are really putting me in a me place, in a hurt me place. And it's really likely that being in a hurt me place takes any of us into some clever adaptation strategies, uh, where we are looking to get something from the conversation. An apology or, um, uh, a pound of flesh or, um, to blame someone else or to get our emotions out of our body because they just feel so uncomfortable to hold. And I get all of that. I am just as human as you guys. And I also know that having the conversation in that context is not sage, but nor is squishing it down. And never having the conversation, nor is eating it, uh, nor is pretending that it's all okay when fundamentally it isn't. Um, you know, I was having a really beautiful conversation with someone about this. It's, it's a balancing act, not to overlay, but to create space in the transaction to allow you to look after yourself first. So the key reminder here really is our job as grownups. Is to look after ourselves even while we are, or even if we know we will be seeking some sort of conversation with another person. It is not their job to make us feel better. It is our job, be with our content and to seek the support that we might need from other places or other inputs to come back to stability. To come back to center, would that other people who were the people around whom we were having the hurtful feeling would that they were able in their equal probably moment of hurt to give us what we think we need. But with the best will in the world, most people won't be able to, because of course, what are they looking through in that conversation or argument? They're looking through their own lens, but just as convincing as our reality is for us. Their reality is for them. Now, you as the person that feels hurt in this moment and is considering having a conversation, don't need to go into their world and negate your truth because you think their truth is bigger or better or more important. Nor do you need to make their feelings about this better necessarily. The first place that we start is putting on our own oxygen mask. And so I come back to really being clear with yourself, what's my intention here? And how centered am I? How stable am I to have the conversation? If you think there's any doubt about the second question. The first one is pretty obvious. Um, and if the first one comes back with a no, I am mal intention here. My suggestion would be to give it a little bit of space and then really to consult on a more expansive level. Really to connect in, in meditation, really to, uh, I wanna say contact your guides, feel into your inner sense of wisdom. What would be the wise action here? And I always just keep that in this day. Because you might have a feeling for what you would do in the future that might already be here, an instinct that you will have the conversation in a week or two weeks time. But in the absence of that, it's just very useful to think in this day, is there anything that I need to do? And remember, the first question, which I'll just go back to again here, is if you're asking, is there anything in this day that I need to do, the first place that you have to go to is that I need to give myself. And I know that some people will be rolling their eyes thinking, yeah, but you know, I have to do all of this myself anyway. And that's also the reality that it does start and end ultimately with us, but, hmm. That the person that says it's all me having to do it anyway, is probably not actually having a ton of really honest, open, useful conversations. And so there is also some real importance in where it feels appropriate, being brave enough to have the dialogue. So if you come, are coming to the conversation and you feel, okay, look, I am not in the thick of it anymore. I am ready to have a conversation. Then how do we do that thing? How do we do the thing of being honest about our feelings and our perspective, um, while also being open to creating dialogue? Mm. Um, collaboration, discovery, compromise, uh, coming into ultimately a we terrain together. And in one sense, I'm gonna go back to what I said about, um, sharing feedback. It's really, really useful and important to share from I, and the way that you do that is in a sense getting a little bit more, uh, descriptive about the experience. So rather than being in a, a present tense I statement, this will make sense in a second when I give an example, by the way, rather than being like, you did this to me, this like, you hurt me. Which is, I mean, you guys can hear all of the challenges in that statement. You did this to me. So it makes them the powerful other person. It makes us the victim. Um, it makes them responsible for our feelings, not the case. Uh, it's blaming, not helpful. Uh, nothing useful is gonna come from that except that they feel attacked and they attack you back, or they shut down and stonewall you back. So what we have to get into practice of doing instead is saying potentially something along the lines of, I'm wondering if you're opening, not opening, something along the lines of, I wonder if you're open to having a conversation about this just now. Um, I would really like to, does this feel like an okay moment for you? And again, it's a little bit that consent thing you have to check in on whether as the other person in the conversation they're open.'cause I can promise you if they're not. Either implicitly or explicitly, it may still be worth saying something at some point, but you won't get what you are on one level wanting from it if you're coming from a place of seeking, repair, and compromise. So the first thing is we've gotta check that they're open, and we do that with a very declarative, um, simple statement. Are you, you know, are you feeling open and available to having a conversation about this right now? The second thing that can be really useful is to state your intention. And I know this sounds all a bit formal and it won't always come through in this formal of a way. You'll probably feel as you gain experience in this, you'll probably feel for, okay, this is not necessary right now, or this is not necessary, but this is. But what you can do if you are just following a blow by blow series of things is to say, my intention in having this conversation is blah. And so again, you get to explain what that is to the other person. My intention is to, um, express to you a little bit what came up for me during this conversation to give you a, an insight into what it brought up for me and for me to then be able to hear your side of that.'cause I'd really like to understand what came up for you so that we can, on some level. Come into the center together, something gentle like that. Um, what's also really good about that is that human beings really like structure. They really like parameters. And so if somebody else knows roughly what the rule book for this conversation is gonna be, it just allows us to go into that more willingly or at least more knowingly. So then comes the question of, well, how do I share what's arisen? And so you do it in a very similar way. So when we were having this interchange, uh, this was what was arising for me, and that was painful because, uh, and this was what I experienced and I'm aware now that I have some sensitivity around this, you can say things like, what I took you to mean was this. What I heard from what you said was this, um. This feeling is still present inside of me. I'm still aware that there's some hurt or there's some rupture here, or whatever it might be, and that causes some pain and some longing for me. And you can also say, I'm aware that in that conversation what I was wanting was this. And as I reflect back on it, mm, I can kind of see I wasn't explicit with you about that. Or I didn't notice that you weren't in a place where we could have that conversation or where you could give me that thing that I was seeking. That's not about apologizing inauthentically, but it's about being willing to at least consider with curiosity the other person's perspective, if we are basing ourselves in the foundation that it's all perspectival Anyway, very little of this is to do with any objective reality. There really isn't one. Um, especially in the relational field, we are talking about lenses and through understanding and through coming together when you're having a conversation with yourself or when you're having a conversation with another person through coming together, coming into dialogue with, there's a huge amount of change and shift that is possible. What I would then do is as the person starts to share back in relation to what you've said, it's quite important, if you are willing to, as you set up this conversation, say, what would be really great for me is for me to be able to share and if, if you're willing to, can you let me share? Um,'cause that would feel really good for me to be able to just get it all sorted down. And then I'd love to hear your feedback. I'd love to hear, uh, your equivalent so that you are encouraging a dynamic where they're not interjecting you because the interjecting of you will create more nervous system and disruption and that can make these things feel really activating. What I would also really recommend is if you find a lot of emotion coming up during the conversation, you as the looker after is of you. You really wanna notice, okay, this is, this is what's happening for me right now. And so you wanna give yourself permission in the conversation to pause, to take a minute to signal, okay, I'm finding this way harder than I thought I would. Just gimme a second. And you just pause and you breathe or you pause and you feel your feet on the floor or whatever your equivalent might be. So what happens then if they come back in a way that is, uh, on some level inflamed? Well, what that tells you is that potentially that person was not in a place of readiness and openness to be able to have the chat, which is useful. And so you've got a couple of options at that point. You could pause the conversation, you know, from a really sage place, you could say, ah, it's feeling like this is not coming across in the way that perhaps would be the most useful for us. And my sense is that you are experiencing something different from my words than what I'm wanting to convey. So. How would it be for us to just put a pin in this? I'd love to come back to it another time. Um, but it doesn't feel great to be having the conversation right now relative to this experience with you. And if that doesn't land well then again, if we go into real self-agency, what you have to be willing to do as the person that brought the conversation, is potentially to walk away in that moment. So rather than wanting something different in them is for you to really just. Take up a different space. So much of the time people stay in scenarios that are unhealthy or unhelpful because on some level they've decided that staying but staying silent is a better way than risking being reactive or being in the inflammation of a conversation. And when we do that, a lot of the time, we're actually operating from a freeze response anyway. But we're also just ignoring the exit door, which means that you ignore your agency. So if you were strong enough, brave enough, clever enough to know that a conversation was needed, also allow yourself to be strong enough, courageous enough, clever enough to exit at a moment that the conversation is not feeling particularly useful. The other thing that feels really important to emphasize is I would really encourage all of you, as you have tricky conversations to allow space. And it's the space in which you get to hear your inner voice, which might differ from the tempting outer voice that would come quickly. So when they say something, can I feel for what comes up in me? Can I feel for truthfulness, the truthful statement? And can I speak that truth in the way that the truth is with that gentle awareness of. What feels loving and honest and useful here to share As I look to share something, can I be tuning into a quality of truthfulness? We just, we get to this just by being a bit slower. It's by being willing to stay is really the fundamental as I have the uncomfortable conversation potentially, can I be present? Can I stay in it? Can I know that getting it done quickly does not mean necessarily getting it done better Can I operate from that place? It's just really important and the outcomes can be really, really beautiful if we're willing to do that. I, what I think I would leave you guys with is an awareness of what can happen when we are willing to be honest. So I'm gonna give you a couple of examples. I have had a few experiences of late where I've been called to be honest, and I can promise you in those moments, that is not what my fearful inners. That is not what my fearful insights have wanted to do explicitly. A lot of the time when you do the sort of work that I do, unfortunately you get a knowing of what you need to do. It's not even a should. It's you get a knowing of what is indicated, what you need to do, and it might not be that you want to do it. But there is some sort of greater wisdom that is speaking, that is saying, okay, this is the truth that needs to be expressed. And actually, in two of these examples, I was on different sides of the coin. On one side, I was sharing honestly about a fear that I had hurt somebody else. And on the other side, I was sharing honestly about having been hurt and. What happened through both of those scenarios, of course, is that you let the other person in on your world, and actually both of them were profoundly important and profoundly healing, but it was the second one that was the most significant. I, I was honest with a person who I had experienced some hurt around, be really, really tempting to say, uh, that that person hurt me. But the reality is that that person's behavior, not manin intentioned, brought up my hurt. It brought up the hurt in me, as in it brought up a feeling in me, and it was a really, really important feeling to be able to see, and it was incredibly difficult at the time and for weeks and months afterwards, and it actually took me quite a long time. To be able to have the conversation, um, because I was still in the hurt and my initial instinct. So funny the way that we do this. My first instinct was not to share it because I knew that it was my stuff on one level, and in a sense that was not quite true. Yeah, but it was a very convenient story to believe, especially when you're a practitioner, because, um, you also know that that's true as a practitioner, that your job is you, the other person's job is not you. But the second instinct that was coming up was, well, you know, I don't wanna put any responsibility on this person to do anything. And what that hid unfortunately, was. That I went from hurt to actually just on one level, rejecting the possibility of coming back together with that person. So having taken it into my own hands to solve my own pain, I didn't allow that person in. I mean, very fundamentally, that person had absolutely no idea that that was the case for me. Well, they had some awareness but not much. Um, and it wasn't until I really connected to it two, three months later that I realized that in doing that I was also still in some, on some level I was still in the discomfort, but also I had really robbed the other person of any awareness and therefore, any useful. Awakening and that didn't feel correct anymore. And so I did what, even for me, felt like a very brave thing. And I expressed the truth of my experience in exactly the same way that I've just explained to you guys. And what was even more beautiful than I had anticipated was that the person came back and said, look, I hear that and I'm sorry. And what I know is that in the way that I shared my feedback, I was really able to recognize that that person had not been in any way unintentioned. And I knew that and I meant that. And in me being honest and open and generous and curious, I was met with care, which ultimately was the thing that had felt missing in the transaction in the first place. So I share it because on some level, in order to live healthily and well in the world, we have to be willing to recognize our mutuality. I, if we are in a marriage or we're in a partnership or in a client relationship, we have to be willing to clue the other person in on what comes up for us if we want the relationship to sustain. Or to grow or to deepen, and all of us have to learn and practice. How do we have those conversations in ways that are genuinely healing and connective rather than accusatory or diminishing or, um, I'm right. You are wrong, which never gets anyone anywhere. And so my hope, gorgeous creatures, if you've been listening this long, is that on some level, that little outline supports you. In both giving you a little incentive potentially to face the fear of being truthful, a little blueprint of how you might be, and a little bit of curiosity within yourselves about what you are seeking when you're looking to either share from you or give feedback from you to another. There will be in the course of the next couple of weeks, couple of months, more of these little nuggets of top tips and themes from the therapeutic coaching world of AB and all the time that that is happening. Just so that you know, we are recording an absolutely fucking stellar season nine. Um, got some really, really incredible speakers on. We are four or five episodes down already, and I can't wait to bring those to your ears very, very soon, just before Christmas. A little treat for you, but for now, you get a little touch of me, a little touch of love from me, and uh, I bid you the most beautiful, gorgeous evenings or days, wherever you are listening.

Anthea: 46:39

Gorgeous listeners. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.