The Impossible Question

This short episode explores "The Impossible Question": Why did they do it? Jennifer discusses why people universally seek reasons after experiencing harm, how this search can deepen emotional disorganization or shame, and why answers often do not heal. The core message: understanding others' motivations rarely brings resolution, since even those who inflicted harm may not fully grasp their own actions. Healing comes from letting go of the need to know why and shifting focus to recognizing unmet needs—both in ourselves and others.

Takeaways

• When harmed, most people instinctively ask "Why?" as a way to make meaning and organize their experience.
• Not getting answers often triggers shame or confusion about one’s worth.
• The search for motivation rarely helps—explanations, if available, don’t resolve pain and can leave us feeling worse.
  Many people, including those who cause harm, are unaware of their true motivations in the moment; naming deeper needs is often challenging.
• Unmet needs—belonging, recognition, control, contribution, safety—often drive behavior, though the strategies to meet them may be unskillful and hurtful.
• Accepting that you may never know why, and that the person who caused harm may not know either, helps release the grip of the impossible question.
• Moving forward in healing involves shifting the focus from seeking reasons to accepting unmet needs and letting go.

Listeners are encouraged to share this episode and explore additional resources on universal needs at www.thedignitylab.com.

Exploring what it means to live and lead with dignity at work, in our families, in our communities, and in the world. What is dignity? How can we honor the dignity of others? And how can we repair and reclaim our dignity after harm? Tune in to hear stories about violations of dignity and ways in which we heal, forgive, and make choices about how we show up in a chaotic and fractured world. Hosted by physician and coach Jennifer Griggs.

For more information on the podcast, please visit www.thedignitylab.com.
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For additional free resources, including the periodic table of dignity elements, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/resources/.

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Transcript

This is The Dignity Lab, a podcast that seeks to define dignity, its violations, and its reclamation. No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what’s happened to you, you can reclaim your dignity.

Hosted by physician, narrative medicine practitioner, and leadership coach, Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

This season focuses on healing from past hurts through forgiveness and its alternatives.

Today’s episode is a dose of dignity, a solo, bite-sized episode that focuses on living and leading with dignity.

Hello and welcome to The Dignity Lab and this special season about healing after harm through forgiveness and its alternatives.

In this short episode, I’ll be talking about the impossible question: Why did they do it? 

When we’re hurt and we want to make sense of what’s happened, it is nearly universal to ask Why? This question is, I believe, prompted by our desire to make meaning, a desire to organize the universe into a coherent story. If I understand A, then I can understand B. And if I can’t understand why, the world feels disorganized and incoherent. 

Understanding the why is also how we make sense of our own experience, an attempt to understand what happened in relation to our place in this world. Not understanding may also prompt shame. That is, if I can’t figure out why they did what they did, there must be something wrong with me.

There are two problems with the question of Why. 

The first is that having an answer doesn’t actually help. The hurt is still there, and the explanations that people give us are not sufficient in helping us break free from our hurt. We rarely believe someone’s answer…if we’re lucky enough even to be offered one. People do, after all, try to justify their actions, which can leave us feeling even worse.

The second and perhaps more practice problem is that people who hurt us rarely know the answer to the question. To be honest, this applies to most of us. We are often quite unaware of our motivation, the underlying why, in a given moment. Think about the last time you made a mistake. Are you able to identify exactly why you acted the way you did or said what you said? How easy is it for you to name the underlying need you had at the time?

Here are my thoughts on why people do what they do…and this does not mean it’s okay, that they get to shrug off the harm they caused. It’s just a helpful frame to understand people’s actions.

My hypothesis is that people are trying to meet some need…however unskillfully. They may have a need for belonging, so they join in the teasing. They may have a need for recognition, so they don’t fully credit others for the shared efforts of the team. They may have a need to feel some control over a situation, so they micromanage other people. They may have a need to contribute, so they interrupt others in a conversation, adding often unhelpful information or opinions. They may have a need to feel safe and in some control over a conflict, so they report you to the higher ups.

There is obviously nothing wrong with having these needs–we all have a need for belonging, recognition, control over our environment, a need to contribute, and a need for safety. It’s the way we go about meeting those needs, the strategies that we use, that go wrong…sometimes very very wrong. If you’re interested in understanding the needs that we all have, every single one of us, you can hop over to our resources page on our website, www.thedignitylab.com and download a list of universal needs.

Here’s my invitation to you if you’ve been asking yourself why and have been unable to heal because of this impossible question. I’m inviting you 

…to accept that you’re unlikely ever to understand why they did

…to understand that the person or people who hurt you probably don’t even know themselves

…to accept that the people who hurt you probably had need that they were unskillfully trying to meet

What would it make possible for you to turn the page and to let go of your own very human need to understand the why?

Would you be able to move forward in your healing? 

If this has been helpful to you, please consider sharing this with another person. And please subscribe, rate, and review our podcast.

Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication presents NVC as a somatic, trauma-informed, decolonial practice rooted in choice, interdependence, and alignment with deeply held values rather than as a neutral language tool.

10 key points

Decolonizing NVC
Decolonizing NVC means actively removing colonial mindsets and values from NVC so that “nonviolence” no longer serves settler-colonial or white liberal agendas, and is instead accountable to Black, Indigenous, queer, disabled, and other impacted communities.

Nonviolence requires specific conditions
Nonviolent communication and action become more possible when people experience themselves as having choice, have aligned somatic awareness of their own bodies, and have an aligned somatic awareness of the collective body and its needs.

Crux of NVC: universal needs and feelings
The crux of NVC is that all humans share universal life-affirming needs; pleasant feelings arise when these needs are met, unpleasant feelings when they are not, and mixed feelings when some needs are met and others remain unmet.

Needs vs. strategies and conflict
Conflict does not occur at the level of needs but at the level of strategies—what people do to try to meet needs—so separating needs from strategies opens space for collaboration, creativity, and reduced blame.

Centrality of body and trauma
The body is treated as the root of communication, carrying personal and ancestral trauma; trauma responses like fight, flight, fawn, and freeze are framed as wise survival responses rather than personal failings, inviting gratitude and repair in relationship with the body.

Radiant vs. conditioned/trauma-driven gut
“Radiant gut work” distinguishes between conditioned or trauma-driven gut responses (judgment, hypervigilance, dissociation) and a radiant gut response grounded in calm, discernment, intuition, and alignment.

Interpretations vs. observations
A core skill is differentiating interpretations (stories, judgments, evaluations) from observations (literal, specific descriptions of what happened), which helps surface underlying feelings and needs and increases choice in how to respond.

Anger, grief, and mourning unmet needs
Toxic anger is described as accumulated, unexpressed grief; acknowledging anger and explicitly mourning unmet needs are offered as practices for releasing this toxicity and reclaiming forward-moving, life-serving anger.

Empathy, sovereignty, and abuse
Empathy is both somatic and verbal, and healthy empathy requires strong boundaries and bodily sovereignty; the text cautions against using NVC to pressure survivors into empathizing with abusers and affirms that no one is obligated to see an abuser’s humanity.

Boundaries, requests, and interdependence
Boundaries are presented as a love language that clarifies how needs can or cannot be met, while requests are concrete, doable, and must allow for “no”; the book critiques individualistic uses of NVC and instead emphasizes interdependence alongside personal agency and ownership of needs.

This has been The Dignity Lab with Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

If you have experienced a dignity violation or have a dignity dilemma and want to be a guest on our show, contact us through our website, www.thedignitylab.com. Guests may remain anonymous. 

And If you’re a leader wanting to up level your leadership with a small community of like-minded people, visit our website thedignitylab.com to learn more about the Dignity Lab (yes, the same name), our group program for leaders.

Our website and the show notes have downloadable resources that you can access from anywhere.

More information about any of our guests can be found in show notes for that episode. 

This season of The Dignity Lab is produced by me, Vanessa Aron. Pete Carty is our audio engineer and sound designer. Chase Miller composed our theme music.

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The content discussed is intended to explore and raise awareness about dignity. Sensitive topics may be discussed that could evoke strong emotions; discretion is advised, and listeners are encouraged to engage with the material with empathy."

Remember, “...be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars.”