Notes on an outline Randomly discovered and forked from mikecrittenden/outline.md that inspired action and felt as if I had stumbled upon a useful and hidden gem of sorts, to motivate and help facilitate the long-held intention of manifesting useful guidance on tackling some of the more turbulent and esoteric conversations that contain subject matter sensitive to culturural differences, expectations, and other nuances found in a patriarchal and/or matriarchal systems (AKA talking to parents who may be unknowingly narcassistic in nature or operate as entitled parents) that would otherwise favor sufferring in silence over constructive conversation. It is thus a modified version intended to serve the needs of those of whom such a situation applies.
Think objectively and describe what happened from a factual standpoint, don't write what you think might have happened and avoid the temptation of getting heated by the other person if they're not able to do the same yet. The sometimes unexpected challenge here is just how often we allow what we know from our past, influence the language we use to odescribe an event or occurance with perhaps unintended subtle bias.
After being able to separate an objective standpoint on the matter, now go back and ask yourself:
- Where does your story come from (information, past experiences, rules)? Theirs?
- What impact has this situation had on you? What might their intentions have been from the most extremely negative standpoint and conversely from the most positive standpoint? (If you assume a worst case scenario, you must always consider a best case scenario--in either case, whichever is more challenging to produce, it is strongly suggested to revisit the idea when we can more calmly put ourselves in the other person's shoes and be more open-minded to perspectives we otherwise wouldn't think of due to long-held beliefs, habits, or customs.
- What have you each contributed to the problem?
- Explore your emotional footprint, and the bundle of emotions you experience.
A great way to encourage cooperation is to replace any temptation of being accusational and replace phrases or words that assumes things about the other preson and express them as emotions or how those actions make you feel. The goal is to determine a description of the emotion so that the actions associated with what causes them can be realized and addressed rather than perhaps fall into the habit of allowing the expression of our emotions to describe what we might've made them out to be (i.e. "You're always doing this because you're so selfish!" would be replaced by "When you do this, it makes me feel like you don't care about me" - In the first part, we focus on the goal of addressing the behavior and in favor of being constructive and/or cultivating change/improved behavior, we avoid being accusational and refrain from mentioning how often the offense might occur. In the latter half, we avoid expressing the impression that is felt by us at that time, which is that they are a selfish person, and describe the underlying cause of those feelings as they relate to ourselves and avoids making a generalization which can, more often than not, make a person feel like they're being attacked and seen as our being accusational for the intention of seeking justice or punishment.)
***Editorial mark - unfiniished/revision to be continued***
- Ground Your Identity.
- What's at stake for you about you? What do you need to accept to be better grounded?
Step 2: Check Your Purposes and Decide Whether to Raise the Issue
- Purposes: What do you hope to accomplish by having this conversation? Shift your stance to support learning, sharing, and problem-solving.
- Deciding: Is this the best way to address the issue and achieve your purposes? Is the issue really embedded in your Identity Conversation? Can you affect the problem by changing your contributions? If you don't raise it, what can you do to help yourself let go?
Step 3: Start from the Third Story
- Describe the problem as the difference between your stories. Include both viewpoints as a legitimate part of the discussion.
- Share your purposes.
- Invite them to join you as a partner in sorting out the situation together.
Step 4: Explore Their Story and Yours
- Listen to understand their perspective on what happened. Ask questions. Acknowledge the feelings behind the arguments and accusations. Paraphrase to see if you've got it. Try to unravel how the two of you got to this place.
- Share your own viewpoint, your past experiences, intentions, feelings.
- Reframe, reframe, reframe to keep on track. From truth to perceptions, blame to contribution, accusations to feelings, and so on.
Step 5: Problem-Solving
- Invent options that meet each side's most important concerns and interests.
- Look to standards for what should happen. Keep in mind the standard of mutual caretaking; relationships that always go one way rarely last.
- Talk about how to keep communication open as you go forward.