**HOW** we communicate
makes all the difference
“Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings.
Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, [and]
in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
(Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1972)
If we are all responsible, what can we actually do?
It begins with how we listen and how we speak, and the opportunity now to take responsibility for acting in a different way than leads to the dead ends and oppression that we regularly see and experience.
Men and women have traditionally been told to shut down our feelings. In response, we have shut down much of a critical superpower that we all have thanks to the internal and external shaming: “You’re too sensitive!” “Cry baby!” “What a weakling.” “You’re reading into this too much.”
Such comments, and numerous related ones, have taught us to doubt our internal barometers of knowing when something is off. We read things at the very surface level, ignoring all the nuance that our acutely sensing selves can know actually motivates the speaker’s words and actions.
That leaves many people trapped and relegated to the models of speaking and power that often get honored and modeled as acceptable in our broken society: abusive, passive-agressive, loaded with unnamed emotion, etc. These models of communication have us talking at one another. In such instances we are left with a stale-mate at best and war/ accompanying war crimes at worst.
But what if instead we could reclaim our capacity for communication that moves us all forward together, and often creates an outcome that far greater than the sum of the parts? Through reclaiming simple, powerful tools that we already have within us, we can learn new ways of being and talking with another, understanding the person in front of us, and moving us together to new possibilities.
Through this work, we will learn:
to hear difficult or “edgy” communication from ourselves or from another as an invitation for us to know them - or ourselves- better,
to reclaim our capacity to know and sense that something lies under the surface
to sensitively explore what lies under the surface
to communicate directly, concisely and clearly in a way that
doesn’t put another on edge, but rather helps uncover what is really going on in order to move the communication forward
… verbal self defense dojo!
supports us in saying
RESOURCES:
Kasia Urbaniak’s classes, such as Verbal Self-Defense, Emotions into Power
Danya Ruttenberg’s book: On Repentance and Repair- Making Amends in an Unapologetic World
to hear this communication as an opportunity to help the speaker of this “edgy” language (whether it’s “me” or “the other”) know myself/themself better
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