"David Cooley (DC): Once we get through navigating conflict together, afterwards, I feel a closeness to the people with whom I've gone through that process that didn't exist before. There's new level of safety that's very tangible. And in some ways, I see it as a legitimate spiritual practice. I think it's one of the fastest ways to sort of evolve our consciousness is to engage conflict in a way that's deliberate and intentional, but grounded in a relational paradigm."

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[00:00:32] Jenny Stefanotti (JS): That's David Cooley. He's a brilliant relationship coach who applies his background in restorative justice to conflict resolution in intimate relationships. And this is the Denizen podcast. I'm your host and curator, Jenny Stefanotti. In this episode, we're discussing conflict resolution. In particular, the distinction between an adversarial paradigm that pretty much all of us unwittingly hold and a relational paradigm that gets us what we ultimately want. Healthy, thriving relationships with those closest to us. 

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The difference between the two is quite literally life-changing. In the former, hurt leads to disconnection and distance with a slow and steady degradation of the relationships that matter most. And in the latter, hurt creates an opportunity for deeper connection and intimacy, which obviously reflects the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. This deep provocative practical conversation will help us move in that direction. 

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Our guest is David Cooley. His work interweaves not just his background in restorative justice, but also training and nonviolent communication, mindfulness-based practices, narrative therapy, somatic work, and attachment theory. He is also the author of Polywise with his partner, Jessica Fern, who we've had on the podcast as well. I have been fortunate to work with Dave in depth over the last six months. And it is an honor to bring him and his wisdom to the Denizen inquiry. 

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In this conversation, we clarify what the adversarial paradigm is. How culture and the criminal justice system affect how we show up in interpersonal conflict? The insidious ways that the adversarial paradigm shows up in our beliefs, responses, and internal narratives. I have confidence, you will see yourself as I described them in the conversation. How these things impact our nervous systems and the nervous systems of our partners? How the stories we hold distort how we perceive our partners in moments of conflict? And why all of this leads to increasing disconnection and degradation in our relationships? 

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And then we shift to talking about the restorative paradigm. Uncovering the restorative versions of the beliefs, and responses, and narratives that most of us subconsciously unknowingly bring to our relationships. We talk extensively about the nervous system and how critical self-awareness and self-regulation is to addressing conflict productively. And we close with some nuanced questions about fairness, forgiveness, and care, versus responsibility for our partners. 

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This is a longer episode than usual, but it's so deep, and potent, and potentially life-changing that I opted to share the full conversation with you. I refer, on many occasions, to David's amazing handouts, which go into great detail on things that we touch on in the conversation. What exactly are those beliefs? Those behaviors? The things that we say? The stories that we hold? That you will see yourself in them, I promise. That we bring to these conversations that is so pernicious. I'm very excited to distribute that to everyone as well. 

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I'll send it out in the newsletter that goes out with this. If you're not on the newsletter, then you can just email me directly through the contact link on the website, www.becomingdenizen.com. There, you can also find show notes and sign up for our newsletter where I bring not just our latest content to your inbox, but also announcements from our partners. 

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If you're a fan of the podcast and haven't yet done so, I highly encourage you to sign up for the newsletter. We've just started doing monthly in-person salons in the Bay area. And I'm distributing recordings of that content to newsletter subscribers. 

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Without further ado, here's Dave Colley. 

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[INTERVIEW]

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[00:04:00] JS: Jess and I did two episodes on consensual non-monogamy. The first episode was just the basics. And then the second episode was what is the relevance of this for systemic change? And we talked about how the work that we do helps us upgrade to the kind of humans that we need to be in the new paradigms that we talk about, the new systems that we talk about. 

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And, of course, we touched on the restorative justice part and your work. And she said, "Oh, I'm going to have to channel Dave for this one." And now, we have you for a whole hour to double-click on all of this. It's been a gift to work with you. My husband and I have struggled to find therapists that we get much out of. And you are actually the person we've probably gotten the most out of since we've been doing this work. And so, it's a real thrill to bring you to the podcast and share your genius with the audience and community. Because I know it will be incredibly impactful. 

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What I found so fascinating about your work is you surface something that I wasn't really aware of and I think most people aren't aware of. We talked about it a little bit in the nonviolent communication conversation. But it's this notion of, when we come to conflict resolution, we tend to hold an adversarial paradigm. That is very at odds with what we're actually trying to accomplish both in that conversation and in our partnerships writ large. Why don't we start there at the most basic level about this thing that most of us are holding that we don't know that's inhibiting us so significantly? 

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[00:05:38] DC: Yeah. If we kind of zoom out to a macro level, we're sort of looking at what are the precedents for the paradigms that we have for approaching our interpersonal conflict. Most of us are taking our queue from larger social arcs, larger social narratives, larger social models or processes. 

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And so, one of the things that I've seen on an interpersonal level is that many people have internalized, mostly unwittingly, an adversarial paradigm when it comes to conflict. What does that mean? It means when we step into a situation where we feel hurt by somebody else, we're starting with the premise, unfortunately, that I've been wronged. You're the wrongdoer. And so we've taken the language of this large systemic approach to conflict. And in this case, at least in the United States, we have the model of a criminal justice system that's based on punishment and retribution. And so, that's trickled down into our consciousness and found its way into what happens for our nervous system when we feel hurt by someone else? Even if it's a loved one. 

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Very quickly, your partner, your spouse, your family member, your friend, colleague, whoever it is who typically you feel very connected to, all of a sudden, they do something that you don't like that feels hurtful to you. And now, we're posited into this position where, "You've hurt me. I feel wronged by you. And now I'm justified in attacking emotionally, labeling, blaming, shaming, counterattacking, being defensive." 

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Why is it that we don't step into, when we feel wronged, a relational posture and explore why was that impactful? What do we need to move beyond it and feel connected, right? How do we restore our intimacy? Instead, we go into a process that's really indicative of this crime and punishment model. We lawyer up emotionally. We try to figure out who did what? 

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[00:07:38] JS: I'm laughing, because my husband has a caricature of me that is literally lawyer Jenny. He used to. He used to before we started working with you. 

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[00:07:45] DC: He used to. That's right. That's right. All that's changed now. But it's interesting we look for evidence to confirm our hypotheses that you're the wrong doer, that you did wrong. And so, that you're the one who needs to be put into that place. We're looking for the binary explanation. It's interesting to me the way that sort of the nervous system, when we feel hurt, starts to get activated and then gets filtered through this adversarial paradigm and interpolated or performed on a very individuated level. 

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[00:08:19] JS: It's so interesting. I hadn't thought about it until you just said it. But it makes a lot of sense. We have these stories that we're not conscious of that we've been exposed to. And that those subconscious narratives lead to that nervous system response. It's so interesting. Because in the moment, it's so reflexive to want to prove your point. And in the sense, if you're right, you feel like you've won and it's myopic. Because Terrence Real states this very well. You both lost. Because the cost is disconnection. And it sets you up for these power struggles. 

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Terrence Real's work has been really impactful for me. He has this book called New Rules of Marriage. And in New Rules of Marriage, he delineates five losing strategies. And losing strategy number one, of course, is being right. 

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[00:09:09] DC: That's right.

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[00:09:10] JS: And I was like, "Oh, okay. I just thought that's what you do." And it turns out no, it degrades relationships significantly. 

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[00:09:17] DC: One of the things I want to jump in and interrupt just to set more of that stage for that macro, like why facilitating training people to do? It's interesting to see, "Okay. Here I am. I'm getting this firsthand precedent of the people who are doing this on an institutional level are just reinforcing recapitulating these problematic narratives and trying to bring them into the restorative circle and it doesn't work. They have to go through their own training. What is it about the restorative paradigm that makes it so different?" 

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And what's fascinating to me is that it comes from Aboriginal culture. We in the West had to look outside of our own culture and our own paradigmatic frameworks to find anything that was actually restorative. And we had to borrow it, appropriate it, and integrate it, and it's still this marginalized little phenomenon. And yet, thankfully, there are people who are paying attention to it and recognizing it's having this influence. 

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[00:10:09] JS: I really appreciate that point. I think that also connects to this notion of individualism that came out of the Age of Reason, the Age of Enlightenment. And so much of our institutions are built on those beliefs. And Terrence Real touches on his follow-up book, Us, where he's really focused on this individualism versus ecosystem orientation. And how connected we actually are? And you feel it so acutely in your intimate relationships because your nervous systems are so interrelated. 

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[00:10:37] DC: That's right. 

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[00:10:38] JS: Right? If you think about the system dynamics of this in our relationships, you put this really well in your handouts, which are amazing, which I'm very excited to send to everyone when I release this in the newsletter. You talked about the adversarial paradigm conditions us to approach interpersonal conflict in a way that makes it worse because it pits us against each other. Robbing us of the opportunity to use it as a means of deepening our intimacy and connection with loved ones, which is what we ultimately want. 

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[00:11:07] DC: That's right.

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[00:11:07] JS: But then what's so interesting is, because that happens and because we have that experience on our nervous systems, we then fear and avoid conflict, which creates more disconnection. You have this of feedback loop that happens in interpersonal dynamics that leads to this slow and steady drift of disconnection. And then if you look at the Guttmann Institute's work, which does the most research out there on love and marriage, and why marriages succeed and fail, they talk about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which is criticism. This is when you have an adversarial paradigm. And then defensiveness, which is, "Oh, I want to be right. Let me defend myself." Which, ultimately, then gets to contempt. Because you're not actually resolving conflict. It just festers and builds over time. And then stonewalling, which is my nervous system is so overwhelmed by this. I shut down. And then that's when the relationships fall apart.

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[00:12:02] DC: Yeah. 

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[00:12:02] JS: And so, the work that you're doing and what we're talking about here is really a – it's a do-or-die skill when it comes to your relationships thriving. 

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[00:12:12] DC: No question. No question.

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[00:12:14] JS: I want your take on this, because I brought this up with Jess. I have some linguistic beef with the word conflict. It's inherently adversarial. Isn't it? Shouldn't we call it something else? 

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[00:12:26] DC: That's interesting. And I feel like I've had this conversation with somebody else. I don't remember when. But I love to geek out on the implications of words. Inherently, for me, I think it's just the way that we think about it. And, really, what is its sort of purpose? And so, I think the way that we think about it and the way that we approach it, which obviously is informed by this adversarial paradigm, makes it something that seems like it's a problem. Whereas I really see it now because of my training and reconditioning as something that's really welcome. I've learned to now have my default response when someone comes to me and say, "Hey, I don't like what you did." Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for not holding that against me. Thanks for not keeping that under wraps and then letting that become corrosive in our dynamic. What do you need? What would help here for you to feel better in the relationship? 

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And am I always perfect with that? No. Really, I noticed that difference in terms of that reflexive response. My default response is different through the hours and hours and hours of training. But it's now something that I really see as completely necessary for the kind of intimacy I want. Once we get through navigating conflict together, afterwards, I feel a closeness to the people with whom I've gone through that process that didn't exist before. There's new level of safety that's very tangible. And in some ways, I see it as a legitimate spiritual practice. I think it's one of the fastest ways to sort of evolve our consciousness is to engage conflict in a way that's deliberate and intentional, but grounded in a relational paradigm. 

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[00:14:03] JS: Yeah. It's very interesting how so much of this has a spiritual component where we can really slough off all the conditioning and get – today, really, we released an episode on living authentically. And it is a return to your spiritual self, if that's what you're – or your authentic self, or your true self.

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[00:14:21] DC: Right. Right. And for me, when I say spiritual, what I'm saying is a connection to life that's not just the individuated consciousness. So anytime we as self are able to connect to larger elements of consciousness, to me, that's spiritual. Touching the multiplicity of consciousness to me is spiritual. Connection, when I feel connected, when our nervous systems feel safe together, that feels spiritual. That feels like it's contacting the field. 

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[00:14:53] JS: That's very interesting. I appreciate that. I want to get into the relational paradigm in a second. But there was really I think a really interesting point too around the adversarial paradigm and guilt. And this has come up a lot in the work that I've been doing of late. Just guilt and shame. Can you speak to shame and guilt and how shame shows up to hold us back from all the beautiful things that you just articulated? 

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[00:15:17] DC: Oh, yeah. And that's what's exciting right now is that Jess and I are actually in the process of writing another book together about shame, specifically the shame triangle model, which is an internalized version of the drama triangle. And so, the reason why we're writing this book is because we found that in order to actually successfully change a lot of the conflictual dynamics relationally with people, we have to address the issue of shame. Because shame is – and Terrence Real talks a lot about this. He's one kind of the primary people for bringing this to the forefront of mainstream American consciousness. 

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Shame is actually one of the biggest obstacles to taking accountability in conflict. And so, for me, that's where its real value is, is understanding the mechanisms, and subtleties, and nuances of how shame shows up to prevent us from being able to do a restorative process. And so, for me, that's what it's like. Unless you touch that and understand that and its connection to conflict dynamics, you can also stay mired in what feel like intractable cycles.

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[00:16:21] JS: 100%. And it's so interesting, because I touch on the Hoffman Process a lot in the episode that came out. And they have this visual. It's like here's all your patterns. And here's all your behaviors. And here's all the things – and the center of it is this heart, which is your authentic self. And the first ring around that heart is shame. 

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[00:16:37] DC: That's right.

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[00:16:38] JS: And when we got into questions of shame, everyone had their own concise dark side shame message. 

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[00:16:45] DC: Yeah. Yeah.

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[00:16:48] JS: And my dark side shame message, because I bear it all to the community, was if you're not perfect and you don't make everybody happy, you're not good enough. And so, when Max comes to me and says, "Hey, here's this thing you did," there's that dark side voice that says, "You're not good enough. You're not perfect." And then I get defensive. 

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And so, that shame piece is so interesting. Because guilt is about I'm guilty about a behavior. Where it shames about me, as a person, in the same way that Gottmann talks about complaints about a behavior versus criticism about a person. And so, thank you for double-clicking on that. I can't wait to read the book. Hopefully, you'll come back talk to us about it when it comes up. 

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[00:17:30] DC: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Well, it's interesting too. Because, I mean, thinking about what you're saying is there's a difference too between – for me, guilt is an interesting sort of middle word. Whereas I like regret better than guilt personally. And so, if we're talking about the difference between feeling regret when you've done something that hurt somebody else versus shame, that feels more important. Guilt can sort of lean into the shame stuff for me a little too much. Whereas regret is like this feels like kind of the healthy shame. 

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Terrence Real uses the healthy shame versus unhealthy shame paradigm. For me, Brene Brown really was instrumental in saying it's regret versus shame. And so, I like what she says about regret. And I like the way that regret lands as a way of helping people make that distinction between behavior and self. 

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[00:18:18] JS: I like that a lot. I'm going to use that one. And, also, it's just this when we are more embodied. Because one of the things that you speak to that we'll get to is you have to be able to know yourself to know your needs, to express your needs. But it's also that things like anger and regret are telling us that something's off. And so, that really then informs how we can come to those conversations to repair. 

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Okay. The relational paradigm. What is it? We're going to get into the details. But at a high level, what's the relational paradigm?

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[00:18:49] DC: Yeah. The relational paradigm is really about centering hurt. It's really about when we have conflict, when we feel hurt by others, it's not about figuring out what's true. It's not about getting to a big T objective truth about what happened. It's about what are the impacts of your behavior? Even if we've got discrepancies in the way that we retell what happened. It's not about getting to the "objective truth" about what happened. But why are we interpreting what happened the way it is? What is it about what happened that's activating for us? 

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Restorative paradigm or the relational paradigm is all about understanding another person's experience. And to me, that's true intimacy. When I can share my experience with you and you can share yours with me and we're not trying to change or fix each other's experience, that's true intimacy. And so, I want true Intimacy in a context of conflict. But in order to do that, we have to have a non-reactive way to be able to understand why was what happened activating for you? What did it trigger? What did it bring up? What are the meanings of the stories of your hurt parts from the IFS perspective? Internal family systems. What is it about that got activated about what I did or didn't do or what I said or didn't say? How can I understand that? And then what does repair look like after getting to that understanding? For me, it's about creating that space where it's about understanding another person's experience of what happened between us when there's hurt that's surfaced. 

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[00:20:19] JS: And I think this point about – again, getting back to being right. We have this sense of like there is one reality. 

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[00:20:25] DC: That's right. 

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[00:20:25] JS: And we need to get on the same page about that. And Terrence Real in us says – I have my clients swallow this bitter pill. There is no room for subjective reality in relational best practices. There are two subjective realities. He says, "Who's right? Who's wrong? Who cares?" It doesn't matter. What I think what matters is that you're hurting.

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[00:20:49] DC: Right. Can we center that hurt? Can we center the hurt and try to understand where's that hurt coming from? Because a lot of time, what happens in the hurt between adults is that it's resurfacing hurt that comes from the past. Not always. You could do something that's an original hurt for me. But often is the case that we're reexperiencing trauma even if it's "small 't' trauma" of the past things that were disruptive to our sense of attachment, security, and relationships with caregivers, and family members, and early relationships, early attachments. 

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And so, what happens in these adult relationships, something happens, it triggers that remember an or that sense that that's what happened to me then. It's happening to me again. I don't want this to be the way things are. I need things to be different in our dynamic.

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[00:21:38] JS: Yeah. In this new paradigm, it opens up a totally different space of connection. The big paradigm shifts that we talk about in the Denizen conversation, it's from independence to interdependence. Or from me to we. But another one that is really central is from zero-sum to win-win. And so, if we're in who's right? Who's wrong? What's the objective reality? We're in power struggle. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose.

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[00:22:04] DC: That's right. 

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[00:22:04] JS: Whereas if we're in everybody wins, because now I understand you better. Now I know how to show up better next time. You feel heard. Everybody wins. When that voice in you wants to get defensive, don't ignore that. Turn that into curiosity, "Hey, that's really interesting that you felt that way. Because I did all these other things that I would think would make you feel different. Can you help me understand why you feel that way?" Instead of, "WTF. Why do you feel that way? Let me tell you all the other –" it's the same information. Totally different frame.

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[00:22:38] DC: Yeah. And I think another thing that's important to like sort of brought back in the question of the nervous system, how it influences conflict, is to understand what is the nervous system's purpose if we really reduce it? The purpose of the nervous system in our relational experiences even our relationship to ourselves is to suss out on a moment-to-moment basis, "Is the experience I'm having safe or dangerous?" Right? Through that process of neuroception, we're unconsciously tracking everything. Your every facial expression. Every sensation. Every phrase that you make or don't make is indicating a degree of safety or threat to our nervous systems. 

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[00:23:23] JS: And fascinating. This is why the Gottmann Institute can watch a couple the week after their honeymoon have a conversation about a sensitive topic and notice the body language, the eye contact, the tone and predict with whatever, 90% accuracy, whether they'll be married in seven years.

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[00:23:39] DC: Right. And I think that's really something that needs to be more understood. We need to understand the role of nervous system dysregulation in the way that then makes conflict harder, sometimes even impossible to actually become relational. If we don't understand the role of dysregulation and the role and impact of neuroception on the way that we perceive ourselves and other people in the moment of conflict, we're not going to have one of the most important tools. Because a lot of what happens in the adversarial paradigms, people think in terms of power. You're trying to control me. You're trying to get this advantage over me. It's your needs versus my needs. 

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From the relational paradigm, when we've got the nervous system at the center of that, we're just trying to figure out how do we get safe? What does safety look like? It's not about power. It's not about control. It's about what do each of our nervous systems need to feel connected? And feeling connected means we feel safe. 

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[00:24:36] JS: And trust and safety are the two most critical things.

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[00:24:41] DC: Safety, trust, and intimacy. To me, those are the pillars. You have to have safety to get trust. And then you need trust to get intimacy.

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[00:24:47] JS: Well, it's really fascinating this came up in the event that we did on Monday. And it came up at the Hoffman Institute, where there's 45 people in the room. And all these couples tend to come out of one cohort. Out in the world, you're in a room with 45 random people. Probably not going to find that many couples. 

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And I was asking my coach about it. And I was like, "What is this Hoffman Distortion Field? What's going on?" And he said to me, "I fall in love with people all the time." And what that revealed was when we are intimate with each other and vulnerable with each other, it is organic. 

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We watched this documentary about Tamera in Portugal. I don't know if you've heard about it. The Village of Lovers. 

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[00:25:30] DC: Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

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[00:25:31] JS: And this point came up too. They have this practice called The Forum where people get up and they reveal themselves intimately. It's really interesting how the love flows from that. I think, also, to your point about the nervous system, we're just really not in our right minds when we're not in our optimal zone when we're dysregulated. We literally can't make sense of and we don't have the same thought process. 

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[00:25:54] DC: That's right. We're different human. We're different nervous systems. When you're dysregulated, you're flooded with a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters that you wouldn't be normally. It's very literally like being under the influence of a substance. I don't think we actually understand the impact of being in a sympathetic hyper-aroused or a dorsal hypo-aroused state of dysregulation. We don't really understand yet collectively how impactful that is on our perception. I don't think we're honest enough yet about how distorting that is and how that plays so much into the dynamics of conflict between people.

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[00:26:31] JS: And nation states? 

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[00:26:32] DC: Totally. 

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[00:26:33] JS: I mean, what's so interesting, if you look at this from an interdependence perspective, we become different versions of ourselves that can't see clearly. Can't sense – I go into flight and like I'm out of here. Some people go into freeze. They shut down. They can't even engage. Having the self-awareness to know that until you can re-regulate yourself and come to center, you cannot engage productively. You can't even think straight. 

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[00:26:59] DC: Right. And so, it's funny because a lot of people come to me and they think the first thing they're going to learn are communication techniques. If they were mired in conflict. So you're going to teach us what to say. And, actually, what I'm teaching them first is how to regulate. And so, often, people are like, "What is this?" I'm putting so much emphasis on the nervous system. But I'm trying to really get people to understand you're not going to have a productive conversation unless you're enough regulated. You don't have to be perfectly regulated. But you have to be enough regulated. And a lot of people don't realize how much of an influence dysregulation plays on their conflict cycles.

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[00:27:33] JS: Yeah. I mean, having the self-awareness to know I'm triggered and I can't even – I need – what is it? 20 minutes or something like that that you need to come back to center? 

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[00:27:40] DC: Everyone's different. And it depends on how activated you get. Right? It's how quickly can you catch it? How self-aware are you? How much practice do you have tracking your own nervous system like on a 1 to 10? Do you know when you're at the tipping point? Do you know when you're about to go out of the neocortex and into the amygdala? Can you track that? 

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[00:27:58] JS: Yeah. And I appreciate when you can see that your partner is triggered saying, "Hey, I really want to hear what you have to say. But I'm having a hard time when you talk to me with that tone. Can we try again?" Again, talking about system dynamics in these interactions. Are you escalating your nervous system until somebody punches a hole in the wall or says something that they can't take back that they regret? Or do you have the skills to see it happening and know how to move it in the other direction? Fine. Everybody gets it at a high level. But what are the ways that it actually shows up? You articulate the difference between pseudo-feelings and feelings that's a really important point I. can't wait to make it. Responses, the things we say. The actions. The things we do. The narratives that we hold. What does that actually look like? Let's start with the beliefs. 

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[00:28:44] DC: All right. Let's do a functional application. What were some of the beliefs of the adversary paradigm that you saw showed up in your dynamic that we went over? 

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[00:28:53] JS: When you point out the things I say or do, I feel judged and criticized. That certainly comes up in talks about the shame, perfection – 

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[00:28:59] DC: Exactly. Exactly. 

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[00:29:01] JS: Right? That was one. If I acknowledge that my actions hurt you, I'm admitting that I'm wrong. 

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[00:29:05] DC: Right? That one. Another obstacle to acknowledgement. That often comes from the bigger, larger social narrative.

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[00:29:12] JS: Yeah. This came up more on Max's end. If your emotional pain doesn't make sense to me or isn't rational, it isn't legitimate. It doesn't conform to my stories about how somebody should feel if those things happen. So let me tell you why your feelings are wrong. 

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[00:29:27] DC: Right. It doesn't match my model of reality. It doesn't match my model of what's valid to be important in a conversation. 

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[00:29:34] JS: Yeah. Which I think there's the related belief to that, which is my worldview is purely objective and my perspective reflects the truth. 

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[00:29:41] DC: Yeah. We talked about that before too.

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[00:29:43] JS: Yeah. And I think for me, related to I feel judged and criticized and my need to be perfect. The protecting and maintaining myself image is more important than acknowledging my mistakes. Let me defend myself. I think that one came up for me. And there's this interesting one. I want to talk to this in a more nuanced way at the close of the conversation with this. Having suffered hurt in this relationship too means I don't need to acknowledge your hurt. 

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The way that tit for tat or fairness shows up to corrupt my ability to show up for this specific incident. And I think that's an interesting point. Right? Isolating this moment of hurt and not throwing in all these other things that are distorting how I can show up for this moment and just showing up for the moment. 

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[00:30:31] DC: Totally. And so, what I like to call it is stacking hurt. You bring hurt forward. Now I'm going to stack some hurt onto it to cancel it out. Right? Why didn't you never acknowledge this? This isn't healed for me. We can't process that. Stalemate. Right? And so, it behooves the person who's holding hurt to bring hurt forward in a way that's actually an invitation into a legitimate process. Not just sort of the adversarial kind of the snake trying to bite its tail. 

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A partner comes to you and they feel hurt by something you did or didn't do. Then they're the ones who have initiated that process. They've taken that initiative. That's them. They've taken that space. And so, it's not fair then to bring something else in to try to dismiss, or obscure, or distract from or detour from that focus. If you've got something that you're needing to process and it's still hurtful for you and do the same thing. Make the same invitation. It's a separate conversation. 

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[00:31:30] JS: And this is where the inclination to defend or the shame kicks in. And I'm uncomfortable with that shame. So let me deflect to something else. What I think is really interesting too in terms of where the stacking hurt comes up is people don't bring the hurt to them when it happens. And that withholding of that is something that creates disconnection. And then, especially, I think this tends to be more common in men. And then it festers and it bubbles up. And in that moment where the woman or the other partner will bring something, it'll trigger the shame and then all of it will spew out at once.

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[00:32:03] DC: Totally. Totally.

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[00:32:04] JS: Yeah. Not realizing that it's causing disconnection. And that was probably the biggest learning from all the work that I did was that there were all these ways that we were dismissing, deflecting, invalidating for all kinds of reasons and all kinds of patterns. But at the end of the day, that that was a central thing that we were both doing that was compromising our ability to repair.

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[00:32:28] DC: Exactly. You're talking about the ways the adversarial paradigm shows up in us internally. These are the beliefs. These are the messages that we hear in our heads in response to partners bringing hurt to us. Right? Hurt is centered. It's named. And then what does the adversarial paradigm do or puppet us to do in response? Unless we know how to center it and hold it in a restorative frame, what you're talking about now is what we typically do in response. 

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[00:32:58] JS: Yeah. I can go into that part. And then we can talk about pseudo-feelings. But the responses are the things that we say. 

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[00:33:03] DC: Right. 

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[00:33:04] JS: The things that we say reflexively when someone comes to us because we're holding that deeper frame of the adversary, which is you're judging me. I actually went through your list and I was like, "Getting defensive, that's deflecting. That invalidates." It's all doing something that doesn't stay focused on that experience. Are there any responses that you want to surface in particular that you feel, or you see a lot, or they're really prominent? You want to make sure people are like, "Oh, I probably do that." 

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[00:33:32] DC: I think one of the most problematic that I see is it's not necessarily a response, but it's actually tied to the behaviors, which is focus on intentions. I'm actually jumping out of this category. But I want people to hear this because I hear it so much is I didn't mean to hurt you. That wasn't my intention. And so, that's one of the things that I hear as a response is, "Well, what I meant was –"or my intention was to do this. And it's interesting the way that that, on the surface, seems like a good thing to do because you're trying to explain the why they did what they did wasn't intended to be hurtful. And that should dissolve that hurt feeling. And, yet, the overwhelming majority of the time, it actually doesn't feel helpful. It feels dismissive. It is. 

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And what people who are doing it don't realize is like that dismissive quality of it. Right? It's like, "Oh, you shouldn't be feeling this hurt because I didn't have the intention to hurt you. So that should cancel out your experience." And so, the hurt doesn't just cancel out. Really, wanting people to like be aware of that. 

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[00:34:33] JS: One of the things that actually was a big takeaway from, again, Terrence Real, I'm a big fan, nonviolent communication teaches us to say here are the facts. You said this. Here is how I felt. I felt hurt sad, lonely. We'll get into pseudo-feelings in a hot second. Because I had this fundamental human need. And they strip out the story. Because the story is always distorted for your own subjective reality, which gets us into trouble and sets us up to be defensive. 

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And so, NVC just strips it out. I said don't bother. I want facts. I want feelings. I want you to tie those feelings to fundamental human need that induces you to be empathetic, which it does. It induces that fundamental human need to show up for each other. But what Terrence Real adds in his feedback wheel, which I thought was so useful, is you inject that story. But you preface that story with what I made up about that was. When I tell you what I made up about that was you don't care about me. You're not thinking about me. It helps your partner understand why those actions led to that feeling, which supports them being empathetic and say, "Oh, I get that. I'm so sorry that made you feel that way." 

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[00:35:42] DC: Yeah.

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[00:35:43] JS: And then once that's said, it's validated. And then you can be like let me tell you how I was actually feeling.

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[00:35:48] DC: Another way to talk about that is through the process of externalization. And that's a concept that comes from – at least where I learned it was through narrative theory. And it's basically taking the narrative, the story that our parts make. So now we're blending internal family systems, modality with narrative theory and therapy modalities. 

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[00:36:08] JS: If we're introducing IFS, because I haven't introduced IFS, I'm actually hopefully doing an on it. For those who aren't familiar, let's just – 

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[00:36:15] DC: For those who aren't familiar, this is a process that was created by a brilliant theorist and practitioner named Richard Schwartz. And it's basically that human consciousness is not a coherent whole, but is actually a multi-dimensional experience. And there's parts of us emerge in response to our lived experiences trying to help us process things that in the moment we don't necessarily know how to process, especially when we're younger. 

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If we're talking about trauma – and this isn't just related to trauma. But trauma is a good way to talk about it. Initially, something traumatic happens to you. A part or parts of us emerge in response to try to deal with that, integrate that, metabolize that experience. And then those parts move on with us into the future as we become adults. And when circumstances start to recreate a feeling of that same trauma about to happen again, these protector parts – not all parts are protectors. But in this case, we're using that concept. Protector part comes online and starts to tell stories. And this is where the narrative comes in about what's happening, "Oh, this person is trying to get you. Remember what happened to us before? They're trying to do that. This is going to happen to you again. You've got to stop this. And you've got to do this to make that sort of make us safe."

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And so, it's interesting the way that these parts take on stories. And when we start to talk about those stories in an externalized way, like this is the story or this is the part, this is the element of my consciousness that I feel activated through my nervous system dysregulation, it can help the other person have that sense of safety. Like, ""Oh, okay. You're self-aware. You're recognizing the internal mechanisms that are generating this tension for you. You're not totally fused with that story. And you're not projecting that story as if it's truth." You've got a healthy distance from it. And now, together, we can talk about what do those parts need. Or what does that story need to relax itself? 

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[00:38:14] JS: Yeah. And really interesting from an IFS perspective when we're in conflict, it's often two protector parts having a conversation with one another.

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[00:38:23] DC: Totally. Right. And they're trying to reason out. Like the logic of your – I'm fighting with the logic of your part. My part is fighting with the logic of your part and vice versa. Instead of actually trying to figure out what do these parts need to actually settle down and stop telling these problem saturated stories? 

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[00:38:39] JS: Yeah. And this is actually a great segue into pseudo-feelings, because you talk about pseudo-feelings keep us stuck in the righteous victim stance. We need to understand these pseudo-feelings are the interpretations made by our hurt parts about our partner's intention. Tell us what pseudo-feelings are. Because just totally blew my mind when I learned it in NVC.

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[00:38:57] DC: Yeah. And it's so humbling. It's so humbling to see how often we do it and what the predilection is to do it. But this is the most – from what I've seen in my practice, the most common abuse of NVC. Right? The common misuse of NVC techniques. And it's the classic I feel plus a verb in its past participle. Essentially, I feel accused. I feel attacked. I feel shamed. I feel silenced. Even I feel misunderstood. 

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We're not actually revealing anything vulnerable. We're projecting a sense of hurt and basically saying to the other person I feel this way because this is what I think you're doing to me. I wouldn't feel this way if you weren't doing it. But none of those are emotions. None of those are actual feelings. We're not actually revealing anything emotional or vulnerable. It doesn't create empathy. It doesn't create the sense that, "Okay. This is a safe space," to start understanding you're hurt. It's basically you're telling me what I did wrong. And so, it's like kerosene on a conflict dynamic.

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[00:39:56] JS: Yeah. Using the word feel where you're like, "I don't know why you're upset. I'm just telling you about my feelings." 

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[00:40:03] DC: Right. Exactly. Saying I feel shamed in this interaction. And you're like, "Well, I'm not shaming you." "Well, that's just how I feel. You're negating my feelings. You're negating my experience." 

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[00:40:13] JS: Yeah. And it's just this fluke of the English language that we use the word feel in this context where it's actually like, I think. And when we use it in this context, it conveys, again, this interpretation and these stories that are biased and distorted in your subjective reality. Your traumatized parts showing up to the conversation. Yeah. 

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[00:40:31] DC: Totally. And another corollary is also the misuse of I need. And this is a mix between like where people are actually not naming real needs. They're naming strategies to get needs met, which are often very activating for people in the way that pseudo-feelings are. Like I need you to be more supportive. That's actually not naming a need. You're trying to control another person's behavior in order to get your need for whatever it is met. 

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The I need and the I feel, that's a big part of the work that I'm doing with people is to help them suss out the way that they're misusing those concepts and not actually revealing anything vulnerable or that's going to lay the groundwork for empathy later. 

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[00:41:13] JS: No. And it's just fascinating when you're using the word feel and you're trying to do it right. And you're doing it exactly wrong. And so, pseudo-feeling is such a critical thing to get. There's just so much gold in these handouts. And I wish we had time to go through all of them. But we'll send them out. 

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I think this is so helpful, because people don't realize that some of these things are just adversarial orientation that isn't leading to connection showing up. And so, the awareness of it is such a critical first component. But you closed this chapter of let me show you in finer detail what adversarial paradigms look like with these narratives, these broader narratives that reflect the adversarial lens. 

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And what you say is that there are five common stories that reflect the presence and influence adversarial paradigms. We need to identify them to see how it gives us a very distorted lens through which we see our partners. There's five of them. I think we can touch on most of them. Which one of those do you see really prominently? I know you see all of them. 

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[00:42:16] DC: Yeah. I see all. I mean, it just depends on the relationships. One of them that I hear a lot is them paraphrasing, "But this person doesn't know themselves. Their needs and wants don't make sense." And so we see our partners as irrational and not knowing themselves. It gives us this paternalistic relationship to them where we become dismissive of them when they start to talk about their feelings and needs. That's a big one. 

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Another one is this person's a drain on me. Right? You start to feel as exhausted, overwhelmed from being mired in a chronic conflict pattern or dynamic. And it's just like, "Oh, this person's just a drag." You start to forget what the value of this person is in your life. Right? There's these different stories that's like, "Oh, yeah. This starts to become the lived experience of who the other person is." And we forget the bigger story. There are good things here about the relationship. 

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[00:43:09] JS: Well, I think it's really interesting too we touched on earlier the notion of bringing the hurt right away or very soon. And what happens if you don't in the way that causes distant connection? But I saw this articulated really well on Instagram. Because my entire Instagram feed is nothing but relationships about these days. But seeds turning into weeds. These seeds turn into weeds. And the weed in the form of these stories. And this actually really happened with me and my husband where he didn't want to upset the apple cart. So he didn't bring things to me. And so, these very negative stories about me ossified. And then he saw me through that confirmation bias, through that distorted lens. And the Guttmann’s talk about negative sentiment override. Right? When you have this negative lens on them. Versus drain on me is a great thing to hold that's not going to do anybody any good. 

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[00:44:02] DC: Right? And is it true? Or is it just, "Yeah, you're frustrated by the dynamics that you don't know how to resolve, or get out of, or change." Versus this person is. There's an essentialization of who the person is and what their truth is to you versus behaviors. Focused on behaviors. And focused on the dynamics and patterns. But, unfortunately, we really internalize these messaging from the adversarial paradigm and it collapses who the other person is into a two-dimensional character. And it's usually not positive.

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[00:44:33] JS: Yeah. And you made that great point in the handout. Like you lose sight of their humanity. You're like dehumanizing the way that loses so much nuance. One of the things I appreciated is Denizen has six values. And two of them are humility and curiosity. And I think those are very central in the relational paradigm.

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[00:44:53] DC: 100%.

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[00:44:54] JS: Yeah.

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[00:44:54] DC: Yeah. Absolutely. Especially curiosity. I mean, both, for sure. But that curiosity. And it's interesting, because if we're thinking about from a nervous system perspective, curiosity and empathy are two of the later developments cognitively for human beings. And it's two of the things that go offline first when we reach a certain level of dysregulation. You literally can't access curiosity if you're feeling afraid. 

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Dysregulation cancels out the capacity to be curious even about your own experience. But then that means you're undercutting the capacity to be self-aware. It really reinforces the value and importance and the fragility or delicateness of curiosity in the ways in which we have to modulate our nervous systems in a way that's going to minimize dysregulation, maximize regulation, so that we have access to that very thing, that very attribute.

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[00:45:45] JS: Just to our point earlier, knowing when you're not in your optimal zone and taking a step back and saying, "I can't engage productively. I can't see straight. I need a time out." 

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[00:45:54] DC: Right. And is it do I just need a second to recalibrate? Or do I actually need to walk away? 

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[00:45:59] JS: And so, then you have this amazing chart, which has the five adversarial beliefs in their restorative analogs. Are there any in particular that you want to highlight?

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[00:46:09] DC: Let's see. It was fun to touch on the ones that came up in sessions with you. I like putting you on the spot. 

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[00:46:18] JS: All right. Well, again, I think that we touched on it earlier, this intent. I recognized I can cause hurt even if I don't intend. And I care about my partner's emotional well-being. And so, really getting curious and understanding that and not going into defensive I think is – that was one. Then the analog to I suffered. And so, I don't need to acknowledge your hurt, which is we are here now to – instead of stacking hurt, we are here now to center your hurt and repair from that. And maybe you brought that to me in a way that hurt me. We can talk about that afterwards. But I'm not going to make this about me just yet, you know? 

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[00:46:56] DC: That's right. And that references the next one, right? Which is we want to be aware that our response to the way that someone's naming hurt doesn't start to hijack the addressing of that initial hurt. Because, often, what you'll see is that. The problem is your tone. The problem is the way that you're saying what you're saying. And that can often be used as this way of hijacking or just missing that focus on the central hurt. 

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We're often wanting to name, "Okay. I'm realizing I'm getting activated by the way you're saying this. But I don't want to hijack that in terms of focus and emphasis on what you're saying. I recognize you're bringing something forward. I'm seeing I'm getting activated in response. I just want to name that, so I can process it, metabolize it and come back to focus with you.

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[00:47:45] JS: Again, we're talking about shame earlier. That gets at this very, very deep I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough. And that discomfort. And I think you articulate it very well. You say discomfort is key to my emotional growth. And, therefore, necessary and desirable. I must not confuse emotional comfort with safety. 

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[00:48:06] DC: Yes. A big one. 

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[00:48:07] JS: Yeah. It's this awareness of, "Ooh. My shame response is getting triggered right now." And sharing that with your partner when your partner is coming at you with something is an opportunity for more understanding and intimacy in that moment of conflict.

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[00:48:19] DC: And that separation between discomfort and safety is massive. Because a lot of people have blended those two things. I feel uncomfortable emotionally. That means I don't feel safe. And people often shut down an argument or a conversation, a discussion saying, "I don't feel safe." When what they're actually saying is I don't feel comfortable. 

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[00:48:38] JS: Yeah. That's a very great point. I think this is worth surfacing, because it's such a critical point. The adversarial, if your emotional pain doesn't make sense to me or isn't rational, it isn't legitimate. And the relational equivalent to that is hurt is complex and always grounded in real experience. I don't have to understand or agree with it for it to be valid. That's a big paradigm shift right there. 

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[00:48:59] DC: It is. It's massive. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. It's not about establishing truth. It's not about establishing "rationality or legitimacy" to the context. It's about understanding the other person as much as we can wanting to understand, trying to understand what is your experience. And even recognizing you may not even understand. But at least validate that they're having the experience that they're having and figure out, "Okay, what is it that you're needing?" But it's a huge paradigm shift.

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[00:49:30] JS: Yeah. It's a very, very, very big one. And then you've got the equivalent responses and thoughts. There's just so much great stuff here. I know I can't get into all of it. Here's one I want to surface. Adversarial. I just said one little thing. You're being too sensitive. This is dismissing. 

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[00:49:47] DC: Right. 

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[00:49:48] JS: This has just been game-changing for me. It looks like I missed the mark with what I said. This to me has made the biggest difference. I'm sorry I impacted you like that. Is there anything you need in terms of repair? 

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[00:50:00] DC: Yeah. 

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[00:50:01] JS: Acknowledging it happened. I regret that that happened. I think the regret versus guilt, versus shame is really helpful. What do you need now? 

[00:50:10] DC: Right. It's not digging into the story at all. It's just bypassing the person's “need” to justify or rationalize their experience. It's just, “Oh, I see you’re hurt. Great. Let's handle that.” 

[00:50:24] JS: Yes, yes. That's centering the hurt, which is such a key thing. 

[00:50:28] DC: Yes, and that takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of practice to not default into the, well, explain to me and justify me why this is even worth talking about, or why I should hold this space for your hurt. Make it make sense to me first. 

[00:50:41] JS: Yes. That also kind of – it focuses on the actual event and experience. It's also taking it out of something that feels like an attack on you. 

[00:50:52] DC: Again, that doesn't even require you to be in agreement with the logic underneath the person's experience. To acknowledge hurt, you don't actually have to be in agreement. You're just seeing that, yes, you were hurt. I see that. 

[00:51:04] JS: Well, there's so much we can get into. We're going to have to direct to your amazing –

[00:51:09] DC: Yes. You're handing them out, so. 

[00:51:11] JS: But let's talk about, before we close, how do we actually get there. This conversation in your handout surfaced a lot of awareness. Okay. Now, I even know there's a such thing as an adversarial paradigm that I'm doing wrong, and I thought that was just what people do. Okay. Now, I've seen it at a nuanced level, and I can check the box. Oh, shit. I do that. I do that. I do that. This is what it looks like. 

But you work with lots of people actually doing this. How do we actually get there? What does it look like in practice? Because when you're in the moment and often you're activated and you've been doing these things for decades for most of us, what does it actually look like in practice in your own behaviors to make this shift beyond awareness?

[00:51:49] DC: Absolutely, totally. I think, like I said previously, the first step is really learning how to clock and track your dysregulation. What I'm wanting to emphasize to people is that you're not going to have a productive conversation about the content of your conflict if you're not able to manage the dysregulation and be transparent about it. 

One of the first things I'm teaching people how to do is name the dysregulation, take a pause, and then figure out, okay, can you actually stay in proximity to this person in this conversation right now, in this moment. Name what's coming up for you around that activation, what's happening in terms of that trigger and that trigger response. There's a lot of self-awareness practices that I'm teaching people right out of the box, or I'm sussing out what is their relationship to their own trigger awareness, their own nervous system. Do they know about the concept of dysregulation? Where is their relationship to all that? 

That's a lot of the groundwork is making sure that people understand how to relate to their nervous system when activated and then what to do when they do get activated and working out protocols that work for that particular relationship. Okay, if you're this level of activated, you're stopping. You're saying, “I realize I'm getting triggered by what you're saying. I need a second to figure out why this is activating for me.” I'm teaching people these little pauses in these things, very specific things to say to make the activation transparent and then say to the other part, “Okay, this is what I'm needing in this moment in order for this to not feel so activated.” 

I'm teaching them how to augment what's being done by the other person in a way that can actually be received and feel safe. Do they need a tone change? Do they need – is it a content of the statement change? Are they needing an acknowledgment of something else first? There's these things that people are needing for the conversation to not feel activating for them. I'm helping people figure out what's the thing that you're needing to be different right now to manage your dysregulation. That's a huge part of the work is just getting through that. 

[00:53:57] JS: Two things on that. One I think is really valuable is just knowing when it's the right time to have a sensitive and hard conversation. Some people might just dump it on them because it's on their chest, and they just want to. It's like you just walked in the door from work. You don't realize that you're dysregulated from something else that happened, and so that spillover that can happen is important to introduce it at the right time, as soon as possible but not necessarily in the moment at the right time. 

[00:54:22] DC: Right, getting consent. Getting consent to have a conversation about something that's potentially activating for one or both of you. 

[00:54:29] JS: Yes. The Gottman Institute just recently released a book called Fight Right, which –

[00:54:34] DC: Yes. It's great. 

[00:54:35] JS: Yes. They regurgitate a lot of the seven principles, but I recommend this book to people who specifically want a conflict resolution lens on it. But one of the things that they introduced in the very beginning that I thought was really useful, it's very pertinent to this conversation, is understanding what your conflict archetype is effectively. They talk about people who are avoidant or validating or volatile. The avoidant people, they don't talk about it. They avoid it. There are lots of couples that don't fight, but there's massive disconnect because they never resolve anything. Then there's validating where you're more able to do the things that we've been talking about. Then there's volatile where you're just more likely to be fiery. 

Another one of Terrence Real’s losing strategies is unbridled self-expression. But what was really interesting that the Gottman book talked about was basically your blueprint, your archetype has a lot to do with the environment that you grew up in and the nervous system effect of these conversations. If you're avoidant, your nervous system is very sensitive to these conversations. Part of why you're avoiding them is because they're so uncomfortable, whereas if you grew up in a fiery household and you don't have the same nervous system response, so you can actually engage that way far more productively than some other person. Just knowing what your default is and what your partner's default is also really important. 

[00:55:53] DC: That's one of the things that we actually talk about in the upcoming book, but we talk about how there's a powerful correlation between the way that the specific kind of nervous system activation that you go into as an individual, your particular brand of dysregulation and the way that correlates to your particular attachment style. When I hear that archetypes as a model, basically what I'm hearing is, oh, they're modeling or giving people a different nomenclature for how to understand what is your attachment style and what is your blueprint for your nervous system's response to dysregulation. Both of which are going to be created or forged in the fires of your early relational experiences. 

[00:56:32] JS: What about people who have a dysregulated nervous system as a homeostasis because of childhood trauma? Do you see that?

[00:56:41] DC: Oh, yes. Yes, a lot. Yes, I mean –

[00:56:42] JS: Can you say anything about that? I think that's relevant, and I'm doing another conversation on healing your nervous system at the root and trauma that will be complimentary to this. It would be great follow on to this. 

[00:56:53] DC: I mean, when it comes to working with clients who have named and recognized trauma, there's actually a lot more of that work that needs to be done upfront around regulation because often one of the impacts of trauma is that you get stuck in one of those dysregulated states. You get stuck in sympathetic or dorsal, or you can't read cues. A lot of times, what happens for people with big trauma is that they don't have a sense of what's safe and what isn't. That can go both ways. You're not picking up on danger cues that you should be, or you're hypervigilant and picking up danger cues everywhere. 

Understanding the way that those dynamics start to affect people's nervous system and the way that that starts to create these very specific and challenging dynamics in conflict is really important. A lot of the work with them becomes very centered on that regulation piece and being able to interpret, like helping them start to relearn through somatic work what actually is safe versus uncomfortable. 

[00:57:58] JS: Yes. I have to punctuate the importance of it being somatic work. Because a lot of therapy sits in your neocortex, it actually doesn't address the trauma in the nervous system because it doesn't live there. 

[00:58:08] DC: That's right. One of the things I joke about in terms of the work that I do, the Restorative Relationship Conversations model, is it's kind of like CrossFit for conflict resolution. I'm taking from everywhere that works, right? For me, the somatic is a big piece of it. I work with a practitioner in particular, and she has a focus in somatic awarenessing. There’s often a lot of back and forth between referrals because there's places where I see, “Oh, this client really needs to stop and put some time into the somatic experiencing category in order to come back and actually do the work I'm offering in a more substantial way.” 

[00:58:44] JS: Okay. A couple of closing questions because as I've been doing all this work, there's a couple of things where I've just been – it feels nuanced, and I don't have clear answers, and I get different answers from different people. So I'm curious about your perspective. One of them is this question of fairness. You don't want to be tit for tat, but you want your relationship to be reciprocal, and fairness shows up in this. You did this to me, so I can do this to you. What is your thought on the role of fairness in relational dynamics?

[00:59:14] DC: Yes. It's a great question. I think there're sort of different things, depending on what we're talking about specifically. But I think the concept of fairness is something that really comes from, in my mind, the paradigm of conflict resolution that we've inherited from culture at large. What's fair? What's just? 

[00:59:31] JS: John Rawls literally has a book called Justice as Fairness. 

[00:59:33] DC: Right. For me, I'm less concerned about fairness in these dynamics. For me, relational or restorative processes are less about fairness and more about addressing harm and hurt. It can in some ways sidestep that question. It's not about fairness. It's about acknowledging hurt, understanding how the impact of behaviors really took their toll, and then figuring out what do you need to make that feel different. 

Then there are moments where there are things that there are dynamics, power imbalances in certain circumstances, for example. It's important to say, “Yes, it's not fair,” and just acknowledge, “Yes, you're right. There's an imbalance here.” Be able to say, “Okay, what do we need? Is there a way to counterbalance that through the acknowledgment and not pretend that there's a dynamic that isn't, right?” 

[01:00:23] JS: Yes. It’s like fairness shows up in relationships. When fairness feels off or reciprocity feels off, that's a hurt that you center in a restorative conversation. But there's not this sense of it's not fair that the exact same behavior causes a different response, and you versus me, and I have to do more to recover from it, right?

[01:00:42] DC: Right, right, and in the sense that we're all different. On one level, yes, it's true. It's not fair. It's not fair that these differences exist and that some people's differences make certain experiences, lived experiences harder than for other people. There is a lack of fairness there in that circumstance. In terms of what we're trying to do in the context of repair, we're not centered on fairness. That's not what we're trying to achieve. 

[01:01:07] JS: I think that's a really great point because it's come up in the sense of you did this thing to me, and I forgave you. Now, I did something to you that's analogous, and why aren't you moving on as easily as I moved on?

[01:01:20] DC: Right. That's where the emphasis on the nervous system is really important, really teaching people like, “Yes, you may be able to have the same kind of experience here with this kind of repair.” Then you offer that to your partner, and it doesn't happen, and it's like the hurt keeps recycling, and you have to keep addressing it multiple times. You think, “Wait a minute. I was satisfied with this. Why aren't you? Why aren't you responding the way I responded to the same situation?” That's where the emphasis on helping people understand nervous systems function differently. Personal histories are different. 

[01:01:54] JS: This is a great segue to the other nuanced question that I had for you, which is around forgiveness. You have this great quote. Hurt is not something that simply goes away because we acknowledge it once. I recognize that pain and grief have their own timelines, and the process of healing is different for everyone. We talked about this in the living authentically conversation I just released. In the Hoffman Process, their perspective is that you have to express before you can forgive. It's like cheap forgiveness if you forgive without feeling your feelings because sometimes you're like, “Ah, I thought we moved on. You forgave me, and now it's coming up again.” 

What you said to us was, “Hey,” to the quote that I just surfaced. You're in your own process of feeling your feelings, and it's bubbling up. It still needs to be felt. Take the moment to be with it. Don't try to fix it. Now, we know what to say. I'm sorry that you're feeling that way. Is there anything that I can do to help? There's this tension between, on one hand, this notion of we have to feel it to be able to forgive or this other notion of we can forgive but acknowledge that they're still a process of feeling. What's your take?

[01:02:57] DC: Yes. For me, forgiveness doesn't factor into the process of repair. For me, forgiveness is something extra, and I know that's not how everyone feels about it. But for my process, I'm not trying to guide anyone intentionally to forgiveness, and I'm not advocating for forgiveness. I'm advocating for repair. If forgiveness comes as a symptom, as it comes of a byproduct of a good repair process, great. If someone feels inclined or motivated to forgive, sometimes when people don't have the opportunity to have closure with someone that has hurt them, either they've died or they're not willing to be in a process with them, they need for themselves a process of forgiveness, or with parents something that you can't rectify directly interpersonally. 

People need a closure process, and forgiveness is often a really powerful way to do that. I see that and honor that. But in an interpersonal process where people are there working together for repair, I'm not advocating for forgiveness. I'm advocating for repair. For me, repair is predicated on acknowledgment and validation of each other's experiences, and then making a commitment to do something different because that's what we're wanting is something to be different. I don't want to have this experience again with you. We need the acknowledgment to say, “Yes, okay. I see how this was hurtful. I see the impact. My commitment is to not do that again.” 

[01:04:19] JS: But what about the impact on a relationship of holding a grudge? If I don't forgive you and I hold a grudge and it keeps coming back. 

[01:04:26] DC: Well, that's what's interesting to me is that I don't see people who have done repair that feels good to both people who have grudges. But that's different than hurt resurfacing because you could have an experience of hurt resurfacing. That's not necessarily in response to something that someone has done to you, but it's just like you're just feeling it again. You're remembering. This was painful. I remember this. I'm just remembering in this moment. Then you're letting the other person know, “This is where I'm at. This is the transparency of my emotional experience. Are you willing to sit with me in it and just help it move?” 

What we're trying to do is get emotions to flow, to move and create space for that to happen. It's not about fixing or changing that. It's just about can we create a conduit through which your lived experience can move. 

[01:05:14] JS: You mentioned in the handouts a distinction between these little every day, “Hey, you made this dismissive comment, and that didn't feel good,” versus these – Sue Johnson calls them relationship traumas. They’re just like –

[01:05:25] DC: Yes, ruptures. 

[01:05:27] JS: At the core shake the foundation of can I trust you to be there for me. Do I feel emotionally safe? 

[01:05:33] DC: Totally. 

[01:05:34] JS: I think it's interesting when we talk about the more extreme moments of hurt that actually are traumatic, that actually supersede what our ability is to process. Then they get stored in their body. I think there's something interesting about repair. You can repair at a conversational level. But really healing from that trauma in the person's nervous system requires the somatic work. It requires something else. 

[01:05:59] DC: Right. That's where the crossover, I think, for me is. It's in those cases where you've got someone who suffered a big relational rupture, and then you have repair work. But then that somatic experience keeps resurfacing. You've got one partner who felt responsible or was named as the responsible party in that rupture saying, “I thought we did the repair already. Why are we still touching this again? You're not going to repair. You're just going to keep holding this over me.” For the person who's living it and experiencing that rupture in terms of the somatic experience is needing to be able to just have a container for the emotions to flow, to move. 

What's interesting is once people learn how to do that without shame and feeling like they're being held to the iron of retribution of like, “Oh, you just keep wanting to have me suffer this again because you felt hurt,” once they realize that's not what's going on, the nervous system just needs this process of experience and release. They actually can hold a really beautiful space. It becomes really profoundly healing where people actually can start moving through childhood stuff where it's like, “Wow.” Their parents never let them have a full cycle of a lived experience. At some point, we're usually getting shut down in our response to something hard because our parents can't handle it. 

For a partner to be like, “Oh, yes. I see how this was painful for you. I see how this is going to keep coming back until it's really worked through,” and that's okay, and that doesn't mean there's something wrong. It just means this is how the body works. They can depersonalize it, let it go, let go of the shame, let go of the stigma, and then just hold this really beautiful neutral space that creates a profound intimacy. 

[01:07:39] JS: I really appreciate that. 

[01:07:41] DC: I see that a lot. Infidelity is one of the best cases. Working with people who use infidelity well, it happens. They see it as a rupture and then lean into real repair. That is not an easy thing to recover from. The percentages are low of people in terms of the relationships that survive it. But the ones that do often have these renaissances in terms of just awakening, in terms of like, “Wow, I was so asleep at the wheel. I see so many things that I didn't see that were causing this.” Now, they go through this process of self-awareness and discovery. They’re starting to hold spaces for each other, and it is. It's that long-term rebuilding of trust for the nervous system, but it can be such a transformative process for people. 

[01:08:25] JS: Yes. I love that. In the context of infidelity, Gottman talks about that always comes after. Someone's just not getting their needs met in their relationship, right? They don't – if they had processes to do this. Or they would take it as far as they could, and they'd realize there's something more fundamental, and I can't get my needs here. Then you exit with integrity. I think one of the big takeaways of an NVC was this notion that every behavior stems from a human need. 

[01:08:52] DC: That's right. 

[01:08:53] JS: It really helps you see from a compassionate stance, this thing that you're doing that really hurts me. Get curious. What is it that is going on with you that led you to do that? As long as you're in your optimal zone because if you're triggered, you can't see. You can't see it at all. 

[01:09:07] DC: Right, totally. 

[01:09:09] JS: All right, two more questions. The other thing that I've been noodling on in a nuanced way is this distinction between care and consideration and responsibility for emotions because sometimes people will say, “Well, I'm not responsible for your emotions.” NVC, even you can kind of weaponize NVC and say, “I'm not responsible for how you're feeling. Your human need is responsible for how you're feeling.”

At the same time, I think people can be overly responsible for someone's feelings, and that results in an intense shame response. It’s very uncomfortable. They have a hard time showing up. Or responsibility for other people's feelings in the sense of I'm not doing what I need for me because I'm contorting myself to manage your emotional experience. I just think it's an interesting nuance. How do we hold care and consideration for our partners while not becoming responsible for their emotions in a way that is disadvantageous to our objectives? It feels nuanced to me. I'm curious, your perspective. 

[01:10:04] DC: Yes, for sure. It totally is. I think that's a fantastic question. Yes. I think that's why the centering hurt concept is really important for me because what we're trying to do is acknowledge the impact of our behavior. For me, it's not that I'm responsible for your feelings. But through the acknowledging that my behavior, whether I intended or not, had an impact on you, I show care through the acknowledgment that our behavior is always having an impact, whether it's good or bad, positive or negative, safe or dangerous. 

All we're trying to recognize in our experiences with partners or other people that we feel close to is I see how what I did or didn't do impacted you. That doesn't mean I'm responsible for your feelings. It means I'm going to hold space for the impact, and part of the impact are the feelings that you had. 

[01:10:52] JS: Yes. That's about care, and love is about care. 

[01:10:54] DC: Right. I care about how you feel. I care about how my behavior impacts you. I want to know. That's really the care is that disposition to learn. Constantly be learning and knowing that we're always going to have to confront situations that don't feel good together and adjust our behavior. 

[01:11:14] JS: That helps for emotional attunement, all these conversations. You're not doing the same thing over and over again, hopefully. You're learning, “Oh, I'm not going to do that again. What do I need to do differently moving forward?” 

[01:11:23] DC: Right. I don't want to trigger you. I care about you. Versus I'm responsible for your feelings. I have to take care of you. Because you feel upset, now I'm beholden to you in a codependent pattern, which is more about an attachment or adaptive survival strategy. 

[01:11:42] JS: I think it's also really interesting. What you just said made me think about preempting repair because I was recently in a relationship where respect and consideration is really important to me. It was interesting these instances where I just – I didn't feel considered, and I was hurt, where one could say, “Hey, I need to bail and do this other thing, and I know that's going to disappoint you.” Even just acknowledging the impact that it's likely to have shows consideration. Even if I'm still doing the thing that's going to cause that feeling, just acknowledging that hurt. 

You can even do it preemptively because you're like, “You're probably going to feel this way. I know you well enough to know that you're probably going to feel this way.” You don't get into it in your materials, but it is an interesting piece of it, right?

[01:12:31] DC: Yes. I think it's interesting. It's interesting that you're saying that, and the example you're using is interesting because I want to distinguish. If you're talking about a pattern that has been explicitly stated as, “This is painful. This is triggering for me,” and you’re preemptively acknowledging that to create an acknowledgment, an attunement saying, “Hey, I know this is hard for you. I know this is something we've talked about. I just want that to be explicit here, and then hold space for whatever may come up because this is the decision I'm making.” That's one thing versus mind reading or being in a dynamic where, “Oh, is this going to be a problem?” I don't want people to anticipate things that aren't named explicitly. I want people to –

[01:13:15] JS: Sure. But there's kind of basic ways you treat other people. 

[01:13:18] DC: See, that's the thing. That gets into a very gray dangerous area for me where people start to come into relationships of universal expectations about this is how you behave in relationships. I'd rather you do something that doesn't feel good, and then the other person is aware of themselves enough to say, “Hey, this is how this is landing for me. This is why it feels this way for me. I'm not even saying you did anything wrong. I'm just saying this is the impact of what you did, and this is my preference moving forward.” I want people to teach people like what is their needs in the relationship. 

[01:13:54] JS: But you can come in for a basic blueprint for how you treat each other. 

[01:13:58] DC: Yes. I mean, for sure. I'm just saying I want to make sure that we don't slip into that gray area because, yes, are there certain things that you assume people don't want to experience like certain kinds of abuse, certain kinds of mistreatment? For sure. What I'm talking is a little more nuanced. 

[01:14:14] JS: Yes. I appreciate how this paradigm causes increasing intimacy, increasing attunement. I mean, I keep saying it. Hey, every opportunity is an opportunity for connection, and yet actually getting there and practicing our behaviors has been a lot harder. But we're getting there. We've gone for a long time. But this is really a phenomenal conversation, and I'm not going to not ask the last question, which is if there's one thing that you wish people would know, what would it be?

[01:14:42] DC: There's a lot of things that I wish people knew, but I think this is the thing that's been coming up a lot. It’s been interesting to think about more and more as I see it surface in relationships and interrelational conflict. I want people to really understand the impact of dysregulation, but this is the reason why in terms of the nuances. I think in the United States what I see is that a lot of people, if we're using a polyvagal map where ventral vagal is the resting place, the social engagement place, the place for our nervous system where it's in safety, where we want to be, what I'm seeing more and more is that many of us are actually idling in kind of a low-level sympathetic or dorsal state. Maybe we have these peak moments where we're touching into the ventral vagal.

But a lot of people are actually riding on low to mid-level sympathetic or dorsal energy dysregulation; frustration, worry, anxiety, irritation. These are things that we've normalized to such an extent that we don't realize how impactful this kind of low to mid-grade dysregulation is actually priming us for adversarial interactions. I want to –

[01:15:55] JS: In addition to the subconscious adversarial frames that we're holding. 

[01:15:58] DC: Exactly. What I'm realizing is people need to see the way that their nervous system is primed more than they think. When someone asks you, “Hey, are you okay? Are you feeling off, or are you feeling dysregulated? Are you feeling irritated,” you don't say, “I'm fine.” You don't say, “I'm good.” You take a pause. You sincerely think about am I a little bit activated already. 

[01:16:24] JS: I love that, and I think this actually brings us full circle because we talked about the cultural context of justice that gets us to the adversarial paradigm. But we're closing with just the cultural context of overextension and busyness and dissociation from the body and insufficient self-care. That is so much of a part of the systems that we're in that also primes us for the adversarial perspective. 

[01:16:51] DC: Yes. I think that's right. I think we live in a contemporary world where our nervous systems are pretty jacked up a lot of the time. I don't think we really understand how much overwhelm, how much baseline dysregulation is impacting our relational experience, so wanting to sensitize people to those larger macro influences. 

[01:17:11] JS: Also, just the fact that we're all influencing each other. It's like you're at your limit, and you just flipped me off on the freeway, and now my nervous system is thrown off, and now I'm spilling that over into my husband or my kids or my co-workers. Then they spill it over into –that interconnected nature of our nervous systems is really –

[01:17:29] DC: Yes. It's kind of the karma of conflict. Can we interrupt the cycle somewhere along that sort of trajectory?

[01:17:35] JS: Well you're doing incredible work to help that happen. 

[01:17:39] DC: I’m trying. I’m trying. 

[01:17:40] JS: This is amazing. Thank you for the depth that you bring to your work and that you brought to this conversation. 

[01:17:47] DC: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so fun to work with you and Max, and just it's such a – yes, it just feels like a family affair. 

[01:17:56] JS: Well, yes. I mean, no. Jess did really well. I can't wait for the next book. Totally bringing you back when that comes out. I've already gotten some glimpses of it from both of you. But, yes, you're both so amazing and so inspiring. Your story is so inspiring as well. Thank you. I really appreciate you. 

[01:18:13] DC: Yes. Thank you. It's great to be here. 

[OUTRO]

[01:18:16] JS: Thank you so much for listening. Thanks to Scott Hanson, also known as Tyco, for our musical signature. In addition to this podcast, you can find resources for each episode on our website, www.becomingdenizen.com, including transcripts and background materials for our most essential topics like universal basic income, decentralized social media, and long-term capitalism. We also have posts summarizing our research, which make it easy for listeners to very quickly get an overview of these particularly important and foundational topics.

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