Important addendum/clarification that arose as I read @AskYatharth's tweet then re-read my own: Your concerns matter AND are welcome.
7 tweets · December 2020 · 10 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
Important addendum/clarification that arose as I read @AskYatharth's tweet then re-read my own: Your concerns matter AND are welcome.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my relationship to transforming coercion into collaboration is not just internal but fractal & all scales. Thus if a voice says "hey, what you're putting out seems off to me," I must listen if I want to integrate it.
And although parts of me may initially interpret others' criticism or questioning as somehow in the way of dialogue, I know that ultimately the obstacle is the way.
Importantly: I'd be naive & exploitable with what I'm saying above if I were not also clear that it is utterly paramount to honor my own distrust. Sometimes I may sense that I cannot safely or enthusiastically engage in a particular conversation. That's okay! I am not obliged.
My resistance may be all about me—some innocuous feature of their vibe reminds me of someone I have baggage with. Or it may be all about them—I might be detecting a sociopath, narcissist, or compulsive liar. Those extremes are rare. It's usually waaaay harder to untangle.
Instead there's some little bit of my shadow that you can tell you can't quite trust but you can't quite name and if you did I might get defensive & deflect so hard you lose your train of thought... ...while my defensiveness is towards elements of *your* shadow that are present!
But whatever we're working with, to the extent that we can find it in ourselves to not demand that either of us trust the other more than we non-naively can, we can create space for a different kind of dialogue.