Dialogue Description:

What communication patterns do we notice in ourselves? How does white female socialization (and other forms of socialization, cultural values, etc) factor into these patterns and how does it affect our ability to engage in meaningful and often difficult conversations with friends, family and folks with different perspectives? We will discuss these themes as well as learn and practice strategic non-defensive communication – so that as we head home for the holidays, we can make this year the one when we don’t just grit our teeth and ignore the racist or otherwise marginalizing comments that many of our families make!

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

“If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family.” – Ram Dass

  • we spent time going around sharing what brought us to this discussion, dynamics we have been noticing lately, and/or a difficult conversation that is up for us
  • introducing the work of Sharon Ellison author of “Taking the War Out of Our Words” and founder of “Powerful Non-Defensive Communication”
    • http://www.pndc.com/
  • we read through the 6 Defensive Reactions she lists, which can be helpful to recognize, identify and name what is going on – within this we discussed where we have resonance and how
  • being socialized as white and female and lead to a propensity to some of the defensive reactions
  • also noting that these defensive patterns or strategies can be honed as actual skills (i.e. presidential and other political debates!)
    • surrender-betray – looking up to someone, hierarchy, maintain relationship, times it can be true they’re having a bad day, can be productive, care-take, the “should” what I did wrong, can be hard to answer alone and tough to navigate, reads as very feminine, privilege prevents going to blame, if it’s my fault then I have control – safety as gender trauma, co-dependency can play into this, try to control this person
    • surrender-sabotage – passive-aggressive, at work the more I threaten boss the more I threaten my job, acrimony – how impact communities being outwardly perfect in social justice circles
    • withdraw-escape – niceness
    • Withdraw-entrap
    • counterattack-justify – lot of energy
    • counterattack – blame
  • “amygdala hijack” hard to think, “is this happening?”
  • somatic staying present – how can we notice sensations as messengers to wake us up, help us navigate these moments with greater awareness and groundedness?
  • how these reactions are related to forms of socialization
  • control: if we blame ourselves we caused whatever issue to arise so we never lost control
  • hard to distinguish this defensive reaction with genuine self improvement and wanting to do the work it takes to show up for someone
  • phenomenon of women hating women for feminine characteristics
    • similar dynamic “a-queer-mony” (acrimony)
  • “Sorry, Not Sorry”: if you aren’t actually sorry, don’t say you are
  • when we get triggered or defensive we might need time to pause and pull together a non-defensive response
  • responding to micro-aggressions
  • have to acknowledge our agendas
    • asking curious, open questions requires not having an agenda
    • instead of trying to convince someone of your agenda try to find a genuine place where you can communicate about shared interests
  • Freire: balance personal experience with theory
  • Identify what the binary is and then scramble that
  • Have to love and trust and respect the truth of everyone in order to have a genuine dialogue
  • Their truth is a real truth for them

Spent some time role-playing a family situation that most of us could relate to in some way, trying out non-defensive communication, reflecting on the scene – this was really just beginning to practice, and there was a need expressed at the end for much more time in this space grappling with PNDC skill-building

  • for next time, how to revisit this practice, but also have an agenda AND selfless curiosity