Practices

Say the frightened thing rather than the sharp thing. It is far more exposing and it is the only version that tends to get a kind reply.

Under most rows sits something like I think there is something wrong with me, or I have already lost you and I am pretending I have not. Sharp words…

Going numb is a good way to survive something and a poor way to live near someone. It shuts the line in both directions at once.

When you cannot feel your own signal you also stop picking up theirs, so the room goes quiet even when they are reaching for you. The loneliness that…

Emptying the feeling out at somebody does not shift it, and being told what to do instead skips over it. What changes things is feeling it with someone who stays.

You can tell the difference from the inside. Venting has a rehearsed quality, the same phrases coming round again with the heat kept up. Advice…

When you are trying to reach a feeling, stay with the actual sentence that caused it rather than paraphrasing it into something milder.

She said you are too difficult. Said again, gently, it keeps the moment alive in the room instead of turning it into a memory being reported.…

Put something in before you take something out. Removing the only way a person has of coping leaves them with nothing, which is not safer.

In practice this looks like smaller steps than a promise to stop: cutting the frequency, changing what is used, agreeing to wait ten minutes and do…

The same sentence lands completely differently depending on who says it. If nothing stirs when it is described second hand, let the person it belongs to say it to you directly.

A therapist repeating what your partner said is information. Your partner turning to you and saying it, in their own voice, is an event. That is why…

Rather than arguing with someone who says they feel nothing, say plainly what would ordinarily hurt about it. Hearing that the person you love is disappointed in you is a hard thing to hear.

Said warmly, this is not a challenge. It sets out what a person would usually feel and leaves them to notice the gap between that and what they are…

With someone carrying old shame, ask about the closeness itself. Is it alright that I am sitting here with you? Would a bit more space help? Then adjust, and let them see you adjust.

Small changes work best. Shifting your chair back slightly, looking away for a moment, softening your voice, then checking what that was like for…

If you can see shame arriving in someone, say so gently and make it welcome. Something like: it looks like there is some shame here, and it is alright that it came.

Naming it does the opposite of exposing it. Left unnamed it works away in private, and the person assumes you have noticed and are judging. Said out…

Telling someone it was not their fault often bounces straight off, and there is a reason for that. Self blame can be the safer of the two stories, and you are asking them to give up shelter.

So do not lead with the correction. Say instead that it makes complete sense they landed there, that a child needs their parents to be good more than…

With someone deep in shame, your steady presence is not the warm up before the useful part. It is the useful part.

That means resisting the urge to fix, to explain the psychology of it, or to hurry them along to a better feeling. Sit at their pace. Keep your tone…