Checking Ourselves for Contempt
I watched the dumpster fire meeting between Zelensky, Trump, and Vance. I had to, because I’d read a couple articles on the conversation, the takeaways being the US accusing Zelensky of being disrespectful, and Zelensky accusing the US of not being diplomatic. But when I watched, what I saw was eerily familiar to what I see in a high-conflict divorce situation. I’m not kidding. I saw three people trying to get their needs met, one clearly interested in showing off, trying to appear to be the better person but really only saying a lot of words about himself. Another, who used his power, subliminally one-upping the others, in order to try to control the situation. And a third, who did not recognize that his audience was not interested in hearing him, seeing him, or understanding his needs but nonetheless tried to get his point across. Do these dynamics sound familiar?
What I saw in that conversation was so similar to what I see in high-conflict divorce it made me cringe. Adults locked in battle over a position to which they are holding so tightly that they cannot see the other person’s experience. Adults believing so single-mindedly that something is true about the person to whom they are talking that they can’t move forward for the greater good of all the people who are depending on them to do so.
In divorce and in life, we can look at anyone’s actions and say, “that was wrong.” We can even think that that person might in some way be totally fucked up. And of course, it’s appropriate to have strong feelings about what’s happening—to you, to others. AND. When we choose to enter into conversation with someone, we have to be deliberate, we have to have the intention of being constructive, rather than breaking the opposing party down. We have to believe that the greatest good is not getting our way, or making the other person see our point of view. The greatest good is ending the conflict.
Historically, my ex and I would spend all our communications trying to prove that one of us was wrong, the other was right, that one of us knew what the kids needed, and the other did not. We assumed roles of both victim and persecutor, and to an extent, they might have been real; sometimes there really is a bully in the room. But, looking back it would have been easier if I had just been accountable for my need for things to be fair when they simply never could be. I wish I had long ago let go of hoping to be seen and understood by someone who would never be able to do that. And I wish I had seen that I was acting from a false belief that I was right, that he was bad, and that I had to prove it to him and the court.
I’ve studied Non-Violent Communication (NVC) for many years. And while I wouldn’t want to go back in time and mediate a conversation between either these world leaders or my ex and I, I would offer some suggestions on how to prevent co-parenting conversations from turning into a similar kind of trainwreck.
1. Settle your nervous system first. Do not underestimate the destruction that ensues when we enter into any kind of dialogue, either in-person or in writing, when we are feeling unsafe. If we are furious, righteous, indignant, or afraid we will never, ever have the kind of conversation we want or need to have. The Insight Meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein said this: “Without the steadiness of at least some degree of concentration it becomes so easy to get caught up in feelings and perceptions…where we can get carried away on the trains of association, of reaction of judgement, not seeing clearly.” Taking the time to settle ensures you will see clearly so you can come up with an appropriate response.
2. Listen. In NVC, we are taught to listen in conversation for the other person’s feelings and needs so we can respond to them with compassion and understanding. If we are working with someone with a high-conflict or personality disorder, this can become confusing and is not always in our best interest. But we can “listen” to what our co-parent is saying from the understanding that they have probably experienced significant trauma in their lives and that they are operating from biological limitations that prevent them from thinking logically and with empathy. With that in mind, we can kind of “ignore” a lot of what they hurl at us. We know their accusations and saber rattling aren’t true or real. We’ve hopefully set up a kick ass documentation system that allows us to chronicle the truth of our interactions with them and our children. We have a divorce coach or other trusted ally to help us work through how we should handle our interactions with them. Then we can see that what they are doing is, in essence, nonsense. It’s menacing, and can momentarily make us feel furious or afraid, but we can listen with an ear to what our kids need in those interactions, instead of perceiving it as something to defend ourselves against.
3. Check yourself for dehumanization and contempt. I hear it often, and was guilty of it in the past myself, the dehumanizing quality of assuming our co-parent is a monster, is evil, or worthless. Whatever words we’ve chosen to describe our co-parent we must check the impulse to use them. Calling them narcissists, sociopaths, psychos, labeling them with a diagnosis that we’re maybe not qualified to make, is actually destructive to our own well-being. It keeps us locked in a victim mentality and makes us feel trapped by the negative influence of another person over whom we have no control. It is hard to have compassion for someone when we see them as “other,” as less than human, as out to get us or inherently bad. But we must, because in this life, we don’t get to be compassionate to some people and not others. I’m not saying we excuse or accept their behavior or play nice with people we really need to get away from. But we do need to cultivate the understanding that, just like us, this person is just trying to live their life, even if we believe their way of going about it is dysfunctional.
As the world mourns this lost opportunity to end a devastating conflict, I think it’s meaningful for us to examine where we have conflict in our own lives and consider what’s most important here. Consider what exactly we are fighting over, what exactly we are fighting for, and what of those things can we let go of for the greater good? I had to let go of the story I was telling myself that my ex was out to get me. I had to see that a big part of the continuing conflict were my beliefs about who he was and what he was trying to do. Whether or not they were in fact true, my beliefs were keeping me locked in a battle I was so tired of fighting, and as soon as I changed my mind, I started to feel safer, more at ease, and was less burdened by my coparent’s behavior. Shockingly, the only thing that had to change was me. Imagine how differently the conversation would have gone if it would have been possible for those 3 men to have taken a moment to slow down, to settle into a posture of listening, and tried to, despite their limitations and their pre-conceived beliefs about one another, offered up solutions that would benefit the lives of the people who were counting on them?
