Say it like you say it
“I feel badly that I haven’t responded to her letter of apology yet,” my client told me, holding a folded piece of paper from a family member she had had a difficult relationship with for decades.
“I’ve been of two minds,” she continued. “Part of me wants to trust her apology, but another part of me is scared that if I forgive her and let her back into my life, my kids and I will become a target of her bad behavior again.”
I nodded and shared that I could understand how she felt that way.
“Can you help me with how to respond to her?” my client asked.
I checked the notes I had been taking, and offered this:
Dear ____,
I feel badly that I haven’t responded to your letter of apology yet.
I’ve been of two minds about it. Part of me wants to trust your apology, but another part of me is scared that if I forgive you and let you back into my life, my kids and I will become a target of your bad behavior again.
“How about that as a start?” I asked my client with a glint in my eye.
“Wow,” she sat back with a smile, “that pretty much nails it.”
“Exactly!” I encouraged, “because it’s literally what YOU just said to me.”
Then I asked her to consider what request she had that would help her to trust her family member’s apology, and to include that. Within minutes, she had the letter crafted in a way she felt solid about.
A significant chunk of what I do with clients, once I’ve helped them to see where old relational patterns came from and to regulate their nervous system so that they can begin to embody new relational patterns, is coach them on what speaking (or in this case writing) in a relational way would sound like.
Sometimes it looks like showing them a whole new way of saying something. For example, turning a complaint into a request:
Instead of saying “you never listen to me!” try saying, “It would mean the world to me if you repeated back what you heard me say so that I know you got it.”
But much of the time all I have to do is mirror back to my client what they’ve just said to me.
“I don’t know how to tell a colleague that I’m hesitant about the request she made. I need more time to think about it,” a different client said to me recently.
“How about telling your colleague this: I’m noticing that I’m hesitant to come up with an answer right now—can I email you tomorrow with my thoughts?”
“Oh, right,” my client laughed. “That would work perfectly.”
So why does this happen? Why do people not trust that they can say to someone else what they so effortlessly say to me?
Because we are used to performing with other people.
We’re accustomed to considering what they want to hear over what is true from our insides out.
We don’t know how to track ourselves in real time to be able to know how we feel about something and express that.
We don’t think how we feel or what we think about something gets to hold weight as having a “right” answer or a solution.
It may make sense, given our training and modeling, to hold these views. But it sure does make feeling comfortable and liking who we are in our relationships a difficult task.
To break these patterns, it takes practice. So here’s your practice:
Do you have something to communicate that you’re stuck with? Consider how you’d talk to me or a trusted friend about it—then use that language to say it straight, yet kindly to the other person.
Say it like YOU say it. See what it feels like to hear your own voice speaking from your own experience.
You CAN do this!
Need help with this kind of authentic expression? The fundamentals for how to do it are all in my signature program, Yours Truly. Check it out!