Let’s say you just encountered an asshole. You’re filled with feelings: anger, shock, confusion, humiliation, outrage. What do you do with all this emotion?

Call the TTE hotline.

I know. It’s the Teaching through Emotions hotline. That’s only for teachers, right?

Nope. It’s for everyone.

Emotion work is relieving for everybody!! So give it a shot: Punch this number into your phone

413.239.4158

and record your story. Call as many times as you need to. If you want, leave an email address so I can get back in touch with you. (No phone numbers, please. Asynchronous communication increases the chances of my making contact.)

I’ll possibly respond to your story on the air! So make sure you don’t use names — unless they’re pseudonyms. Or initials. That sort of thing.

Sharing your story will do two important things: get relief for you. And help other listeners who have had similar experiences. Which makes you both brave and generous.

And smart. I mean, this is what I do. I help people unpack and understand their worst experiences. Because these experiences so often mean something entirely different from what people think they mean! And getting the meaning right — with the help of someone like me — can change everything!

I hope you give it a shot.

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For my own sanity, I remind myself and others all the time that relationships are about experiments. You simply cannot know for sure what’s going to happen in them. I mean, you can know that something will happen — because we fit together and therefore influence each other all the time — so you can make extremely good guesses. But you can’t be sure.

Which is a good thing, because being sure about what your relational partner feels or is going to do is really annoying.

So not knowing, being open to and even excited about trying relational experiments, is a great skill. That’s what this post is about.

And here’s one last chance to win big at tomorrow’s TTE merch drawing:

Take the survey

If you’re loathe to take surveys because what’s the point? I can tell you the point here is pretty basic: It’s a chance for me to get evidence that you’re out there, that you’re reading and listening, and that TTE is either benefitting you or needing improvement. If it’s benefitting you, your survey response will make me so happy! If TTE needs improvement, your response will also make me happy — because then I can improve my offerings.

In any case, thank you so much!!

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OK so you’ve gotten defensive, left the room to center yourself in your Garden, practiced self-awareness, refused to take things personally or to blame anyone, and done a lot of active listening. A good week-and-a-half’s work!

Now for the next skill. It’s actually more like a trick because it works like magic. You’re gonna love it.

But first: Please take the TTE survey. You know the drill. And thank you!

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Oh, how I hate it when someone says to me, “Don’t be so defensive!” It shuts everything down. Well, I’m here to tell you how defensiveness can actually open up communication that leads to mutual understanding.

Huzzah!!

As always, I’m going to exhort you to take the TTE survey. (If you haven’t already.) Hearing from you makes us feel like we’re landing somewhere and not just floating in the ether. How is that landing? Let us know! (And maybe win an excellent TTE Tee or mug!)

Take the survey

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This skill is another muscular one. Like listening, some of us have to really rein ourselves in to conform to this basic rule of relationships. But it is so helpful and humane.

Before we jump in: Please, if you haven’t already, fill out the short TTE survey. It’s your chance to give concrete feedback to me and my team about what (if anything) you want us to keep doing and what (if anything) you want us to stop. We’d love to hear from you! Your name will go in the Valentine’s Day top hat out of which I’m going to draw the winner of some TTE merch on VDay itself. Do not miss this opportunity to WIN BIG!!!

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Now. On to the muscular skill.

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Welcome to the Monday before Valentine’s Day! I hope you’re enjoying these daily advent treats. Not just tasty but nutritious!

Before we jump in: Please fill out the TTE survey. I’d really like to hear what you think of the blog, the podcast, and the TTE content in general. Is it all worth it?

I’ll make it worth your while by putting your email address in a drawing on Valentine’s Day for a winner of some TTE merch. A TTE Tee or mug! Wahoo!! Thanks in advance for your help!

Take the survey

Today’s skill is going to seem obvious to you. But

• it might not be obvious how it relates to Gardens and conflict.

• obvious or not, in my experience this skill is too rarely practiced.

But you can practice it! With your beloved. (And everybody else!)

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If you’re like, “Quiz? What quiz?” then um. You didn’t do your homework yesterday.

The quiz was to unpack the scenarios I laid out in which partners (and, in one case, an entire group of siblings) fit together in dysfunctional ways.

Since I know some of you are DYING to know if you got an A on that quiz, here are the answers. (And here’s a subscription button in case you haven’t become a paid subscriber yet.)

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One of the best ways to avoid conflict and engage fruitfully is to listen.

Such a powerful tool:

• Stand in your garden.

• Look over your garden wall and get curious.

• Ask questions.

• Listen to the answers.

What I mean, of course, is active listening,

the art of opening to other people’s words without cluttering your attention with tho…

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This concept is, in my view, the foundation of all human interaction. With the world and with other people.

And you’re going to learn it right now.

To get to the calendar door so you can learn what this foundation is, become a paid subscriber!

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When I figured this skill out, I was blown away. Because I didn’t think it was possible.

(And reminder: This is the last of three free Advent Calendar posts. Become a paid subscriber to move seamlessly into the fourth post tomorrow and beyond, all of which will be paywalled.)

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Open the door

(Click on the graphic below)

This skill is so valuable. In every setting. For every type of caregiver. Parents. Therapists. Teachers. Aides for the elderly. Nannies. Spouses. Valentines.

Everyone, really.

Because when people act out — when they do something you’re tempted to take personally — chances are very good that they are not telling you anything very interesting about you. What they’re telling you is all about them. Which can be super interesting! And surprising, because they’re probably totally unaware that their behavior has revealed truths about themselves they might want to keep hidden. Or don’t even know about themselves.

Which gives you a great deal of power.

Which you can use for the good.

By recognizing how bad your relational partner must feel when they, say, call you a slob. Or how honest your students are being about how much they hate the book you’ve assigned. Or how desperate to belong people who exclude you must feel.

Uhhh! It’s hard not to take all this personally. But you can do it: Focus on the data. Use the power the data has given you to try to understand the people whose behavior you’re tempted to think is all about you. When it’s, I repeat, all about them. Understanding, even if only provisional, changes everything.

Practice

Interestingly, the way to practice the skill of Not Taking It Personally is to root yourself in your Garden and look over your Garden Wall. At the Garden(s) of your relational partner(s).

With curiosity.

What is going on over there? What is their behavior teaching you about them?

When your partner, say, calls you a slob, what do they need? (They might need you to agree that you do have slobby tendencies and will work on them.) But, in addition, they might be teaching you that they feel overwhelmed by a sense of encroaching chaos, which they simply cannot abide. Not because of you directly, but because they learned long ago that chaos is dangerous and dysregulating.

When your students rebel against the book you’ve assigned them to read, what do they need? Well, they might need to hear that you love that book. But they also need you to accept that they don’t. And run with it. “What do you hate about it?” you can ask. I guarantee you the resulting conversation will be rollicking.

When two people whisper to each other while looking at you, what are they teaching you? For one thing, they’re rude. For another, they’re regressed to an earlier stage of development. Like, middle school. Maybe more interestingly, they’re probably teaching you how fundamentally insecure they are. They’d rather use a convenient third person (you, but it probably doesn’t matter who) to reinforce their bonds to each other. Which protects them (in their minds) from the very bullying behavior they’re enacting on you. Ew.

Got an example that bamboozles you? Leave a comment and I can work on it. You’d be doing me a great favor, as I love unpacking bamboozling examples of bad behavior.

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Oh dear! This is the last free post of the Valentine’s Day Advent Calendar. If you want to receive tomorrow’s post seamlessly in your inbox, please upgrade your subscription. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you very much!

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And share this post with your Valentine! Or your students! Or your rude co-workers! Subscribe for a month for less than a third of the cost of a bar of wild chocolate from Caputo’s or for a year for half the cost of the Wild Chocolate Trio Gift Box. What a deal!

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First, an apology: Yesterday’s advent calendar door did not open! I am so sorry! Here is the post you should have gotten behind Door #1.

And now: This second skill isn’t very sexy, but it’s incredibly useful. It is the skill that follows on Getting in Your Garden. Once you’re in there, this is what you gotta be able to do.

(And reminder: This is the second of three free Advent Calendar posts. Become a paid subscriber to move seamlessly into the fourth post and beyond, all of which will be paywalled.)

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Open the door

(Click on the image below OR click here)

I hope you’re thinking, “Hey, Betsy, self-awareness involves much more than just noticing internal sensations.” Because you’d be o so right! Interoceptive awareness is just a start. What you make of what you notice is super important. That is, learning about yourself, about your particular, peculiar, precious organism, is the goal.

So yes: Notice your pain. Notice your emotions. And notice your thoughts. Your beliefs. Notice the nasty voice(s) in your head that cut you down or push you to do things (like restrict your eating or question your right to exist) that your best friend would tell you aren’t true or aren’t good for you. (I say your best friend because often nasty voices are so persuasive they’re difficult for you to have any perspective on.) Notice your unwillingness to be alone with yourself, your fear of feelings, your terror at the possibility of being retraumatized, your distrust of yourself.

All of this noticing exposes the various plots in your Garden. The spots that are barren. The dangerous spots. The spots you can’t even penetrate because they’re shrouded in darkness. The places where monsters lurk.

And this noticing suggests where you need to focus your beautification efforts, quite possibly with a good therapist.

You know? I could just as easily have called this second skill Noticing.

Practice

The very best way to practice Self-Awareness is mindfulness meditation. Sitting with your thoughts, centering yourself in your body, having the courage to follow negative self-beliefs down to the emotional bedrock so you can get to know their origins — and smash them to smithereens.

Yoga will do, too.

Because Self-Awareness is all about noticing your body and everything that goes on inside it, the practice for this skill is all body all the time.

• work meditation into your daily routine

• do regular body scans — set a timer and, when it goes off, turn your attention inward and label what you’re feeling

• label as much as you can, since capturing big, inchoate, overpowering feelings in words makes the feelings much easier to manage and work with

• do gentle exercise like stretching and yoga — especially if you have trauma to work through

• breathe — especially in difficult situations

• work with a therapist on negative self-beliefs — “I’m stupid”; “I’m unlovable”; “Everything I touch gets ruined” — so you can root them out and make your Garden safer and more hospitable to you

• work with a therapist on the unbearable feelings and thoughts that come up when you try any of these practices (again, trauma can make your Garden seem uninhabitable)

• notice any resistance you’re feeling to these ideas and wonder about it

In general, just notice. Everything.

That should keep you busy for a bit.

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Of course, your partner can afford to notice, too.

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If you want to hear a podcast episode about someone who made remarkable use of her self-awareness, go here.

And, as usual, you can upgrade to paid right now for the cost of less than half of a Botanical Bar & Tablet from Tavernier Chocolates for a month and much less than the cost of the Couple Bon Bon Collection for the year. Thank you for considering it!

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Welcome to the TTE Valentine’s Day Advent Calendar! The calendar that counts down to the most romantic day of the year by giving you solid skills to practice to make your romantic (and other) relationships the best they can be!

So here’s how your Valentine’s Weekday Advent Calendar works:

I’ve chosen a series of skills I know are important for healthy relationships. Much healthier than chocolates. How do I know? I’m a therapist, psycho-coach, and relationship warrior and have seen my clients — and myself — use these skills to great effect over and over again.

And, while I like chocolates, they don’t really contribute to my good health at all. Sadly.

Every weekday until Valentine’s Day, I’m going to publish a post about one of these skills (and maybe the occasional concept). I’ll give some initial context and then provide a little door flap you can open — by clicking on it — to find a gem from the TTE archives that explains the skill or concept. I’ll end with a suggestion or two — or fourteen — on how to practice the skill on your own.

Note that the first three Advent doors are free to everybody. Starting on the fourth day, though, you’ll have to become a paid subscriber to access the rest of the Advent doors.

So. Let’s get started!

This first skill is a favorite of the people I work with. They use it all the time.

Open the door

(Click on the image below OR click here)

This skill is all about boundaries. The line or wall between you and someone else that demarcates your reality from theirs and allows different realities to co-exist without threat.

But it’s also about you. Your psyche, your internal space, your safety with and trust in yourself. It’s not enough just to Get in Your Garden. You have to be able to stay there. Which means you have to know (and like) yourself, recognize your self-defeating reactions, kill off your self-critical voices, know how to find comfort and strength in your own company. You gotta tend your Garden so it’s easy, even welcoming, to inhabit.

Crucial, crucial, crucial skill.

Practice

The basic practice of Getting in Your Garden is resisting the urge to jump into someone else’s.

• by jumping into a conversation or argument through interrupting

• by jumping into problem-solving mode for someone else’s problem

• by jumping into a vacuum and doing the work someone else has failed to do

• by jumping to conclusions about what is happening right now

• by jumping into defensive mode

• by jumping into reactive mode

• by jumping into the fray and going on the attack

How do you practice this skill?

Try it in a simple situation. You’re having a friendly conversation with someone. When you feel the urge to speak, try not speaking. Let them talk a little longer. Or allow silence to fall. (This can be so hard for so many people! But damn: Silence can be incredibly generative. People say things to fill silence that can be quite interesting!)

Or next time someone has a problem, actively resist solving it. Instead, say something like “That sounds tough. What are you willing to do about it?”

If you need a more customized practice suggestion, leave a comment. I’ll come up with something for you.

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Getting in Your Garden can be hard enough. Staying in it can be even more difficult. But, like all relationship skills, it is crucial. Staying in your Garden means feeling safe there. Which means knowing and trusting thyself. And being able to regulate yourself. All of which comes with the second skill of relationships, which I’ll unveil tomorrow.

In the meantime, you might want to provide yourself — and others — with a bold reminder of the valuable relationship skill you’re developing.

And you might want to listen to a podcast episode about how Getting in Your Garden can transform a relationship — here.

You might also want to upgrade your subscription to paid (if you’re not already a paid subscriber). You can subscribe for a month for 1/5 of the cost of a 9-piece box of chocolates at Chocolate Springs. A year’s subscription costs the same as a 20-piece box of dark chocolates. Just sayin’.

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And pssst….Share this post with your Valentine.

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Consider:

• One colleague criticizes and intimidates another colleague.

• A student yells, “Fuck you!” in a teacher’s face.

• A mother emails her son’s teachers daily about her worries about her anxious son.

How does a person even begin to start dealing with these dilemmas?

With the No Blame Frame.

Of course, most of us start dealing…

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This is a trick you can use every day all day. Not only will it help you dissolve conflicts and other unpleasant interactions, but it will make you a better person!

The trick is based on the premise that emotions are contagious. Through empathy, of course. But also through behaviors.

You want to make me mad? Pretend you don’t…

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OK this is going to seem really simplistic, but many people I’ve worked with have found it helpful.

Here goes:

When I think of people, when I think of individuals, I think of gardens. I think of each of us as standing in the center of a circle — a garden wall — filled with flower beds.

The garden wall is a boundary, a personal boundary, a membrane that defines where we end and others begin.

The garden is ourselves: our needs, our safety, our identities, our happiness, our interests, our power, our psyches, our reality.

We cultivate our own gardens. We choose what flowers we plant and where and when we plant them. Ideally, we make our gardens beautiful and safe for ourselves. We range freely in our gardens and value them.

And we decide if and when anybody else gets to come into our gardens. We build up our garden walls, lower them, open the garden gate, close the garden gate. We invite people in when we want to and, when we don’t want them in our gardens, we have the right to tell them to get out. Ideally.

I told you it would be simplistic!

But the metaphor is also really useful.

Because, if my garden is my reality and your garden is your reality, then I don’t get to trash your garden. I don’t even get to enter your garden without your permission. I get to talk to you over our garden walls about our gardens, try to understand why you planted deadly nightshade right next to your garden gate, admire your hollyhocks, think about planting some of my own.

I get to wonder about your garden, your reality, from the safety of my own garden, my own reality.

I don’t have to take on your problems or energy or emotions. I don’t have to convince you to make your garden look like mine. I might think your garden desperately needs tending, but when I remind myself that it’s yours, I’m clear that the weeds in your garden are not my responsibility. I might wonder about them; I might express concern about them; I might itch to pull them; but I don’t need to fight you about them. They’re yours.

Conflict happens, I believe, when I charge into your garden and start planting or fixing or weeding or judging or — UGH — defining your garden for you. Or when you do this to me. Engagement happens when I can be curious about you and your garden without co-opting or colonizing it. And, importantly,

when I am confident that I can prevent you from co-opting or colonizing my garden.

I’m here in my garden. You’re there in yours. Let’s be clear about that.

Your nose is in a rose and you are breathing in the delightful fragrance.

You are fighting with your partner about the same old thing.

You are stung by a student’s blatant disrespect and are plotting revenge.

You give a student one last extension right before grades are due in hopes she’ll get the work in.

You can’t stop thi…

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Kinda like Mother’s Day: Shouldn’t every day be Valentine’s Day? Shouldn’t we be celebrating our partners and others we love all the time? And shouldn’t we recognize that loving sometimes involves hating? Or at least disliking intensely? That romantic and other relationships require work and wherewithal and wisdom?

What good is a day we mark with hyper-romantic gestures — then go right back to fighting or misunderstanding or feeling hurt or resentful or just feeling bored and uninspired?

No good. In my humble opinion.

But we can make it good! Here at TTE we’ve got a plan.

We’re going to roll out the red carpet to Valentine’s Day. We’re going to celebrate Advent.

The coming of the day when we celebrate our partners and others we love by committing to being in healthy relationship with them!

Here’s how we’re going to do it: Starting on February 2nd, I’m going to publish a post that focuses on healthy relationships every weekday leading up to Valentine’s Day. That’s 10 posts. Each post will give you food for thought as well as a skill to practice. Practice those skills with your partner and your VDay will be truly meaningful! The way it should be!

I can tell you right now one of those skills will be Staying in Your Garden. If you want to really drive the point home, give this to your honey on the big day. It comes in pink! (Or you can give them a mug.)

The first three posts will be free to all subscribers. And the final seven posts will be paywalled. Ugh! How will you stay up-do-date with the TTE VDay Advent calendar? By upgrading your subscription to paid for just one month. A lovely Valentine’s Day gift to yourself. And if you like what you read, you can consider subscribing for the year so you don’t miss a thing!

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One month for the cost of a beer and an entire year for the cost of two-and-a-half four-packs of a good craft IPA. As well as the satisfaction that you’re supporting the important work of TTE.

Please consider it! We appreciate every cent.

And we appreciate your listening and reading as a free subscriber, too! We love you at all levels! Check out the TTE podcast. It’s free for everyone!

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I feel like I recommend mindfulness and meditation to virtually all of my clients. Mindfulness being paying attention, especially to one’s innards, all the time (or at the drop of a hat). Meditation being sitting (or standing, or walking) at a specified time to allow for deliberate focus on one’s innards.

These are such important practices. Mindfulness and meditation are grounding, stilling, centering, and self-regulating. They illuminate the fleeting nature of thoughts and feelings that otherwise distress. They help us to know our own gardens and, super importantly, strengthen our ability to stay in our gardens. Which leads to the crucial experiences of self-trust and safety. Which leads to the crucial ability to trust others and feel safe in relationship.

So mindfulness and meditation are great.

But they’re not enough.

It’s not enough to detach and watch our feelings disappear. And, while mindfulness, or noticing our feelings, is a crucial discipline, it is only the first step to personal and relational transformation. Because, like pain, our emotions are signals. Just as pain suggests we should attend to our physical structures, emotions indicate our psychic structures need attention. And, like hurting bodies, if we don’t address our emotional warning signs, our psychic structures can continue to serve up those feelings — until we deal with them.

For example

I used to fume every time I saw my husband’s dirty dishes sitting next to our kitchen sink. I saw them and immediately assumed my husband expected me to clean up after him. Instantaneous anger and resentment. Because I had become aware of (1) my tendency to put others’ needs before my own, caring for them and not myself, and (2) I was self-righteous in my newly found resolution to reverse this pattern (and, importantly, reduce the resentment I felt pretty much chronically).

I could have continued to look at my husband’s dishes (which were a regular feature of our kitchen) and allowed my resentment to build and build and build. Until I exploded in self-righteous outrage.

Or I could have dealt with my emotions. Why were they arising? What were they telling me? In a (fairly large) nutshell:

My emotions were telling me that dishes next to our kitchen sink triggered a response, an interpretation, that stemmed from a negative self-belief — “It’s my job to take care of everybody (or I won’t be loved)” — accompanied automatically by resentment. That dark angry emotion that (I claim) signals an imbalance of some kind (like pain, right? Resentment means there’s emotional and relational imbalance in my life). In this case, an imbalance in responsibility. I was enraged by my assumption (based on my negative self-belief) that my husband was leaving me responsible for cleaning up his messes.

Note the words “my negative self-belief” and “assumption.”

Noticing these feelings was great work. Honestly: Stewing in resentment is not healthy. Noticing it is absolutely essential. But actually getting healthier required that I do something about my resentment. I could, of course, have sat in meditation. And I am sure my resentment would have dissipated. It would have wafted away like vapors from a boiling kettle. I’d have returned to my kitchen feeling all calm and content — only to face those fuckin’ dishes again.

Rinse and repeat.

Beyond mindfulness and meditation

What can happen beyond mindfulness and meditation? If sitting mindfully brings you into awareness of your emotions, and you can label them, then you can wonder what they’re telling you about yourself and your relational situation. And, once you’ve made a good guess about those things, you can craft a plan of action.

My plan of action? To get a reality check on my belief and my assumption. That is, to check with my husband to see if what I assumed about him and myself was accurate. I asked my husband, “When I see your dishes next to the kitchen sink, I assume you expect me to wash them for you. Is that correct?”

Note the formulation of my reality check. I described the trigger, shared how I interpreted it (essential!! this is me owning the shit in my garden), and asked my question (about my husband’s garden, his reality).

My husband’s reaction? Not defensiveness (because I didn’t accuse him of anything; I accused myself of making an assumption). Not argument (because I was simply sharing my reality, which is non-negotiable). Not withdrawal of love (which was the foundational fear my emotions were pointing at).

My husband simply said, “No.” And immediately washed the dishes that were such a bug up my butt.

And, I kid you not, he now washes up all the dishes within a half-mile radius of the kitchen sink every morning. Without fail. Which leaves me to struggle with my feelings of guilt for being cared for — but that’s another topic for another time.

My point here is to encourage mindfulness and meditation — and the steps beyond that lead to personal and relational change.

I would love to hear about the changes you’ve made in yourself based on your mindfulness and meditation. Leave a comment! Share your wisdom with others! We all benefit from stories of emotional and relational success. Keep doing the good work!

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And it’s so arrogant! I mean, what do I know about psychology? Very little, mostly because I can’t stay with a study or a finding long enough to respect it. And how dare I? There are brilliant people designing clever studies to confirm — well, to confirm what most of us already know intuitively.

OK, so that’s one reason I have no use for psychology. It tends to confirm what we already know intuitively.

And the corollary: Psychology tends to downplay intuition. Instead, the field of psychology tries to legitimize itself by hoping beyond hope that human behavior and experience can be explained using the classic scientific method. You know: research question —> hypothesis —> experiment —> results —> discussion, which states conclusions and identifies where further study must be done.

Problem with the classic scientific method is it requires tangible evidence, measurable data. Which is where the clever experiments come in. And where intuition gets left behind. Because it is virtually impossible to measure and validate and replicate intuition.

To be fair, psychologists try! But their methods still rest on assumptions — like the brain is the center of all knowing, like the only evidence that matters is empirical and quantifiable, like knowing rests on experimentation that follows certain rules of scientific rigor (which reinforce biased opinions about what knowing even is), like reality is “out there” to be grasped and understood as distinct from ourselves.

Right about now you might be — even should be — saying, “But you’re a psychotherapist. How can you reject psychology so blithely?”

For me, psychology and psychotherapy — that is, psychoanalytic theory, which I love — are two very different things. Psychoanalytic theory developed at a time when introspection was considered a legitimate method of scientific discovery. I love that about psychoanalytic theory! And I love that about psychotherapy, at least the psychotherapy I practice, which depends on relationship, experience, introspection, reflection, and, of course, rich theory.

Even though psychology is, according to Google, “the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context,” the field has abandoned introspection as a method. I get it: introspection is “soft,” subjective, unreplicable. But here’s the thing: human psychology, despite attempts to “harden” it through empirical study, is just that: “soft,” subjective, unreplicable. So how do we get at personal, constantly changing, unreliable, yet fascinatingly rich human experience?

My answer is to adhere to an entirely different paradigm with entirely different assumptions.

The paradigm is known as enactivism.

A totally different model

The assumptions that underlie enactivism diverge spectacularly from those underlying the field of psychology.

For example:

• Enactivism sees all cognition as fully embodied and enacted.

  That means the brain is not the Master of the Universe, as it is in psychology. Rather, living organisms interact with, even co-create, the world through full-body interactions, what some enactivists call structural coupling.

• Cognition is action.

  We know through the ways we fit with (couple with) our surroundings. Our biological and, I would add, psychic structures determine what we perceive and how we interpret those perceptions. Our actions on and in the world constitute our knowledge — which is, I propose, necessarily biased (even for psychologists!) and inescapably contextual, given that it’s based on structural coupling. This can explain why I can say one thing and do another. Is what I say what I know? Not if what I do utterly contradicts it, right?

• Reality is co-constructed.

  While there is stuff “out there” in the world, what that stuff actually is — really, how a particular organism can fit with it for what purposes — depends entirely on the organism, what it “selects” from the stuff of the world and how the world then works with the organism to effect the fit. Quick example: We all know that matter is made up of atoms, and atoms are mostly “air,” yet we do not perceive either atoms or the air within them. We perceive solid matter. That’s thanks to our peculiar perceptual mechanisms — our organisms — which collaborate in this limited but magnificent way with the stuff of the world to co-create what we call reality.

• Perception is direct, not indirect.

  Enactivism has no use for mental models or internal representations, as psychology does. Knowing is acting, which involves neurological firings and felt sense (or intuition) and repeated experiences of good and bad fits, meaning direct apprehension of stimuli, not translation of the outside into a picture or model that then gets scanned or processed by the brain. It’s much simpler — and more complex — than that.

OMG there is so much to say about enactivism and I’m betting you’ve already gotten bored and stopped reading. But if you’re still with me, I can tell you this paradigm has changed my life, my psycho-coaching practice, and the people I work with. I love it so much.

Want a starter book? Try The Tree of Knowledge by two of my heroes, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela.

And leave a comment! You might think I’m crazy for having no use for psychology! You might find enactivism utterly incomprehensible! Or you might agree with me! Let me know!

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I know — it’s a lovely objective! It reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s suggestion to smile at strangers. First, because smiling activates good feelings in you. And, second, because it activates good feelings in others. Win-win!

(He apparently called this practice “mouth yoga.” Easiest yoga I’ve ever practiced.)

So I get the pros of assuming positive intent. They are, as far as I can tell,

• recognizing and counting on a basic human desire to be good

• embodying that desire in yourself

• deciding to view others benevolently

• disrupting automatic, uncharitable interpretations

These are such nice moves! Like Thich Nhat Hanh’s smile, they fill one with good feelings that can then infuse our next steps with others. That’s good.

But what about the cons of assuming positive intent?

• denial of reality

• avoidance of the negative

• inaccurate seeing

• reinforcement of a binary approach to “intent”

• perpetuation of conflict-aversion

• willful blindness to actual malice

• superficiality rooted in semantics

Get ready. Get yourself a drink. Find a comfortable place to sit. We’re goin’ in. And we’re goin’ deep.

Denial of reality

Sad but true, people: Reality can really suck. It can be very positive, yes! People can be kind and good! They can be that way by mistake, and they can be that way intentionally.

But negativity also exists in reality. It is negative, yes, but that does not make it bad. Negativity is interesting (often more interesting than positivity). It can be extremely useful (to people who know how to do emotion work) because negativity is a magic portal to psychic reality. You feel angry? A good sign that some injustice or boundary breach has occurred. The injustice or boundary breach might have occurred with the best of intentions, but it still leaves you seething. Rather than stew in your anger or pretend it doesn’t exist, you can figure out what the problem is and decide how to address it. That’s good work coming straight out of negativity!

Developing the capacity to deal with the negative — the difficult, the chaotic, the unexpected and unwanted — is a good way to define a healthy person. Whereas denial of reality is a very primitive psychological defense. It works really well! But it means you’re detached from reality and quite possibly engaging in toxic positivity. To put it bluntly: “Assume positive intent” all to often means “go into denial.”

Avoidance of the negative

It goes along with acceptance of reality: Embracing the negative within yourself and within others neutralizes it. That is, confronting negativity, accepting bad feelings in yourself and evidence of bad feelings in others, trusting that you can survive the feelings and even convert them into world-saving relational moves, gives you a fuller grasp of reality, which allows for a fuller experience of life. Which, in my view at least, is a desirable outcome.

Avoiding the negative amounts to self-protection. Good on you, if you need protection from reality. But hear me: If this is you — if you have suffered trauma, are hobbled by behaviors and expectations of the world that limit your ability to relate to others or be true to yourself and your talents, if you are prone to take things personally without any psychic recourse from the resultant pain — then get help. Avoidance of the negative is learned. So it can be unlearned. Assuming positive intent does not help with the unlearning process.

Inaccurate seeing

I gotta start by questioning our apparent assumption that intention even exists in certain interactions. When I spew venom on you because, I don’t know, I fear you think I’m stupid, which is a chronic basically unconscious fear of mine, am I acting on intention? Is it positive? Is it negative? My answer is no. Neither. What I’m acting on is instinct. It’s the only response my particular organism, driven by my psychic structure, can come up with to help me maintain my equilibrium. For you to assume positive intent when I have just slammed you because of my own psychic reality would be a disservice to you and to me.

The first disservice would be to yourself. Why would you want to assume that my hurtful behavior came from a positive place? You’d have to tie yourself into psychic knots to believe this.

The second disservice would be to me. Because you’d have to deny me entirely, see me totally inaccurately, to put a positive spin on what I did. Being seen inaccurately is something no human being can stand. (Many are so accustomed to it that they expect nothing less. But that doesn’t make it OK.) In fact, bad behavior can often be seen as a test of a relational partner’s ability to see the negative in a particular person or reality. And, if our relational partner fails the test the first time, behaviors can escalate. You didn’t see me accurately then? OK. How ‘bout now? (Crash!!)

Knowing how to mirror back the good, yes, but also the bad is a crucial skill that assuming positive intent both overrides and atrophies.

Reinforcement of a binary approach to “intent”

Intentions can be good. And they can be bad. But, as I stated in the previous section, they can also be neutral. They can be unconscious. They can be nuanced. They can be confused and confusing. They can be ambivalent and ambiguous. They can be irrelevant. Where they exist, they are always meaningful. Committing to uncovering the motives, the “good” reasons, underlying negative behaviors and experiences always yields deeper understanding, which can trigger authentic compassion, which can lead to data-based plans that offer corrective action where needed.

Corrective action being one of the great boons of relationships, an extremely effective means of teaching and learning: being honest about impacts (without making any assumptions at all about intentions); wondering about the magma that underlies the offensive behaviors, magma being the miasma of emotions, beliefs, and expectations of the world that can erupt into surface behaviors; and being willing to work out ways of avoiding such undesirable behaviors and impacts in the future. Don’t like how I treated you? Address it. Describe it and its impact on you. Ask me questions about my experience. Insist on an agreement we will both rely on to address similar future enactments so that the learning, the relational training, can continue as long as it needs to.

Going binary on intentions obscures the rich repertoire of reasons why people treat each other badly. Go for the concrete reasons! Go for the needs the behaviors reveal (in the mysterious language of the embodied psyche)! Embrace the negative!

Perpetuation of conflict-aversion

Sometimes we just gotta wade in. As I’ve written about here, here, here, and here, conflict-aversion, while understandable, is nonetheless a scourge. If, that is, you want to be a whole, healthy human. If you want assholes to continue doing whatever they want unabated, then by all means: avoid conflict.

And, while you’re at it, assume positive intent. Which also lets assholes off the hook. Once again: Negative behaviors are, actually, negative. Whatever the intent is. Addressing negative behaviors calmly, realistically, compassionately, and with authentic curiosity allows for accurate mirroring, honest connection, productive problem-solving, and ongoing corrective action. To avoid conflict by assuming what is not true — that there’s anything positive in a negative behavior — just kicks the developmental can down the road.

Willful blindness to actual malice

Some people are cruel. Abusive. Usurious. Ruthless. Controlling. Psychopathic. Despite the extreme words used to describe them, they can also be tough to pin down. Because they can also be charming. Loving. Seductive. Intelligent. Believable.

If you’re someone who is inclined to forgive terrible behavior, who questions your take on reality, who is susceptible to gaslighting, then assuming positive intent is most definitely not for you. Rather, you should squint your eyes at the possibility of negative intent and get the hell out of there. And get help from someone who can hold you while you forge a more accurate relationship with reality.

Superficiality rooted in semantics

What does the phrase “assume positive intent” even mean? How does it apply to someone who constantly interrupts you? To a co-worker who gives you the silent treatment? To a roommate who ignores your requests that they clean up after themselves? Really to any negative behavior or treatment?

To me, it just means you’ve decided prematurely what the answer to the problem before you is. And it’s a semantic solution, a solution that relies on a bunch of words you put together that, frankly, sounds good, makes you feel like a better person, and paints bad behavers in a flattering light. But it doesn’t get you any closer to the complex, at some level negative, but possibly transformable reality (transformable through what I call emotion work). Assuming positive intent invites a terrible mismatch between your approach and the reality. Which could be disastrous. But which definitely sounds nice.

By all means, smile! But my hope is that more of us can embrace the negative, learn to honor it as incredibly precise information about complicated internal experience, recognize it as symptomatic of all-too-human psychic structure, and use it to strengthen our connections to each other. To assume nothing; to look for the emotional and relational data; to ask questions and make good guesses; to enact data-based plans of action that offer corrective experience — to do all this is harder than to assume positive intent. But it can change your relationships, and it can change the world. Which assuming positive intent most definitely cannot.

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