Transcription
Hey guys, I'm Heidi Prib. Welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here.
This month on this channel, we're talking about rupture, self-recovery, and repair. So, in short, we are talking about conflict. And today in particular, I want to talk about how to recognize a good faith conflict. So, a conflict where both people are being honest and explicit about what they're trying to get out of the interaction versus a bad faith conflict. So, a conflict where one or both people's intentions are obscured. So, where they're saying that they want one thing when that's not actually the thing that they're there to try to get out of the interaction.
And we're going to look at this from kind of a 360° view. So, I think that a lot of people think of bad faith interactions as interactions where one or both people is necessarily lying outright. So, where someone's coming in going, "I want X," when really they want Y. But I think that another thing that happens, especially for a lot of us who have low internal emotional coherence, I guess I'll call it something in the realm of when we don't have good vocabulary for what we're feeling or when we have a lot of trauma patterning that keeps us unaware of even sometimes what our own true desires and motivations are, how we can accidentally end up in bad faith interactions even if we think that we're entering them in good faith.
So, we're going to look at both sides of that coin and I'm going to try to lay out in each of the examples that we go through why someone might do something if they are operating in conscious bad faith. So they actually are intentionally obscuring their motives versus accidental bad faith where someone just has a lot of internal incoherence that's getting in the way of a clear, uncomplicated conversation. Sometimes we are refusing to do better because we don't want to, and other times we just don't know how to. And as much as is possible on this channel, I like to try to hold space for the latter situation.
First kind of classic sign of a bad faith interaction is shifting goalposts. So someone has a request or a demand of someone else. They talk it through. Maybe the other person agrees to meet that demand or there's some other form of agreement that they reach. And then the next day or the next week or whatever it is, there's a new demand. That past demand, in fact, seemed to not satisfy whatever that person was upset about or struggling with. And now they want things to change again. And this kind of shifting goalpost can be a lot of different things.
So, first, we're going to look at why this could happen in a way that's kind of innocent. So, sometimes when we go into conflict or we're struggling with something inside of a relationship with a person, we're not actually 100% clear on what the problem is, right? I do think most of us, even the most secure of us, have had that come up. Like, we're in connection with someone and something feels kind of wrong or bad, and then maybe one day they do something and we're like, "Oh, I know that that upsets me. I know that when they do this specific thing, I don't like it. And so, I'm going to go talk to them about it." And then we go in genuinely hoping that if we're able to change that one thing or if we're able to reach an agreement in this one area, then the way that we feel in general that's kind of off about the relationship is going to go away.
And I also think that most people have had the experience of going through all of that. The person changes their behavior or whatever else happens inside of the relationship that we wanted to happen, and then the feeling remains, right? For whatever reason, we still feel kind of irritated, or we find that our frustration or our unhappiness is jumping from issue to issue. So, one day we're mad that they don't clean up. The next day we're upset that they are talking too long on the phone when they promised they would come watch a TV show with us. And very often in these scenarios, what's happening is that there's kind of a deeper wound that's going unaddressed that is hopping from issue to issue. So maybe what you're actually feeling is that your partner doesn't really prioritize or value your time. So maybe feeling frustrated that they're not helping out with the housework is kind of the same underlying issue as feeling like they've been on the phone for too long. Maybe in both cases, you're not really feeling valued enough.
And so if we find that this type of interaction has accidentally drifted into bad faith territory, a sign of that might be that we keep promising them, "I just need to work through this one thing. All of my frustration is about this," and then it turns out that's not true. The frustration that feels kind of similar keeps reoccurring. The way to bring that into good faith is to acknowledge it directly and name it. So, we're going to come back to this tool over and over again, but acknowledging discrepancies in what we say and how we feel is a really big tool for bringing things into good faith quickly. So, going to someone and saying, "Hey, I know that the other day I said that I was comfortable with this solution that we found, but for some reason, I just keep feeling activated around this issue." Or, "I feel a similar type of frustration when this happens as when this happens, the thing that we talked about the other day, and I'm wondering if there just might be something deeper there for me that I actually need to try to talk out with you, even though I don't 100% know what's up for me yet."
In secure relationships, there is space to do stuff like that, right? So to bring in feelings that we don't properly understand all the way through yet and to try to work through with another person what might be going on. The less secure the relationship is, the more one or both people often feel like they need to attach some feeling they're having to a very explicit situation or thing that is happening in order to have the space that they need to work through that feeling. Generally because there's some pattern of one or both people dismissing any emotions that are not tied to very specific situations. So the way to take this out of bad faith into good faith ideally is to just acknowledge what's happening. So tell the other person, "I know you're probably sick of having this conversation and I know that maybe I even said I was happy with the solution we reached, but for some reason, something's still up for me." Right? If that is what's true, that's the way we want to address it to bring it back into good faith.
But there's another reason that we sometimes see endlessly shifting goalposts in relationships. And often it's because one person is trying to assert some type of power or control over the dynamic by continuously changing what their expectations in the relationship are. So, I'll give an example of this because it's actually not quite as overt as it might seem sometimes. I remember watching this reality TV show once where there was an engaged couple. It was a man and a woman, and basically as soon as the engagement had happened, the man had started coming to his fiancée with all of these hypothetical situations like, "Okay, what are we going to do if I suddenly have to work 80 hours a week?" Or, "What are we going to do if we have a child who has a disability and one of us needs to quit work and stay home with that child?" "What are we going to do if suddenly we have no money because of X, Y, and Z?" And he had all of these recurring issues that suddenly he was very concerned about as soon as the relationship moved to that next level of an engagement.
And every time he brought those to his fiancée, she would essentially answer the exact same way, which was, "Well, we would figure it out based on where we were at as a couple and what our resources were at the time and what it made sense to do based on the situation we were in. We would work together to figure out the best solution." So, there are many situations where I think it would make sense for us as a couple for you to, for example, spend a lot more time at work than at home for a period of time. And there are other situations where it would probably make sense for us to pass up on a job offer that was going to be really demanding if what we were focused on at that point in time was taking care of our family and we were financially stable or whatever it is. And so, she would give these really kind of nuanced and context-aware responses. And what was interesting was they never seemed to satisfy her fiancé. He seemed quite grumpy almost every time that he would bring in a hypothetical scenario and his fiancée would answer with some version of, "We would figure it out together based on what would make sense for us as a unit."
And it occurred to me one day while watching this show after like the third iteration of this guy coming in with these crazy hypotheticals. I think this person is only going to be satisfied if he hears his fiancée say, "You can make these decisions." And the reason that I had that suspicion was because this person was also displaying a lot of kind of controlling behaviors in other areas of the relationship. But it really seemed like it wasn't that this person was actually preoccupied with, "Oh my god, what are we going to do if X, Y, or Z happens?" It seemed like they were actually preoccupied with trying to find a scenario where their future partner would not expect them to work as a team and in fact would hand all of the control over to them. And my guess is that until they found a scenario where their fiancée was willing to totally fold, they weren't going to be happy and they were going to keep coming in with new issues and new hypotheticals. Okay?
So there can be situations like this where the goalposts that keep shifting in a relationship are actually pointing at one person trying to shift the power dynamic in some way. And so something I always try to check in on with myself or when I'm hearing about relationship struggles in other people's lives that keep kind of recurring endlessly is, is there some way in which one or both people really want the power dynamic to change in this relationship? Right? So, what is the underlying need beneath all of these shifting goalposts? It can be a sinister and unhealthy need like one person only feels comfortable if they have total control over all of the decisions that get made in a relationship. But it can also be something like one person just wants to feel a little bit more appreciated and like the work that they are putting into the relationship is getting seen. And so again, to bring this into good faith, we just want to start acknowledging, "Hey, this problem is really jumping around, right?" You're going to know that you're in good faith when the feelings actually change after a decision gets made. So, when the emotional climate of the relationship has shifted as a result of some conflict that's been worked through, that's often a sign that the underlying problem was addressed, not just the surface one. So, that's what we want to start checking in on in our relationships. When we work through problems and get to the other side, has it actually changed the way that we relate to each other emotionally? That's a pretty good sign that it's been a good faith interaction.
Sign number two that an interaction might be happening in bad faith is incongruence. So, someone is sitting there telling you they really want to work something through with you, and the vibes that you are getting off of them is sheer contempt or hostility or whatever it is. Or maybe someone is telling you they're sorry or claiming to take responsibility for their side of a conflict, but they don't really seem sorry, right? They seem like they're kind of angry or simmering under the surface. And the next time you see them, the same thing is true. And often when we approach things from a place of incongruence, what happens is that the problems again do not get solved on that deeper level.
And there are a lot of different reasons why this might happen. So one is you might have someone who just has really low emotional self-awareness. So this can be the case very often when dealing with people who tend to live in alignment with their "shoulds" rather than the information that their body is telling them. So avoidants tend to have an internal world that is structured very heavily by kind of rules and things they've internalized as right versus wrong or "should not." And the reason why their inner world is oriented this way is because they aren't very connected to what their actual feelings are or what their more vulnerable experiences are. And so when they're approaching a conflict, often what they're referencing is not, "How do I feel about this?" They're referencing, "What do I think should happen here?" So based on what I have learned through a lifetime of growing up around other people about what's right versus wrong, what do I think the right course of action is? And they don't really check in on, "Do I feel aligned with that course of action?"
So this is very often why you get things like apologies that you don't really feel when they're saying them, right? Because they may have identified, "I did do something wrong. I should feel bad. I should make amends." So, they might say, "I'm sorry." But if for some reason they're actually really angry, or they don't feel sorry, they're often going to radiate that through their body language, and their partner is going to pick up on that, and it's going to feel really confusing and insincere much of the time. But this is another one of those things where it's technically bad faith, but the place where the bad faith is happening is inside of the person, right? So they might actually think, "Yes, I've done something wrong and you deserve an apology, and that's what they're saying." So their thoughts are congruent with their actions, but their feelings are not congruent with their thoughts. So we have a disconnect in that place.
And by the way, the same can be true on the other side of things. So anxious attachers often feel quite conflicted when they get into a conflict with someone if they think that they're right or they think that actually their feelings are really important to be aired out and felt in the relationship, but they can tell that they're going to lose access to their partner if they make too big of a deal about what they're actually feeling. And so they might apologize and they might say something like, "I really want to fix this. I really want to make up." And it's true that they want to make up, but what's not entirely true is that they're no longer angry or that they no longer have feelings about things. So there's kind of a competing set of needs that comes online. One set of needs is just to get back in emotional connection with the other, maybe because they struggle to self-regulate. And so because conflict feels very intense, they need the person that they tend to go to for co-regulation to help them even bear the feelings of conflict itself. But on a deeper level, maybe there's stuff that they don't actually feel sorry for, or they do actually feel like they were justified in saying or doing. But again, competing desires. If the desire to regain emotional connection is stronger than the desire to stand up for what they want to have addressed in the relationship, you're once again going to get apologies that are only really sincere on one level.
So both of these are cases where the person's thoughts and actions are congruent, but their feelings and thoughts are either not congruent or are in some type of competition with each other that doesn't get overtly acknowledged. And then of course, we can have the extreme bad faith version of this, which is that someone is not sorry consciously. They're aware they're not sorry. They think they're right and the other person's wrong, or that they just don't care that they hurt the other person, whatever it is. But they know that it will make them look too bad if they don't say, "I'm sorry," after they've done something overtly wrong. So, they're going to say the words that would basically protect them in a court of law, which is, "I'm sorry. You know, I apologized. What more do you want?" When really there is absolutely no sense of being sorry inside of there, and they know that. So, this is kind of the cleanest example of bad faith. Someone knows they're not sorry. Their thoughts and their emotions are aligned, but their actions are different than both their thoughts and emotions.
So again, if someone is operating in pure bad faith, there's not a lot that we can do. But if you ever find yourself in one of the two former conditions where there's actually an internal war inside of you that maybe you're a little bit aware of, but that you're not really sure what to do about, the way to bring that into good faith is to name the internal war. Okay? So to be honest about the fact that there is kind of two wolves inside of you, and one of the wolves wants to reconnect. It wants to get back into that co-regulation, but then there's another wolf inside of you that is still kind of angry or upset. And both of those things are true. We can both believe that someone deserves an apology from us and we can care about the impact that we've had on them. And there can be a part of us that also has feelings that don't neatly fit into that. And so in insecure relationships, you see a lot of this actually. You see a lot of acknowledging of mixed feelings. "A part of me really just wants to get over this fight and get on with things and get back in connection. And another part of me still feels really frustrated." Or, "One part of me is really afraid that you're going to leave me if I stand up for what I need in this relationship. And there's another part of me that's just feeling like its needs are not getting met."
So naming the things inside of ourselves that are kind of at war with each other brings a bad faith interaction into good faith if that's what was causing the discrepancy. And this is a skill that particularly those of us who have early relational trauma patterning might have to practice quite a bit because we might have this brain that very naturally wants to put everything into a black or white category and go, "Okay, I'm either all good or all bad. My feelings are either right or they're wrong." And that was a very good instinct that helped us survive in early life, but in the world of healthier and more relaxed connections, we're allowed to have mixed feelings. And in fact, acknowledging them actually brings us closer to other people most of the time rather than further away from them.
Third sign that you might be in a bad faith interaction is that you are encountering a lot of unnecessary abstraction. So, there's this video of Jordan Peterson that's been going viral the past couple of weeks. And I promise I'm not trying to pick on Jordan Peterson in particular here. It's just funny the way people are using this where someone asks him a question and it's something to the effect of, "What do you think happened in this situation?" And he goes, "Well, first we have to look at, what do you mean by 'happen'?" And people are using this clip on social media to be like, "What happens when you ask your gaslighting family member to acknowledge something that happened to you in childhood?" And I will be clear that I'm not trying to pick on Jordan Peterson here. I believe, I don't know for sure, but I believe that the way in which he was picking apart that term probably makes sense in the context of the conversation he was having. In that one place where it is very appropriate to pick apart the meaning of words are in fields like philosophy or law, which are specifically aimed at getting at the meaning of a word in a certain context. But where it very rarely makes sense to pick concepts endlessly apart is when we are sitting in front of another person trying to resolve a conflict that is predominantly emotional in nature. Okay?
Picking apart what someone is saying with the purpose of taking what they're saying out of context and delivering it into a context where it doesn't make any sense is usually a pretty bad faith move. And it's one that people do like to defer to when they are uncomfortable with having the conversation as it actually is. I've been watching a lot of Married at First Sight. It's my favorite reality TV show to watch like attachment dynamics come online in real life. But in this most recent season in the UK version, there was this one guy who kept going when his partner was asking him, you know, "What are you here for? Are you here for commitment? Are you here for love?" He kept going, "Well, what do you mean by love? What do you mean by commitment?" And I think this is a pretty good example of what sometimes happens when people who have defenses online that are very intellectual, that again may have served them very well in their young lives, don't realize or do realize that what they're being asked to do is confront how they're feeling. It is generally really not that hard to figure out what a word means inside of the context you're using it in.
And so what you really want to pay attention to here to figure out if the conversation is happening in good or bad faith is, does this person's exploration of a given term give us more resource for dealing with the underlying feelings that we're talking about here, or less resource? So, what I mean by that is taking a term and picking it endlessly apart in a way that kind of gets the conversation further and further away from what the person originally brought into it is usually a bad faith move designed to help the person who's using it avoid the actual emotional undercurrent of the question being asked. Same can be true of the shifting goalpost. Right? "Well, I want to have that conversation with you, but only under these circumstances." "Actually, only under these circumstances." "Actually, only like this." Right? This can be the same kind of move pulling things into the fog. So making what is simple to understand feel endlessly complicated. And I think this really just follows the same principle of, you know that someone is truly intelligent or good at what they do when they can explain something complicated simply. I think that when someone is really emotionally honest, they can find whatever kernel of truth is there inside of an interaction without having to endlessly define terms and get clearer and clearer and clearer on what X, Y, or Z means and debate things endlessly. It's not that hard to sit in front of someone and go, "Oh, is this what you mean by that?"
And so, this is one where you can just kind of ask yourself the question, "Do I feel like this person is making a reasonable attempt to understand what I'm saying?" If a conversation is kind of getting way off track and the person is seemingly always confused by simple concepts, it could be happening because the person is genuinely just disregulated by the emotional content of the conversation. So, they're trying to pull it into this more intellectual sphere where they're comfortable. But I think a good kind of gauge for good faith is if someone starts taking things and pulling them into the fog and getting all convoluted, you can try asking them, "How do you feel right now?" and try to bring the conversation back to that present moment. And someone who really is trying to solve things with you in good faith is probably going to be open to that. And they're probably going to be able to acknowledge at some point, "You're right, this is kind of getting way out of hand." Someone who is purposefully pulling things into the fog for the purpose of obscuring them, which does unfortunately happen when we're on that far end of the bad faith spectrum where it's more conscious. That person's probably going to have a lot of reasons why what they're feeling does not matter or is not relevant, or you're going to get a fake feeling, whatever it is.
This is one where we actually just have to use our gut, I think, and do a vibe check a lot of the time. Do I get the sense that this person is kind of nervous and disregulated and trying to bring the conversation onto a level where they feel more comfortable addressing things? In which case, maybe we can try meeting them where they're at a little bit and addressing things in a little bit less of an emotional way until they're at least regulated enough to come back down into the land of present moment connecting? Or am I getting the vibe that this person is kind of intentionally trying to misunderstand me? So the former, we're going to be able to check in on, "Okay, how about we just find some terms to define these things cleanly and then move on?" And maybe that's going to help a little bit. In the second situation, it's going to feel like this person almost seems happy about the instances where they are able to dodge the question, including when I keep bringing it back in. And that's often when you know that you're dealing with someone who for whatever reason cannot be present with whatever it brings up in them when you bring in what you need to talk about with them. And so if we feel like that's often something that happens when we end up in a conversation with a particular person, what we want to do is be very clear with ourselves going into the conversation. "What is the one point that I want to have addressed?" And bring that point back over and over and over. Check in with yourself every five minutes to see, "Are we anywhere close to this point right now? Or have we completely jumped into a different dimension in this conversation?" And then we can just overtly say, "Hey, I would still really like to talk about this and I feel like we've gotten away from it," and at least give the conversation the opportunity to be responded to in good faith.
Sign number four that you are having a bad faith interaction is that one person is continuously asserting themselves, either overtly or covertly, as the moral authority of the universe. So, one person is consistently kind of picking apart the way that the other person is responding, or the ways that they're expressing themselves, or the ways that they are trying to get a point across, and basically implying that they will not continue the conversation until the other person is doing things in the way that they believe is the right way to do things. Now, there's one thing I want to make really clear from the start, which is that this is different than setting boundaries. Okay? So boundaries sound like, "Hey, if you're going to insult me, I'm gonna stop having this conversation." Right? They are things that we are choosing to do to protect ourselves from someone else's behavior that maybe feels hurtful to us or whatever it is. Moral policing is more in the realm of persecution. So, "You're doing this, you have to stop doing this, I won't talk to you unless you say things in this way."
Very often we go to moral policing when we're trying to control someone else's behavior because we don't know how to be present with the feelings that that behavior brings up in us. So it's basically taking this persecution role and telling the other person how they need to be because we don't want to just reveal to them what it feels like to be us in connection with them in that moment. So we don't want to sit in front of them and go, "Hey, I feel really kind of on edge when I hear you using that tone, and it's making me distracted. I'm having trouble hearing what you're saying." Or, "I want to hear you out, but I feel like you keep making these kind of jabs at me, and it's really hurting my feelings, and I'm not wanting to continue the conversation if you're going to keep talking to me like that." So that's the opposite of trying to control someone else's interactions towards us, right? Being centered in what our responses are to their interactions and sharing that. And then of course, if there's genuine disrespect happening, drawing boundaries and choosing to disengage if certain things happen.
But why would someone not engage vulnerably like that? There are, in my eyes, two key reasons. One is that someone does not have access to vulnerability as kind of a tool in their skill set. Right? So when we need something to stop, but we don't know how to acknowledge to another person that we're feeling hurt, we're going to try to get the thing to stop before it ever happens rather than being honest about what happens for us when it does happen. So situation one is someone can't be vulnerable. That's generally going to be a pretty tricky person to work through a conflict with in most cases, unfortunately. But scenario two is that the relational dynamic does not allow for vulnerability. So, this is something that I've had to reckon with at certain points in my life, and I think a lot of people on the more avoidant side of the spectrum do have to as well at some point in their lives, which is, have we made space inside of the relationship, our partners or our close loved ones' feelings, to be cared about? So, if a partner comes to us and they tell us we're hurting their feelings, do we dismiss that or do we actually listen to them, hear them out, and then adapt our behavior in a way that shows that we don't want their feelings to be hurt in that way anymore? This is what making space for vulnerability inside of a relationship looks like. And we can also do that through a series of negotiations. So, "You know, I don't want to hurt you in that way, and here's what's up for me around it. Can we find some sort of middle ground?"
If there's space for vulnerability inside of a relational dynamic, usually people don't feel the need to police each other's behavior very much because they know that the other person cares about the impact that they're having on them. And the reason I'm drawing this distinction is because someone who can't be vulnerable in general is different to work with than someone who can't be vulnerable situationally. So in the latter case, if you just open up the floor for the relationship to become one where it's safe for people to share the impact that each other is having on one another and have it cared about, you can totally bypass this issue a lot of the time. But if someone just purely can't be vulnerable as a human being because of their own patterning, unfortunately the route you're going to want to go is towards sharing your own impact and setting boundaries. So, that's something to check in on if we're getting really set on, "I need the conversation to happen under these specific conditions, and this person is a bad person, and I'm going to tell them," ask yourself, "What's going on for me? What is going on in my body right now?" And can I, instead of trying to change the way this person is behaving, let them know a little bit of what is coming up for me and just see what might happen as a result.
And fifth sign the conversation is probably not happening in good faith is that it feels like what you are saying is not really ever getting integrated into the conversation. And it's sort of like the conversation isn't quite updating. It can kind of feel like you're just typing the same thing into a computer over and over again, and then the text just disappears. And sometimes this can even get into the realm of things being twisted or manipulated. So you'll be saying to someone, "Hey, it hurts my feelings when you do this," and they'll go, "Oh, so you always need me to act like this." That's a very easy way of kind of dismissing the genuine concern that's being brought in by bringing it to an extreme, right? And this is very commonly what people will do when they can't sit with the shame of whatever is being brought in. So, it's actually really hard for a conversation or relational dynamic to update if the thing that is required for that updating is that someone has to encounter a feeling that they don't know how to metabolize. There's going to be a whole bunch of programs that very quickly come online in most of those cases that is going to try to take the conversation anywhere but that present moment where they have to sit in front of a human being who they have disappointed or let down and feel the feelings that that brings up inside of their body. And those defenses can kind of look like any of the above, right? Pulling things into the fog, shifting the goalposts, being incongruent, apologizing when you don't mean it, taking what's being said out of context and plugging it into some moral framework where it doesn't actually make sense. All of these can be the body's defense systems, trying to take attention away from wherever one is feeling an intolerable feeling.
And I say this as someone who has admittedly done some version of basically all of these things in the past. And I think that sometimes it can be really easy to confuse the feeling of kind of taking a situation and being able to find some way we're right about it inside of our own minds as the actual feeling of being right about something. So I actually have learned over the course of many years to be very suspicious anytime I feel self-righteous in the face of someone else's pain. It's not to say we're never right about things, but there's this particular feeling of like, "Haha, I figured out the right answer to this." And then the kind of subtext of that that no one likes to say out loud is, "Which means I get to dismiss what you're feeling." Finding a way to write off what somebody is saying on kind of a technicality is not the same thing as actually solving a conflict. Just because it feels good and relieving internally does not mean that it's doing something good for the relational dynamic. Close relationships are not supposed to be about who gets the power where. They're supposed to be open negotiations about how to properly disperse the power that the two of you are holding as a unit.
And so the opposite of this, the good faith version of this is that conversations do update and quickly when each person sits in front of the other and stays present. And this might sound ridiculous to those of you who have never had really insecure, really kind of bizarro world relationships, but you know that something is happening in good faith. If you're having a conversation and then 10 minutes later it really feels like something you said 10 minutes ago has informed what's happening in the conversation now. Like there are open-ended questions being asked, the other person is listening and hearing what you're saying and actually trying to meet you in your world, and vice versa, right? And so it feels more like you're exploring together than you are trying to defend something about what you're saying or doing. This is a very clear marker of a good faith interaction. There is an openness to whatever is coming up and a willingness to be curious on both sides about what's coming up, even if some of it feels uncomfortable, and it's okay to bring that in too. Right? "Talking about this, I feel really kind of ashamed and I'm distracting myself with that," is a much, much more good faith thing to say than whatever defense mechanism you might be more prone to grabbing onto when you start feeling something that feels intolerable.
So, we've done five signs that you might not be operating in good faith. Quick tips for getting back into good faith if you ever find yourself in a moment where you're either not sure that the other person is operating in good faith, or you're even kind of questioning your own motives, which again, is a really secure and normal thing to do. Being attuned to our own body signals and our own thoughts and asking ourselves, "Am I actually here doing what I said I'm here to do, or has my motivation shifted at some point in this conversation?"
So, the first thing we want to do is pay attention to levels of regulation. Anytime I am in a conversation and I'm trying to work something out with someone, if I notice myself getting really upregulated, so really kind of pummeled with adrenaline, I ask myself, "Are you able to keep having this conversation in good faith? Are you actually here at this point to resolve things, or has your motivation shifted to either I'm trying to win, or I'm trying to get my point seen above trying to actually resolve the issue, or whatever it is?" All of those things are natural feelings that are going to come up in conflict. But we have to know when we are no longer arguing for the thing that we came in claiming we were there to argue. So if we show up in a conversation where we're like, "Yeah, I'm coming in to fight for our relationship and to fight for this person," and halfway through it actually feels like, "I think now I'm trying to fight for the kind of relationship I want, but not for the kind of relationship that me and this person can co-create together. I'm trying to fit them into my mold." That's worth noticing and either acknowledging or taking as a cue that maybe we need to take a break from that conversation. Get to a point where we can regulate again and where we can reopen the conversation with a new premise. Right? "Last time I came into this conversation, I was here to fight for our relationship. I'm becoming aware that I think we might actually want different things. And so, I want to talk that out and focus this conversation on what we're both looking for and what we both are and are not willing to compromise on."
And a really important thing about paying attention to regulation levels is that if you want to be doing it in good faith, do it for the other person, too. So what I mean by this is do not take advantage of somebody either agreeing with you or messing up in a way that you get all high and mighty about when they are disregulated. Okay? Care for your own regulation, but also have care for the other person's. Do not fall into getting all high and mighty if you have won a conversation around a person who is clearly really disregulated and probably not in the right headspace to be having that conversation. So as much as possible, try to reach important decisions only when both of you are inside of that window of tolerance, right? Where you're able to be at choice about the decisions that you're making.
Two, be really intentional about acknowledging the emotions that are happening below the surface of the conversation. So even making that move periodically over the course of a conversation. "Hey, can we check in on how we're both feeling?" Or, "Can we talk about what's up for us and what's happening in our bodies right now?" Right? That often goes a really long way towards making clear and explicit that the emotions inside of a given conflict conversation are incredibly important. And we're not trying to fight this out on a logic level where there's going to be a winner and a loser. Though the logic matters, right? We want to be able to integrate things cognitively. But if we're doing this in one way or the other exclusively, so if we're having a conversation where only logic is allowed and emotions are seen as lesser than, or if we're having a conversation where only emotions are allowed and sensemaking about why we're feeling those emotions in the particular pattern that we're feeling them in is not allowed. There's usually some bad faith element going on. Right? This is why you always hear stories of like cults who have that concept of, "Turn off your brain, and all that matters is the now." If you can't access your brain, you probably can't point at patterns of really bad behavior, right? But the same thing is also true in the opposite direction. If you're expecting people to only argue things logically, you're missing out, maybe intentionally, on the emotions that are actually driving these patterns that need to get cared for. So allowing and making space for both emotions and logic to coexist inside of repair conversations is the best chance at getting things resolved healthfully. Trying to push either one out of the way is a recipe for either reaching really bad conclusions or, in some cases, allowing one person to take advantage of the other person losing access to the thing that feels resourcing for them.
Third thing, we've said this again, but just to be clear, own your mixed motives. Own your changing motives. "One part of me wants this, another part of me wants this. I'm not quite sure which one to talk about first." Or, "10 minutes ago I wanted this. Now I notice that I have something different that I'm wanting or that I'm fighting for in this interaction." This takes a lot of mindfulness. This takes practice with observing ourselves and our body states and our thoughts. And so sometimes it takes a while to develop this skill. But the more we can notice internal disharmony and bring it into the conversation, the better a chance we give ourselves at having those good faith interactions. And sometimes also just pointing out that we're feeling like we're getting mixed signals from someone can be an opportunity for the other person to pause and reflect on whether or not they have mixed motives. And the more that we make space for all of that to exist and be okay inside of a relationship, the better fate the conversations end up getting, so long as both people are cooperating.
Fourth move that's going to help with good faith is be aware of anything that you're withholding in a conversation. So, I think that a lot of us really believe that we can hold back major feelings if we think that expressing them is either going to harm the person or embarrass ourselves or whatever it is. And I think that most of us think we're better at doing this than we actually are. Very often, if there's something we're not saying in a conversation, there is some way in which the other person is picking up on that, and there's a way in which it's kind of stalling the conversation. I remember one time being part of this group that was working on a project together, and there were things that were going wrong and tensions were rising between people, and yet there was a way in which we just could not get to the bottom as a group of what was going so wrong in the way that we were all trying to work together. And then one day this one person who throughout the whole ordeal had been kind of the peacekeeper in the group came forward and had this kind of explosion of emotion. Like they started crying and explaining that they were so angry at how certain things had been happening. And what was so interesting was that after that point, it got a lot clearer how to solve the problem because it opened up space for many more people to express what they had been withholding. And once we had everyone's real feelings on the table, we could figure out why things were happening. Like, one person would be given a task and then they wouldn't do it, right? There was all of these moving pieces that didn't make sense until we were clear as a group on what everybody was feeling about all of it. And so often we think that we're being kind of like a good or pro-social person by withholding what we're actually feeling about a situation, when actually the better move would be to try to figure out how to communicate what we're withholding honestly but respectfully. Things that are going unsaid are very often impacting our relationships much more heavily than we assume they are. And so the better we can get at at least noticing when there's something major that we're not saying in a relationship, it can be really useful to log that as information as to why our conversations are not feeling very easy to get through.
And last but not least, this is a really hard one, but a really important one. We need to learn to grieve the interactions that we cannot have healthfully rather than resorting to bad faith. So, a lot of us might feel like, "Okay, I'm going to try to do things healthfully. I'm going to try to be honest and upfront and give the person the chance to respond honestly, but if they behave deceptively or if they are cruel or if they are operating in bad faith, then I'm going to give myself permission to retaliate in kind." And this is unfortunately how a lot of bad faith dynamics and bad faith relationships end up just going on indefinitely. Right? If we make a self-boundary that we are going to behave in good faith, and if we're not met in good faith in return, we're going to distance ourselves rather than fight on the level of bad faith. We are going to save ourselves endless grief in life by doing the upfront grief work of realizing, "This person is not willing, or maybe not able, to engage with me in good faith." And God, I want to engage with them in good faith, right? I really want to be close to this person or keep dating them or whatever it is. But if we have given it several honest shots at good faith interactions, and the other person either will not or just cannot respond in kind based on where they're at with their own development and healing. Grieving that we cannot have the relationship we want to have with that person is again going to save us months, sometimes years, sometimes decades of ongoing heartbreak where we both have to engage in a way that we're not happy with, but also lose our self-respect in the process of doing that. Grieving the relationship we cannot have with someone if they don't know how to engage in good faith is always going to hurt more upfront, but again, save us a lot of heartbreak and a lot of compromising of our own integrity in the long run.
All right, I'm going to leave this video at that for today, but as always, any questions, anything coming up for you as you've gone through this video, please leave in the comment section below. I love you guys. I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you back here again really soon.