How to Talk with Anyone about Anything, page 12
We are often asked how SC Dialogue works in everyday life, so in this chapter we offer examples of our process being put to work in a wide array of situations and settings from around the world. They were compiled with the help of our many friends and associates who teach and practice SC Dialogue.
Connect and Have Safe and Direct Conversations
Let’s begin with examples provided by Mo Byres of Dallas, Texas, who is a woman of many talents and interests. She is a life and recovery coach certified in Safe Conversations methods who does a lot of work with members of twelve-step programs.
Mo is also passionate about her sideline as a makeup artist, which feeds her artistic side. In addition, she is training to become a yoga instructor, and she often helps her husband, Tim, a James Beard Award–winning chef and restaurateur, by using Safe Conversations skills in his consulting business.
Mo offered compelling examples from her Dallas-based recovery coaching business, Instar Coaching; her makeup business, FGM agency; and from her private life as well. We have changed the names of her clients to protect their privacy.
Mo Byres’s client Melanie began drinking alcohol at the age of sixteen and became a chronic alcoholic. She’d had a series of alcohol-related troubles over the years, including auto accidents and a one-night fling that resulted in pregnancy and a child.
Melanie had been in and out of alcoholism treatment and counseling programs beginning as a teenager. She was thirty-two when Mo began working with her as part of a team of psychiatrists and therapists trying to work through Melanie’s family issues and help her finally stop drinking for good.
“We had these group sessions with her and her family, and it became clear that one of the problems was not what they talked about but how they talked about it,” Mo noted. “I said that you need tools for talking to each other. The only safe place you can have a family dialogue is here. You need to learn how to do it so that you are not just spinning the same stories but getting to solutions instead.”
Melanie had issues with her mother stemming from Melanie’s childhood battles with cancer. Her mother, a loving woman, had devoted herself to helping Melanie but had become overprotective. Even after Melanie was cancer-free and into adulthood, her mother continued to be controlling in her daughter’s eyes.
“Melanie didn’t want to feel like she was still fourteen years old all the time,” Mo said. “She felt her mother monitored her conversations with her son and did not trust her or think she was capable as an adult.”
Melanie and her mother had trouble working through their issues until Mo introduced them to SC Dialogue. Following the SC Dialogue process, Melanie was able to explain to her mother that as a child, she understood she had cancer, but her mother usually excluded her from conversations with her doctors, which made her feel “managed and filtered.”
“Melanie felt like, I’m going to die, and I just want to hear the truth,” Mo explained. “She was fragile, but she wanted the truth instead of a version of it delivered from her mom. Once we began using SC Dialogue, they could speak authentically to each other about this historical event. Her mother had not known Melanie felt that way.”
The mother, in turn, felt she was being blamed for Melanie’s alcoholism, so she was put on the defensive in past conversations, and Melanie would get exasperated and think, It’s always going to be this way, so I might as well keep drinking.
Melanie’s mom was trying to protect her during her cancer journey, but Melanie just wanted to be heard. She felt that her mom didn’t think she could handle the truth, which left her feeling insecure and lost and contributed to her alcohol abuse. As she grew older, Melanie felt her mom did not trust her and did not treat her as an adult because she was an alcoholic. And so the cycle continued.
Mo shared that with the help of SC Dialogue, Melanie and her mother were able to connect and have safe and direct conversations about this “huge pain” for the first time. “Melanie now feels her mom hears her when she talks about the pain of their disconnection, so Melanie can share her feelings without her mother getting defensive.”
Melanie, who had been through alcoholism treatment nine times, now credits Mo Byres and SC Dialogue with helping heal her relationship with her mother and reclaim sobriety.
THE ORGANIC APPROACH TO SAFE CONVERSATIONS
Mo Byres has used Safe Conversations tools for so long in her coaching that she finds herself using it organically in every aspect of her life, including in her work as a makeup artist. She offered an example from a recent photo shoot for a Texas company’s marketing campaign. The company wanted to feature photographs of its factory workers in the campaign. Byres was brought in to help them look their best for the photo shoot.
“Being in a makeup chair is very intimate. I’m in your personal space, touching your face, so I work at making you comfortable. In this case, these were regular people who were honored to be asked to appear in the photo shoot for the company, but some of them were nervous, too, so I worked to calm them down using SC Dialogue in an organic way to help them feel safe, calm, and happy. I listened to them and gave them affirmations in ways that many of them have never experienced, and they expressed how deeply touched they were because they had never been heard like I heard them,” Mo said.
On-site at the Texas factory, Mo was working with an attractive young woman who seemed to be more nervous than most of her makeup clients there. “When I locked eyes with her, I felt her fear. I knew instinctively that there was something more going on with this woman when she sat down in my chair, and that I needed to go into intentional mode. So I was mirroring her and validating her to help her feel safe, telling her that I wanted to help her feel confident and pretty for the photo shoot.”
Mo said she felt a connection with the woman. “We were sending and receiving information about each other, and I asked her if she was nervous because she’d never done anything like this before.”
The woman responded that yes, she was feeling a bit nervous.
“She was a cute young woman,” Mo said, “so I didn’t think she was insecure or hung up about her looks. I thought it might be something else making her nervous. Remaining curious, I asked her questions to find ‘the more.’ Is the issue an internal or external fear? At one point, I asked her if she was happy with the wardrobe selection they’d made for her. She’d worn a short-sleeved shirt to work because they’re required to wear them in the factory around the machinery, so I didn’t expect that to be the problem. An expression came over her face that told me I had found the issue. When I looked down, I saw that she had a bad scar on her arm. I asked her if she was afraid of people seeing her scar in the photos being taken for the company brochures, and she told me she was.
“I promised her that we would help her with that,” Mo said. “I didn’t press for information on the scar’s origins. That’s her story to tell. I stopped asking questions because I knew what she needed. I validated her concern and empathized with her. She worked in a small-town factory where employees are very close, and I could tell she was comfortable with her coworkers seeing her scar. So I mirrored their empathy and told her we would make sure she felt safe and comfortable in the photo shoot.
“Once I told the young woman that I would share her concerns with the photo shoot producer so that her scar would not be noticeable in the photos, everything shifted! We rallied as a team so that during the shoot she was able to enjoy herself. She laughed and smiled and was adorable.”
After the young woman left, the agent for the marketing company came up to Mo. She had been sitting off in a corner, working on her computer in the same room. “She asked me what I’d said to the young woman when I was doing her makeup,” Mo recalled.
“When I asked her why she wanted to know, the agent said she saw a nervous young woman transform into a smiling, laughing, confident woman, and she wanted to know what I did.” Mo told the agent about helping the young woman overcome her fears and nervousness about the scar on her arm by assuring her it would not be an issue in the photo shoot.
“Making her feel safe with the scar made me feel so good too,” Mo said in reflecting on that experience. “I’m glad I didn’t miss the moment or the opportunity to help her. What if she’d gone out for the shoot and everyone had gawked over her scar, or some lighting guy had asked her about it and embarrassed her? She didn’t need that. I wanted her to feel loved and accepted by us, just as she was by her coworkers. Everyone has scars, and by using the SC Dialogue, I helped her get beyond what made her feel different from us. It’s all about connecting.”
THE VALUE OF CREATING SAFETY
The very next day, Mo had another opportunity to use SC Dialogue when the photo shoot team moved to another of the company’s factories near Uvalde, Texas—scene of the 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in which nineteen students and two teachers were killed and seventeen others were wounded.
“I was doing makeup for another young lady and using the SC Dialogue organically to make her comfortable when she just spilled out this horrific story,” Mo said. “I realized that most of the people we were working with that day had children in that school, so I pulled the crew together and told them we had to be conscious of that delicate atmosphere we were working in.”
Mo said that as the makeup artist, she is often the only person on a photo or video shoot who has the time to connect with people in a way that makes them feel safe and comfortable. “I am the connection point for most of them, and SC Dialogue gives me the skills to do that.”
SEEK TO UNDERSTAND
The final story from Mo Byres comes from her personal life. Mo noted that she has taught the SC Dialogue process to her mother, who was born in Cuba but now lives with Mo and her husband, to help talk through issues that come up in their day-to-day lives. Recently, they used it to work out a common mother-daughter issue: doing the dishes.
“My mother says it makes her crazy to see dirty dishes piled up in the sink,” Mo said. “So I asked her why she gets so insane about that. To me, she acts like I stole a thousand dollars rather than left some dirty dishes behind.”
They went into SC Dialogue to explore her mom’s feelings on the issue, and Mo realized it was more than a housekeeping issue. As a six-year-old in rural Cuba, Byres’ mother was left for a long time with relatives when her own mother had to go to the city to get medical treatment for tuberculosis.
“When her mother came back, she found my mom had been neglected and was living in terrible conditions,” Mo said. “She had lice and physical injuries, and my grandmother went off on the relatives for neglecting their important responsibilities to take care of her child and the place she lived.”
By using SC Dialogue, Mo came to understand the history behind her mother’s need to be in a clean and orderly environment. “She wasn’t mad at me. She took it personally when she saw the dirty dishes stacked up because it made her relive something bad in her childhood. When we talked through it, I realized the impact it had on her. So now, even when I am rushing around because of work, I take five minutes to do the dishes.”
Mo said she also texted her siblings who live nearby and told them, “The next time Mom is being weird about something, just remember that there’s probably a story behind it.”
Mo summarized her experience with SC Dialogue. “Being committed to using Safe Conversations as a way of life for all communication is like having a magic spell. Your friends, coworkers, family members, and so on absolutely don’t have to know anything about it for it to work. When I allow myself to be safe for others (go into the curious space, pause and listen, mirror what I’m really hearing and not what I think they mean), I do feel empathy and want to validate their experience. They always feel it, too, and that’s when the magic happens. No matter how difficult or complicated the topic is, it will work if you practice it. Start with the easy stuff and work your way up to the hard topics. It takes a real internal commitment to become the source of safety in order to create a Safe Conversation.”
We all wish for total love and harmony within our families, but experience teaches us that sometimes the most contentious relationships begin at home with those we know and love but sometimes butt heads with.
Family Members Need Safe Places to Land
William, an accountant trained in SC Dialogue, had always been close to his cousin Danny, but their relationship deteriorated after Danny started dating a woman.
“We stopped talking,” William recalled. “I know when you start a new relationship, you become a bit consumed. But this felt different from his past relationships.”
After a few months of not talking, William reached out to his cousin, asking him if he had time to meet for a beer and talk about things. They met at their favorite pub.
William followed the process by starting out positive. He said to Danny, “You’ve been like a brother to me. And ever since you started dating Veronica, it seems you’re avoiding me. We used to have a beer together, hang out, watch Sunday football. I’m not sure why we don’t anymore. Did I do something to upset you or Veronica?”
William shared that his cousin didn’t say anything at first, but then he got a bit teary-eyed, stood up, and hugged William. “Danny told me he needed to hear that. That he missed hanging out too.” Danny shared that his girlfriend knew about their earlier “bachelor” days together and seemed threatened by that. “But he promised me that he would speak with Veronica and let her know that I’m like a brother to him and there’s no threat there,” William said.
“It will take a bit, but we have had a couple of family gatherings together. And I think Veronica is starting to feel a bit more accepting and less threatened by me, especially as her relationship with Danny becomes stronger.”
Sometimes we think that if we didn’t have family drama, there would be no drama at all. In fact, sibling rivalry has provided storylines for Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the battling Lannisters in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, and most recently, the madly dysfunctional Roy family on Succession.
And yet, most of us want our family relationships to work, and that is why our SC Dialogue can be the most useful household tool ever created. Empires could have been saved if the Lannisters and the Roys had practiced even a little mirroring and empathy.
Safe Conversations creates a level playing field in conversations, where any topic can be discussed calmly, regardless of age, gender, or family roles.
Listening Inspires a Re-Marriage
With every relationship, there are stages, particularly when it comes to partnerships. Often, we forget why we were initially attracted and connected to someone. Safe Conversations helps us remember the person we first admired and recover that affection by listening with empathy and working to understand perspectives. This creates a sense of safety so you can let down your defenses, relate emotionally, and work on working out the important issues dividing you. This next example comes from a couple who attended one of our workshops.
Derek and Michelle had decided to file for divorce after ten years of marriage. Michelle said, “Things weren’t too bad, but I was young and didn’t have a mentor to tell me to stick with it. Co-parenting our son kept us connected, but also, our feelings never really died.”
As sometimes happens, this couple started dating again after their divorce was finalized. They loved each other but needed a better way to work out disagreements and differences, so they attended our workshop. Michelle realized that she tended to shut down when conflicts occurred, keeping her concerns and feelings to herself instead of telling Derek how she felt.
For his part, Derek came to understand that his listening skills weren’t as well-developed as he’d thought. He learned the difference between listening to someone while thinking about your own response versus listening to understand what the other person is saying and feeling. He also tuned up his approach to handling conversations about contentious topics. “When it comes to conflict, I tend to bow out gracefully. I don’t want to add to the pain. That’s why I granted Michelle the divorce she asked for, even though I still loved her. Now, with these tools, I know that I can share how I feel without adding pain.”
Derek realized that building a relationship is a continuous process. He learned to trust that when conflicts occurred, he and Michelle could overcome them together. Michelle learned that as well, and she gradually allowed herself to be open with Derek about her feelings.
Two weeks after attending their first Safe Conversations workshop, Derek and Michelle remarried, which is about as good a result as we can hope for with couples who’ve come to us in search of healing.
As we stated earlier, we learned so much about bringing healing to relationships with couples that we expanded into all sorts of relationships and into communities and their educational, social, political, advocacy, spiritual, and governmental organizations.
Safe Conversations Goes to School
Many years ago, there was a New York Times number-one, bestselling book titled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by minister and author Robert Fulghum. The basic idea of the book is that in our first year of official schooling, most of us learn essential things that stay with us the rest of our lives: Play well with others. Sharing is caring. Clean up your own messes. Look both ways before you cross the street.1 While we agree, we would add another ten years or so, at least through middle school, as so much is happening to our bodies and brains developmentally, emotionally, and physically. It’s during these early school years when we begin to navigate differences outside the family unit, often for the first time. We imagine a fourth R being added to the basic skills students are taught: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, and Relationships (okay, we took some creative liberty here!), hoping that teaching our SC Dialogue method for dealing with differences would serve them well for the rest of their lives.
We tend to have idyllic memories of our early school days; in truth, there are many lessons learned about dealing with life’s challenges even in kindergarten. For many children, this first year of formal schooling is where they must learn to deal with a group of their peers in a structured setting. There are rules and schedules and other kids you must adjust to, including some who want what you have, or don’t like you for whatever reason, or don’t want to do what you would like them to do.
