Clean Communication and the experience of anger
Imagine two innocent people having a conversation. There is no pre-existing charge or issue. Mutual respect is present.
During the course of the conversation, one person believes that the other is charged and angry.
They tell the other person. You are angry.
This happens in normal, healthy relationships.
The person accused of being angry scans their body being and says no, I am not angry.
How do we proceed?
Is someone right and the other wrong? Do I want to insist I am right and you are wrong?
Or can we both have an experience that is not the same? Can I experience you as angry, and yet you have no experience of anger?
The moment I deny your right to experience anger from me, I impose myself on your valid feelings, true or not.
The moment you insist that I am angry, you impose your right to dictate how I feel.
The only way forward is to accept the valid feelings of each other. I experience you as angry. My experience is not angry.
From this position, we might then explore an underlying emotion, either being projected by the accused of being angry, or resident in the accuser, or a combination of both. There is a beautiful opportunity for relational nuance and understanding.
In Syntropic World, we use a tool called Clean Communication. The person who has the charge is responsible for cleaning the charge. Keeping relational dynamics clean is a daily, moment-by-moment commitment. It requires the willingness to grant the other the right to their authentic, valid feelings, different from ours, just as we want our feelings to be valid and true for us.
Photo Taken September 19th 2024
