Could Anxious Conversations be a useful process like Active Listening?
How do we provide a structure for thinking about what is stressful to a person and how to establish some mutual rules on how to stop/start conversation?
I am wondering about new workshop tools after finishing Naomi Alderman’s book ‘Don’t burn anyone at the stake today’. The information crisis she describes that we are living thru today will continue for decades and thus we do need new tools and ways of being together.
Unwelcome conversations
The anxiety felt about talking to each other is one area.
The conversations that never even start is similar to the problem of places never visited by people with disabilities. The uncertainties of what might happen, what may be missing and what may be painfully there maximise the anxiety and prevent going out.
The vastness of human imagination and the lack of explicit proof that wellbeing will be supported and welcomes will be offered makes starting out impossible. It is easier and more sensible not to act and not to do.
Currently, it is like that with many conversations. Easier not to start one and simpler to remain apart.
This card is wrong
This card is not enough because:-
a) printed signs are never enough.
They are too often used to push away and dump systemic problems onto individuals rather than engage with actions.
b) it is all awareness raising without actions.
This builds stress rather relieving it. There needs to be a process of scaffolding expanding consideration of what might go wrong. Imagination and anxiety multiply problems and there needs to be boundaries.
c) it needs social prompts.
When people travel they generally look for other people not just signs. We seek out what worked for people like us, not just touchpoints and rules of how organisation believe and demand we comply to.
Anyway, it’s a start. I’ll work on it more. I am happy to chat about ideas and possibilities.