ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE: WHAT TO SAY WHEN THE CONVERSATION GETS HEATED

By Ginger Kuenzel, Author, DLE Mentor, Author, Translator, Corporate Consultant, Adirondacks Enthusiast, Hague, NY/ Englewood, FL

The anger and the rifts in relationships are painful, and they don’t seem to be diminishing. Even within my immediate family, conversations can be difficult.

After the January 6 insurrection (or, as some would call it, the day patriotic tourists visited the Capitol), things got so bad that I had no contact with some relatives for months. Though things are now somewhat better and we can now once again be in the same room, it’s like we’re walking on eggs. Anything that anyone says could be taken in the wrong way.

The good news is that I’ve developed two coping mechanisms to keep things on an even keel. These seem to work in personal as well as professional relationships. First, I have created a closet where I put everything that is painful, but which I cannot change. I can actually visualize this closet, which is situated toward the back of my head and has a lovely wooden door with beautiful rustic hardware.

I understand just enough psychology to know that living in denial is unhealthy. So, with this closet concept, I tell myself I am not denying anything. The issues are always there, just not front of mind. I sometimes open the door to that closet and contemplate the mess. I see that I still can’t change things, so I simply close the door again. The misunderstandings are all there, but I don’t let them take control of my life or make me angry. I’m hopeful that, with the passage of time, I’ll be able to leave the closet door open for longer periods of time and start sorting through the issues and cleaning things up. Isn’t that pretty much how we handle any closet project?

My second coping mechanism is to simply pretend that I’m watching a movie when I’m with certain family members. This takes me out of the scene, and puts me in the audience, where my role is to simply watch and listen, not to be part of the dialog. The actors’ lines in this movie come straight out of the media. In fact, when I go to different ‘movies’ with different actors, the lines are almost always the same. The extremes in the media–both on the left and the right–are largely to blame for our society’s divisiveness. The personalities we see on some channels are entertainers rather than serious journalists. These performers espouse their opinions, which are designed to ignite passion. Their viewers don’t have the time or the will to validate the statements. If they hear it on TV or read it online, they believe it must be true.

The right and the left in America hear two different sets of ‘facts’ from the media they follow and are thus living in two very different realities. That’s why I often feel that I’m watching a bad movie when listening to certain friends and family members. At least I now understand that it’s only a movie, and not reality–or at least not my reality.

I recently came up with a phrase that I think can defuse nearly any uncomfortable situation. Let me set the stage. A friend was ranting about how tired she is of hearing that white Americans are bad people. For example, she explained, it was the British, not Americans, who first brought slaves to this country, before the U.S. was even founded. According to her logic, there were not yet any Americans, so they should not be blamed. Like other extremists, she had created her own reality and was firmly convinced of its truth. What could I possibly say? Not wanting to engage, I replied simply, “Hmmm, that’s an interesting way of looking at things. Now, let’s decide what to feed the cat.”