Your heart will be beating different. You will feel the regular thud-thud at an accelerated thud-thiu-thiu-thiu; it's beating as if you're speaking in front of a crowd. Taking a moment to loosen the strain, the stress causing your body, a longer breath envelops lung space, your mind opens with glint of ease. Just relax for a sec. Maybe a thought of how useful taking a little time each day for deep breathing is glimpsed. That's in passing--everything comes back like a landslide: you are here, now. The strained voice of the other is making both afflicted sides blood boil. You restrain, subduing your fighting impulse (fight-or-flight response) to a simmer.
It's the middle of a fight with your parent, spouse, other half, whoever. By now it's actually done, what is now a fast fading memory. Alone, it is worth nothing.
Was the screeching tension worth all the effort? How well did you try to hear the their story, "their side/ opinion?" Did they not compromise enough; did you not give them enough options? Did they leave you dry, no compromise in site; did you really need to disagree instead of "sacrificing" something? time? effort? flexibility?
Anyway, I read this book, Toxic Feedback, about the precarious task of critiquing someone...
fitting into the Form of Your Audience:
- It is always your fault. While not meaning, it is all your fault.
- First, accept--truly realize--you are always at fault. Each side--in any tiff or feud--is faulty.
- "They are mostly who is to blame!"
- It does not matter. (Take the absolutist POV on this one. Another link, for more.)
- There is not two sides.
- Second, there are no sides. Two opposing positions are only theoretical academic modes of discourse. If used outside of theory, they make armchair philosophy into something useless.
- They don't know how to correctly talk about it.
- Last, do not try to tell them, "I know how to argue correctly--and you don't. Hpm!"
- Whether misunderstanding
Well, if it's all to shit?
- At least ~ in the heat of the moment ~
- Try stepping back.
- Take off your shoes, and put on their's.
- Try and try again. It takes practice for something that is hard to do.
