Pushkin hard conversations.

I think we talk about them as if there's these discreete things.

What hard conversations are in service of is a relationship and that is ongoing.

Anna Sale is the creator and host of Death, Sex and Money, a show that explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.

She believes that sometimes the most powerful thing you can say during a tough conversation is nothing at all.

I think often when people jump in to fill gaps in silence, it's to indicate that having an uncomfortable feeling is okay.

And maybe there's this other thing, you know, like, Hugh, have you talked with arapist?

You know, like we want to say something that's going to make it feel tolerable, and sometimes big things just need a little bit of air.

On today's show, How to Have Hard Conversations, I'm Maya Schunker, a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change.

Lately, the world has been feeling super heavy, and it's made me lose my appetite for hard conversations in my personal life about even the small stuff.

This worries me because hard conversations are essential.

They're how we process and work through the challenges in our lives.

Today's episode is a gentle nudge to initiate those conversations that need to be had and to bring our empathy, patience, and care to these exchanges.

Anna Sayle has spent her career leaning into difficult topics, both on her podcast and for her book, Let's Talk About Hard Things the life changing conversations that connect us.

In this episode, Anna reflects on what she's learned, what's helped, what hasn't, and what she's still figuring out.

I wonder if you remember a time where you really struggled to say something important to someone else, and what was it about it that made it so hard.

I have four sisters, So in any family, as you get older, you realize that, like, the different siblings have very different experiences in the family depending on how they align with parents' expectations.

Or I'm one of four, so you know, totally get it.

Yeah, yeah, So I remember different sisters of mine at different points in their lives.

Teenagers call just would have different responses to the way they talked about our parents or whether they were felt like they had our parents' approval.

And I was a middle kid who did well in school, and when I did things that were against the rules, I never got caught.

So like I just like slid through, you know, I just like knew how to bob and weave and didn't really have trouble with my parents and other sisters of mine, like they had different responses to confrontation and had different relationships with our parents.

And so I can remember those early conversations about, you know, try and understand when something was upsetting them, and then also having that parallel conversation or like desire to be protective of how I saw our family and how I saw our parents think it was too upsetting to let their version of what their experience in our family had been for me to sit with the conversation.

Do you feel like you play a mediator role within your own family, which is when you see that there's some sort of strife, you try and actually facilitate an open dialogue about it.

Yes, And I think I would have more fully owned that earlier in my life, because there's a way that that fit with my idea of myself as super relationally advanced and skillful.

But there's this way that trying to be in the middle and moderate and like help people hear each other in ways that you think that they're missing that that's like a power move that's kind of obnoxious.

Like, so when you step in to moderate something, you're becoming the podcast host and the difficult relational piece in your family, and not everybody wants you to play that role.

Absolutely.

I ask this because I am cut from the same cloth.

I don't know if it's a pathology around peace seeking or the fact that my brain kind of instinctively says, of course, a conversation would make this better.

But I feel such an impatience with silence and with just pushing stuff under the rug that I feel like a desperation in my life to expose everything, even if it leads to a sense of calamity in the moment.

I think I just instinctively believe will be some sort of payoff down the line.

You so you're a disruptor, Yeah.

Very disruptive, and often it works, but then sometimes it makes things worse.

And that is really a failure of mine to empathize with a person who would prefer to not talk about the thing I'm placing kind of a norm on the other person, or I'm assuming they carry my psychology.

Yeah, and I totally get that impulse, especially when it's like among people you really love and you want you want it to get on with it.

Let's just like get on with it and move to a new way of understanding each other.

I mean, I wrote a book.

I wrote a benmore.

I had a whole chapter about family.

I was like sharing drafts with all my family members.

How's this read to you?

How's this read to you?

So?

I think I was definitely playing that role when I was doing that, and then it was kind of like, Okay, I've done that.

We're just going to like step.

Back and let everybody have their own experience in the family and sort of be a member of it and observe and realize that this is an organism that has a lot of different stuff going on.

Yeah, so zooming out a little bit.

I mean, you've obviously made a career around having difficult conversations with people.

How do you prepare for a hard conversation with someone with your family, with your husband, with friends.

Yeah.

When I think of hard conversations now.

They don't happen during podcast recordings.

They happen with my husband, they happen with my closest friends, because those are the ones where there's stakes and where it hurts if you feel like your intentions are not sort of seen clearly, or that I'm missing something that's that I'm doing, that's really hurtful.

So I think that the way that I try to prepare is I can feel it in my body when I get seized up with sort of like I get something to got to bring up, you know, I'm feeling wronged, you know, And often it's something around feeling overwhelmed or like some way that I've tried really hard hasn't been sufficiently acknowledged and I'm worn out, and it's really hard not to just start the conversation right in that, you know, like pissed off way, Yeah.

Like you don't appreciate that I'm doing the dishes every night.

Yeah, And that doesn't always go well.

It's like how do I slow down and take a breath, And then after I sort of can breathe a minute, I have just a little bit more space around the emotion of it that I can like be a little bit more in control of how I respond, because when I don't take that minute, it's just if you're pissed, you've got something to say, it doesn't land well, and then you're feeling like you're having to defend yourself.

Then it's just like tight self protection defensive Anna, She's just going to be present in protecting herself until she gets tired.

Then you can finally resolve.

And I'm assuming you lack receptivity to what other person's saying, so nothing other than Anna, you are totally right.

Oh my god, And how could I not have seen?

And I think to myself every day how lucky I am that you were willing to marry me and that you do do the dishes.

My god, Maya, maybe we should get married.

I know, I think so.

So I think we can all imagine pretty clearly what the pissed off version looks like, Oh my god, you never appreciate me.

What is the more like, take a deep breath, slightly more reflective version of that conversation?

Look like?

What I try to do is just starting that conversation with like, Okay, can we back up and talk about how we hope this thing goes?

What do you hope for it?

What do I hope for it?

It's trying to get to that place where you have the spirit of Okay, I am doing the best I can, and this person I have conflict with right now is doing the best he can?

And how do I not lash?

And like lash out is a good word, because like, my kids are elementary school age, and I can see when I lose my patience and I get a little like snippy, it almost goes down like a little ladder.

I get snippy about something, getting get your shoes on, get in the car, And then I can watch my nine year old get snippy with my six year old, and it's just like, oh, this isn't about some like fundamental you know, misalignment and chores in this house.

This is like I felt bad, I madebody else feel bad.

They made somebody else feel bad.

What about the conversations where you have no idea where it's going to go.

You don't know if they're even willing to talk about it.

How do you prepare for something like that?

I think.

I have a friend who lost her dad.

It's been a few months, and every interaction that I have, I'm aware, Oh, we're catching up and I want to know how she's doing with grief.

HM.

But I don't want to be that friend who like, every time we call, I'm like.

How are you?

You know, I've been close to enough people in grief who know like, oh God, there's this weird currency to getting updates on how I'm doing that people want in on, And I don't want to be that friend.

I want to be the friend who.

Just like swims up to him and is like, what's going on today?

We can talk about the weather, we can talk about whatever.

We can talk about a menu.

Or we can talk about your dad, or we talk about how much nis him?

Yeah, you know, So that's kind of that's like a micro version of like how's this going to go?

It's kind of like when you know somebody's going through something.

But I don't want to be that friend who's like, you know, how's it going?

What are you dad?

How's your heartbreak today?

You know, there's other things where say there's like a revelation where somebody is revealing something that's going to fundamentally change the way the person you're telling understands the world and their place in it.

And I think with those conversations if you can control the circumstances.

It's to like prepare yourself, prepare the person that there's going to be sort of a different kind of can I talk to you about something important?

You know, you create a little cocoon somehow for a different kind of conversation.

I think the best kind of planning for a hard conversation is, like you plan for what you're going to say to the person who's going to find out the thing, and then you have consent circles outside of that of the other people who know you're having the conversation, so you can like debrief and get support from them so that the initial reaction of the person isn't something that you need to go a certain way because you just can't control that.

If somebody's finding out something.

Fundamental about your relationship or something that hasn't been honest, or if you're a manager who has to lay somebody off, you can't go into that conversation expecting that they're going to like appreciate hearing that information from you.

Yeah, what about when when you're preparing for a conversation where you might be on the receiving end of the revelation, so you can tell someone's carrying something really heavy, and your goal and the conversation is to create a space where they could maybe feel comfortable opening up to you about it.

I think that the thing that I have learned from talking to both people I love and I'm close to in real life and people who are strangers as a journalist about being that person that that someone is like sharing something that they haven't shared before, is is it's a huge compliment, but more like it is an immense responsibility, because there's like, what is your first reaction?

Are you trying to lighten the mood and you laugh and it could be construed as you laughing at them?

Is it like.

You don't know what to do with the information and you feel like you want to offer some immediate, prescriptive advice that's going to help make it feel less heavy, And then that feels really pat and like you didn't hear them.

I've done all these things.

By the way, just be clear to all of these stings.

You have a responsibility to clarify with this person what the expectation is about what you are going to do with this information, how much it's kept confidential, who you might share it with, and why, what you might do to help them, support them, or advocate for them.

You need their permission to do that.

I liked fashioning myself somebody who people would confide in.

That has long been part of my identity, And now I almost feel rather than like going immediately into leaning in, I keep the middle distance a little bit to make sure I'm the right person, like recognizing your ability to empathize and the limits of your ability to empathize.

It's like, am I the right person?

And maybe I am the right person, but I'm not the right person right now.

Like other mistakes I've made is not be clear about my ability to show up.

You know something about raising young kids.

As I've disappointed a lot of people and let some friendships that were very like core to me.

They're a little bit dried up and need need watering when I get more capacity.

So I think that's the other thing is making sure you're checking in and as you can, and when you can't check in, figure out how to like acknowledge that so that they don't feel abandoned.

I'm so curious to know how having kids has shaped how you think about difficult conversations.

You're a mom to two young children, and I imagine you don't engage with them as you do with adults.

So how have you been navigating that space?

It is profound.

Something I think about a lot is restraint.

I have daughters, so there's like a mother daughter just like picture a mother daughter trope.

And in my version there's like the way it expresses itself is I'm both the person that they feel the most comfortable sort of falling apart with after a long day of school.

So they're the most like Braddy to me of anybody in their lives.

You're their safe space.

Anna, That's what I always hear.

I had a friend and tell me recently, I don't want to be my child's safe space anymore.

Man, it's trying.

So there's that, and then there's also when I really want them to get something, and if I've had to repeat it or if it's if it's something, the way it shows up a lot is like if there's something about interacting socially that feels very core to our values as a family, whether it's how we talk to people who're just meeting and manners, or how we just deal with people who are different from us, Like your responsibility as a parent is to teach this child how to live in civilization.

Right, the stakes are high, but kids can only take in so much high minded instruction, so like there's a certain point where you just get totally tuned out.

I think this is the same for whether you're talking to a child or are grown up.

We all have our openings where we can hear, and we have our times when we just like we're like, whatever, what do I need to say to get this lady to stop talking to me and move to my next thing?

And so I'm just I think being a parent has made me much more aware about watching for your spots and making sure you don't fill the space so that them reflecting on something from the backseat of the car when you're driving, you just like, don't talk over that because you've got some lesson to impart.

I love that kids' timelines are different than grown ups.

I mean, just imagine, I'm like somebody who might I've built my professional life around getting in there with people, and I'm gonna do it with my kids.

And like, you know what, Dinna, you just got you gotta pace yourself.

We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans.

What's your advice when you feel like a difficult conversation needs to happen, but the other person does not want to engage.

So let's say there's a conflic at work or with your partner and they're just not having it.

What do you do in a situation like that?

You can't force somebody to engage in a way that you want them to engage, And so then it's the questions are if this person can't be with me in this way that I want them to be and expect them to be, and they're letting me down, can I still have a relationship with them?

Or do I want to be around them?

You know, and certainly an employer employee relationship is lower stakes to move on from than somebody in your family of origin, Like can you figure out another way to be in relationship with them but have things that you can't expect from each other?

You know?

If I feel like I need something from someone and they are not giving it to me, what do I do?

That's a question about who you are, and you have to sit with all those different possibilities that that could raise.

You know, I was married before, and in my first marriage, any relationship has conflicts right and your earlier is like part of getting to know each other.

You discover the ways that you're different, You discover the places where we kind of misalign and have.

To work at it.

And then when a relationship you know that balance of like we've lost so much of the connective tissue that holds this together and I'm not giving you what you need and You're not giving me what I need because we want different things.

You sort of knowed it.

You feel it's heaviness.

You think about can I carry this around?

Is this going to change?

Is this temporary or is this forever?

What does it mean about me that I don't know how to have this relationship continue?

If we can't figure out this core hard conversation, Who am I?

If I'm somebody who doesn't want to stay in a marriage.

It's just like this kind of swamp you have to trudge through to think, like what of this can I tolerate and figure out how to live with?

And how much of this is so heavy and boggy that like, I'm getting stuck in this mud.

If the person is willing to engage, but you feel like there's a moment in the conversation where they're starting to close off.

Do you have any advice for how to help the walls go back down?

Or do you just kind of pivot?

Do you take a break?

I would try saying like, I noticed that you seems like you're getting tired of this conversation.

I notice that you're sort of losing energy here.

Do you want to talk about this in another time?

You know?

Are you frustrated?

Are you angry?

Like just kind of doing that thing where you notice you make something that's unspoken or maybe meta about the interaction and you make it explicit and then see if it opens up and they might tell you, like, you know, when you said that one word four sentences ago, it really pissed me off, you know, and.

You might not have been aware of it.

Or it might be that you've talked for fifty minutes and it's you know, eleven forty five pm, and it's not the time to like come to a resolution.

To be continued can be okay, It can be really scary for people who think of themselves as like I resolve conflict to like sit with something that's unresolved.

My worst night, Marianna, I can't even sleep well.

I think that that's so interesting because I feel that way too.

And it's like something that my husband sometimes says when we're like in the middle of some kind of hard discussion.

He'll be like, we're going to be okay, but this really pisses me off when you do this.

It's just like so little, but just like it just says, I'm not rejecting the whole idea of you as a human person.

Anna, you are not bad.

Right now, and this relationship is not over.

Yeah, because it gets to like our own feelings of where we feel insecure and worthy, et cetera.

So I don't know, I think practicing sitting with unresolved conversations is really powerful.

I just felt that in my soul father way, and I'm sorry to interrupt.

I felt you were going to say something else.

I think that's so small it We'll let it resonate in your soul a little bit.

Ding.

Yeah, that is what I personally need to practice.

You need to practice sitting in the discomfort of an unresolved conversation.

And I'm sure a lot of people who are listening to this will resonate with that.

We want closure.

We're desperate for closure and clarity and definitive answers, And so when we don't get that on our timeline, when we impose our timeline and someone else who is a very different timeline and a very different level of patience and tolerance for uncertainty or unresolved things, that's when we drive ourselves crazy.

Yeah.

Well, it's a little bit like that gear that I will go into at a dinner party.

It's the way I like to relate to somebody who's like driving right to them.

The other thing about that interaction is I never feel out of control.

I am like engaging with somebody in the way that I want to engage with them, and if they're giving it back to me, we're like digging in.

I don't feel out of control.

I feel out of control when somebody is like I don't want to engage with you in the way that you're coming at me, it's.

Like what, yes, okay, wait, tell me more about that.

So, like when you're doing the Anna version and they're not having it, you can kind of feel like things are going off the rails a little bit.

Are there questions or phrases or mechanisms you have to help pull yourself back for a second and kind of recalibrate, like re engage.

I mean, I think it's just, uh, I think it's off putting me or it's surprising to me because it's a it's an affront to my version of charm.

You know.

I'm like, this is how I work, and you're not meeting me, and it makes me feel It'll make me feel self conscious.

It'll make me be like, oh God, don't they see that I'm coming with good intentions and I'm good, and I'm worthy, and I'm righteous and whatever, Like I'm curious, I'm all the things that I was taught to be in Unitarian.

Church, you know what I mean.

But the fact is, like I'm not in control.

I think of it in three D.

It's three dimensional space.

It's not me being able to come at somebody and have the kind of transaction I most want to have to feel the most emotionally sort of secure and fed.

But like, if I can figure out how to be next to them without needing them to like do the thing in the way that I know how to do it best, and I can be patient and humble, it is a surrender of control.

I guess, like Anna, you have no idea what somebody is going through in a certain day, even somebody you know really well, if it's not clicking, you're going to think, oh, it's me, and I want to figure out how to get back into click, and I'm going to like force it.

But sometimes it's just like not your day.

You know, a lot of us, when we think about approaching hard conversations, we focus so much on saying the right thing.

So in my head, I'm rehearsing throughout the day exactly having to phrase this line and that line, and what's my delivery going to be like, and anticipating what they're going to say in response, and we forget actually that one of the greatest tools at our disposal is silence.

It's just letting moments sit.

You're the Queen of observing silences, So tell me a bit more about that.

It's a little bit like when you're talking with someone and something has just happened, like you feel it happened in a conversation, whether it's a sentence that sums up something really big that you were sort of talking towards and.

Then like oof.

It's almost like when you don't rush in to just tell them you understood, or you have another question or like make them feel better when you just sit and just let it.

You know, it's kind of like throwing a brock into a pond, like you just let it have its moment.

It's sort of a sign of reverence or what has just been expressed.

It also can be.

Just like a you know, you're a musician, it's sort of like arrest or almost like if it's a really big thing, you're like, maybe we need to move to the next movement.

I'm gonna I want to just like respect that something.

This was something, So what I'll do.

I noticed my this isn't conscious, but I've noticed myself over the years, like just sitting and I'll take a deep breath in an interview set, and then unnoticed, the person I'm interviewing will take a deep breath because they've been sort of moving towards this saying, and then something happens and then it's like, oh yeah, yeah.

It's letting something be big without having to be fixed or smoothed over stand it over.

I think often when people jump in to fill gaps in silence, it's to indicate that having an uncomfortable feeling is okay, and maybe there's this other thing you know.

Like have you talked with arapist?

You know, like we want to say something that's going to make it feel tolerable.

And sometimes just big things just need a little bit of air before you can start thinking about what to do about them.

For someone who's listening, who's mustered up the courage to have that big, hard conversation, is there one final thought you would leave them with, or some form of encouragement or some wisdom from all of your years doing this in your personal and professional life.

I think if you're on the doorstep of a conversation that makes you feel intimidated and nervous, just practice.

It might seem so dorky, but practicing really helps with someone who knows you, with someone who can sit with you and say, like, what's the most important objective you have for this conversation?

Is it to tell them this thing?

Is it to feel reconnected in this other way?

Like, we have a lot of different mixed objectives when we have relational conversations, and there's sometimes at cross purposes, and it can be so clarifying to just have an ally who helps you figure out just that forest of feelings so that you can feel confident that what you are trying to express or bringing to the conversation is something you've thought through and then you have that person to come back or whether the conversation goes well or goes terribly, Because these siks are not one and done like these hard conversations.

I think we talk about them as if there's these discreet things.

What hard conversations are in service of is a relationship, and that is ongoing.

And so it's about that particular relationship where you haven't want to talk about that thing, and then surrounding yourself with one or as many relationships as you need to feel like you've got back up to go into that scary thing.

Hey, thanks so much for listening.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow a slight change of plans wherever you listen to podcasts and join me next time when we explore what happens when the dream you've spent your whole life chasing begins to hurt your well being.

I almost saw myself as this piece of glass and it got a crack, and you get up and you try to put a little band aid on it.

You know that doesn't work, and then another crack, and another and another, and then you kind of just wonder, at what point is it just gonna shatter?

That's next time on A Slight Change of Plans.

A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker.

The Slight Changed family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and our sound engineer Erica Huang.

Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.

A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy.

You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.

See you next week.