Interrupting Ourselves

Whether it is to be better prepared to say no to your boss, or for being true to yourself in complex social situations with crosscurrents of expectation and conflicting interests, or to speak your truth to the voice of the “boss” that you may have internalized in your head and is now driving your life far more than you might want, or even want to admit, most of us could probably benefit from developing what behavior-change professionals call “communication skills” as a means of learning to convey, politely and with kindness, but all the same, firmly and assertively, how we are seeing a particular situation or more importantly, how we are feeling about it. Of course, before we can convey how we are actually feeling or seeing something, we have to be aware of that terrain within ourselves. And so often we aren’t, or we are only partially aware of it. And that is particularly the case when we are feeling conflicted and torn, and all the options we can think of seem problematic, and maybe even too costly. We get caught up in those conflicted feelings, and are therefore, whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not, caught. …