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My question today is: what happens when my experience of you is negative or painful? Should we also reveal that, and if so how? This is part 2 of the 5P posts, reveal your experience.

Lets adopt a working definition of criticism as feedback of a negative nature. Now, if we in this movement value honesty, authenticity, and the growth value of 'feedback', does this also mean criticism has a place?

Of course, NVC would have us employ less blunt language like: "when you did X, i felt hurt". Like that somehow makes it not criticism. But more recent nervous system science tells us that the outcome here is determined, not by the words, but by the non-verbals employed by the feedback giver. And fairly universally a criticism giver tends to emit cues of danger. Consequently, the target, now in states of defense, learns nothing. But we were trying to teach them something, right? Instead the thing they learn is to fear you.

Some would urge: "you should not take it so personally". To my mind that overlooks the nervous system's reflexive and biological sensitivity to social sanction and exclusion. Even the hint of being cast out of the tribe, amounts, to the primitive parts of the brain, as certain death.

Of course we can, with experience, make in-roads into being more able to examine and manage our emotional reactions, but from a neuroscience point of view this is a glacially slow process. Change is just hard.

Recently i was present when a friend (A) criticized another friend (B)'s work. B had previously offered to prune A's bush as a favor. A accepted. B pruned the bush in a way that A didn't like. A criticized B.

Afterwards A came to me to reflect on this interaction. I asked A what they were hoping to achieve by giving the feedback, (given that the bush cant be un-pruned). Understandably there's few easy answers, ranging from having the pain validated, (or off loaded?), to offering clarity for (notional) future events.

I find myself arriving at a view that negative feedback has no constructive purpose. That is, unless the target explicitly invites it. Consent is everything to the outcome, because it implies regulation and nervous system safety, both fundamental to any learning outcome.

Those of us drawn to interpersonal development, can probably gravitate pretty easily to the idea of asking for feedback. As the target, initiating the communication makes us significantly more open to the receipt of gentle negative feedback.

Now, coming back to our topic of revealing our experience, what happens when our experience of someone is of discomfort? What then? AR gives us the tool 'presence your struggle'.

Here is an example: "I am noticing some discomfort, but I am nervous about revealing it. I fear that i wont be able to say it the way that i want to say it."

The result: we have successfully revealed our experience, and, we also avoided giving negative feedback. Sue Johnson calls this 'slicing it thinner'. You can't eat an elephant all at once.

Of course this too requires a certain presence of mind, ie. regulation. A person inclined to offer uninvited criticism is more likely to be dysregulated. Which implies reduced cognitive control of both words and non-verbals. In other words criticism as a trauma rooted reflex (others might sulk instead). Given that it is probably unrealistic to expect much executive function in order to be able to withhold or dial down the criticism, so, it seems we need another solution.

My best guess right now is that by building a culture of 'only give negative feedback with consent', and by infusing that culture into our regular and repeated practice work, there is the potential to create a new and alternative neural pathway. Muscle memory that we can lean on when we need it most.

Building relationships is hard enough. If we are to get and keep people in the same room, rather than assuming the arrival of some magical conscious behavior, the adoption of the shared practice of 'consent before negative feedback' seems like a route more likely to succeed.

Regulation, plasticity. Plasticity, regulation.