They consistently reroute pressure away from them. I once sat in on a dojo where I watched one of the students point out an error the teacher had made. The teacher then responded by asking the student a question that investigated what was behind the pointing out, what was really about them that caused this? The resulting discussion then was entirely about the student, and as far as I can tell everybody else forgot about the mention of the error.
Once while talking to my then-therapist, I made an offhand remark about how I listened to headphones a lot and was afraid they would damage my ears. She wanted to explore the psychology of that remark, I objected that it was a reasonable concern grounded in physics, and she said ~that that was irrelevant, the fact that that thing was more salient to me than other true things meant it held emotional significance for me, and she was interested in that significance. I don’t remember if anything useful came of that discussion, so it probably wasn’t amazing, but I think her overall model was correct and it was a reasonable thing to pursue, and that it was safe to do so in that context because she had absolutely no stake in anything except my emotional state.
People criticize therapy for being toothless. I think there’s a lot to that criticism, but also that the lack of teeth opens up the ability to do things like “investigate a question’s emotional salience independent of its truth” in ways that would be dangerous if the investigator had any stake in the answer (the way the dojo leader did). Why people are bringing up a particular criticism is interesting and potentially worth the time to investigate, it’s just not a replacement for ground level truthseeking.
And there’s a particular trick you can pull where someone brings up a factual question, you make it about their emotions, and then treat doing so as favor for which they are in debt, all while ignoring the factual issue they actually wanted addressed.
Once while talking to my then-therapist, I made an offhand remark about how I listened to headphones a lot and was afraid they would damage my ears. She wanted to explore the psychology of that remark, I objected that it was a reasonable concern grounded in physics, and she said ~that that was irrelevant, the fact that that thing was more salient to me than other true things meant it held emotional significance for me, and she was interested in that significance. I don’t remember if anything useful came of that discussion, so it probably wasn’t amazing, but I think her overall model was correct and it was a reasonable thing to pursue, and that it was safe to do so in that context because she had absolutely no stake in anything except my emotional state.
People criticize therapy for being toothless. I think there’s a lot to that criticism, but also that the lack of teeth opens up the ability to do things like “investigate a question’s emotional salience independent of its truth” in ways that would be dangerous if the investigator had any stake in the answer (the way the dojo leader did). Why people are bringing up a particular criticism is interesting and potentially worth the time to investigate, it’s just not a replacement for ground level truthseeking.
And there’s a particular trick you can pull where someone brings up a factual question, you make it about their emotions, and then treat doing so as favor for which they are in debt, all while ignoring the factual issue they actually wanted addressed.