Week 6 Coaching Assignment - Reflective Analysis: Mastering the Practice of Suspension

By Muriel Guillod

In order to complete this assignment, I thought about a situation where I’ve been disagreeing with someone. For a start, I couldn’t imagine having a discussion with a person I had deep relationship troubles with, as this might represent an Herculean task for a first try. Therefore, I asked one of my flatmate, which whom I generally have a good relationship, to come back on the only one topic we once disagreed about.

As we entered the discussion, I must admit I was a bit tensed, as I knew we had totally opposing point of views and that the last time we talked about it, it really created tensions between us, which in no occasion happened before. Therefore, this time I tried to introduce the topic smoothly, by making a general statement about it and asking how she saw the situation. Then, I let her speak and really entered into active listening. While she was speaking, I tried to understand her point of view, even though I knew I was totally disagreeing with her. The problem is that the subject at hand is something I really care about, something deeply rooted in my values and personal beliefs. I started to notice my body becoming more tense, and I wanted to react to what she was telling me. I couldn’t let her speak like that, it sounded so crazy, almost impossible to sustain such a point of view. Still, I tried to calm down, first by bringing attention to my breath. I know I was partially in the process of reloading, as I have had similar conversations before that one. However, it was mainly with people sharing my point of view. As a result, my behavioural repertoire was also influencing the course of the interaction taking place. I had some previous knowledge on the topic, I knew the issues at hand, and I’ve been discussing it so many times, especially over the last 6 months, that being confronted to someone whose opinion was contrasting so strongly with mine for the first time was a real challenge in itself for me. The point she was supporting was so paradoxical to me, so extreme, that I couldn’t relate to it. Willing to fully commit to this exercise and develop my suspension abilities, I put into practice what I learnt about it. As showed above, my first step was to start noticing my thoughts, my emotions, my body, my gestures, which is all part of the inward process. My second step was to share what I was noticing and how I was feeling at that moment. I told her that I heard her, that I took her point of view into account, but still that I was experiencing all these feelings in my body which were showing me that I wanted to react strongly and wasn’t agreeing with her. I told her that my reactions were so strong because this topic mattered so much to me, because it was an entire part of my personal values. Luckily, probably because we both know each other and usually get along pretty well together, she also listened to me and understood my feelings. Another point maybe is that we both care about our relationship, as we are living together and don’t want to be in a situation of permanent conflict. I wonder if the situation would have been the same with a person with whom I originally have deeper and stronger arguments, and with whom I wouldn’t mind breaking my relationship…

Even though I was open to listen to her point of view, and tried to understand her perspective, I knew I could not totally change my mind. I could agree on some smaller issues, but for the general topic, I kept my standpoint. So in a way, I would only say that I half succeeded in my suspension process. By being open and listening to what she way saying I could, to some extent, understand her perspective and see why she would support it. However, I could not let go to the point of totally being influenced by her words.

My personal learnings out of this conversation and of this whole exercise is to willingly try to open up and develop my empathy, even though the topic is somehow sensitive and very close to my heart. The most important thing which prevented me from escalating in a conflict and reach a dead-end in the conversation – or worse in the relationship – was the ability to become aware of my body and control my emotions in order to calm me down. In this regards, the outcome of the conversation was different than the first time we talked about it. During our first conversation, we had to stop it abruptly in order to avoid a huge fight and we kind of tacitly agreed not to come back on the topic to avoid such situation in the future and not to risk to definitely break our relationship. This time, the conversation went much more smoothly and ended up still on a friendly tone, even though both of us kept our initial standpoints. We could really discuss calmly, openly and we now know there is no topic to avoid; it’s just how you approach it which matters. Finally, a next step would be to try suspension with someone I found it really hard, on a regular basis, to talk with, i.e. someone with whom I find it hard to agree. That would be a really huge challenge, but I think I could also learn a lot and improve my suspension skills much more.