The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Episode 78 Navigating Difficult Conversations and Conflict Using Curiosity

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 78

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What happens when a simple Facebook post unravels into a heated argument with a close friend? In this episode I discuss a recent experience that underscores the challenges of navigating difficult conversations in today's divided world.

Discover the importance of open dialogue, and why it's essential to focus on the topic rather than attacking the person, and how free speech and thoughtful discussions can foster mutual understanding and learning.

Drawing on Peter Boghossian's Street Epistemology, I share techniques for fostering meaningful dialogue and how curiosity helps in these situations.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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The Beat of Nature

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Fiona Kane:

Hello everyone. I'm your host, iona Kane. Today I'm actually going to be talking to you a little bit about dealing with difficult conversations in relationships, particularly in regards to. At the moment, our political climate is quite divisive and what's happening is a lot of people are losing friendships over politics and sort of. I had an experience the last few days where on my personal Facebook, where there was a little bit of a I posted something and a few people got upset and there was a discussion and I'm learning myself what is the best way to manage difficult discussions and discussions where you have different opinions with people. So I don't pretend to have all the answers to this, but I've been learning and practicing different things to see what works. So I'm going to give you the benefit of what I'm learning so far.

Fiona Kane:

The first thing I would just say is that, of course, there are people who are bad people in the world, and if you recognize that that person truly is a bad person, then, whatever your intuition tells you, that person's not safe, listen to your intuition. However, in many people just have a different opinion. They're not necessarily a bad person, and what we do is we paint in our mind that person to be a bad person or some sort of evildoer just because they have a different opinion to us, and we make a whole bunch of assumptions about that person's character based on one thing they say or one thing we know about them, and that's really sad because then the truth is you don't actually know the truth about everything that person believes and thinks and who they are, and this kind of thing ruins friendships. It certainly has done for me. I won't go into great detail, but I have a friend who I've been was my best friend for the best part of 40 years, and this person seems to now be really angry at me and I have reached out in the past and this person is just not willing to talk right now, which is fine. I respect that. I respect that person's boundaries that they're not willing to talk right now, which is fine. I respect that. I respect that person's boundaries that they're not willing to talk. However, on my Facebook post, this person started being quite snarky and a bit mean and not kind at all, and I just felt like that was just really sad and that's not a really useful way of managing these things. I know the person's feeling hurt, so am I, but we can talk about it. That's the better way of doing things, but if someone doesn't want to talk, you respect their boundaries.

Fiona Kane:

But one thing I have learned there's a few things. So one is when I am having whether it's a discussion, debate I just like to call it a robust conversation. Really, I don't see it as fighting. It doesn't have to be fighting, it's just. I believe in free speech and I believe that things get better when we can actually have conversations right, because we get to understand each other more and we also get to understand each other's positions even more and we learn. So it's not a bad thing having the ability to have conversations, and we need to have difficult conversations, and we're all afraid too, because we're all being sort of cancelled for doing so, and I understand. You put your head up and someone tries to smack you across the head sideways. It's kind of the way the world is right now. It won't get better, though, if we stay more silent. It will get better when we all stand up and say no, no, actually we need to have conversations.

Fiona Kane:

So one thing I've learned, or some boundaries I've put in place in regards to this, because I know the more I put myself out here in the world, the more I'm going to get. I will not engage with anyone who is just having a go at me personally. So anyone who's calling me names or using any derogatory language or just being nasty and not trying to have a conversation, I just won't engage. I just don't. I just don't see the point there. That person is not approaching you in good faith faith, and if someone doesn't want to have a good faith discussion, I am not interested. So the, in my opinion, it's about the topic. When you're having these discussions, it's about the topic, it's not about the person. So it's not a chance to say, oh, you're this, you're that, you're all those, all the names.

Fiona Kane:

It's an opportunity to have a conversation about the topic at hand, and so I only engage with people who will engage me on the subject matter and who do it in a decent way. Otherwise I just won't answer their questions, won't reply to them, will not engage at all, and I've made that clear on my post as well. It's like no, I'm not going to engage with anyone. So the people who came straight out of the gate and were abusive or mean towards me not having that conversation. But anyone who wants to have a discussion. I'm happy to do that. So that's the first thing I would say don't engage in that sort of thing. You only want to have these discussions with people who are willing to have the discussions in an open way and in a good faith manner.

Fiona Kane:

So don't waste your time and energy with people who aren't of good faith and don't want to do that, and people who already have decided who they think you are, or people who just need to be right, no matter what, and they just want to get you and they're going to get you. Every question is like gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, right. That's a waste of energy. You just don't. There's no point in even trying to talk to people when they're in that place. But some things that I have learned and I'm learning. Look, I'm learning. I'm not perfect at any of this by any means. By the way, I'm learning. I'm not perfect at any of this by any means. By the way, I'm not saying, oh, I'm so perfect and people who are having a go at me aren't. This is, being a human being is challenging, and in this world it's challenging, and in this online space and with this political climate, it's even more challenging. So I'm just trying to figure this out myself.

Fiona Kane:

So one thing, a word that has come up for me a lot lately in my life is the word curiosity, and you know, and I'm just looking here at the definition of curiosity, and it's a quality related to inquisitive thinking, such as exploration, investigation and learning, which is evident in humans and other animals. I would say that we need to go back to curiosity. We need to explore our curiosity yet again. Children have it why? But what for? Why? Yeah, but as adults we often lose that and we get to a place where we feel like we know everything, or we, we, we decide what we believe about a particularly particular political thing and we just, oh, okay, that, okay, that's fixed. Now I believe X, y, whatever, it is right, and that's not healthy. I think it's actually worth having curiosity.

Fiona Kane:

So curiosity about your own. So if I'm kind of thinking, oh, I believe such and such, and because a lot of the things I talk about are controversial and people don't agree with them, the things I talk about are controversial and people don't agree with them, I constantly go back to myself and say, why do I want to say this? Why do I believe this? Is it true, or is it true as far as much as I can clarify and confirm that it's true, and I keep just going back to myself and having that conversation. So I try and stay curious with myself. I don't and I don't get that perfect all the time either. This isn't you know. I'm just being honest. But the other thing I do is I try and have curiosity about what's going on with the other person and why they're talking about talking to you the way they are.

Fiona Kane:

Now it does not mean you need to engage with that person. If someone's behaving in that way, I won't engage with them. However, I can think about oh, what's going on for that person? Why are they doing this? Now, I'm not talking about the trolls that are doing death threats to JK Rowling and that sort of thing. You don't need to think about what's going on for that person. They're clearly mentally ill and deranged. So I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm just talking about generally that conversation you have with friends or people that you might be friends with on Facebook or whatever, where you're just having disagreements. So I'm not talking about the trolls, right? Ignore them absolutely and you don't have to spend a moment thinking about them, unless it's to report them to the police, but when it's friends and friendships or people that you generally know to be good people, my invitation to you is to think about what is going on for that person, and I went to look it up because I was learning recently about different ways of having discussions and different methods, and this method does have a name and so sorry, I've forgotten what it's called. Someone in the YouTube or Rumble chat might know, and let me know, but I see it in if anyone's ever seen Peter Pagosian's YouTube and Rumble.

Fiona Kane:

He does what's called street epistemology, I think it's called, and he uses this. So so what essentially he does is he maps out on the ground. I'm not telling you to do this, but he maps out on the ground. Uh, you know, agree, disagree on opposite sides, and then all of the all of the in-betweens, you know strongly agree, agree, slightly agree, neutral, right, and then he asks people a question and gets them to go and stand on whichever, whichever where they stand, but then, if he has people on either side, he has a discussion with them. Okay, what would it take for you to move one back or one forward or whatever? What? What would you need to hear? What would you need to know what you need to hear to move one step forward, one step back, whatever. But the other thing he does is he has the people.

Fiona Kane:

If you've got two people one's in the strongly agree, one's in the strongly disagree he gets them to verbalize what they think the other person's argument is. So an example would be I don't know one, that's. This isn't what I was talking about the other day, but I'll just give you an example. An example would be you know, pro-life versus pro-choice, right, and this is one of the ones he's done, you know. So he says okay, so you're pro-life, that person's pro-choice.

Fiona Kane:

If you had to do the argument for them and say what they you think that they would say what do you think that they would say, what do you think they believe? And it's a really good argument thing to do because it actually makes you think okay. So why is this person over there with this opinion? Why? Why, rather than just think this is a stupid person, you think, okay, what, what is if? What are their feelings behind this? And not just feelings, but what are their thoughts and thoughts, more than feelings, actually, the problem is we do too many feelings and not enough thoughts in this. It's like we just have this trigger, trigger, trigger trigger, where it's all about our feelings Rather than thinking okay, what is that person thinking, what is their argument for this, what would be their best argument? And then he gets them to present to each other.

Fiona Kane:

Look, I think that you would believe this because you probably this religion or you believe in, you know whatever it is but they go through the reasoning they think that person would have for having their position, and then they do it the other way around, where the other person says well, I think you believe that because you believe this, this and that Sometimes they're wrong and sometimes they're right, but if they're wrong, then they get the clarification. That's no, no, actually, the reason. I really think it is because of this and what happens. Well, then the people on either side get to learn what is underneath the person's position, what their thoughts are and why they're thinking this way. Now, you may still completely disagree and you may never agree, but if you do understand where someone's coming from, I think it is really, really useful, because if you understand where someone's coming from, you can find their humanity and you will find, in most cases, most people are actually coming from a good place, a well-intentioned place. Now, whether or not that intention pans out in a good way or not, that's a subjective thing you can decide. Well, sometimes it's not, but anyway, that's a whole other story. However, you can understand where the person's coming from, and so I invite you if you have a strongly held belief that's different to somebody else, then ideally have a conversation with them. But a good way to do it is to be able to say, hey, let's play this game and let me guess what I think your position is and why, and in a nice way, not in a nasty way, not. Oh, you're some. So so this person, that person you know, right wing, left wing, blah, blah, blah, not anything like that, but just simply, I think that you believe that because this, this and that, right, same the other way around, that person will say well, I think you believe that because of this, this and that, and then you get to find out is that true? Is that not true? Is there something else behind it? What are you missing? What don't you know? And if nothing else, you will learn something, and you'll probably learn.

Fiona Kane:

The other person is a human being and they're well-intentioned and in a lot of cases. Sometimes you might change your thoughts about something. You might change your thoughts about something, you might change your mind about something, but sometimes you might just simply agree to disagree. But you can do it in a more respectful way because you understand the person is well-intentioned. They just think differently to you, right? They have a different way of thinking or a different value system, whatever it is. However, when we do this, we can understand what someone's thoughts are.

Fiona Kane:

Instead, what happens is we say one word, one thing, and we're triggered and we're angry and we're just like oh, that person is just a horrible right-wing extremist, or that person's a silly lefty, whatever, or whatever it is, whatever the argument is, and we take away their humanity. That's what you do. To be able to do really cruel and awful things to people, like things that happen in wars and stuff like that, you have to actually take away someone's humanity. And this is the first step to it. Where you take away someone's humanity, oh, I don't have to listen to that person, because they're just a insert. Whatever, the insult is right and it's not healthy to take away people's humanity, and I think that the more we take away humanity of each other, the higher risk we have of more and more violence occurring, because when you dehumanize people, that's where that's the direction it goes in, and I don't think there's a need to dehumanize people.

Fiona Kane:

Most people not all people, but most people, especially generally the people in your friendship groups are usually well-intentioned and it is quite possible to have a very different opinion to someone and really love that person and really get along well with that person. There's people in my life who I have very different opinions with and we love each other and care about each other and we're able to have robust debate and then kind of just get over it and have a cup of tea and have a laugh, right, and that is a useful skill to have in life if we can do that. So I would ask you to be curious, be curious about your own beliefs and where they came from and what your intentions are with them when you do share them. And I think about that as well, because I've started, I've got to. I'm actually going to release this on both of my podcast channels because I think this is a topic for both. So for those of you, I have two podcasts. This is why I didn't announce which one it was in the beginning. One is the wellness connection with Fiona Kane and the other is what's on my mind with Fiona, and this episode will be released on both because I think it's important for both, because I think our well-being is affected by these things as well.

Fiona Kane:

So, because I do have two podcast channels, and one's very much my opinion about health things and just exploring health things, and the other one's more my opinion about could be sometimes about politics or about different things going on in the world, I'm putting myself out there and I'm saying my thoughts on things, and what I hope I'm doing more than anything is offering people useful information and helping people to start discussions. But I do think about what my goal is and what my intention is. Am I putting it out there in a negative way or are my intentions good? And on examining that at the moment I feel like they're well-intentioned. There's just lots of things going on in the world of nutrition, but also in other things in the world socially, that I think are problems and they do need to be discussed. So my intention mostly is to start discussions, not to get everyone to agree with me, not to get everyone to hate on each other. It's more about let's learn how to have difficult discussions.

Fiona Kane:

So check out Peter Boghossian's Street Epistemology I always get that word wrong. Check that out, because it's quite a useful way to see how to have these discussions where, essentially, you try and really get into the mind of the other person rather than making a whole bunch of assumptions or dehumanizing them in some way or other. I think we can get a lot further in the world if we do this. So this is what I recommend for anyone with friendships and things in this situation. Now, both people have to be willing to do this, and you do have to respect boundaries of people, and if a friendship, if a friend, has sort of set a boundary and said, no, I don't want to talk right now, there's not much you can do about that, you just have to respect their boundary. About that, you just have to respect their boundary.

Fiona Kane:

What I would say, though and this is what I've done in my case is I have thought through very deeply why I think this person feels this way, because I haven't been able to have the discussion. So I've thought about it very deeply and I'm fairly sure I know why, and I actually believe, based on what I think they are thinking, I understand. I respect their choice and I understand that they think that they're doing the right thing. So I do believe that and I understand this person's reasoning. I think that they're misunderstanding a lot of things in regards to me and my thoughts about things, and I think a conversation would be very useful in that. However, I understand why that person doesn't want to do that at this point in time and I understand why the person is thinking the way they are. So I've really tried to you know, and I look I don't know for sure because I haven't spoken to this person, unfortunately, but based on previous discussions, based on our previous history, based on a few different facts, I know about our relationship and the way this person has reacted to the thing I said on Facebook recently. I'm fairly sure I know where it's coming from. I'm fairly sure this person is well-intentioned and they really think they're doing the right thing. It saddens me that they think that and it saddens me that someone I've known for so long can just suddenly believe that I'm such a horrible person. I don't think that she really believes that. I think that she's telling herself that at the moment and that's helping her.

Fiona Kane:

However, something I've talked about before is we can't control what other people think about us or what they say about us, except for legally if there's legal issues, we can't. People will cast you in roles in their life and sometimes people need the bad guy or the villain, and sometimes they will cast you as the bad guy or the villain. I recommend that you don't just try and fit into that because you've been cast that way, but also you've got to be true to yourself and if someone wants you to make you their bad guy, they're allowed to. They absolutely can. You can be the bad guy in their story if that's where they want to cast you. We don't have any control over that. And the same is in our own lives, that we have people in our lives that we've cast as the villain. Maybe they are the villain, maybe we cast them that way, maybe a bit of both, but we all tell ourselves stories. Every single one of us does that. So it's that sad for me that that has happened.

Fiona Kane:

I've put myself into that person's position and I feel like I understand why they are feeling or responding the way they are. I don't ultimately think it's just because I think a conversation would resolve a lot of things. However, I do respect that person's choice to not have a conversation at this point in time and I feel like I understand where this person's coming from and I think that they're coming from a good place and I believe I'm also coming from a good place. We're just kind of like missing each other, which happens in life, and that's okay, that happens. You know, we're human, it's messy and I think sometimes in long relationships too, that there's a lot, a lot of hurt comes into it. So there's a lot of feelings involved. So I hope I've given you some ideas in regards to how to have difficult conversations.

Fiona Kane:

I would say, just start by being curious and if someone's not willing to talk to you, you can at least be curious yourself and think what you think it might be. You don't know for sure, but if you think what it might be, you'll usually come to a place where you know that they're coming from a good place, even if that's not how it's coming out, and you can sort of hold that in your heart and just hold, hold that person in your heart, sort of over here, waiting and ready if they choose to return to your life at some point. Uh, but um, but don't hold hatred for them. Understand. If you understand where people are coming from, it can really help you to not take things as personally, even when it does seem really personal and it's really hard. So I would say, number one just have curiosity, be willing to have conversations, be willing to listen and rather than trying to do the gotcha questions or I have to be right and I have to finish, I have to be the last word on everything Be curious, ask questions, be interested and don't abuse people or be snarky or nasty, because I simply just won't respond to that and I advise that you don't either. If someone is not willing to have good faith discussion with you, they're not ready for that yet. That's fine, that's their choice.

Fiona Kane:

But anyway, I hope that you found that useful. I know it's just been me sort of going along about this stuff, but I just wanted to clarify my thoughts but also just give you some strategies of maybe how to think about these things in your life and how to manage them. We really are losing the art of conversation, and the art of conversation starts with curiosity and believing that you're going into it in good faith, and if the other person's not in good faith, then you can just choose not to have the discussion, but don't become bad faith like them. Don't choose not to do that and you'll do a whole lot better. Anyway, I'm just trying to you know navigating this world like we all are, and I hope that's useful and I will talk to you all again next week. Thank you, bye.

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