Chapter Y: How the Holy Do-Over Works
• We understand your skepticism. You may feel that what's done is done and if you could have done better, you would have. It may also seem that looking at a better way to do the same thing can only lead to pessimism about ever getting this relationship stuff right.
If you regularly pretend to be a fireman, that doesn't mean you should rush into a burning building to rescue someone's puppy.We began this work only because we were so frustrated with our merry-go-round approach to working through a conflict. We had an awkward conversation one night: someone was testy, someone else got defensive. It didn't get better from there.
When we tried to talk about it, we repeated the same pattern as we talked. You said, I said turned out not to be very productive. We love each other, we wanted to work this out and we each wanted the other to feel heard and respected, but explanations and self-justification just weren't doing it.
We decided that we just had to do the damn thing over again, go back to that stupid conversation and do it right this time. After a few false starts, we got it right.
•This approach works by modeling behavior that leads to both people feeling better and their relationship working more smoothly. The good feeling (positive reinforcement) attaches to the new behaviors themselves and the content of your Hold Do-Over quickly becomes part of your repertoire of inter-personal skills. It works because you feel better immediately.
•Holy Do-Over has been used in tens/dozens/hundreds of situations by real couples who have faced problems like yours.
•The approach works whether you "believe in it" or not. There are two negative outcomes possible. The worst possible result of a Holy Do-Over is a repeat of your first conversation. Everything is the same as it was, you each do what you did in the Original Incident. Less worst is the possibility that you go through a HDO and you still don't feel any different. (This can happen for several reasons) in that case, what you've done is modeled a different approach to your problem. When the problem comes up again (and it will surely come up again in one form or another), you'll have an alternative way to deal with it and each other.
•There's research behind it.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Friday, July 22, 2016
The Holy Do-Over
When
I was a kid in Brooklyn, we played a lot of games that were
improvised versions of the serious, canonical games that we saw
played on television. There was stickball which looked like baseball
with a broomstick bat and a pink 'spaldeen' ball. it was played in
the street, usually with a manhole cover as home plate and temporary
bases assigned to car doors or fire hydrants. the rules were sort of
ad-hoc and in the absence of umpires, there were a lot of disputed
calls. since the game was far more important than the outcome, we
never let a disagreement over a fair or foul ball stop play.
If
we couldn't agree on a call, the most common result was an agreement
to do it over. Once both sides acknowledge that the other isn't
willing to concede and neither is interested in taking the ball and
going home, we'd agree: 'okay, it's a do-over'. A do-over wasn't, of
course, a replay of the original event: that would have been
impossible. Instead, a do-over was a completely fresh iteration of
the opportunity that had just occurred. It's still two strikes and
one out and you're still up and we take it from there.
A
Holy Do-Over in a relationship is a little like that. Something bad
happened: something where neither of you did your best and the
outcome isn't very satisfying. He was accusatory, she was defensive.
He sulked, she yelled. She was unkind, he was deaf. The outcome
sucked, you both feel terrible. Chances are that you can't unwind the
event, you can't blot it out and your mutual failure sits like a
smelly embarrassment between you. You can't have an Undo, but you can
have a Do-Over.
A
Do-Over is an agreement to suspend your feelings for the moment, to
see them as mere artifacts of a need, whiskers to be shaved off and
allowed to grow back in a different color and texture. In a Do-Over
you return to your needs, consider your love, take up your courage
and act the way you might have acted the first time if you had been
true to yourself.
Of
course, the kind of Do-Over we're talking about here has higher
stakes than the street ball version.You're playing with each other's
humanity, which is to say that your staking your own on the outcome.
In a Holy Do-Over, everybody wins.
Guidelines
for a useful Holy Do-Over
•wait
as long as you need to, but no longer
one
necessary pre-condition is that both of you have taken a step back
from where you were emotionally. you now see your behavior as a
'thing-you-did' and not as 'you'. As long as you're still identifiied
with what you just did and said, you can only have a Repeat, which is
not the same as a Do-Over.
with
practice, the latency period can be very short. Couples who have
learned to play the game can sometimes regroup immediately as both of
them realize that their best selves weren't operating.
•replicate,
don't duplicate
in
so far as you can return to the place where the first event happened,
do so. if you can make the situation similar in any other way, good
for you. it's a mistake to strive for cinematic perfection though.
For one thing, all that obsessing just gets in the way. More
importantly, you want cues in the environment that tell you that this
is new, that you are free to do and be as you didn't the last time.
•immerse
yourself in the feeling, but don't rehearse.
the
point of a do-over is to enlist your best self to show up and be you.
one way to scare that best self away is to give yourself a script.
it
doesn't matter if you wrote the script or if you borrowed it from
someone else: a re-do is not a performance, it's a natural emanation
of
your reflected, refined essential self. if you be you, but don't be
rehearsed.
Magic
has responsibilities.
Religions
have forbidden magic for a reason. Salem witches, ecc. the magician
abrogates the powers of the divine:
in
truth the magician commands what the religious supplicant begs for.
When
you mess around with the laws of nature, you're very much
obliged to respect the outcomes of your experiments.
so
what you're doing here is dangerous stuff: powerful and sacred. done
frivolously, it won't work; done half-seriously it could make you
crazy.
you're
playing around with two natural laws.
first,
you're denying time; you're going backwards by acting as if time
hadn't elapsed and you have your hands on the hands of the clock.
second,
you're screwing with cause and effect. you're taking the effect of
some previous act and using it as the cause of the original act
itself.
(stay
with me now) your do-over is an effect that's (in effect) becoming
the cause of its own cause.
dizzy
yet? good.
so
that's why you have to approach the act of the do-over with a certain
gravity if not outright reverence. you're bending the laws of nature
for your own interests. make sure it's worth it. don't joke, pray.
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