During the conversation: silence and explosion
Step 1 / 4·The story you tell yourself
0/4 steps done
Learning objectives — after this module you will:
- Separate what you saw from the story you built
- Handle the two extreme responses: silence and explosion
- Close the conversation with a concrete commitment
The story you tell yourself
See the gap between fact and interpretation.
Between OBSERVING and FEELING there is always an intermediate step we do not notice: we tell ourselves a story that explains what we just observed. That story creates the emotion — not the event.
For example: a colleague does not reply to your message for two days. That is the observation. The story you build might be 'this person does not respect me' — and you feel annoyed. Or 'they are probably swamped' — and you feel sympathetic. Same event, two stories, two entirely different emotions.
This matters because in a difficult conversation we usually present our story as if it were fact. The other person hears an accusation about their motives — and reacts exactly as anyone does when wrongly accused.
The sentence that separates the two
'What I saw was… and the story I am telling myself is… I want to check whether that story is right.' This does two things: it clearly separates fact from interpretation, and it invites the other person to correct the interpretation without denying the fact.
Key takeaway: Emotion comes from the STORY you build, not from the event — say the two separately.