Why don’t we say what we want to say?
Whether it’s in our close relationships, romantic partnerships, budding friendships, or people we’re just meeting, there is usually so much we want to say, but just don’t.
It could be feelings or thoughts of curiosity, anger, pain, confusion, joy, excitement, or even sexual desire.
Sure, we share some. But our true thoughts and feelings are often left pent up and locked up rotting inside of us.
Why is this?
In practicality, if we have something to say, we should just say it, right?
Well, it’s not that simple. In truth, it’s fucking scary to share a lot of the things on our minds and hearts. We’re afraid we’ll share something too personal, and as a result, what is said either won’t be understood, will be judged, and/or won’t be reciprocated.
If we share the unshareable, what if we hurt someone’s feelings, strain the relationship, embarrass ourselves, or just come off as “weird”?
What if we make the leap and end up feeling even more alone than we did before the share?
So it’s easier to just keep it inside.
However, we’re massively shooting ourselves in the foot and missing out on the beauty of true connection and intimacy in our lives. We don’t share because we don’t want to be misunderstood, but if you don’t share what you want to, you will never truly be understood, fully seen, and met the way you deeply desire and deserve.
My friend and Connection Coach, Ash Witham, described the bleak situation to me, “Most people show up halfway to their relationships and expect to be fully loved.”.
If you want to be deeply understood, seen, and loved, it is a requirement you learn to say what has been unsaid for so long.
My Journey to the Unsaid
Like a lot of people, I was terrified of saying how I actually felt in so many of my relationships. Conflict made me extremely uncomfortable and I just wanted to maintain the peace. If I did say something, I skirted around how I actually felt in fear of rocking the boat too much or pushing them away. I thought this would bring me closer connection.
It did the opposite. I felt profoundly alone and misunderstood.
But it didn’t make sense! I had the best intentions for everyone around me so I couldn’t figure out why I felt like that. I wondered what I was doing wrong and what I would need to do to try to make people understand me.
How could I show them my good intentions? Maybe I should be even nicer or maybe just more understanding of them?
I was running up against a wall. And the perpetual bumping up against the wall was beginning to challenge my sense of self. If people weren’t seeing and recognizing the good qualities in me, I feared that maybe the ones I saw weren’t actually there.
And then, I discovered a practice called Authentic Relating that completely flipped everything I thought about connecting to others on its head. The more I dived into it, the more I realized it was the blueprint for everything I ever wanted in my relationships.
And the more I devoured this blueprint, the more I realized that I had been going about connecting to others completely wrong. It challenged all the conventional advice.
But at that point, I was willing to try anything.
This was necessary because the practice had a tremendous Ask as the core of all its teachings: Say the unsaid.
Shit.
I had nothing to lose, so I dived in. I took training workshops in Texas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and committed to radically practicing this core truth in my life.
I was not prepared for the radical shift that would result.
I healed long-standing rifts and tensions in my relationships with family members and close friends, created new friendships with people I respected and admired, opened up romantic possibilities, and was acknowledged and valued more than I had ever been in my entire life.
I was hooked. I had cracked the code to everything I had ever wanted in my relationships including possibilities I didn’t even know existed.
All I had to do was reveal what I previously thought I wasn’t allowed to.
So should we just go around with blunt honesty saying whatever is on the top of our minds? Sure, if you want to be punched in the face.
Like most things, saying what needs to be said is a science and an art. It needs to be done skillfully, and if done correctly, it is the key to mastering your relationships.
It also requires immense courage to do what you think you can’t. But once you get a taste of what is possible, there is no going back.
The Process of Revealing
Imagine a scene where you go to a market to barter and trade some of your possessions. You meet the person, sit down at a table, and take out your sack of possessions to start the barter.
Throughout the process, you reach into your sack and place your possessions on the table one by one to determine if the other person finds value in your possessions and is willing to barter for them.
This is the process of revealing our usually covered-up thoughts and feelings. You take them out of your sack (hidden inside) and place them on the table for you and the person you’re interacting with to look at and examine.
Some people have already started to take the risk to reveal their inner thoughts (start the barter) but go about it all wrong. They have incomplete views of what authenticity and vulnerability are and so their attempts often lead to more disconnection than connection.
They might think that authenticity and honesty mean to just share whatever is on the top of their minds. They are just pulling out what’s at the top of their sack, a handful of low-value copper coins, and throwing them on the table for the other person to pick up.
Sure, there is value to our thoughts, but what’s underneath them is usually significantly more valuable to others. We need to dig a little deeper in our sacks to pull up some more valuable artifacts if we are looking to cultivate real connection in our lives.
This reaching into our own sacks (probably should have picked a better word here) is a skill in itself. It requires that we slow down to uncover what’s beneath the thoughts (copper coins). When we take our time, a whole world of information opens up.
We might take a deep breath, reach beneath the coins in the sack, and find that there are precious metals, beautiful jewelry, shining gold, and even diamonds! These are our emotions, beliefs, values, needs, desires, and intentions.
This is the good shit. This is what makes the barter interesting and valuable.
A copper coin share might look like “I want to go to the club tonight! Come with me!”.
This is a pretty surface-level reveal. If your friend has the same desire, they could easily understand you and agree to the club plan. But many times, people don’t have the same desires and are not going to agree with, or value, just anything you put on the table.
If you wanted to put something more valuable on the table, you’d need to slow down and reach a little deeper in your sack. What’s underneath the coin might look like “I’m feeling super stressed at work and am honestly overwhelmed. I really just need to let loose tonight. Would you want to go to the club with me?”
This kind of share creates a whole world of difference. We are putting something of value on the table: our deeper Whys behind our desires, our emotions, and our intentions. Someone on the other side of the table might not connect with your desire to go to the club, but they can definitely relate to feeling stressed and overwhelmed and the desire to let loose.
Another example of a low-value copper coin could be yelling at your friend for canceling on too many plans: “I’m so sick of you canceling. What’s the point in even inviting you to things anymore!”.
A more valuable artifact to pull out and place in front of both of you could be “Hey, I really miss spending time with you”, “I feel anxious about our friendship and want to feel closer”, or “I value integrity and feel hurt when you keep canceling on what you commit to”.
When we share the deeper cut of what’s going on internally, we give the other person the opportunity to understand us and see where we’re coming from. This is how we create the possibility of deeper connection in our lives, more nourishing and stronger relationships, and the opportunity for us to be known and seen.
We also give the greatest gift of all to whoever we are interacting with. The inspiration and permission for them to dig deeper and bring more to the table so that they can feel more understood and seen themselves.
If we put a gold and diamond bracelet on the table, they’re going to feel pretty silly placing some cheap copper coins down to match it. More than likely, they’ll dig a little deeper and place something more valuable down themselves!
That’s incredible! From just our courage and skillset to share what we previously wouldn’t, we raised the value that everyone around us was putting down. The table in front of us just got a lot more interesting.
The practice of revealing might get a little addicting. From personal experience, the ability to lead with vulnerability starts to feel like a superpower.
We have to be careful here though.
This is where the art of the practice comes in. We can’t just dump our whole sack on any table in front of any person.
What Can The Table Hold?
Before we dump our very valuable possessions out, we have to take a good look at the table in front of us and act accordingly. What material is it? Is it a thin glass, is it a thicker glass, or is it a reinforced steel?
If we throw down a heavy bracelet on a thin glass table, it’s going to shatter. The table wasn’t strong enough to hold the object you put down.
In other words, what is the quality of the connection between you and the other person? Can the current connection hold deeper levels of vulnerability?
This is where we come into the issues of things like “over-sharing” and “trauma dumping”. There’s nothing wrong with sharing intimate things with other people. It’s a beautiful act, yet we have to be sensitive and conscious of the other person in front of us and the connection there.
It’s disrespectful of the other person (and can even be taking advantage of them) if you aren’t paying attention to what they can handle at that moment.
We’ve all had the experience of meeting someone at a gathering and within thirty seconds, they’re unloading their frustration and anger about their “piece of shit” ex-husband/wife on you.
It’s like “Dude, I just met you, really?”.
We can even feel a little used after the experience. They might have not even checked if you were in the right space or had the capacity to listen to them on it.
What went wrong here is that they didn’t check if the table between you two was able to support what they were putting on it.
Checking the quality of the connection and what it can hold requires sensitivity and attunement to the present moment.
It’s possible you could meet someone and see that immediately the connection between you two is rock solid and can support some heavy shit. And if the connection can’t hold some heavy or deeper reveals, that’s alright. It just means it can’t support it right now. With time and going slowly, the table can get stronger and hold more.
So now that we built up the capacity to reveal our deeper inner experience more freely and learned to check in on what the table can hold, this is where the barter gets interesting. And a little magical.
The Magic of Co-Creation
Say you have a desire. You want to go to the mall with a friend. The old model of throwing copper coins down would just be asking for your desire.
“Hey, want to go to the mall with me Friday?”
Your desire can be met (friend agrees) or unmet (friend disagrees).
In the new model, however, you’d slow down, reach deeper in your sack, and reveal more valuable possessions like your emotions and motivations behind your desire to go to the mall with your friend.
“Hey, I haven’t seen you for a while, I miss spending time with you! I’ve also been pent up inside for the week and feel isolated. I’d love to just be around other people and also catch up with you. Do you want to go to the mall on Friday?”.
This is where everything changes. Say your friend doesn’t want to go to the mall. Your desire could still be unmet, and that’s ok!
Regardless, your friend can really understand you, see your motivations and deeper Whys behind your desire, and is able to put down some more valuable possessions themselves.
“I miss you too and want to catch up! And I get that, I’ve felt pretty isolated too this week. But to be honest, I hate the mall, it always gives me anxiety.”
This is where the magic of the barter begins. Even though your friend is not agreeing with your desire to go to the mall, you both have revealed a lot to work with.
Oftentimes, we get so attached to our surface-level desires because we haven’t taken the time to slow down and look at our own deeper Whys ourselves. So we might think we really want to go to the mall but going to the mall is just one possible option for satisfying what you really want.
In this case, you’ve revealed that you miss your friend and want to catch up and have felt pretty isolated so you want to be around people. Your friend is actually feeling the same way besides not agreeing to the specifics of how you want to go about it (i.e. the mall).
So you both can enter a process called Co-Creation. Instead of one, or both of you compromising, you each get creative to honor both of your deeper needs and emotions.
This could be catching up over a cup of coffee in a busy coffee shop, it could be going on a walk to a lively park, or it could be walking the boardwalk together.
There are countless ways you can collaboratively fulfill both of your desires without anyone having to compromise. When both people reveal more, you can creatively work together so that everyone is 100% fulfilled.
But this wouldn’t be possible if both of you just tossed out copper coins. Surface-level desires can be conflicting and mutually exclusive. But in most cases of revealing more of ourselves, the deeper needs of everyone can usually be fulfilled together.
And in the case that they can’t, there’s no animosity. Both people can see where the other person is coming from. There doesn’t need to be any ill will just because you aren’t aligning at this moment.
There’s time to align your deeper motivations later and using the power of revealing more of yourself, there’s infinite possibilities for it!
And while this might be a silly example of going to the mall, the process of Co-Creation can be used in any scenario and in all relationships.
Conflicting desires can be the reason for business partnerships falling apart, marriages breaking, and friendships and families becoming estranged.
Because we haven’t slowed down and revealed more of ourselves along with allowing the other person to do the same, it is too easy to be hurt. We all deeply want to be seen and understood! That’s why it’s so easy for a “No” to our desire to feel like a “No” to us as a person.
But when we use the skill of Co-Creation, we open up a world of possibilities on how we can all be met exactly the way we deeply desire.
A Commitment to A Full Table
Again, revealing more of yourself and saying what has been unsaid is no easy task. We have trained our whole lives to keep our deeper inner experience separate from our interactions.
We may have been insulted or put down for displaying our feelings or felt that people just don’t care. Maybe we just just never took the time to look more deeply into ourselves.
It’s also terrifying to reveal more. If someone doesn’t like us, we can just say “Fuck em, they don’t know me anyways!”.
But what if we showed them more of ourselves and they still didn’t like us? Honestly, it’s a possibility.
You can reveal more of yourself and sometimes will still not be understood. However, if you never reveal more of yourself, you will NEVER be understood. You will not be seen, acknowledged, or valued.
You will have let the fear of being judged block off the endless amount of love, appreciation, and true intimate connection that is available and possible in this lifetime.
I believe it is our birthright to experience these things. That doesn’t make opening up easy though. We have to grow our courage, act boldly, be ok with it being clunky and weird in the beginning, and claim what we deserve.
And it’s not an all-or-nothing. Start slow. Work with your current capacity. What feels like a little risky to reveal right now but is still manageable? You can work with just one or two relationships in the beginning. See if you can slightly build up the table and expand from there to other relationships. Just like any skill, it will grow with time and practice.
You deserve to be truly seen and met exactly the way you want to. And you can have it if you are willing to stand up for it.
On my deathbed, I’m going to look at the table in front of me. I’m going to see what has been taken out of my sack and placed on the table. Is it some cheap copper coins or is the table going to be overflowing with the most dazzling jewels?
I’m going to spend my life making sure that there’s nothing left to put on the table. There’s going to be nothing left unsaid.
My commitment is to a full table. How is your table going to look?