80 ~ How to Be Someone People Can Be Honest With

Ever wonder why receiving feedback (aka honesty) can feel horrendous? 

In this conversation, we unravel the art of receptivity in relationships, revealing how to transform unwelcome criticism into opportunities for growth. 

Join us as we share our personal stories and practical tips for handling criticism, feedback and honesty with grace and openness. Brenda's reflections on parenting illuminate the power of non-reactivity in maintaining genuine connections, providing a heartfelt guide to becoming approachable and sustaining deep relationships.

While we explored the dynamics of receiving feedback gracefully, this episode emphasizes the importance of approaching criticism/honesty with openness and love. By cultivating a safe space for honesty, we deepen our relationships and foster growth.

Highlights of this Episode:
• Disentangling identity from criticism 
• Recognizing when we have defensive reactions 
• Evaluating the source of feedback 
• Becoming a safe space for honesty 
• The value of consent in giving feedback 
• Navigating vulnerability in conversations 
• Embracing the light and dark in relationships 
• Building trust through honest dialogue 
• The importance of mutual understanding 

If something really resonated with you, please, please, please, let us know. We love hearing from you. We love receiving your messages and your DMs. If you feel so called, please leave a review on Apple. Thanks so much, until next time.

Chapters

• 0:08 Exploring Feedback and Receptivity in Relationships
• 9:22 Embracing Honest Relationships With Consent
• 17:43 Navigating Honest Communication in Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Hello, friends, family, welcome back to another episode of the Desire as Medicine podcast. I am here with the lovely co-host, my lovely co-host Brenda. We're super psyched, as always, to bring some, I guess, hopefully some juice to your life today, because we're talking about reception. We're talking about how to be a fantastic person to give to. We're talking about how can we receive something with love and wait for it, drum roll. We're talking about how do we do those things well while receiving things we don't like. And I'm not talking about somebody gave you a shirt and it's not your size. I'm talking about when someone's giving you feedback you either potentially didn't ask for or feedback you don't like, or worse, someone's delivering a criticism. So that can be choppy, dangerous waters.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Here it comes. Someone has an opinion. Uh-oh, they don't like me. We have fears. Now am I going to be safe? Am I somehow not going to be liked by my friend or colleague? All these things come up for us.

Speaker 1: 2:57

The first thing we want to do is be absurd and get defensive. I'm only kidding. I don't want to call people names, I don't want to say being absurd, but it is sort of like here's this person telling us something and I have the opportunity of being the person that people can give me their truth. I want to be that person. I always want to be the person where people know that, no matter what is happening, they can come to me, that it's safe, that I'm not going to kill them, chop them down, cut their legs off, be really mean back, that I'm able to just receive what they're giving me. And how do I do that? Well, the first step is to put a hold on the defensiveness and remind myself I'm not getting arrested. I don't need to call my attorney or forever hold my peace. I am just receiving feedback. If it's at work, maybe I'm getting a quarterly review. If it's with a friend, maybe my friend is saying hey, this thing that you did I don't really like.

Speaker 1: 4:16

And as the receiver, I have a lot of decisions to make. First decision is am I going to be defensive? Am I going to defend myself? Is it necessary for me to defend myself? Maybe I don't know. I may not be getting arrested, but maybe I'm getting fired. Maybe, if I'm getting fired, this is the time I want to say my piece, my part.

Speaker 1: 4:37

But what if it's not that dire? What if it's just someone is critiquing something or offering me feedback on one of my actions or behaviors? I get to not be defensive. How do I do that? Well, the first step is to understand that this feedback is not about me, my inherent value, it's not about my identity. Inherent value, it's not about my identity, it's just their perception.

Speaker 1: 5:11

I get to also consider the source. Do I value this person's opinion in this way about this thing? Is what they are telling me about myself? Is it useful? Is it something that I can change? Or are you telling me I'm too tall, too short? Well, I mean, how does that help me? How does this information help me? It only helps me if I'm going to like on a roller coaster and I'm not tall enough, or I'm too tall and I'm going to hit myself somewhere. But other than those circumstances, that feedback is not helpful. So these are all things that we need to think about and the reason why we're bringing it to you today. Brenda and I were talking about how hard it is to be someone that people can be honest with. Brenda.

Speaker 2: 6:01

That's such a beautiful frame. How can you be someone who someone can come to and just be honest with? I know, as a parent, that's been a really important piece for me. How can I be a parent who my kids this was something I learned when they were teenagers who they can come to me with anything, no matter what, and I'm just going to receive them and handle it? And in order to do that, I need to really not be reactive. I mean, that's a really big piece because you know, when something comes in that sounds scary or maybe touches on our own wound in some way, we get reactive and then you're not even really dealing with the person in front of you anymore. You're just in your own little sphere with you and your wound. It's just you and your wound having an experience getting reactive. So that's something really to aspire to like to be the person who people can come to you and just tell you the truth, like that's how we have deep relationships.

Speaker 2: 7:14

The first thing I'm going to notice if a criticism comes in is how am I feeling? How do I feel? Just check in with my body. This is a great place to pause and go slow, because this is a place where we want to speed up. And here's a little trick people, if you feel the need to speed up, that's a surefire sign that you need to slow down. So I'm going to notice how I feel, and do I feel hit in any way? Did this hurt me? Did I take it personally? That, to me, is the first thing.

Speaker 2: 7:50

And then sitting with it, and I think it's really important to ask myself, as a person who wants to grow and evolve is there a truth to this? Is there truth in this comment? Is there truth to this? Is there truth in this comment? I think that's the most vulnerable thing that we can say and ask ourselves. Maybe it's not revealed in that moment and maybe you're not going to look at it in that moment, but that's the deeper thing that I would recommend sitting with later that day or when you have space. Is there truth in this and is there truth in this? And can I receive that? Or are you just somebody who wants to deflect it and move on with your life? Well, you're probably not listening to this podcast, if that's true, if that's for you, but that is a really important piece, because when we look at prioritizing our growth over our comfort. Well then, we're going to have to see things about ourselves that we might not like, and sometimes those do come in the form of criticism from other people.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Yes, how else would we know that's the other piece If the people who are near us and around us are technically like our external barriers I want to call it or boundaries, or external mirrors. That's the thing. The people around us are our external mirrors. If we get to see ourselves in those around us and people around us are saying, hey, this action you did is not to my liking, this behavior you have, well, I don't really like that. I get to say, ouch, thank you for sharing that. That was hard to hear.

Speaker 1: 9:50

It may have been hard to share and I appreciate you, but if I allow myself to have a full on meltdown reaction and make it so uncomfortable for this person to be with, well, I'm chipping away at the mirrors that reflect back to me who I am. I'm sort of chipping away at my own checks and balances because I'm having it be that people can't tell me the truth, which is unfortunate. I always want to be the kind of person that somebody can tell me the truth. I want to appreciate this person's perspective, perspective. I get to decide is this useful? Is this helpful? Do I fully respect the source? I can decide that, but I actually want that funnel, that pathway, that highway, the highway of feedback. I want that one fully open for me, because having it closed would suck.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Honestly, it just would suck for me. I'm so curious why it would suck for you. Could you say more? Because I'm not perfect and for me life is like 50-50. 50% yum, 50% yuck. Which means I have to be engaging in shit that people don't like. And if they're not telling me about it, then why are they not telling me? Am I not behaving like myself in front of this person? Am I somehow contorting Like there's not going to be anybody in my life that absolutely loves everything about me? It just doesn't make sense. It's not statistically possible unless they are interacting with an idea of me. So that's why I say it would suck, because it means that somewhere I am in relationship with, I am in relationship to a degree where I would prefer to go deeper.

Speaker 2: 12:16

Thank you for that. Yeah, what I'm hearing is that you want honest, deep, truthful connections and so receiving or hearing or being part of quote negative, we'll just say is part of the deal, Because that's just how it is. If we're in reality, it is.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Yeah, it's part of reality. I have to be ready, willing and able and available for what pisses somebody off or what they don't like about me, and be okay with, potentially, the fact that I may be that way and not be ready to make changes in that arena and know that this person hates that you know this is reminding me of the natural order of life day and night, good and bad, winter and summer.

Speaker 2: 13:03

These are universal laws. We're human, we're not here to just be in daytime all the time. It's just not the way the world works. Nature is not built to be sunshine all the time, be sunshine all the time. And so if we're in right relationship with life, then we are looking at 360 degrees of truth. We're looking at and receiving the wonderful things which are 100% there, and then we're also looking at the shadow, the things we can't see. Which brings me to relationship. Like you can reorient relationship from being this romantic, sunshiny, fantasy life which I don't know about anyone else, but that never worked for me. That was never sustainable.

Speaker 2: 13:56

If we're in relationship with people, we are in relationship with who they fully are, the truth of this whole person. Can we be with that and can we see the parts of ourselves that we might not like so much and the people around us that we're in relationships with. Like you said, there are mirrors. Like you said, there are mirrors. So sometimes I'll say to my partner I'm like, oh, he's moving so fast, can you slow down? And I'm like, oh, where can I slow down in my life. Where am I moving too fast? This happens with the people closest to me all the time. This happens to me as a mother all the time. When I see my kids in a behavior or in a pattern, I'm like, oh my God. When I see my kids in a behavior or in a pattern, I'm like, oh my God, this is totally me and I can shut myself off to that. And parents blame their kids all the time. Or you can use it as a mirror, as a place where you can grow and just work on that thing inside of yourself. Now this takes tremendous amount of willingness to be with all of the parts of yourself, dropping of ego to see the truth of who you are, because you're not all sunshine and rainbows people. You have all the other stuff too, and that's kind of the beauty of it. You know that's. We're here as a spiritual being to have a human experience and we're not perfect, so can we be with that?

Speaker 2: 15:32

And this other really important piece that I want to say is buy-in. Buy-in with people that we're in relationships with. You can walk around the world criticizing everyone. You're not going to be too popular. People aren't going to like that when you're in relationship, you can say to someone hey, I have a thought about something that I noticed. Are you available to hear it? You don't want to just blurt it out. Like if you really want to be in connection with someone, then you would create a time and a space to have a conversation, not just walk past them in the hall and drop a bomb and run. That's not connection. That's called hot potatoing it and that is one way to give a criticism, but it's not the most connected way.

Speaker 2: 16:24

You have to be willing to hold the sensation of the discomfort of sharing it and it is uncomfortable. I think it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to receive and it's uncomfortable to give. But you can create that Like. Sometimes we've done an episode on this on withholds early on At night. My partner and I will share. We have different closeouts for the day, but sometimes they're withholds where we're sharing something, an honest piece, with the other person, and so it's like a container where the person is bought in. They're a yes, I'm not just dropping a bomb.

Speaker 1: 17:04

I love your description of consent. Yeah, you don't want to just drop grenades everywhere, blow up relationships. We definitely. I agree with you. There has to be willingness like, willingness to not be liked, willingness to not be perfect, willingness to be human and willingness to ask for consent, to ask, you know, to enroll someone in this conversation, for buy in, like you say, and I get that at either point in time, we can be on the different side of the coin. I get that at either point in time we can be on the different side of the coin. One day, maybe we are asking for consent to offer.

Speaker 1: 17:43

The reflection, Like this is can I share with you something that I'm noticing, or can I share with you something that's actively happening in our relationship that I want us to address? Maybe the person says, no, not right now, I actually don't have the bandwidth for that, but can we talk on Tuesday at eight, let's say over the weekend, after we go to such and such party, after brunch, right, Setting a time and space to connect on something. And there will be other times when I am that person, when someone comes to me and says, hey, can I share with you about, and maybe I have the availability to do that, maybe not. And then there is the impromptu. Let's talk about the fight, and in the fight it's hard if we're activated. If I'm activated in a fight and someone I am in relationship with, it's almost like they sling something at you, right. You feel the grenade pop and hit you straight in the back of the heart. They say something. I'm like, it's almost like I get winded, the breath was knocked out of me and can I fight? Well, Can I say, oh, thank you so much for sharing that and I need some time to recover from that one. I need to come back. Or, oh, you just said something and I don't feel fully present to be with what's happening right now. Or worse, I get slung at, grenade thrown and I'm like, uh-oh, grenade thrown, and I throw my own grenade and then I have to clean up the grenade that I throw right, Because, well, now we're doing tip for top and still I want to be in a relationship that's honest, Even though there is this fear and even though the risk is in the room when you're having an honest conversation, that I'm not going to be liked, that I'm not seen as perfect, that I do something wrong, that I'm way too human and maybe even that there's a rupture in the relationship. And even with that, I want to have honest relationships.

Speaker 1: 20:05

I'm thinking right now of some friendships where I have been told by friends I used to be. A former version of me was definitely very people pleaser and I would really go out of my way for friends in different ways, ways where I definitely abandoned myself. When that started to change, I had friends say to me I don't like the way you're, whatever X, Y or Z, and I would have to say I'm sorry, I can't behave that way anymore. I'm not willing to be in relationship with you in that way anymore.

Speaker 1: 20:42

If that's something you need, I can't do that anymore, Versus I can't be in a codependent relationship with you anymore. I cannot be your people pleaser, doing everything for you like your lapdog anymore. We also have to learn how to deliver right. I am not going to provide my feedback, my critique, in a way. That's where I'm trying to hurt the other person on name call. I keep it on my side of the street, I say like I am not able to, or I. A lot of the conversation is about I, I, I, I how I feel, how I can only take the ownership for me, so I also want to put that in there.

Speaker 2: 21:30

Yeah, that's a great skill. That comes over time, because when you, when you first start speaking up more or maybe going through a transformation and you're having more awarenesses, you're like I'm going to say all these things, it's easy to see in other people all the things about them and it might not come out. So I'm talking about two different things here. It's like one you could see more in other people. And number two you're not skilled at how to say it, but you do have to go through that part of how to speak in a way that people can actually hear you, because just delivering a truth bomb, like a grenade, is not going to be heard, because if you're saying something and somebody immediately gets defensive and puts their back up, gets defensive and puts their back up, they didn't hear you. You hit something in them and now they can't hear you and now you're just in a grenade fight or your thing can't be received. So how you deliver, it actually matters. It really does matter if we're talking about delivering a criticism right or feedback, and this takes practice.

Speaker 2: 22:47

It's like a faucet. If a faucet's been turned off for a long time, you turn that faucet on, the water's going to be coming out brown for a while and that brown phase in learning to speak up and speak honestly and share these things is messy. It's really messy and you could say to people around you hey, I'm practicing this thing, I'm practicing being more honest, I'm practicing sharing more of what's happening inside of me. It might be a little bit messy. Can you be here with me and can we work this out together, like that's really when you're in relationship with someone, where you're really invested, where you're practicing these things together. These things just don't come out perfectly from the beginning. I know like Catherine makes it look so easy and it just doesn't start out that way. It's a journey to get there. And it just doesn't start out that way. It's a journey to get there.

Speaker 1: 23:44

It really doesn't start out that way. I and if I'm giving that impression, believe you me. I remember a common thing I used to have people say to me was I know what you're thinking. Why are you giving me that face? Like, first of all, get out of my head, stop thinking what I'm thinking. But that's just a side note, because that's what you had me think of. I'm going to go and just reiterate some pieces that you mentioned, brenda, and just say yes, how can I be someone that someone can be honest with? How can I be someone that someone can be honest with with and can I be the person where we're not then engaging in a grenade launch, like if, my, if. Ultimately, I want to engage in honesty. It's for connection, it's for repair, it's for reconciliation, it's for common ground, it's so that this connection can get better, not so that I can win the argument.

Speaker 2: 24:45

That's a beautiful piece. And now that I could feel truth in my body and I could see where a wound is hit or I'm taking it personally, or it's my ego, or I don't want to see it. Now that I've learned to be with that in my body, I only want my relationships to be that way, and a lot in my romantic relationship I'll share truths with my partner that are really uncomfortable. I don't really want to share these things, but it's an investment in the relationship to do so and I hate that so much Because it's so hard. It's like I hate it and I love it. But sharing the truths inside of me the 360 degrees are important for me to be in relationship with him, or else they end up being withholds. They're things that I thought that I haven't said, and then they stink up the room like bad cheese left in the corner. It's going to smell and for me I can feel it when it smells.

Speaker 2: 25:52

Now I'm not saying I share every little truth with him. I don't, because some of them are just for me to work out inside of myself. I no longer believe that everything needs to be shared. I did believe that at some point and that was great practice. But that's what I'm talking about the hose right with the water coming out, like I had to go through this period of practicing saying every little thing on my mind, all the truths, to actually get to a place where I can now be more discerning and work some things out inside of myself. And it's an investment. It's actually love. And he's a yes. He's like yes, I want to hear these things. Yes, I don't always like hearing them, or my ego gets hit or I feel hurt. But he's also like please tell me. We've built that up over time, that trust, and I will also share with him.

Speaker 2: 26:50

This is hard for me to say, or I feel really uncomfortable saying this, or, ooh, I have something I want to share and I'm a little scared to say it, and that it's vulnerable. It's really vulnerable to do that. It's really vulnerable to share and I'm a little scared to say it, and that it's vulnerable. It's really vulnerable to do that. It's really vulnerable to share the truth of your heart and it's also really important to do it because the truth is also. We can feel it in relationships. You can feel it when the other person isn't saying something to you is withholding something, you can feel it and it creates disconnection. Or if you sugarcoat something, it creates disconnection.

Speaker 1: 27:30

It's unfortunate, but it's true. Said differently, when we withhold or when others withhold the truth, that's happening because they are either afraid of our reaction or we are afraid of their reaction. We create a withhold because we are not being the person that somebody else can be honest with and vice versa, there's disconnection. Normally, whenever you're feeling disconnection in a relationship, it is because some truth is not being told and then the relationship gets further apart, further apart, further apart, further apart, and there's more distance, more distance, more distance, and all of a sudden you have a very casual friendship or casual relationship. You don't have the depth anymore, so you might hate it. It's uncomfortable to be in these honest conversations, but ultimately it is an investment. As Brenda said, it is actually extremely loving and it's what an amazing way to be dedicated to your relationship, your friendships, to be that person, to be someone that people can be honest with, to be non-reactive, to do your best, to be with the truth. Not have to be perfect, not have to always be liked, be willing to be human, not go and engage in the natural human, not go and engage in the natural, common, socially accepted grenade way of fighting, but really connecting and being honest and being willing to hear someone else's honesty so that you can have an even more loving and deeper connection With that.

Speaker 1: 29:22

I want to say thank you so much for listening. I hope this really landed. If something really resonated with you, please, please, please, let us know. We'd love hearing from you. I love receiving your messages and your DMs. If you feel so called, please leave a review on Apple. Thanks so much, until next time. Bye for now.

Speaker 2: 29:49

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 29:52

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.