Be kind!

Be kind! (except to people you don't like - screw those guys)

It's not always so easy, I think, to be kind. I think that's because "kindness" means so much more than we realise - and the "more" is actually quite difficult.

Especially when it comes to people we disagree with.

The trouble is, to those people on the other side of the fence, we're just as nuts and what we say is equally incomprehensible batsh*t. And let's be fair, we don't have it completely right on our side either: we don't have all the answers and some of us... Well, we maybe are a bit batsh*t...

And both of those things are okay

Because there is enormous value in different views, and holding each other in balance means our diverse perspectives can find novel middle ground that works - or at the very least, has equal discomfort for both sides.

We need each other, and we won't find that ground if we can't be kind, and make space for each other.

It's easy to feel angry and threatened, even easier to react and provoke in return. Animal studies have shown that biting back is a completely normal stress response but that doesn't mean it's going to help us find a path that works. By taking a provocative, middle-finger-up approach to conflict, all we generate is an mirrored middle-finger-up response.

Interestingly, humiliation seems to be at the heart of this fight. A fascinating talk I heard from a former neo-Nazi earlier today echoed my thoughts when I first started writing this: at the seat of these conflicts sits toxic shame, or the suggestion that YOU are bad. When we respond to opinion as if it makes the person opining, wrong, or bad - we shame them. We humiliate them.

Now shame has got some fascinating research around it, showing how much more intensely we seem to feel it. How strongly we react against feeling it, how much we push back.

This means that when we engage with someone we disagree with in those terms (where we seek to show them up or put them down), not only do they have an intense emotional reaction - but that they also then bite back, which of course (unless we're brain-meltingly Zen-like) we react, intensely, in return. We also bite back, an emotional fight response is kicked off in our respective brains, and before you know it, ten pages of 140-character vitriolic attacks have unfolded and both sides feel seething resentment to pretty much anyone who so much as frowns in our respective directions.

It takes a beat, but in between our heart leaping into our throat and bile spewing from our fingertips, into our keyboards, onto a blue screen... There is a moment in which we can notice. And in noticing, we can re-direct the course of our conversation, the other person's response, and - well, who knows where a less acerbic exchange could lead? Certainly, it has less chance of ruining your morning's productivity, your day, or your circadian rhythm.

It seems simple, this act of noticing - but I'd say it's deceptively so. In that moment of noticing, you give yourself a chance to decide what you want from the exchange. What you'd like from the other person - what you, as a decent human, would like for them. You can notice your thoughts, possibly even what it is that you're really afraid of here (this one gets clearer with time and therapy, but a small start is still better than nothing).

That moment of conscious choice takes you from "screaming monkey" to "rational, conscious human" - or at least, a step closer to it.

! CORTISOL, NOREPINEPHRINE, ADRENALINE

!  Perception alters reality

References and further reading

_{(please read with a critical eye; not all sources are from peer-reviewed journals but are indicated with a *)}

* Davis, S. (2019, April 11). The Neuroscience of Shame. CPTSD Foundation.org. https://cptsdfoundation.org/2019/04/11/the-neuroscience-of-shame/

* Global Citizens Circle. (2020, November 3). Global Citizens Circle - Healing Divisions Embracing Our Common Humanity. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPe8KuVghs

Luca Piretti, Edoardo Pappaianni, Garbin, C., Rumiati, R. I., Job, R., & Alessandro Grecucci. (2023). The Neural Signatures of Shame, Embarrassment, and Guilt: A Voxel-Based Meta-Analysis on Functional Neuroimaging Studies. Brain Sciences, 13(4), 559–559. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13040559

Otten, M., & Jonas, K. J. (2013). Humiliation as an intense emotional experience: Evidence from the electro-encephalogram. Social Neuroscience, 9(1), 23–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2013.855660

Saulo Fernández. (2020). Humiliation. Springer EBooks, 2079–2081. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1081