* "**If I had been watching how anxiety sparks, I would have noticed here that my strategy for reducing anxiety didn’t work for Kellianne, which should have been enough to make me realize that she’d need another answer**. This makes sense, because the source of my anxiety was that I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to work, and that was unlikely to be the cause of Kellianne’s anxiety. I could have asked at this point what she was worried about, to get a better sense of the disagreement’s real source. At the very least I could have dropped the proposed solution that worked only for me and kept looking for one that worked for both of us. Instead, I chose to start a new disagreement about whether or not my solution was legal in California, blindly hoping that that was what she was actually worried about. * ME: I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal. KELLIANNE: No. It’s not negotiable. I just don’t feel safe. I don’t see why you can’t just stay home an extra hour. I have been on kid duty every sick day ever, and you never have. ME: I can stay home for it, but I just think Niko could also handle being alone for an hour or two. He’s a responsible kid. * **Because I wasn’t paying attention to the source of my anxiety, I couldn’t see that it was different from Kellianne’s source. Therefore, I couldn’t see how my solution didn’t resolve her problem. Worst of all, I was insisting on having a disagreement that she didn’t actually care about while ignoring the one that she actually wanted to discuss**. If I had been paying better attention to all of this, I would have very easily noticed that for Kellianne, our disagreement had nothing to do with California laws or even with the possibility of leaving Niko at home alone. * For her, the disagreement was actually about a value judgment of my willingness to pitch in for the family. By the time this became clear to me (it took a bit longer than it should have), my offer to stay home was no longer enough to salvage the conversation, because it had shifted to a much broader disagreement about my general behavioral trends and even my inability to communicate effectively." (~[Location 653](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B081J97HLQ&location=653)~) *** #### See Also - [[202308181107 — AtN — Staying calm within disagreements can be a superpower]] - [[202308170954 — AtN — Productive disagreement can be a superpower]] *** **Tags** — [[quotes]], [[anxiety]], [[mindfulness]], [[negotiations]], **Source** — [[202308170952 — B — Why Are We Yelling]]