joreth | Fucking Hell Just Fucking Stop It. Hush. Silence. SHUT UP!

I wish I had a magical power where I could mediate a dispute between two sides and every time someone opened their mouth to distract, obfuscate, argue, or otherwise not say something helpful, I could raise my finger in the "shush" position AND THEY WOULD. I would calmly tell them to try again, and they could start again, but if they just found another way to do the same thing, I could shush them again. And they would all be forced to sit there until they learned how to properly discuss contentious topics.

It would help if *I* had that skill myself, so that I knew what "properly discuss" techniques were, but since this is a magical power, then I would magically know.

I had a partner once who I was attempting to teach about feelings, their importance, and how to identify and use them. I remember one particular argument we had where I was trying to just get him to state his feelings. That's it.

He said "I think they're wrong." I said "that's not a feeling that you are having." He said "well I FEEL that they're wrong." I just could not get him to understand that the correct answer is "I feel frustrated and hurt and defensive." He was just dead set on deflecting the conversation onto what OTHER PEOPLE were doing, not on what he was feeling. In our entire relationship, I never got him to understand this.

I've seen other people who go into discussions where one person is trying to understand but the other person just keeps taking every attempt to understand as an attack and reacts defensively. I want to make them put down their defensive positions and just talk. Stop *arguing*, and start *revealing*.

Whenever I see an image of Impeachface McTinyhands, I have this same frustration. Every time he opens his mouth, I want to bang a gavel at him to interrupt him until he learns how to fucking answer the goddamn question. Spiceyspice too.

My head is filled with banging judges' gavels and Dr. Evil doing "shhh!" and Ruby Rod with his "zzzzzzZZZZzz!"

No. Just stop it right there.

Try again. Nope, that's still not it.

Nuh! Try again.

Uh uh. No.

Nope. Stop. ...