Episode 166 - There is No Time Limit to Talk About It
How often do you finally realize what you want to say hours, days, months, or even years after a misunderstanding or disagreement? Some people need time to process, but it's easy to think you've missed your chance once the moment has passed. Learning how to have hard conversations has changed my life more than almost anything else, and I've noticed a rule many of us follow without ever questioning it: after enough time passes, you're no longer allowed to bring something up. In this episode, I'm unpacking where that rule came from, who it benefits, and the rule I've replaced it with so more women can stop carrying unresolved hurt alone and start saying what they need to say. Here's what I cover:
How so many of the rules we live by were just made up and never questioned
What I call a “crockpot brain” and why some people need more time to respond
Two questions to help you decide if something still needs to be addressed
The steps to starting a hard conversation, no matter how much time has passed
A conversation that allowed me to resolve my hurt after carrying it for four years
Join me LIVE for a free workshop on June 11 at 9am PT or June 24th at 1pm PT. Register for Speak Up here: sarafisk.coach/voice
Find Sara here:
pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
Transcript
00:59
If you were to ask me, what has changed my life the most, I would have to say learning how to have hard conversations. It has really defined the last maybe 10, 15 years of my life personally and the last eight, nine years that I've been coaching.
01:17
So professionally, that has been the thing that has moved the needle the most in giving me freedom and the power to create the kind of life that I really want to be living. And that involves a lot. It's about a couple of different things.
01:34
It's about how do I find the right words? How do I know what I really want to say? And then how do I develop the inner sturdiness to stay in the conversation, to not accommodate or collapse or explode?
01:48
How do I learn to say what is true for me and also stay in the conversation when the other person's reaction maybe isn't what I hoped? Because of course, sometimes that happens too. This is at the center of what I teach.
02:01
It's the center of my work. It's how do we have the conversations that we need to have to make our experience better, whatever it is. And as I am teaching this, there's something that I keep running into with my clients.
02:17
And there was a time that I ran into this a lot myself, and I want to talk about it. It is a made-up rule that gets in the way of having these hard conversations. As a side note, we swim in rules all the time that we never chose and that we've never questioned.
02:36
They're just part of the wallpaper that we live with all the time. And most of them are completely made up. They are invented by someone somewhere for some reason that has nothing to do with our lives.
02:50
Let me give you an example. Gender roles. Completely made up. There was a point in time when men wore high heels and skirts and makeup and powdered wigs, and some of them still do. And then one day they just didn't, right?
03:05
Someone decided. And then now it just feels like, oh, these gender roles have always existed this way. And it's simply not true. Rules change and rules are made up. And so I want to talk in particular about one made up rule about how women are supposed to behave in relationships, because it's really causing a lot of discomfort.
03:29
Here it is. When something happens, there's a fight or a misunderstanding or some kind of hurt or something that needs to be addressed, when something like that happens, there is an amount of time after which you are no longer allowed to bring it up.
03:47
The window has closed, the moment has passed, and if you missed it, too bad, the conversation is now over. And that rule has cost a lot of women a lot of things that they wanted and deserved to say. And today, I just want to dig into where did it come from?
04:06
Why is it completely made up? Who benefits from it? And the rule that I replaced it with. Here's something that I've learned about myself that you might identify with. My brain works more like a crock pot.
04:21
It is slow. It takes a long time. It'll serve you something delicious. It just takes eight hours. In contrast, I've often joked with my husband that his brain works more like a microwave, right? He can come up with how he feels about something or what he thinks pretty quickly.
04:38
And so I spent a lot of time envying people like him who could say things with clarity and with cleverness and connect things really easily. And I just didn't feel like I could. I felt like I needed time to cook.
04:56
And for a long time, this felt like a deficiency. I would walk away from a conversation thinking, gosh, why didn't I say that? Or why couldn't I get there faster? Or, oh, you know, it occurred to me two or three days later.
05:07
I wish I had said that. But here's what I figured out. The problem wasn't my brain. The problem was this made up rule that there's an expiration date on when you're allowed to bring something up. There's this expectation that you have to say it now or you somehow lose your right to say it forever.
05:30
That was the problem, not how my brain works. And so maybe you've heard of this rule. I actually started asking people just out of curiosity, how long is too long before you can bring something up? And the answers I got were all over the board, fascinating, 48 hours, two weeks, a month.
05:50
One person even said, like, if you don't address it in the moment, that ship has sailed, too bad, you're out of luck. And everything was made up. Nobody had a reason. Nobody had a source. There was just this feeling, this social norm that kind of came out of nowhere that we had all absorbed, but that kind of pointed to the same thing.
06:11
There is a certain amount of time. And after that passes, you can't bring it up. That rule, this arbitrary expiration date on having your say, who does it serve? It serves the person who already got to say what they wanted to say.
06:29
The person whose brain was the microwave, who can come to conclusions and opinions faster. The person who has the crock pot brain is not served by that rule. And so I made a different one up. And here it is.
06:46
No conversation is over until I get to say what I need to say. That rule is permission. And it's the right that I retain. It's a right that never expires. And the reason that it's so important to have that is because this arbitrary timeframe keeps a lot of women quiet.
07:11
A lot of us with the crock pot brain. A lot of us who need a little more processing time. A lot of us who feel frozen in the middle of hard conversations. And we need to have our nervous systems out, come back to a regulated space, and then our prefrontal cortex kicks in.
07:29
And then we're able to think more clearly about the things that matter to us. This rule stops a lot of us from getting the closure that we need. Unresolved hurt is actually an open loop. It's an emotional thread with no closure, with no end, with no resolution.
07:52
And a part of us is gripping that thread and holding on because that's what an unresolved thing does inside of a person. It stays open. It stays present. And I want to be clear about a differentiation.
08:07
There are people who keep a mental file folder in every argument, right? They pull it out and they read from the long list of everything that they have collected or remembered about this thing to try and make a point or to win the argument.
08:23
That is about control. This is something different. What I'm describing is this. Something happened and a part of me is still carrying the weight of it. And I want to put that weight down. So when I feel that weight, there are a few questions that help me decide when something is worth addressing.
08:48
Does it surface often? Does this thing come back over and over and over again? Is there like a part of me that seems to be knocking, hey, hey, hey, this is still here. This still hurts. I'm still carrying this.
09:02
Number one, does it surface often? Number two, can I feel it in my body? Is there a heaviness, a tension, a feeling in my stomach when I think about it? Or when I encounter something that reminds me of the person?
09:17
Or when I see the person, do I feel tension? Or do I feel afraid? Do I feel worried? Do I want to avoid that person? I think that's something to pay attention to. If there's a yes to either one of those things, then I think this is something that you should consider in some way.
09:37
And I'll get into some different ways that this can be addressed because I don't think it's always a conversation. But if that weight is still there, if it comes up and up and up over and over again, I think that means something.
09:50
This is also not to say that everything needs to be addressed because not everything does. It's going to be a very personal decision. There is not going to be a solid rule on when to have a conversation.
10:02
If you're really curious about your situation, send me an email. I would love to hear it. I'll give you my opinion. But for the most part, you're going to just ask your body, is this something that we need to resolve?
10:14
Is this something that we are carrying alone that we want to put down? And if the answer is yes, I think it's worth it. Here's the part where the good girl rules come in, though, that I think you're going to be familiar with.
10:28
Because oftentimes, let's say the answer is yes, and there is something that you actually want to consider bringing up and you feel that pull to go back and say the thing that you didn't get to say. There's rules that are going to pop up because what are good girls?
10:45
Good girls are easygoing. Good girls are low maintenance. Good girls let things go. Easy peasy, water off a duck's back, right? Good girls are the last ones to make a scene or cause drama or require extra emotional work from the people around them.
11:04
We're not going to be a burden. We're not going to rock the boat. And so bringing something up violates every single one of those rules. So if you're thinking about bringing something up and something inside of you says, uh-uh, that's a bad idea, those are just the good girl rules trying to stop you, trying to keep you in compliance.
11:24
If the feeling that is stopping you is saying like, this is too long ago, this is too small, I'm making too big a deal out of this, I should just let it go, that is not your intuition. It's just those rules.
11:38
A rule that was handed to us that we do not benefit from. It's made up and you are allowed to break that rule. So a couple of things that matter when you're going to have this conversation. When it is with someone where the relationship really matters to you, I ask for what I call conversational consent.
12:02
All that means is asking the other person, is this a good time to talk about this? Here's how I say it. It sounds a little bit like I say something like, hey, I was wondering if we could talk about something that happened a while ago.
12:19
Part of it is still a little sticky for me, or it still hurts a little bit, and I would love to feel better about it. Would you be open to that? And then I wait. The ask is direct. There's no apology for bringing it up.
12:32
There's no softening it into something smaller. And there's definitely no preemptive, like self-deprecating to cushion the other person's reaction. This is what I need. Is now a good time. That's it.
12:47
And I found that overwhelmingly people say yes. And for the relationships where maybe the stakes are a little bit lower, where deep connection is really not what you're after, is kind of beside the point, I'm still direct.
13:00
Something happened. I want to address it. Is now okay. Both are very honest. And I use both of those approaches when I want to resolve something. Because more than anything, I just don't like the feeling of something being between us, of carrying a weight that both of us created or both of us contributed to, but I'm the only one carrying it.
13:28
That doesn't feel good to me. That doesn't feel fair to me. And it is the motivation behind the story I'm going to tell you. I randomly went to the gym at three o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday.
13:41
It's usually when I'm working. I didn't have any clients that day. And so I went to the gym. And as my workout got started, I looked up and saw my old bishop. If you are unfamiliar with that term in Mormonism, the leader of a congregation is called a bishop.
14:00
And so he's like the pastor or the priest. And he's in charge of what happens in the congregation. He, you know, leads and guides and kind of sets the mood for a lot of what goes on. And at the time that I saw him, it had been almost, yeah, at least four years since our family had gone through one of the hardest seasons of our lives.
14:25
My husband had left the church. It was a really kind of rocky time. I was somewhere in the middle holding on and also kind of letting go at the same time. I went to church looking to be supported, to have community.
14:41
And this man, my bishop during that season, had really not shown up for us. When we needed care and generosity and graciousness, he was in many ways the opposite of that. And it really hurt. It was confusing.
15:00
It felt like I was being punished for my husband leaving. And it didn't feel good. I carried the weight and the sadness and the grief of not being taken care of during such a hard, tender moment. And not even just not being taken care of, but having some things done to our family that felt just really terrible.
15:24
And every time I would see his wife, I would, you know, see her from time to time at the gym actually in the morning. I would feel that. And it was just like this resentment. I could feel it. But I had never really gone beyond, you know, just feeling and noticing it until I saw him that day.
15:42
I saw him and then I looked away and then I noticed him notice me and he started to come over to me. And so I knew I needed a minute. So I pretended to get a phone call because one of the crucial things that I teach in all of my programs, all my clients is you have to have a pause.
16:03
You have to pause to connect to yourself. What do I want? What do I want to do here? What are my reasons? Can I handle it if it doesn't go the way I want? So those were the questions that I was asking myself when I was pretending to talk on the phone because I needed a second and I knew I had some options.
16:20
He was going to come over. I knew that. I could pretend. I could be warm and kind and just kind of let it be brief and move on. I could also leave, just leave the gym, walk out, come back at my normal time in the morning and, you know, never see him.
16:34
Also an option. And then option three, I could be honest. And so what I asked myself was, can I handle it if this goes sideways? If he gets defensive or doesn't understand, could I handle that? And I decided I could.
16:50
So I got off my fake phone call. And as he came over, I smiled and we started to talk. We exchanged, you know, a few pleasantries. And then I said, do you have time for some honest conversation? And he said, yes.
17:09
And I said, even if it feels a little prickly at first. And he said, yes. And so I said, in the moment when our family really needed to be loved and taken care of, to be welcomed, to be understood, we didn't get that from you.
17:30
And I really feel like we deserved more. It had a really profound effect on me and on my kids to feel like in that moment of being so vulnerable with all of the faith transition things going on with Dan, that we didn't have a place in our ward.
17:50
We didn't have someone who was loving and kind and generous. And then I stopped talking and he started crying. And he acknowledged it. And in that moment, something huge shifted inside of me. Something that had been sitting there in like the middle of my chest for four years just wasn't there anymore.
18:19
And here's what I understood more clearly in that moment than any other. I had been stuck in a relationship dynamic with him that he had no idea existed. I was carrying resentment that he couldn't see and pain that he couldn't see that he had contributed to.
18:41
He was not going to come to me and make it right because he didn't know it existed. And that dynamic was never going to change on its own. Could I have just carried it or figured out some other way to deal with it?
18:55
Yeah, I probably could have. Time would have just, you know, worn it away. I get that. But the moment presented itself, and I didn't want to carry all of that dynamic that both of us had contributed to by myself.
19:10
He had been unkind, uncaring. He had lacked understanding. And he had done some things that were just genuinely mean-spirited. And so in naming those things, he had felt some things that genuinely just felt mean-spirited, like totally unnecessary.
19:34
And so in that moment, what I felt like happened was I had been carrying all of that myself. And in that moment, when I shared it with him, I shifted what belonged to him to him. And I wasn't carrying it anymore.
19:54
There might be people out there who would say, well, you know what, Sarah, if you're hurt, if you're upset about that, that's yours to own and that's your responsibility to deal with. And I don't think that that's necessarily wrong.
20:06
What I think that that misses is that relationships are between at least two people and that we are capable of having effects on each other in the relationships that we're in. And we need to be able to take responsibility for the dynamics that we help create.
20:26
And so that's why it felt so important is that in that moment, I invited him to take responsibility for what he had contributed to our dynamic, and he did. I know it doesn't always go that way, but here's a story that had a little bit of a happy ending because he did own it, he did apologize for it, and it really changed the weight of what I was carrying.
20:51
To me, this is the feeling of freedom. And it is this. I never have to be stuck in a dynamic, in a relationship. Again, I can talk about it. I could bring it up. Even if the other person disagrees or doesn't feel the same way about it, we can talk and I can at least share what is on my mind in a way that feels relieving.
21:21
So if you are interested in this rule for yourself, a couple of pointers. It doesn't always have to be a conversation. It could be a letter. Sometimes the other person we want to talk to is actually not safe to talk to or they're not around.
21:36
They're not available. A letter. You can write it to them. You can send it or not send it. You can burn it or bury it. You can keep it, right? But getting the words out is the important part. You can send a text.
21:51
You can make a phone call. You can ask a friend that you have to role play the other person and let you just talk to them as if you were talking to the other person. You can talk to yourself in the mirror.
22:06
There is more than one way to use this rule in your life. It doesn't have to be a conversation with that other person physically there if that's not the best route for this. What I want you to take away from this is that you have the right to say what you need to say and it never expires.
22:30
And once you know that, once you really, really know that, you stop swallowing things that need to be spoken. You stop letting this arbitrary timer run out on when you're allowed to name things. And you speak up.
22:49
And then you carry less. You carry less resentment. You carry less confusion or anxiety or sadness because you share it with the other person who created it. And whether or not they take responsibility for it, that's not even your part of the problem.
23:08
Is it great when they do? Of course. But when you become the person who can have any conversation that needs to be had, that is freedom. That is freedom. And to me, that has been the gift of doing this work over the last decade and a half of my life and the gift of doing this with women because so many of us end up feeling held hostage by our own silence.
23:39
And that is a painful place to be. So if you've been listening to this podcast episode and you are thinking, I also have things I need to say. I know that I need to start speaking up and saying something, but I don't know how.
23:54
I have a workshop for you. This workshop is going to be happening on a weekly basis, but the first time is this Friday at 9 a.m. Pacific. This workshop is called Speak Up. It's simple, it's easy, it's three steps that you can start taking immediately to start building the muscle, start building this communication muscle so that you can have any conversation you need to have.
24:19
The link is in both my Instagram bio and it's going to be in the show notes. But just in case, it is www.sarahfisk.coach backslash voice. You can register there for the workshop this Friday. And if this Friday doesn't work, it's going to be offered weekly.
24:38
Just check that same page, sarahfisk.coach backslash voice for the next time it's offered, because we are going to be doing this work together for this report. We are going to be doing this work together for the foreseeable future.
24:52
Thanks for listening. See you next week.
