Episode 173 - The Motivational Triad: Why Avoiding the Hard Conversation Feels So Good
Is there a difficult conversation you know you need to have but keep putting off? You may have noticed that every time you decide to wait, you feel a little better even though you’re avoiding something you actually want to do. That relief is real, and in this episode, we’re breaking down the motivational triad and why people-pleasing and avoiding conflict can feel so good in the short term, even when they’re creating results you don’t want. Because once you understand what’s happening, you can start practicing a different response: having the hard conversation instead of dropping hints that something is wrong, waiting for the other person to change, or continuing to endure a situation you don’t want to be in. Here’s what I cover:
A framework called the motivational triad that describes the three things human beings are strongly motivated to do: seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy
Why knowing something isn’t working long-term doesn’t erase the short-term reward
How overthinking can become another way of avoiding discomfort while making you feel like you’re solving the problem
What it looks like to have compassion for your brain while you learn a new way of responding
Why the capacity to tolerate discomfort and take care of yourself matters more than false certainty that a difficult conversation will go well
Reserve your seat for Sara’s next workshop: sarafisk.coach/voice
Find Sara here:
pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
Transcript
00:59
One of my clients has come to our group sessions a couple of times with the same conversation that she knows that she needs to have.
01:09
She's known she needs to have it for a long time. She owns about 20 rentals, and it's with her property manager. This property manager was recommended by a friend, and is not doing a great job.
01:24
There are complaints that are piling up from her renters. There are repair tickets that are taking a long time to actually get resolved, and it's starting to show up for my client in stress.
01:37
She's waking up in the morning worried about checking her email because she doesn't know who's gonna be, like, upset or angry with her.
01:46
She has started to feel really uncomfortable around the friend who recommended this particular property manager because the friend is always talking about, "Hey, isn't she doing such a great job?" So the stress is piling up.
02:00
She's been thinking about it for a long time. She has a couple different versions written out of how she wants to bring this up with the property manager.
02:10
And in our last session, we were catching up about what had happened since the time we previously met, and I asked her, "Were you able to have that conversation?" And she said, "No, I just decided to wait until after school gets back in session." You know, she's got a couple kids.
02:27
Maybe, maybe that'll make things better. And I said, "Okay. How did you feel after you made that decision?" And she said, "Ugh.
02:38
I felt a lot better because it's gonna give me a little bit more time to think about it, and it's gonna give her a little bit more time to maybe, you know, get her kids back into school." And I said, "Okay.
02:49
Tell me what it is that you still need to think about. What are you still thinking through?" And as we talked about it back and forth, nothing has changed factually.
03:01
It's just that every single time she goes to do it, there's a part of her that talks her out of it, and then she feels better.
03:10
And that particular kind of relief is what caught my attention, and it's what I wanted to talk about today because once you understand where that relief comes from, it makes a lot of sense, and it's a lot easier to know what it's costing you and what you can do instead.
03:29
So she's telling me about this conversation that feels like it has a lot of implications. It might affect her friendship with the person who recommended the property manager.
03:40
It might affect the way her property manager thinks about her.
03:44
She's not ready to fire her yet, but she is definitely ready to ask her to change some really important behaviors so that her renters have a better experience.
03:55
And every time she goes to do it, she just-- it feels like there's something in its way, and then she puts it off, and this is what I pointed out.
04:06
Your brain just got rewarded for avoiding doing something that you actually want to do, and we need to make sense of that.
04:18
And so I've taught her what I want to talk about with you today, the motivational triad.
04:24
There is a framework that is sometimes called the motivational triad, and it describes the three things that human beings are strongly motivated to do. Number one, seek pleasure.
04:38
Number two, avoid pain, and number three, conserve energy. And these are actually incredibly useful things. These are the things that help human beings survive.
04:52
They still keep us alive today, and I, I want to be clear. The problem isn't that our brain does these things.
05:00
The problem is that it is a system that is designed to protect us and help us survive in the short term, and this system doesn't actually know or care about you creating the life that you want in the long term.
05:20
So there's a real trade-off between short term and long term, and we need to better understand that.
05:27
Let's start with just seeking pleasure, and when I say pleasure, I'm of course talking about chocolate cake, shopping, or Instagram.
05:35
But I want you to just think more broadly about what feels like a reward to your body and to your brain. It's food when you're hungry. It's warmth when you're cold.
05:48
It's connection and belonging with other people. It's sexual attraction. It's being held. It's being accepted. It's being successful when we accomplish something.
06:01
It is getting our curiosity satisfied, being able to play, being able to just be. All of these experiences can create a reward.
06:12
And reward is super useful because it motivates us to repeat behaviors that support our survival and our reproduction.
06:24
I mean, I want you to imagine just for a second, imagine if you were starving and if eating felt terrible. That would be a problem because we need to eat to survive.
06:35
Or if connecting with another human being produced no reward or revulsion or, or, or something bad, right?
06:43
It would not motivate us to connect or to care for the people around us, to care for our children if it felt meaningless.
06:52
So a species whose brains didn't encourage those life-sustaining behaviors would not do very well. And so we do an action, and then our brain learns, "That felt really good.
07:08
Let's do that again." And so this learning isn't just limited to the obvious pleasures, because something like relief can also feel like a reward. Approval can feel like a reward.
07:26
Someone saying, "You're such a great person for saying yes to that project," can feel like a reward. Seeing someone else's face relax after you agree with them, that can feel like a reward.
07:43
Restoring harmony when someone is mad at you can feel enormously rewarded.
07:48
And this is where it gets really interesting for people pleasers because the reward isn't just, "I got something wonderful." Sometimes the reward is, "Oh my God, thank God.
08:03
Everything is okay again." Everything is returned to a peaceful place, and our brain pays attention to that and says, "Do it again. Do it again. Make yourself smaller. Agree with them.
08:19
Don't say anything. Just let it go. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again." That's seek pleasure. The second part of the motivational triad is avoiding pain.
08:28
And again, this is essential, pain is information. If you put your hand on a hot stove, pain tells you to move it.
08:37
If you are hiking and injure your ankle, pain changes how you move so that it doesn't injure yourself further.
08:45
If you hear something that's threatening in the dark, your body prepares to protect itself.
08:51
Fear, discomfort, and pain help direct our attention toward the things that are potentially dangerous and potentially threatening to our survival.
09:04
If we were somehow rendered indifferent to threat and injury, that's like a terrible survival strategy. So these systems have been designed to help us notice danger and respond quickly.
09:21
But physical pain isn't the only kind of pain that human beings experience. Social pain matters too.
09:31
Rejection, humiliation, exclusion, disapproval, loss of status, conflict and tension with people that we depend on or who matter to us.
09:44
And for most of human history, belonging wasn't just like a nice thing to have. We only survived because we were in groups.
09:55
Other people helped provide the things that we needed as a community, food, protection, care, information, support.
10:05
And so it makes a lot of sense that human beings are highly responsive to social connection and social threat. That's what keeps you in the group.
10:18
Keeping the rules, not doing anything to get kicked out matters a lot. So let's think about how that applies to having a hard conversation.
10:29
It's not that you are facing a life-endangering threat like a tiger or a large pre- predator. You're thinking about telling maybe your mom that you're not coming for Christmas.
10:44
You are going to ask your boss for a raise. You're gonna tell your husband that you want more out of your intimate sexual life together. You're gonna tell a friend that something she said hurt you.
10:56
And so intellectually, these aren't physical survival threats on par with a bear or a tiger, but your nervous system can still respond strongly because now it's looking at rejection, disapproval, or disconnection.
11:18
So then your brain decides, "You know what? Let's just wait until later. Maybe I don't have to bring this up." And the threat decreases. Your body starts to settle.
11:30
It produces relief, and then your brain learns something. Avoiding that worked, which brings us back to pleasure, right?
11:42
And so your body is always trying to bring you back to relief in the short term, and these three tendencies or these three parts of this triad, they don't operate separately, they reinforce one another.
11:59
The last one, the third one, conserving energy. This one I think is a little misunderstood because we tend to moralize effort. The more effort, the better the person.
12:13
Less effort means that person is lazy or unmotivated or undisciplined. But conserving energy Also has a very intelligent biological strategy.
12:26
For most of human history, we didn't DoorDash our calories to us, right? We didn't have endless sources of calories. We couldn't get a churro at Costco.
12:37
In fact, I don't think you can get those anymore, sadly. But we couldn't get a cookie at the gas station.
12:42
We didn't have refrigeration that kept our food for a long time, and so energy was expensive. Finding food required energy. Escaping danger required energy.
12:58
Maintaining our body temperature, pregnancy, nursing, healing, moving, hunting, gathering, and caring for the people in your tribe all required energy.
13:11
So organisms that use energy efficiently end up having a huge survival advantage.
13:19
So our brain, which is itself an energetically expensive organ, is constantly looking for ways to make repeated behavior more efficient. This is part of why habits are so useful.
13:37
Within the last 12 months, I taught my youngest son to drive, and I was reminded again of how much energy it takes for something that I don't even think about, and watching him, like, literally have to think hard to put the car into drive and take his foot off the gas and put it on the brake and back and forth, I watched him expend a tremendous amount of energy every single time we got in the car, and I was reminded again of, wow, this is this amazing part of our brain that learns how to just autopilot so many things.
14:19
It learns how to take decisions that we make over and over and over again and just make them very familiar so we don't have to think about it.
14:31
You actually don't want every familiar decision that you have to make every single day to require 20 minutes of conscious analysis and thinking.
14:43
Your brain gets very good at automating the things it has done before, and that matters enormously for our behavior because if you've spent 30 years responding to tension by smoothing things over, your brain already has something that works.
15:04
It's a very well-practiced route. Someone is unhappy, you accommodate, and tension decreases. Done. Easy.
15:15
Now, let's compare that for just a second to someone is unhappy, you notice what you're feeling, you figure out what they actually want, you regulate your body, you decide what needs to be said, you say it clearly as you take care of your nervous system, they react, you stay present, and you respond without abandoning what matters to you.
15:36
I mean, that sounds really great, and it's what I want to teach you how to do, but that takes a tremendous amount of energy, especially when you are learning.
15:47
So when your brain says, "You know what? Just say it's fine. Just say, just don't bring it up. I know you're upset, but it's not gonna...
15:57
Just, just say it's fine," that's not necessarily revealing your character. It's not telling you who you are. It's a well-practiced, energy-efficient solution.
16:13
So this is where the motivational triad becomes incredibly useful. Imagine that you need to tell someone you're upset. Your brain is going to see the potential conflict and tell you, "You know what?
16:27
Don't bring it up." So you decide not to bring it up, and your anxiety immediately drops.
16:34
Seek pleasure or reward through relief, and you get to use the familiar response that you've practiced 100 times. Conserve energy, and your brain has just literally hit the jackpot.
16:49
From just the perspective of your brain, that was a fantastic decision. You avoided a potential threat, you produced immediate relief, and you used an efficient, familiar behavioral pathway.
17:05
Amazing. Home run. And meanwhile, there's another logical part of your brain that's asking, "Why do I keep doing this? What is wrong with me?
17:16
Why do I keep saying that when I know it's not working?" Here's what I want you to hear.
17:23
Knowing something isn't working long term doesn't erase the short-term reward, and that's the tension that I want you to notice and to have some compassion for because your brain can be doing exactly what it has learned works while also producing a result that you no longer want.
17:51
Your brain can be doing exactly what it has learned works, and you cannot want that thing anymore, and that is very different from this is just who I am.
18:06
I just want to be really clear because this is where we can misunderstand what that avoidance really means, and instead of understanding it as part of a survival mechanism, we make it mean something about who we are.
18:19
I have women say all the time, "I am just conflict-averse," or, "I'm an overthinker." Or I'm, you know, I'm just really sensitive to other people's emotions, or I'm terrible at confrontation, or I've always been a people pleaser.
18:35
And what I want you to consider is that all that has happened is that you have been programmed with the good girl rules, and your brain has learned that keeping those rules produces relief, and that relief feels like a reward.
18:56
So when you soften or you say yes, or you don't ask for what you want, or you apologize even though, uh, you didn't do anything and you might still be upset, you feel the relief that you are programmed to seek.
19:12
It's part of what you have been wired to do to survive. But the problem is that it's now being misunderstood as like a part of your personality. It's not your personality.
19:25
It's a survival strategy that doesn't take into account the long-term plans that you have for your life, the long-term relationships that you want.
19:37
The motivational triad is optimized beautifully for right now, for the short term. But the life that you want and the relationships that you want often require that you optimize for something else.
19:55
For example, if you want an honest marriage, that is gonna require some uncomfortable conversations today.
20:04
If you want employees who respect your expectations, they're gonna require some feedback, and that might feel difficult. Maybe you want friendships that feel connected and reciprocal.
20:17
That is gonna require telling someone when they've hurt your feelings. Maybe you wanna stop carrying everything at home.
20:26
That is definitely gonna require a conversation where you ask someone to do something differently.
20:35
And so every single time we want something that requires discomfort, that introduces two competing rewards. Because the immediate reward that our bodies and our brains will always seek is relief.
20:52
But the long-term reward, which is the relationship that I want, the career that feels really satisfying, self-respect, or the life that I actually want to be living, those require us to understand long-term consequences.
21:11
And when our brain is still trying to get us and steer us toward that short-term reward, we have to really understand what is happening so that we can do something different.
21:21
I wanna focus for just a second on overthinking, because this connects directly to overthinking.
21:29
So many women that I work with, myself included, we tend to go inward when there is something that we need to solve, and we actually think we're solving the problem.
21:41
We are trying to eliminate the emotional cost. We are looking for the right words so that we can guarantee he won't get mad or she'll understand and nobody will think we're selfish.
21:52
And once we find that sentence, or once we have, like, the magical equation that makes it certain that we are not going to get in trouble when we have this conversation, then we'll speak.
22:07
Except, I, I don't wanna say this any more than you wanna hear it, those magical sentences and magical circumstances don't exist.
22:17
And so thinking just becomes another way to avoid pain while you feel productive.
22:26
All of that inner good girl math, where you're calculating and trying to find the right sentence and trying to make sure that it's the right time, and the way that you're measuring and weighing and trying to make sure that you're not going to have a conversation that results in something bad can feel like you're actually doing something important.
22:50
Here's what I want you to hear. You don't need enough certainty to make the conversation comfortable, because it doesn't exist. You can't control how the other person is gonna respond.
23:04
What you need is the capacity to have the conversation and take care of the part of you that is scared, and to be able to tolerate that discomfort while you are honest and while you say the thing that needs to be said, and that is a very, very different skill.
23:26
The goal is not to wait until we know exactly how to have the conversation in a way that nobody gets mad and everybody agrees with us, because that's not gonna happen.
23:38
The goal is to be able to stay with yourself and not abandon yourself in the middle of the conversation and be able to be honest. That is what gets you the relationships and the life that you want.
23:56
So one of the women that I worked with in a different workshop was divorcing, and her soon-to-be ex-husband did not want to sell the home that they had shared.
24:08
In fact, he wanted her to make a lot of accommodations and let him live there for a little while, while he figured out what he was gonna do next and possibly, you know, do some different things.
24:18
And as we talked through what she wanted to say, she was very clear. She knew exactly what it was that she wanted. But what was hard was that she kept thinking, "What if he reacts this way?
24:32
What if he reacts this way? What will I do? What will I say?" And again, all of that internal energy was costing her a lot. We talked about what she wanted. She seemed very clear.
24:46
We decided that whatever it was that happened in his reaction, she could handle it, and I got an email from her, and she said, "You know what?
24:55
I did it." She handled it, and the win wasn't controlling his reaction because we both agreed, and it's obvious she can't do that.
25:07
The win was that she had trusted herself to just have the conversation, and she had it, and now she was one step closer to the life that she really wanted to be living.
25:21
So the next time you find yourself thinking, "Why am I like this?
25:29
Why am I doing this even though I know it doesn't work, even though I know it's not helpful?" I want you to try a different question. I want you to try this instead.
25:39
Ask yourself, "What is my brain getting rewarded for right now? What am I getting relief from? Am I accommodating? Am I staying quiet?
25:51
Am I thinking instead of acting?" And then ask yourself, "What do I want to teach my brain is rewarding instead?" Telling the truth, asking, being clear, letting someone else be disappointed in you, and learning how to tolerate that.
26:15
Maybe it's trusting yourself to handle whatever happens next. Because every time you practice that, you're giving your brain new evidence.
26:27
You're teaching yourself, "I can do something uncomfortable, and I can still be okay." And eventually, something that once felt dangerous can be something that you simply know how to do.
26:41
That is how I feel now about the conversations that I used to 100% avoid. I used to drop hints. I used to hope that the other person changed.
26:53
I used to kind of try to manipulate and arrange the perfect circumstances so that I'd have a better chance of not making anyone mad at me or not ever disappointing me.
27:03
But what I can tell you is this: It is now something that I feel not only really good at, but I enjoy getting on the other side of a hard conversation because now one of two things always happens.
27:18
I'm either very clear on what the relationship can or can't do, or I'm closer, and sometimes it's both.
27:27
Sometimes I'm closer to a person because we've been able to have a hard conversation and work through it together, and sometimes I'm clear on, "Okay, that is...
27:36
That's not somewhere we can go." Either way, it has become a skill that I, I really believe it is the most important skill that a woman can have.
27:47
And so if you're interested in developing this skill, check out the link in my bio. It's sarahfisk.coach/voice because I teach three steps every single week. I teach it live.
27:59
You come to the workshop.
28:01
I am there with you for an hour talking you through these steps and helping you see where this breaks down for you and where you can start using the power of teaching your brain different rewards to master skills, because that's all this is.
28:21
You're not conflict-averse. You're not just a people pleaser. You're just missing some skills, and I would love to teach them to you. So check it out, sarahfisk.coach/voice.
28:32
It's also in the show notes, and I'll see you next week.
