How to argue like an adult.

How many times have you been having a conversation with someone that takes a turn for the worse, and out of your mouth comes something mean, something spiteful, something low?

Yep! I’ve done it too. We all have. In a moment of tension or frustration, we say something we don’t mean, and we hurt the ones around us.

It’s OK. It happens. You’re not perfect and never will be, no matter how much therapy you sit in.

But what are you going to do afterward? This is where the real work is.

In the recovery world, we have a tool we talk about a lot that comes from the 10th step (of the 12-step tradition). It’s what we call a spot check inventory, and the practice of this type of inventory allows us to check in with ourselves right in the middle of an emotionally charged moment.

In the above scenario, we might have said something inappropriate to a colleague or employee, and as we walked away from them, we noticed that something felt off. Not quite right.

Our tendency is to try and find a way to blame the other person to justify our outburst, but it still doesn’t make us feel any better. The best we can do is to stuff it down and try to forget about it. Or maybe we admit to ourselves that we might have been wrong and we’ll do better the next time. Again, this doesn’t really resolve the shame or embarrassment we feel.

The spot check inventory would have us pause, check in with what’s really going on, and pay close attention to our role in the argument, ignoring the other person’s transgressions completely.

Then we can be free to see that we played a part in that argument and were not at our best. We did not show up in the way we’d like to.

After that, it’s worth checking to see if we feel like we’ve caused harm. If so, making amends is in order. An amendment is not just an apology. It’s actually amending the way we behave.

So we can go back to the person/s we wronged and acknowledge our poor behavior, but it’s also on us to make a commitment to ourselves to do better in the future.

To be clear, the amends are for us, not for them, even though they may benefit from it.

Over time, the spot-check inventory (if practiced regularly) will save us from ourselves. When we find ourselves in the next tense conversation with a colleague or employee, we will notice the emotions rising, the sensation in our body that always comes before we go off on someone.

Then we have a choice. We can even silently say to ourselves: “Should I just pause and breathe here? Could I ask for some kind of a time-out? Do I really want to go to war, or do I want to practice peace?”