Fight Wise: interpersonal courage training

The last few months I’ve been working with Gabe Broussard (@VividVoid_), training habitual people-pleasers to be more confrontational. It’s been so fascinating to learn the logic of conflict-avoidant people and to find strategies that support them to stand up for themselves.

Our Fight Wise program is a series of role-play exercises where people practice navigating heated interpersonal scenarios with skill. I observed one particular scene that I want to describe here in detail because it illustrates so much:

Mark is rehearsing a difficult conversation he needs to have with his partner (role-played by Jess). He needs to let her know that something about their relationship needs to change. We want him to find that confidence where it feels natural for him to advocate for himself and communicate directly about his needs, boundaries and requests.

But all it took to throw him off his game was for Jess to change her body language slightly to show “I’m not receptive to you”. Some part of Mark picks up on those nonverbal signals and completely loses track of himself. The confidence evaporates, the clarity is replaced by hedging and compromise.

Mark is operating on a logic something like, “if I’m always accomodating, we can find a way to get along”. This strategy is certainly effective for maintaining a relationship (either at work or at home), but it comes with psychic damage, it undermines his self-respect, and generates resentment that comes out sideways, as passive aggression or pettiness.

I was shocked to see how much power Mark gave to Jess. All she had to do was squint her eyes slightly and scrunch up her forehead and that was enough for him to concede the fight before it had even really started.

In the course we go through repeated cycles of roleplay + reflection:

• Before you go into a confrontation: settle yourself & clarify what’s most important for you to communicate

• During: actively regulate your nervous system so you can communicate as directly as possible: “This is what I observed. This is why I can’t accept it. Would you be willing to do XYZ instead?”

• After: settle yourself & reflect on what happened, so you can 1) understand how you habitually respond in moments of interpersonal stress, and 2) get the “update”: what do you want to remember, next time you’re in this situation?

I think we saw the biggest change in Mark when he learned to keep his awareness on himself, not to get lost in his mental modelling and anxious anticipation of what the other person is thinking and feeling, but maintaining some curiosity about his own body, and mindfully maintaining deep breath, neutral voice, straight back, relaxed shoulders. That’s the somatic foundation for straightforward communication.

Training these new habits of awareness, posture, and nervous system regulation opened up the space where he could practice a new repertoire and develop a new logic in relationships. He’s learning to be loyal to himself in the high-stakes moments, rather than abandoning himself.

Past students are saying things like “this is one of the highest returns-on-investment from any personal development activities I’ve done” (source).

If you wanna join us in the dojo and practice standing your ground and advocating for yourself, we’re running another cohort this year, starting October 22nd. Update: the October cohort immediately sold out so we’re running another class in November. Register here for Fight Wise.