A Thursday conversation
What happens when we meet someone 180 degrees different from us?
Donna and Kirsty look back over weeks of talking together, and what it taught them about presence, safety and the middle ground.
Why this conversation
Donna had been watching her feed fill up with people sitting at opposite ends of the same argument. Around the same time she noticed how much she had been learning from simply showing up each week with Kirsty, with no script and no plan for what either of them would say.
So she asked one question: what have you learnt from us talking every week, about yourself and about others? Kirsty's answer went wide. Donna's went close. As they always seem to do, they landed in the same place.
What Kirsty learnt
Presence matters more than the label
Information and diagnosis can be really valuable, but they are not more valuable than being truly present with the person in front of you. There is no formula and no cheat sheet for it. Kirsty noticed it was almost easier when her children were small, because the intensity left no way around it. As they get older, it becomes a reminder not to forget full presence.
Safe back and forth makes room for curiosity
When it is safe to have a different opinion, there is spaciousness. You are not busy proving your point or bracing to be judged. Real change tends to happen in relationship, in mutual respect, even when we disagree. With teenagers on the horizon, Kirsty sees this as something to hold close, because pushing against their parents is a healthy part of growing up.
The pendulum between empathy and boundaries
Kirsty once feared conflict so much that nothing would come out when it counted, and her body would go into emergency. Becoming a parent, and some strong stands in recent years, thickened her skin. She then noticed a subtle edge in her boundaries, a little more closedness. The pendulum swings, and the work is finding the centre and staying in a heart space.
The tool she values most: noticing the need underneath what she is feeling, then asking how she can meet it herself rather than bemoaning that someone else is not.
What Donna learnt
Putting herself on mute
Donna does not trust herself not to interrupt, so she mutes herself and waits. The result, she says, is stunning: the wisdom she hears when she lets Kirsty finish. She writes her ideas down, then comes back to them with her own perspective. There is a time for back and forth too, and they practise that at the end.
Masking, and the swing away from it
Donna noticed she had swung the other way in this friendship. She has dropped the mask so completely that she is often ten minutes late and says so, while with people she does not feel safe with, she still masks. Her view: we sometimes have to travel to the far side before we can come back to the centre.
Meeting the child with the huge behaviour
Teachers are taught to regulate, regulate, regulate, and in a big group that makes sense. But in a small space with a child and their parents, a child sometimes needs someone to match them, stay connected to themselves, and be a witness to how it feels. Donna remembers a four year old in meltdown who shouted that he hated her. She stayed, said she was not going anywhere, and he eventually collapsed into tears and asked for his mummy. She never rushed him out of it. When his tears dried he went back to play, and there were no more big behaviours that day.
It was never about anger. It was always about safety, and a nervous system that had been missed again and again.
There is no cheat sheet. Look at the person, look at the child.
The pendulum, and the middle
Both of them kept coming back to this picture. Many of us start at one end, swing to the other while we heal, and slowly find the middle.
- Donna sees clients who start anxious drift towards the avoidant side as they clear old wounds, copying the boundaries they have seen in others.
- Clients who start avoidant can find that when their nervous system finally feels safe enough to feel, it is startling. Donna now warns people about this so it feels less frightening.
- Asking for help is a really secure thing to do, especially for someone who has spent a lifetime doing it alone.
- Most of us lean one way, towards following the child with empathy or towards setting limits. Few people hold both all the time, and under stress Donna knows she still heads back towards where she began.
Interdependence looks like putting on a sock
Some days a child can put their own sock on. Some days they need you to do it, and that is an act of love, a little memory of closeness. Healthy attachment is interdependence: sometimes the child leads, sometimes the adult leads. Donna remembers Pennie Brownlee describing this with two plates, one moving with flow, one jagged with hard edges.
And when a child is making a very elaborate plan, some parts are safe, some are questionable, and some are truly dangerous. Being the senior partner means stopping the dangerous parts, while staying in partnership for everything else. Kirsty added that every child needs to try things, even if they sometimes land on their faces.
Some things to ponder
No pressure to answer any of these. Just notice which one catches you.
- Who in my life am I meeting through a label rather than through presence?
- Where is it safe for me to hold a different opinion, and where is it not?
- Which end of the pendulum do I tend to start from, and which way am I swinging right now?
- When I feel something big, can I pause and ask what I actually need underneath it?
- What is my version of the mute button, so I can really hear someone who sees the world differently from me?
Meet Donna and Kirsty
Donna Stichbury
The Relationship Facilitator
PIKLER® Pedagogue and Circle of Security Facilitator
Donna is based in Pukekohe, Aotearoa New Zealand, and works both locally and online. She calls herself The Relationship Facilitator because her modality, Relational Flow, moves across every kind of relationship: adult attachment work, couples, parenting, and children's big messy behaviours.
Curious where to start? Book a free Zoom coffee chat with Donna.
Kirsty Denny
Kirsty Marie Energy
Energetic kinesiologist
Kirsty is an energetic kinesiologist and home educating mother of neurodivergent children. She uses kinesiology to work with the layers of subconscious stress and conditioning that can impact our ability to align to our truest expression.
When it comes to nervous system health and healthy attachment, she believes it all matters, the physical, the emotional and the spiritual, with healthy relationships with ourselves and others as the bedrock.
An invitation
As the election approached, Donna wished for a round table where every party placed our tamariki in the middle and asked one question: what do children need? Kirsty named it as a powerful time to practise being present, open hearted, and noticing needs, while still keeping our own voice.
Part of leading by example is finding whatever way helps you change your own behaviour, so that you can listen to someone 180 degrees different from you.
Book a Zoom coffee chat with DonnaMauri Aroha. 🌿
