In this episode, Katie talks with Nairy McMahon, CRR Global’s Director of Business Development, faculty member, and Head of CRR UK, about our relationship with toxins. Across this conversation, they discuss:
Nairy McMahon is CRR Global’s Director of Business Development, faculty member and Head of CRR UK. She is a CTI-trained coach and ORSC Certified practitioner with a corporate background, having worked in banking and property development. She has spent the past 10 years collaborating and running a private investment company in London. She also has acted as a business advisor to a number of start-ups. She has a strong interest in teams, especially culturally diverse teams. A psychologist by education, Nairy has worked and lived on four continents.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
In this episode, Katie talks with Nairy McMahon, CRR Global’s Director of Business Development, faculty member, and Head of CRR UK, about our relationship with toxins. Across this conversation, they discuss:
Nairy McMahon is CRR Global’s Director of Business Development, faculty member and Head of CRR UK. She is a CTI-trained coach and ORSC Certified practitioner with a corporate background, having worked in banking and property development. She has spent the past 10 years collaborating and running a private investment company in London. She also has acted as a business advisor to a number of start-ups. She has a strong interest in teams, especially culturally diverse teams. A psychologist by education, Nairy has worked and lived on four continents.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
Key
KC – Katie Churchman
NM - Nairy McMahon
[Intro 00:00 – 00:06]
KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and in this episode, I'm talking with Nairy McMahon, CRR Global's Director of Business Development, faculty member and head of CRR UK about our relationship with the toxins. Across this conversation we discuss the benefits of becoming aware of the toxins, integrating the antidotes to create long term behavioral change, the value of viewing the toxins through the lens of relationship, the subtle and sophisticated ways these toxic behaviors can show up in our relationships, and the importance of slowing down the pace of relationship. Alongside her roles at CRR global and head of CRR UK, Nairy McMahon is a CTI trained coach and ORSC certified practitioner with a corporate background, having worked in banking and property development. She spent the past 10 years collaborating and running a private investment company in London. She has also acted as a business adviser to a number of startups. She has a strong interest in teams, especially culturally diverse teams. A psychologist by education, Nairy has worked and lived on four continents. So, I bring you Nairy McMahon talking about our relationship with the toxins.
KC - Nari, welcome to the Relationship Matters podcast, I am so excited to have you on the show today. Welcome.
DM - Likewise, I am so excited to be here. Thank you for the invitation, Katie,
KC - I'm very intrigued about this topic today on relationship with the toxins. I haven't actually thought about the toxins through that relational lens. So, I'm excited to deep dive with you around this.
NM - Likewise, I've spent lots of time thinking about toxins and our relationship, and more importantly, how it becomes so sophisticated in relationship. So, I look forward to exploring this topic further with you.
KC - I wonder if we can start with a bit of an overview of the four toxins, which are sometimes known as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. What are they and why are they useful for us to be aware of, particularly as coaches?
NM – Yeah, it's a way of communicating with teams. Actually, all of us use a form of the toxins to communicate something that we need but we don't know how to say it so it becomes quite unskillful. The interesting thing about the toxins is that they all invite another toxin to come up. So, the toxins are defensiveness, blaming, stonewalling and contempt. If a person or a team doesn't know how to communicate something that they're not happy about and they use one of those, then inevitably, another one will come up to respond. So, it's like having a relationship between these toxins until we step away from the toxins and look at it and say, ‘hang on a moment, what is the need that's trying to be expressed here?’ And how do we go back a little bit, a few paces, to figure out what it is that we're trying to say unskillfully.
KC - I love this inquiry that we're bringing today on relationship with the toxins, because I think for many of us, we do this tool, maybe we even train in this work, and then we think, ‘yeah, I've got the toxins, I've done that now’. And yet, they continue to emerge and evolve in our lives. I wonder for you, how has it been useful to look through the lens of relationship as it relates to the toxins?
NM - What I love is that you took us back to how these toxins are introduced. We introduce it as a tool in fundamentals on day two, after we've done some education around positivity and why it's important. We have this fun experience, and we normalize it, and everyone has a good time. Even when you work with teams or couples, that's exactly how it feels. All of a sudden, it's out in the open. Everybody knows that ‘wow, in this relationship, this is how I show up, this is how you show up and I've also showed up like this in other relationships.’ It's all there. So, the type of relationship it is almost this permission for a particular type of toxin to come out. Because we're all good at all of them, even though we say what do you master, we're all good at all of them. But then we kind of put it away. It's almost like we've done the work and here's the antidotes, keep going and we'll go off. It's in our consciousness, maybe we want the defensiveness the way we did before, but it comes up again and again. In every relationship, the more sophisticated we are at being in relationship, the more conscious of the relationship, the more sophisticated our toxin comes up. It’s almost like its fact, it's justifiable. ‘But you did this last time?’, ‘Well, you did do it, here are the facts’. That's what we bring in, I think we become a lot more sophisticated at it.
KC - That is something I can certainly relate to. I remember one time, I think we might have been leading together and we’d just led the toxin grid and we had a break, it was a virtual course, and I think I went straight into blame with my husband, outside of the session. It was only afterwards, when I was able to step back and take the balcony view, that I realized it was blame. In the moment I think I thought, well, I'm being skillful, and I was up on my highchair about that. I think that's why it's so important, what you're saying here, it’s that we have to keep on our toes because otherwise these toxins will continue to trip us up. And they will do, of course, but they will show up in different ways and we need to be aware of those new ways in which they live in our lives.
NM - Yeah. Just to build on what you said, we become skillful in the way we use toxins to express a need. What we want is for us to be skillful in using the antidotes to express the need. I still think the impulse that we get from the toxins are really important, because if something happens, and it steps on something, you immediately… it's a shortcut, it's like anger. You go right into it, it's not great, you want a solution. You might stonewall because you want to protect yourself, because something just happened, or you want to defend the position or you're blaming on something because something's not working. But the question is, how do you then skillfully, rather than enact on that, how can you skillfully go into the antidotes and see which one of those are going to be supporting you to communicate what needs to be communicated so that you can solve it? Otherwise, it's just gonna go round and round and round, as you said, getting more sophisticated, bringing more facts, quoting statistics, or bringing a study that was done or something you saw on Instagram. These are all really sophisticated ways of defending a position that I'm holding without accepting the fact that all voices are welcome, and some voices are going to be really different from the voice that I hold. Can you see how the principles have just snuck in in here as well?
KC - They really have. And I think it really talks to that idea that toxins belong to our systems. They're both personal and they’re collective and certain toxins show up in different relationship systems that we’re a part of. It is fascinating, particularly in the UK, how sarcasm seems quite fun and banterous, it's sometimes called, but it can be quite contentious, too. I think that's a way, particularly in the UK, we hide behind sarcasm when it's actually contempt. I'm sure there's different ways this manifests in different cultures. You can see how they subtly become more sophisticated, so we don't call them out and say that's not okay, actually, that's quite rude.
NM – That is exactly what you've just pinpointed us to, which is, how do we stop and say, ‘actually, that's really rude’. Because when you say that, obviously somebody's going to get offended and when they're offended, they're probably going to be defensive or stonewalling or say something quite derogatory, whether it's a derogatory term to who we represent. That is why I love the antidotes. You can say something like, ‘that is really rude’ and actually, Marita Frijhon said something amazing the other day – ‘this is where I stop and go ouch’. ‘Ouch’ doesn't say anything, but it's ‘ouch’ and it gives a moment for the relationship to go ‘ouch, ooh, what did I just do? What was ouch?’ and gives you a moment to breathe and say, ‘ouch, that really hurt’ and ‘I don't know whether I'm being sensitive, I just want to check something out with you’. Can you see how we're skillfully bringing the antidotes to shift… we just put that relationship on an edge, didn't we? Someone said something, we responded in a way that was quite toxic and the relationship was ready for something to happen, a breakup, or toxins coming in. But we are taking individual responsibility to say ‘ouch’, even in a team situation, ‘that actually hurt, who else has felt that pain?’ What do we need to do here?
KC - I love that. What a simple way of sassily showing that maybe that didn't land in the way that we expected it to. It makes me think that in some ways, it's really important for us to slow down because our lives are very fast, very, very busy, and it's not getting any slower. It seems that the antidotes work more effectively when we slow down and have that pause to feel, to breathe for a moment.
NM - You're right. That banter, the one that you're referring to, is our natural go to and what we're not very good at is slowing down and considering what that ouch was for me and what that ouch was for our team. How do we need to own part of that ouch but also redirect it so that we don't end up defending the ouch, the pain that we are feeling. Obviously, feeling a pain is a reason for doing something, for saying something. The other day I was walking in the park with a friend, she made a comment that was actually very hurtful, and I didn't know how to respond. The way I responded was changing the direction of the conversation, I stonewalled her. That not very good because our relationship felt like something was missing. From then on, the conversation was very surface. And we left and the text messages have a sadness in them. And now I have to go and repair what happened. Whereas if I was really skillful in that moment and had that that little badge that Marita gave me, which was ‘ouch’, at that moment we could have adjusted it and had a wonderful walk in the park. But that's not what happened. Because I'm more skillful at the toxins than I am skillful at the antidotes.
KC - Oh, me, too. I'm so glad you owned up to that. I am so good at some of the toxins, and I think many of us are. We have a one or two toxin that we are experts at. I wonder how those pattern in our brain. They're very hard wired. So, we're not just working against something that's been building up for a year or two, this is our lifetime's work. When we bring in the antidotes, I think we have to bring a sense of grace and compassion to ourselves because it's not always going to work out and it's not going to be easy.
NM - Yeah. That is exactly what we want, for our coaches to know, as coaches for us to know, for our clients to know, because one of the things you do after the toxin grid exercise is that you go into the conflict protocol, which is what you are going to do when things inevitably get difficult and when we are triggered, or something happens, or we stress, or we tired, as you said, fall back into our learned patterns. I wonder whether it gets parked. It gets been beautifully written and then gets parked, which I do as well. I write all these things: I will not, I will not, I will not. But of course, I am doing it. How do you bring that as a ritual because rituals are what starts rewiring the brain. How would you bring the practice of coin? Context, observation, impact next? How do you bring that skill of normalizing all that ouch? Wouldn't it be great if we all practiced ouch. What was an ouch that happened to you so that you can start using the language? My favorite one is the 2% truth. I've heard lots of people say, ‘but I’m 2% right’.
KC - That's not quite the point of the exercise.
NM - Because the 2% is exactly what you said before which is how do you slow down? How do you be with yourself and take on board that 2% truth that belongs to me? Or the 2% truth that belongs to us as a team? And then how do we adjust accordingly? What do we need to do to shift or not shift, to be in a conscious relationship? What is that new information? What's the gift in that?
KC - As you're speaking particularly about breaking some of these hard won patterns, I'm hearing slowing down to the pace of relationship. That means not just doing the toxin grid and then the conflict protocol and then being done, but actually integrating these antidotes into our lives. That's where the work really starts to live outside of the coaching session and in our family systems and our organizations. But it's much harder to do when we're fast and we're busy and we’re rushed. I think in those moments, at least for me, my autopilot takes over.
NM - It does indeed. I'm also just thinking how do we how do we embody, how do we become in stronger relationship with the antidotes? Because we have a strong relationship with the toxins haven’t we? We've learned them. They're our go to. They're powerful. They're fierce. They come quickly, with skills that we can do in so many different layers. Almost like every time we talk about the antidotes, even in this conversation, we both slow down. There's an elegance to it, a grace to it. How do we start building that relationship? As you said, that takes time. Who has time? We all have time, actually. Here’s the thing that we want to share - at the start maybe you will require a bit more time. But with practice, I think that grace and elegance will become the go to. It's not that we are going to take up more than 60 seconds in a minute, we're just going to live the 60 seconds fully, rather than, my go to is 45 seconds, really shorten that 60 seconds. Get to it. get to the point. But imagine fully owning that richness of the 60 seconds and exploring what's available with the antidotes.
KC – That’s such a nice way of holding time. I do think time is relative, it depends on how we're experiencing it. If we're present and then we bring conscious intent, that's going to be a very different 60 seconds than if we're really not present, we're thinking about the next thing and then rushing into our autopilot to fix this argument. And of course, we can't be conscious and intentional all the time, because that would be exhausting. But if we could just bring a tiny bit more, particularly to those relationships that matter - imagine the impact.
NM - Imagine the impact. Even you raising this thing about time, I'm also saying, wow, we even blame time for us.
KC – We do!
NM - We don't have enough time. Of course, we're gonna go blaming and defending, who has time to do the antidote? Can you see it?
KC – That’s fascinating. I'd not even thought about the toxins in relation to other relationships beyond our human relationships and actually, yeah, we blame time. We blame the weather in the UK. That's something we do a lot. We were doing that before we started recording, in fact!
NM - I'm feeling blue because it's raining. Well, it's raining. I don't think the rain is intense. My relationship with the rain and what it's bringing up in me, knowing that it's gonna be a wet summer, how do I have to be in relationship with myself so that I'm not blue, and I'm not grumpy, and I'm not allowing myself to be rude and miserable because of the weather? Weather is not personal. It is just what it is.
KC – Well it brings it back to that idea of right relationship. What does right relationship look like in this moment? From the series I did with Faith on Conversations On Cancer around what right relationship looks like with life threatening illness, it was different moment to moment. I'm sure those toxic behaviors, those toxins, did show up. I'm sure there was some blame and content towards the cancer, the illness. But we also have that agency when we bring that relational lens in. That's why I love looking through the relational lens today at toxins, because I don't think I allowed for that agency before this conversation. That actually we have that choice. It's a two-way street.
NM - It is a two-way street, and we have the choice. Bringing that powerful thing around how we then try to blame, yeah, we have the choice. Again, what you brought in, even the weather. When it's sunny we don't want to work because it's a beautiful day. When it's wet, we don't want to work because it's a miserable day. The whole thing is it's our relationship but what are the conditions I need to create, to do the work I need to do? That gives me joy and fulfils me. And in doing that fulfils and gives joy to my relationships, and gives joy and fulfilment to the teams that I work with? I think that's the agency, and that's the agency we need in everything. We're not being picked on. There isn't somebody doing that where we have to defend or blame? How are we in relationship with what is going on for us right now? But aligned to our purpose, our goal, our mission, it goes right back to that, doesn't it? What is personally, life-giving for me and how am I going to be in relationship with everything around us?
KC – So powerful to hold that. I think what's interesting about this is that as soon as you look through that lens of relationship, you can't easily go into that toxin party of if someone's defending, you then blame them and it goes back and forward. It's not so easy anymore, because suddenly you have choice. You don't have to go into that pattern of backwards and forwards conflict, actually you can change the game and I think it does take you to that ‘hole on up’ as Ken Wilber would describe it. It gives you a bit of a meta view of what's going on.
NM - It's brought to your consciousness, you're aware now, you’re at choice and your body remembers. That's why the exercise of the toxins, when we do the gestures, it’s an essence connection and our body knows. The minute your brain knows that toxin grid and memorizes it, which you do straight away from doing just that one session, then you are constantly aware that you've just done something. You do feel like a naughty child when you do it. All of a sudden, you’re like, ‘why would I do that?’ And then the antidotes are there to help you recover, because we will do it. I think that's how we started this conversation Katie, we said we've been doing this work, we're really committed to it, we teach, we train, we coach, and we still do it and we have this beautiful skill set that we can recover from it. Recover and own up to what you just did, and why you did it, and be in strong enough relationship with the other person to also accept it, knowing that we're all going to be doing it at some point. It goes back to how learning the antidotes brings grace to the relationship,
KC - And knowing that we will make mistakes over and over again and maybe that's a part of this journey. I did a conflict protocol with my husband many years ago and it happened just before we got some surprising news that our visa had been rejected in America and we had to suddenly move back. It didn't mean there was no conflict in this very stressful time, but on looking back, we were more skillful than we would have been had we not done that. I think it's important for us as coaches to look for that two-degree tiller shift, as we call it. It's not about completely changing the dynamic because we're human beings, we're going to get stressed and triggered and there'll be all of that physiological response, or reaction to it and a lot of it is out of your control. And if we can just have a little bit more of an opening, what might that allow?
NM – Wow. Just keep repeating this, the fact that you've done the conflict protocol at home. As coaches, it's a great space for us to practice and also observe, how often do you go back to the conflict protocol? How often are you implementing the antidotes for you to have some data yourself, so that when you are in front of the team or the relationship that you're coaching, you also set expectations? That’s the other thing - we do the toxin grid, we create the conflict protocol and then the accountability piece is so important. How are you going to be accountable? How are you going to be holding these? Knowing that… again, I don't know if this is true, i've heard that behaviors take a long time, three, six or nine months to change. I'm not too sure what it is, but because I'm assuming even that is relational, so how are you going to be holding accountable so that it becomes the go-to rather than, ‘oh, wow, we didn't do it. Let's do it again in six months’ time.’
KC - That's such an important point of inquiry. I know you do a lot of work with teams Nari, how would you help to create a sense that this is an ongoing piece of work for them, as opposed to a one and done exercise?
NM - The accountability piece and really checking back on them. Not to police them, not to blame them, not to finger point, but to hold awareness around accountability and at what point did the accountability drop off? Because it does. But the other thing as a coach is the rituals, the checking questions, checkout questions, in the middle of the session, those are consciously and intentionally created, co-created with the teams to ensure that the habit of ritual comes in. When a ritual starts being adopted by a team, then the ritual of the antidotes will come in. So, maybe a ritual might be something around now we've highlighted all the toxins, we see the toxins coming up, a ritual might be something that you've learned about yourself in the since we last met. So that's the 2% truth being reinforced but from a different channel. The channel is here's what I learned about myself. I don't know that I like salt in my food - again, that's an awareness and you can, as a coach, bring that back into what are you doing about that awareness? Are you just accepting it? What are you doing? What I'm trying to say is that teams need rituals, we do check in and check outs for a reason and bringing in the ritual of becoming better skilled at the antidotes is a very good way for teams to develop those skills.
KC - Yeah, I read something recently about how many of our lives are lacking in ritual. I really feel that in terms of those ongoing coaching engagements, some people want to really hold on to you as the coach because they're almost dependent on you to keep them accountable. But I guess for me, at least, my job is really well done when they don't need me anymore because they can keep themselves accountable. I think that integration piece is key, but not easy. Because in some ways, our clients want us to give them the answers and actually, they're only going to find themselves when they start looking in the mirror together.
NM - Gosh, I can't help but to really highlight the point you just said. I keep saying ‘highlighting’ because every time you say something I'm like, ‘Oh, my God Katie, that was amazing’. Think about it, sometimes a very difficult conversation or a conflict or a communication breakdown is packaged and handed to the coach. So, you can see that in a way it's a toxin, but not the way we know it. The toxin is, ‘I'm not going to deal with it. It's not my problem. It's now the coach’s problem’. I heard this in systems integration, actually. Somebody said, ‘how do you know, when a coach has done a good job?’ and they said, ‘well, you wouldn't be hired again’. But again, can you see the blaming? The coach did what the coach did and then the system needs to do their work. That's the whole thing. You’re right, the ritual of the organization might be to package things and hand it over to someone else to solve. Now, it is great because as coaches we are skilled, we're able to unpack that box that has just been pushed aside or they’re looking at it, the team is looking at it. And we are experts at it, we untangle it with them, we show them the mirror, we give them the tools and the skills for them to pick the bits that they want and repackage it and take it and keep it and look at it. And exactly what you said, we are developing that skill for them. What we're not doing is taking onboard solving it so that we get rehired because that's not the point. The point for coaches is for us to hold the mirror. As you said that 2% tiller, we know that it's heading somewhere else.
KC - And then eventually they can hold that mirror for themselves and see themselves as a system too. I think this applies as much to couples as it does to teams. I remember one couple I worked with, they wanted to be more aware of the toxins in the moment and help each other to be more aware, and so because of the name the four horsemen of the apocalypse they'd be like, ‘oh, another horse’s come into the room’, and they had this joke around the horses. And it was so light and playful that it would automatically snap them out of whatever pattern they were in. I think those playful, light ways of holding this can really help us in those moments too, because it pulls us out of that triggering, maybe, and into a different kind of awareness that gives us a tiny bit more choice.
NM - Keith and I do it. He says to me, ‘oh, what just happened?’ and I go, ‘I think I just started on the horse here. I'm galloping’ and he goes ‘yes, galloping right through my heart’. You know what we do also want to normalize? Sometimes we are very, very unskillful.
KC – Yes. And I think there are many things, many factors, that impact this. Of course, if we haven't slept it's going to be much harder to be skillful and bring the antidotes. But there are also ways that we can hold this to. For me a big game changer was actually realizing that we don't have to have the conversation now. We don't have to fix it before we go to sleep, it can actually be an argument that we resolve tomorrow.
NM - Yeah, and the conflict protocol, the way we have it in the fundamentals, is for a specific reason. But you can exactly do the conflict protocol as couples and also as teams we also have biorhythms. I'm a morning person, I can have the best conversation between 5am and 11am. But my husband wakes up at 11am. So, he probably would like to have some kind of a topic conversation over the dinner table, but I am de-skilled and there's no point. As you said, the conflict protocol between us has been that the best time for our relationship to have discussions around difficult subjects is between 11 and 4. If we miss that window, we miss that window. We will not do it because you’re right. Imagine having an argument just before you go to bed- how helpful is that?
KC - That really talks to being conscious and intentional around the toxins. It's not that you're saying, ‘oh yeah, we've worked through the toxins, they don't exist’. It's an awareness that they do and actually that these behavioral patterns help us to navigate them a little bit more skillfully. They may still show up, but they might show up a little bit less than if you were tired.
NM - And we are being conscious and intentional about times when those things come up. So, if I am tired, I probably will be quite sarcastic or I might be intolerant and not open to listening to anything that's been said, so stonewalling. Or I might be defending my position or blaming someone else for the way I feel. But it is a way of protecting my energy. And in the mornings, it's a way for him to protect his energy. So, just imagine in teams, there are 11, 12, 20, 35 people with all their different biorhythms and we're hybrid so it's complicated. As you said, educating ourselves around the toxins, having this amazing experience, coming up with the antidotes, creating some form of ritual so that that's a default. But importantly, having grace and knowing that we're not going to be great all of the time.
KC – What do you feel is the power of normalizing how we show up in each of these toxins? I think for many people it can be a bit of an edge, initially, to say, ‘oh, I do this horrible thing with my partner or with my colleague’. What's the benefit to us in our relationship systems when we normalize that and make it a part of being human?
NM - Well, when you're defending the fact that you don't use it - it is a toxin and it's protecting our status. It’s protecting who we are. I mean, imagine being an adult and discovering that, oh, my gosh, I'm doing these things, maybe at home and maybe at work. So, I think it's a natural way to defend. My biggest takeaway has been to really use the way that ORSC introduces the toxins, where we talk about the importance of positivity and how that creates goodwill in the relationship, how it makes relationships resilient. From that, introducing the fact that we all do this other thing. When you do that the sharing of the original data you are also bringing in that it is normal that we go to the four horsemen, because we are trying to defend or protect something that's important to us. Because when you do the exercise, all of the toxins are there to protect you. So, you need you need to ramp it up. There are a lot of systems, including relationships, that the word toxins can be very triggering. So, unhelpful communication, unskillful communication, we all understand that. We've just been invited to do some coaching and the topic is communication. I'm not sure if it is relating to the toxins, but there is something going on in communication. We all need to continually be skilled in communication, because our language is changing all the time.
KC - Yes. And the way we communicate is changing. I think there's so many ways now that we show up with the toxins online that we didn't 5 or 10 years ago. I think turning off our camera can be an example of stonewalling. It could be. It depends how it's done and the intent behind it, of course, but that could be stonewalling and that wasn't something that we could do when we were always in the office all the time.
NM - Yeah, I love to hear this. The latest one is ‘I have broadband issues’. I said to someone, ‘really, broadband issues?’ and she said ‘no, not really but I use sometimes when I can't cope with the intensity of the conversation’. Now, imagine having sufficient safety in that relationship to use one of the antidotes to say, ‘I'm sorry, but right now, I feel flooded’. Or imagine being skilled enough to say, ‘wow, I just said all these information. There are all these things going on around us. I'm sure we're all flooded. Let's take a break’. These are the things that we are teaching. When you see a toxin coming up, it's not to answer it with a toxin but to slow down the time to think wow, what can I do right now as a representative as a voice of the system, to slow us down, to give us a break, to be curious about what just happened. To own it.
KC - I love that example because it also talks to how these evolve and emerge over time. Back in the noughties that was me saying to my mum on the phone, ‘oh, I'm going through a tunnel’ and I'd go [shushing noise]. Now it's ‘I've got broadband issues’. It's just so interesting how it moves on, but it will continue to do so. I think, as coaches particularly, it's our job to stay on our toes and then hold that for our clients too. Because we never arrive with this work and I think that's sometimes so frustrating, isn't it? That we don't arrive and get our badge and we're done. It's a lifelong lesson and learning curve. But it’s also exciting because, wow, there's always something new to teach us.
NM - Something new to learn, something new to practice on how our brains are functioning, helping our brain to remain curious and not on autopilot. I think this work is a real invitation to keep evolving as human beings in relationship.
KC – Yes, in relationship. With self, with other system, with the toxins. Thank you so much Nairy, this has been a fascinating conversation. I'm taking away so much and I'm hopefully going to be a little bit more aware of the toxic behaviors I bring particularly to my family system today. So, thank you. I can't wait to get you back on the show very soon.
NM - Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I also have learned a whole lot of new things about myself. So, thank you, Katie. It's been amazing.
[Music intro begins 35:57]
KC - A huge thanks to Nairy for that insightful discussion. Here are my key takeaways. The toxins are trying to protect us, even if they do so unskillfully. They are a form of unhelpful or unskillful communication and are something that we all do. Normalizing this can help relationship systems to become more aware of the toxins and understand them as part of being human. With heightened awareness comes more choice. We can choose to utilize the antidotes and bring more grace to the relationship. We can become more sophisticated at using toxic behaviors. So, it's important for us to continue to pay attention to these behaviors as they evolve and perhaps become more subtle in our lives. Slowing down can help us to be more skillful when in conflict. It can provide us with a bit more space that can help us to break out of unskillful yet well-worn behavioral patterns. We can integrate an awareness of the toxins and the importance of the antidotes by creating rituals within our systems. These rituals help to remind us that our relationship with the toxins is an ongoing learning journey, not a one and done exercise. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. CRR Global’s unshakeable belief is that relationship matters, from humanity to nature to the larger whole. For more information please visit CRRGlobal.com.
[Music outro 37:56 – end]