NNTD pith instructions discussion
- A friend of mine recently wrote in a group chat:
- > would/could you write pith instructions for NNTD? I'm curious but haven't dived in, and would be more likely to if I could get a more concentrated sense of the flavor of it.
- For those not familiar with the term "pith instructions", it refers to condensed, direct, pithy core instructions, often for a meditation practice. Before I had the chance to reply, another friend linked my yearly review blog post 2020: Free to Dance, and the first friend replied:
- > Yeah that's helpful! It definitely gets at the problem statement. I still feel like I'm missing something about what actually goes into doing NNTD.
- It can be hard to give quick general instructions for NNTD for a few reasons.
- Most immediately, there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work.
- This in itself could be considered a pith instruction for NNTD, since it points at the flaw with any technique or process or mindset that claims that if you do it correctly and someone doesn't vibe with it, then there's sort of nothing you can do and they need to change. This flaw is what makes a protocol not a meta-protocol.
- With this in mind, one might say: try to establish and build trust as best you can, and whereever that breaks down, no matter how frustrating or annoying or unnecessary the obstacle seems to be, find a way to see the breakdown as necessary for the trust you're building to be non-naive. ie that obstacle is letting you know that something is missing
- There's also something about how NNTD is in some ways more view than it is method. trust-dancing is an element of all human interactions (tbh, interactions with animals as well, and arguably human-corporation interactions too) and the NNTD framework illuminates the basic physics of how trust works
- for instance:
- any way in which someone does not trust me is a way in which they can't trust me (without some additional data or experience they don't currently have)
- even if it seems that I trust myself in this way, I don't know what their actual trust landscape looks like
- discussion ensued! (M is me)
- M > there's this which I just incidentally came across and realized it sort of is already an attempt at pith instructions for NNTD:
- here's one thing I tweeted, that is close:
- respect that there are ways in which you can't trust each other
- and gently inquire into why that is
- not trying to force behavior change
- trusting that new more workable behavior will emerge
- when you can see why it makes sense to do what you're doing
- and see its impacts on others
- friend > Ooh, this elevator pitch is really good! Interesting that there's a meta-trust element too, in the process itself
- M > yeah, the whole thing is kind of about meta-trust!
- what stands out to you about the elevator pitch / meta-trust?
- friend > I needed something like that, as opposed to the core principles of the NNTD page, which feels too big/complicated/rabbit-holey
- It's just very instantly practical
- M > what's fascinating is that it does seem like there's just one core idea in some sense, and if you get it then the ~20 ~principles immediately fall out as obvious
- friend > For context: I've got a pile of new work relationships as a consequence of this reorg, and a couple of my new folks clearly don't trust me yet
- And reading that first line just prompted me to notice how I'm trying to FIX that
- M > aha! yes, then yeah, the most important thing to do is to honor that they don't trust you, and that it would be naive for them to trust you
- friend > Yeah!
- M > yes yes yes. perfect. that's the only sane place from which you can begin to build trust
- otherwise you're ummm fighting the laws of trust-physics
- friend > So I should try accepting/exploring the lack of trust
- M > a few pieces, here:
- 1. if you can stay really grounded in the ways in which you trust yourself and you know others trust you, and be clear that those are not in question (although you may have accidentally falsely generalized their implications a bit too broadly) then you'll have a lot more space to consider others' concerns — to the extent that you're having trouble respecting & honoring that someone else doesn't trust you, it's probably because you fear losing touch with your own self-trust, so focus on honoring that
- (this is probably where the urge to fix comes from)
- (and why it feels so urgent - if it were just a matter of building trust, it would feel more obvious that it makes sense to go at the optimal pace for that)
- friend > Yep, this urgency definitely ties to a questioning of my own trust in myself — “can I even do this” / “what do I even bring here” / “I don't even know what I don't know” — and feeling time pressure to figure it out
- M > yup, totally
- there's also a subtle piece here where with respect to things that aren't just about you but are about interacting with them specifically... ideally you can actually hold a space of genuine not-knowing about whether you might betray them in some way they don't trust they won't be betrayed, either:
- because you do something that lands as betrayal to them in a way that surprises you because you have different buckets or
- because their patterns or projections or whatever cause you to behave in ways that you recognize as betrayal but would not ordinarily behave, and you didn't expect to betray them because you didn't expect to end up in this situation but they kinda did expect to be betrayed because this is the usual way they get betrayed
- so yeah, there's a kind of humility there, rather than "ofc I would never betray you!"
- which is the same as the fixing energy, basically
- like it's one thing to say "I would be very surprised if that happened" but also you might not actually really know what the "that" is that they're afraid of—their concern might, under the surface, be essentially a fear that their attachment wounds will get poked, and like, can you really be so sure that won't happen?
- 2. sometimes it can be really valuable to speak to the lack of trust, especially from that grounded & honoring+respectful place.
- it's easiest when the other person has explicitly voiced their distrust, because then you can directly speak to it without reifying it into existence or seeming like a projection or fixation or whatever
- sometimes you can get there with a few steps though, by reflective-listening-paraphrasing some concern with "it sounds like you don't trust that [I'm going to] X [if you don't Y]"
- and then if that lands you can (if grounded enough) say "okay, well, good to know! I'm not going to ask you to trust that if it would be naive!"
- or "okay. I respect that you don't trust that. Glad you're listening to yourself."
- and sometimes there might be a thing you can do right in that moment that will already shift the trust landscape
- (sometimes this comment itself does so, because of how strongly it validates the other person's perspective)
- or there might be a thing that needs to gradually play out over time or something
- friend > What comes to mind is “I don't expect you to trust me yet”
- M > I would say “I don't expect you to trust me until you've had whatever experience you need to trust me" or something like that
- to make it clear it's not just like, a time/familiarity thing, but actual learning etc
- M > there might be ways to phrase that that are more or less workable for a given situation
- some of the boilerplate NNTD language at present is sort of unusually verbose and loopy - I think in some cases there are ways to shorten it (especially if you're embodying a stance that validates everyone's perspective) but in other cases the relevant perspective-taking involved is actually 2-4 layers deep and needs to somehow be acknowledged as such
- friend > Mmmhmm, and these are not people who tend to talk a lot about their inner process
- M > yeah. and maybe the way to phrase it isn't even about "trust" so much as "what you expect me to do" or something - something that feels more external
- friend > Trust is a powerful word though
- Hmmmm
- You know, I should start with the self-trust aspect
- So I'm coming from a stronger root
- M > that makes deep sense to me! you might find my resources on Internal Trust-Dancing useful for this 🙂