“Emotional Sobriety” In Media, Government, And Conversation

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 I’m really excited to talk about Emotional Sobriety in conversation also in our media and in our government and politics. Bill, emotional sobriety, that seems to be a very loaded label. Maybe it’s a label or maybe it’s a reality. There’s a lot in there. Can you help unpack that for us?



We have an emotional thing here. We have the word sobriety which is a term that is approaching regarding addiction. You’re addicted to something which is a label. Emotional sobriety, “Are you sober to your own emotions? Are you sober to the emotions of others?” It has to do with reactivity because many times, as somebody that has worked in the drug and alcohol industry, one of the challenges is that not only was there the substance that the person was struggling with, but they were also struggling with their language and their thought structures that led them to use the substance. That’s called the precursor. Here’s my thought or here’s what’s happening to my body, it doesn’t feel very good. If I take this substance, I have a form of relief that shows up in my body. I have a form of ease that shows up in my body and it’s easier for me to be in the world and be inside this body because part of me is not as constricted or restricted. Therefore it’s not as reactive. Emotional sobriety is, I have an emotion and I can be present with it without reacting to it or overreacting to it.

People will do all kinds of things to satiate, to push down and to deal with their emotions. Everything from, “I’ve got to go to my next skiing trip.” “I am going to go out to eat because I’m a foodie.” “I’m overweight, but that doesn’t make a difference because I like the feeling I get when,” I like the feeling I get when is the thing that starts us down from the path of sobriety to not being sober.

Thoughts, words and actions can do the same thing. News media is getting a little bit hijacked to save the least. There is not an emotional sober response to it. There’s an attempt to do a truth response to it, but what’s happening is a spitting match is showing up between liars are not liars. Liars are not nice. That’s not honest. It’s like that is another form of exhaustion where you’re on the gerbil wheel like we talked about, the gerbil wheel of blame and shame and judgment and criticism. A sober response in media, in government to have an honest conversation to not have an honest conversation, but when somebody brings a derogatory phrase in our direction that we’ve got to have some communication and a conversation that sticks. It’s got to stick.

The question then is that, “How do you make something stick?” It’s got to be meaningful. It can’t be you said this and then I said this and then they’re screaming at each other. We have seen all the different screaming talking heads or people talking over another person in order to do a thing called dominate a narrative. Most of the time it’s not about truth telling. It’s trying to get a message to stick. Even well-meaning people are repeating a message that they don’t know that they’re helping the other side to stick into somebody’s consciousness. They are saying the message, they repeated a tweet that wasn’t true. That message now becomes reinforced.

The way the brain works is it’s a little bit more like how many impressions the message has? It’s not how true the thing is. How many message, how many impressions it has? After a certain number of impressions, your brain goes, “It seems like it’s a good idea. I know it’s 12:00 at night and I’ve seen this ad for the last five days because I haven’t been able to sleep. Maybe I will buy this special motorized toothbrush that does X, Y, Z because it could clean my teeth. It does scrape white plaque the way it does.” What has happened is the stimulus and the response, the impression is taking place. What happened is the truth is hijacked. It’s an overpriced toothbrush that will tend to break or get worn out the same as the other toothbrush will and now you spent five times the amount on this toothbrush. You are in worse shape than you were because now the money is gone. Now, you’ve got a toothbrush and now you could have bought five more of those for the same price in that location so on and so forth. Does that make sense how media’s repetition of messaging they’ve got to really watch out for because it doesn’t mean if it’s good or bad. All sides have got to populate the brain of the voter in order to get that message to stick and to go about.

I find it very interesting that the media seems to be taking the bait of the Twitter storm, the Twitter feed of the president because that seems to be the beginning of the majority of reporting, especially in the 24-hour news media. It doesn’t matter whether it’s extreme. If you think Fox News has their agenda or you think CNN has a different agenda, but any that are trying to actually be reporters in the middle of the road by making everything a reaction to a presidential tweet. They’re playing right into the hands of the repetition of these messages.

That’s very disheartening. They’re playing in the hands of him and taking the bait.

I’m talking about the tweet amplifying it even if they’re trying to say this isn’t true.

I’ve been asked that question. What will you do about it? Once there’s a tweet that’s launched, the next message in order to get this to move into its right sober or sobriety position is that whatever the tweet is there needs to be a compassionate moment where we have heard this message and then a gentle shift away from the addicted response that the person says, “Yeah.” Instead of saying, “Yeah,” they’ve got to say, “Yeah, that’s part of it but what the real truth is this.” You’ve got to gently shift them from the trigger response into a soft landing away from what has been being propagated or pushed forward or re messaged in the person’s mind.

 That becomes a little challenging because people don’t know how to do that. Welcome to my world. They don’t know what to say next. What do you say when the person says this?

Taking the high road is not trying to get power over but to have power with the other person.

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To me that is right there. The path through emotional sobriety is having the discipline not to react instinctively to the label or to the insult whatever it is that emotionally someone else is trying to push your buttons in the conversation. When you were talking about two people in the media that they have on a panel arguing their talking points. Each layer you were putting on top is usually another talking point or another zinger. Trying to score points in the debate. If it lands and affects you, you’re not going to have emotional sobriety. You’re going to have emotional knee jerk reaction. It seems that whoever can truly embody emotional sobriety is going to help change the conversation and get out of this cycle of talking points and messaging that is really going to land. You’re right, Bill.



No matter whether you think these constant tweets are true or not. I think even the fact trackers have borne out 10,000 lies in the first couple of years of the presidency, mostly over Twitter. It’s repetitious messaging that is tapping that elephant brain and making people believe that it’s true.

Those elephants are following those thoughts. We might’ve mentioned this in the past, but it keeps coming up in my mind. At a racetrack, at a horse race, when is most of the money being taken in? Most of the money is being taken in the last fifteen, seventeen minutes before the race. Who is spending that money? This is the one that you get to fall off the seat with. It is a gambler who has already bet on a horse and has come back a second time to put a second bet on the same horse he’s already bet on. 73% of bets are second bets on the same horse by the same person.

I’d love to know why that is, Bill. I’m not a gambler. I don’t know the psychology of gambling.

You will. This is where the fear that the American public who needs to be in is that people are going to want a second bet on Trump.

They’re going to double down?

Those voters are doubling down because they already bet they believe in it. The hardcore ones now, the ones that have been affected by integrity, been affected by mutual respect, been affected by honesty and been affected by their belief. They’ve been hurt personally and emotionally by this experience. Those folks are going to feel bitter and upset. They’ll say to themselves, “I have had a junkie experience here. Maybe once this Mueller stuff is behind him, then he will be the president that I’ve always wanted him to be.”

They’ll double down on the horse even though they’ve been hurt and are going to continue to get hurt. They’re going to double down because of the emotion that they felt initially as well as their lack of understanding about what the government does and the amount of safety and infrastructure that the government provides. As well as being sold the belief is government should do something for you personally for your taxes. For me, I got a road to drive on. That’s something that I got personally. All of us chipped in for this road. All of us chipped in for this bridge. All of us are chipping in for the police department. All of us are chipping in for the fire department. All of us are chipping in to care for nature.

All of a sudden I am doing good PR work for the government. We’re all chipping in for some common things that we’d like to have in common rather than the belief that if you use it, then you should pay for it. If you don’t use it, then you shouldn’t pay for it. I don’t think I want to live in Florida with all the toll roads because I’m paying for a part of it because I’m using it. Do we need to slow down the commerce any more in Florida than as slow as it goes right now? It’s a little unsettling. Does that have to go any slower than that? For a few cents getting the millions of dollars that they’re missing out on by slowing people down at a toll road because that’s what it cost. It costs millions of dollars to slow people down.

In order to pay the toll, you mean?

A dominating narrative, most of the time, is not about truth telling. It's trying to get a message to stick.

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I’m emotionally off the wagon.



It’s funny how the brain works and it’s funny how the language is preloaded for that response. We can build this habit pattern into our consciousness. All of a sudden one person says one, one person says another. That person says it. That person says that. This conversation, Tom, is something you can relate to, whether it’s an argument with your kids, your spouse, or a business partner that’s bugging the crap out of you or whoever it is. You’re going to notice that the triggering response that takes place in this thing is so instant that it’s a little hard to believe. For example, if the first person, the male figure in this says a judgmental sentence to the woman that’s on the other side, it could be his daughter. The daughter has done this thing or the spouse has done this thing before and the guy says a simple sentence, “That’s not the way to do that.” Notice the judgment quality of the sentence and we don’t even know what’s the thing that she has done, but her response might be something like, “What are you talking about?” That’s called a defensive response.

Think of this as tweeting and the response the tweeting and the media’s response to the reaction and overreaction to it. What happens is that really some cool stuff starts showing up. The guy says, again, “That’s not the way to do that.” The woman on her side says, “What are you talking about?” He listens to that and then responds back, “What’s wrong with you?” The conversation is not going in the right direction. She says, “Nothing is wrong with me.” We got judgment and then defensiveness. We have criticism and now we have contempt. Nothing’s wrong with me.

In politics it’s, “I’ve always said this.” As if inconsistency is a character flaw or changing your mind.

“I told you a million times,” the guy says in a blaming tone and a judgmental tone. She says, “That’s not true.” It might’ve been 900 times, but it surely wasn’t a million times. In other words, she’ll find the one time she brought in the newspaper or whatever the thing.

I think that she is correct because the statement he made was a bit hyperbolic. It was overblown. Exaggerated maybe is a better word.

I think you had all those words right. Hyperbolic, exaggerated, all those things are correct or right there, Tom, because that’s when emotional sobriety goes out the door, is that when you start picking on micro truths. The last episode we had around truth really got us caught into, what are we focusing on? Are we focusing on the illusion of the micro truth or are we looking at the bigger truth the thing that’s causing the problem which is a big part of it? The next part of it is that he gets to say, “It’s your own fault,” in a shaming way. For her part goes into withdrawal and says, “Whatever.” There is no compassion, no mutual respect, no understanding and no reaching for an effective way to speak and think about things. All it is judgment, defensiveness, criticism, contempt, blaming, judgment, shaming and withdrawal. You can call something shaming but that’s not helpful. Even if your label is correct, like you did before, that sophomoric response or whatever.

I was not emotionally sober at the time, which I’m actually disappointed in myself, even if you love it because I gave you a perfect example here.

This is the way newscasters need to take this on, too. As soon as they take the bait, they’ve got to pull it back. “I took the bait there.

What I’d like to say is,” and reframe right there. Go right after it. You say, “That response was not helpful. Here’s a better response.

 The need for respect looks like this. This is what integrity really looks like. This is what the rule of law states and this is what didn’t happen. This is what did happen.” There is a little bit of margin that we can give people for making mistakes, but this is not one of them.

Bill, it appears to me that you’ve given us a roadmap that is an example of most conversations in our political discourse. The two sides are speaking in these ways to get a sound bite on the evening news or to score points with their base or to satisfy their leadership in Congress. It is not a path to actually understand each other and accomplishing anything. It’s also a roadmap for what a lot of the 24-hour news media does. This argument, let’s not even call it debate, let’s call it what it is, it’s probably an argument, makes for good ratings on TV.

Let’s get to a solution part of it because the solution part of it is really where the thing lies. The two circles that I described at the beginning, the feeling and need behind each one of these four sentences that the guy said. The feeling and need that is behind the four sentences that the woman said have a compassionate response to them. You’ve got to go around the language that the person has said to have a compassionate response to what the person says. Likewise, to draw out a compassionate response from the other person is a way that you could actually reframe your own thoughts. You don’t have to get into the gerbil wheel, dog fight, blame, shame, guilt narrative.

Let’s go back to our example. President Trump says, “Who Pete Buttigieg?” and then he was asked about that during an interview. The president made fun of your name. Watch my response, “I guess he might’ve been feeling uncomfortable because my name does have some difficulty until you’re used to saying it. The way it’s pronounced is Buttigieg. I’d be happy to assist both him and others to speak that way.” It is a unique name and it does have three syllables where Trump only has one syllable. It’s a little easier to say Trump than it is to say Buttigieg, but I think with a little bit of practice, most Americans can get it. No one will pick on his name again.

 No one’s going in there again, Trump can’t do it again at the next rally because now all of a sudden, he provided a compassionate, respectful response to a person that fits the label of sophomoric. It fits the label of that. He gave an adult response to it. He gave a response that has respect and integrity to it. He extended respect.

He would diffuse what Trump was trying to accomplish and if Trump continued to try to disparage him by intentionally mispronouncing or exaggerating the phonetics of his name would end up making himself look worse.

Actually, there’s a moment of where you get tired of the name caller. You get tired of the person hitting the dopamine and hitting the response out of the person. You get tired of the frequency. You’re tired of it. That’s one of the things that one candidate can start running on right now. “Aren’t you tired of it? Wouldn’t you like to return to a stable, effective government? Vote for me. I’m interested in a stable, effective government. You might not like some of my ideas. You might want to poke some holes in it. I’ll be happy to discuss with you some of those ideals, but I’m really interested in a government being a quiet, supportive, that thinks for our lives and not to be something that impacts our lives in such difficulty with a lot of adversarial to get us to fight with each other.” If any politician reading that right now, they’d go like, “I guess so.”

What to me landed from what you said, you illuminated what anyone who is proposing that they are the candidate to run against Trump in 2020. Honestly, it wouldn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or Republican challenger, although we’ve yet to see a Republican challenger emerge and there may not be one. The common theme that’s being talked about among Democratic candidates, especially at the top, the leader, even Biden is talking about, it’s more important than anything else to be Trump. They’re starting to focus on who can beat Trump or beating Trump is more important than policy issues and differences. That to me is going to be a losing strategy. That is again what you said. Any serious politician or campaign out there, whether it’s Trump, Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker or any of them. If they actually approach it the way you said it right there, that is the path to having their message land and it effectively does become a beat Trump message without saying, “I’m about beating Trump.”

I’m about securing Trump’s vote from my side. I’m about a person that is going to do their best to restore stability and consistency in government to make my best choices and to discuss through something that’s going to work and restore a workable government. For anybody that is going into the adversarial space that is going to go into this, I’m interested in taking on the conversation in a different way. I am not going to argue with it, but I most certainly be compassionate to that point of view. The point of view is that, “You would like all of us to give Trump a pass for the things that he said and did and all the people he did regarding Russia, regarding his comments, regarding the different disrespectful things or the things that didn’t meet the need for respect towards others. The different language strategies that he used to trigger people to vote for him. You don’t want that. You would like something that is more thoughtful and more effective? It might be worth it to you to vote for a candidate like that.”

The path through emotional sobriety is having the discipline not to react instinctively to the label or to the insult.

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Notice I didn’t say vote for me. I don’t want anybody to vote for me. I want somebody to vote for my values. Did you see how that landed? I don’t want them to vote for me. Don’t vote for me. You’re not going to like the things I say if you vote for me. I’m hoping you’re going to like the values and what I stand for because that’s the same as yours. It is. I want mutual respect. I need integrity. I need to have stability through following these rules of law. Making rules of law that allow us to create a fair playing field for people that I have not gotten the fair playing field over the last 30 years. That’s what’s happened. The fair playing field is not fair right now.

Fairness would look like and see all of a sudden look at how there’s almost a moment of stillness between you and I as soon as I stopped.

No, you’re calm. When you go through this translating language slide that you showed and you have this unproductive discourse of judgment and defensive criticism to contempt, blaming to judgment, shaming to withdrawal, your tensions get raised to a boiling point. When you speak the way you did, I become calm.

It really is a defusing and also powerful way to have power with somebody, not power over someone. He’s gotten a lot of traction on TV to have power over people and because he’s had that power over people, “You’re fired.” He’s spent his whole MO, his one tagline is, and, “You’re fired.” Look what he has done to every single one of “the best people.” He has fired people. He’s translated his TV show to government. Think of all the government people as if they were all on The Apprentice. Imagine that. You have everybody, Bannon, all he’s been doing is plucking them off one at a time in a four-year episode of The Apprentice in the government as a president. I’m surprised nobody has even said that.

No one’s talking about that and I’m glad you’re talking about it. Using The Apprentice is obviously the logical relation because he was the star of The Apprentice. The last episode of Game of Thrones entered and I think it’s a little more Game of Thrones, which to me what we’re seeing in the president’s style of governing is much more akin to a monarchy than it is to a Republic, like the way our government was formed. You’re the king, it’s my way or the highway. In business, that’s often the way it is. Especially if you have a private company and you are the CEO, the largest stockholder. It is going to happen your way. If you don’t like it, too bad and if you don’t do what I tell you to do, you’re going to be fired. To an extent, people serve at the pleasure of the president. He has the right to fire anybody he wants. Maybe not necessarily the most effective way to govern in our form of government though.

I feel appreciative of the Game of Thrones reference and for those of you who haven’t seen the show, it’s like all the people that are closest to the people in power, all the different people that are closest to are submitting to, they have lesser courage. They have the inability to act towards the person in charge. To keep with the Game of Thrones metaphor, when that leader gets angry and gets on the dragon and starts flame throwing all the peasants, it sounds like 200,000 people losing their healthcare. That’s what it sounds like. That’s exactly what that metaphor is. “These people aren’t doing what I want. I think it’s okay to fry them all. I’m going to take it out to show how powerful I am. I’m going to have power over it.” Now that we pressed on that metaphor, I’m sure you’ve got questions that show up. Does it make some sense then with this slide called Translating Language that if somebody says something tragic that we can have a different response to the tragic language that they’re saying?

It makes complete sense to me.

I’m going to have you play one of the roles. I’m going to pretend that I’m the woman in this picture and you’re going to be the guy on the other side. You’re going to read to me the sentences from the bottom to the top and I am going to deliver compassionate sentences on the fly to what you are saying to me. The first sentence was “That’s not the way to do that.” Her response is, “What are you talking about?” Notice that was her response. Watch how it goes differently if she holds back that, “What are you talking about?” Instead answers in a different way. Go ahead and read the first sentence and then respond naturally to what I say next.

“That’s not the way to do that.”

To draw out a compassionate response from the other person is a way that you could actually reframe your own thoughts.

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Let’s go to the second set and watch what happens next.



“What’s wrong with you?”

Tom, you’re feeling irritated and you would like me to have some more knowledge than I do and you want to point out that I really made a mistake, is that correct?

Yes.

Notice I’m staying power with you rather than fighting the conversation. I would be after, “Nothing’s wrong with me.” It’s like, “Stop talking to me that way,” or whatever, instead of being compassionate to what is saying. I’m ready for the next one.

“I told you a million times.”

Tom, I’m guessing you’re really feeling frustrated and I haven’t heard you and followed your advice in the past and you want me to do that, is that correct?

Yes.

You’re ending on the yes. I’m still in a compassionate space for the sentences that you’re saying. It does take a little bit of training and for media people to do this and it will take a little bit of training. It doesn’t damper, it doesn’t slow down ratings as much unless if you do it too soon it might. What happens is it starts to create a healthier language that goes on and the person can still use other techniques to keep the readers engaged without losing the integrity and respect and getting all flustered and things like that. “You won’t believe what he said next, after the break.” There are other ways to hook it. I’m ready for the last one.

“It’s your own fault.”

You’re feeling irritated. You’d like me take ownership of this mistake and you would like me to do better next time, is that correct?

Yes.

What’s happening now is I’m being at a compassionate place. I’m connecting to what the other person is saying. I’m not allowing judgment, criticism, blaming and shaming to get to me. I recognize the pain, the way the language is being spoken, formulated and expressed. I’m being compassionate to that. So far so good?

Yes. It sounds good.

Now we could take a look at what about what the woman said. She said four sentences, too. She said, “What are you talking about?” “Nothing.” “That’s not true.” “Whatever.” She can stop herself from saying that by talking to herself on the inside or he can realize, “I need to start being compassionate to her,” and stop his narrative from escalating and take the high road. Take the high road is not trying to get power over. Taking the high road is to have power with the other person.

That needs to be amplified, what you said, the power with. That’s profound. I want to emphasize that because to me again, that’s what I’ve seen at least most of the time. I see people in past election cycles, the winning candidate who gets the nomination tends to speak more in the language of we and us than me, I type of language. Power with I think is very powerful.

It's one thing to be clueless and it's another thing to be smart and unaware.

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There was a slogan. This is the reason why Hillary is not the president. This is the number one reason. Here’s the slogan, “They go low, we go high.” That language is a losing narrative. The reason why is because without her knowing it, it’s creating an us versus them mindset instead of a power let’s start leading now in a collaborative way. Don’t start leading as, “All I need is 50 more votes than the other person and I’m in.” It’s different. We are looking to have a narrative that is power with the person, not power over and it goes much better. Instead of saying, “When they go low, we go high.” The slogan might have been, “There’s frustration, aggravation and anger because they’re not being heard the way they would like and the way I would like to run the country is.”

All of a sudden, it’s you’re not deplorable. You’re angry and aggravated about the state and your experience up to this point, let alone the media saturation that things are terrible, Obama is bad, their policies are bad. They’ve been hammered to bet on the horse away from the horse that has got them there. You’re going to win with this horse better if you stay with it. Things aren’t going to be exactly the way you would like it. Both parties have problems but not as many. Anyway, let’s go and do that and let’s get compassionate for there. You go ahead and start to read the first sentence, “What are you talking about?” and watch what happens.

“What are you talking about?”

I’m guessing you’re maybe confused and you need some clarity about what I’m talking about, is that correct?

Yes. The interesting thing here is though that the woman’s statements are the responses to the man’s statements, that were not compassionate at all. It’s hard to cycle through them, isn’t it?

It’s a little hard to cycle through it. She could have in her mind, watch this. Instead of saying the sentence, “What are you talking about?” she could say this sentence out loud. “I’m really feeling confused and I need some clarity right now.” Instead of saying the defensive sentence, “What are you talking about?” “I’m confused. I need some clarity about what you’re talking about.” It prevents him from bringing such a volatile second sentence. Even the second sentence, if he’s going into the bully place and says, “What’s wrong with you?” Her defensive and contempt mind wants to say, “Nothing is wrong with me, you jerk.”

Instead, she would say, “You really needed me to have some more awareness that I didn’t have about something and you wanted me to follow what you taught me last time.” Instead of saying the word “Nothing,” she has a power with sentence. Hillary would have never got caught with the word deplorable coming out. She would have never got caught if that person said the sentence and put the word deplorable in there and it was caught on media. She turns to him and says, “What mutual respect looks like to me is.” It’s not a lot of votes we’re talking about for the swing to get her to be elected, not tons of votes in various states. It is still seeing the pain inside the other person in a compassionate way. This is not about getting votes. This is about establishing a language that has a value and need base that’s going to work better.

In general, she didn’t come off as very empathetic as a whole. Anyway, if she had, I agree with you that the outcome of the election would have been significantly different.

She still doesn’t. Look at the list. She still has the list. Defensive, contempt, judgment and withdrawal. She doesn’t even know she is a consistent support. Every time she does an interview or writes things, it’s on this side and she doesn’t even know that. It’s one thing to be clueless and it’s another thing to be smart and unaware. That’s two different things. She’s smarter. She knows stuff.

She has so much experience that the country would have benefited a ton from.

This whole thing is about emotional sobriety. With very little emotional sobriety.

That is the illuminated point here. It’s going to take someone with emotional sobriety to be able to not get caught in this spiraling downward discourse with Trump or the Trump campaign, both, really. Very few candidates out there have this emotional sobriety, but they can get it. I would like to put my vote that whoever ends up wanting to win this election, they should call you, Bill, and get some coaching. You can turn anybody around. They have to study and learn. You know how to do it.

I appreciate that. One elected official in Michigan took one of my workshops in 2001 or 2002. He ran for an office against an incumbent and won with 73% of the vote. It flopped over for him.

He must have applied the principles.

He took it and applied the principle. What winds up happening is he’s a really good integrity guy. It was never ever about manipulation. It’s always about power with and power for the greater good and standing for the American values the way it needs to be talked about. Which is, how do you have compassion for people that don’t have things and have junky language in their head and have junky trauma patterns in the past? This is not a tool or technique that you can use on someone. You’ve got to connect to authenticity, compassion, and empathy in order for anything to work. You’ve got to put the right words in place because then it works.

You need to have the discipline. You’ve got to be able to be in these moments and not take the bait, à la Tom calling Trump sophomoric and then respond with that empathy and compassion. The world opens up. That’s so exciting. Bill, I’ve had so much fun talking with you about this. I hope our readers have gotten something good out of it. I’ll be shocked if they don’t.

Tom, it has been a delight. What a fun banter. Thanks for roleplaying with me. What a way to take this out for a spin.

It is so much fun. Thank you, Bill.

Tom, take care. We’ll talk soon.