Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> He would have been pretty worried if we sat down and I was like, “Jim, can we talk [Laughter] about my feelings? I mean you left the plastic open and dust got into the house, and sometimes I feel like you don't respect me as a person.”

This is one of those moments where someone is theory own worst enemy. The expectation for people to bottle up their feelings and sit there in annoyance is silly. There are only two basic scenarios here. The cause of the annoyance mainly sits with...

1. Jim.

2. John Ousterhout.

3. Some unidentified cause.

The proper approach is to think carefully about whether it is case 2. If it is, stop feeling annoyed - the annoyance is harming the self and the relationship for no reason. It is an illusion that can only cause trouble.

Most of the time that is the end of it. However, sometimes it is a case 1 or 3. Then it is perfectly fine to sit down with Jim and talk feelings. Just do it. Learn to make it sound natural and stilted and people only notice that you seem really easy to talk to. Figure out whether it is case 1 or 3 and whether it can just be resolved on the spot. Nobody is helped by bottling even minor things up. Learn to live a comfortable life.

It drives me crazy when I find out people just sit there and don't tell me when I'm upsetting them. Communication, my men! If you can't fix it in your own head, get other people involved and talk it through.

Plug for Marshall Rosenberg and Nonviolent Communication. This stuff really can be reduced to an algorithm as long as it accompanies a relentlessly nonjudgemental mindset and a tolerance for not getting your own way.

I don't know that NVC always works the way its proponents think it does.

I've been around a lot of NVC practitioners. Many have been active NVC educators.

Maybe they've all been Doing It Wrong, but...I find that when presented with the "NVC way" of discussing a problem, my brain always translates it to the emotional symbols I understand, which are nearly identical to the symbols generated by an overt criticism.

That said, I recognize that could simply be a "me problem." Which I won't dispute. I'm not entirely neurotypical. And generally if something I'm doing is bothering someone, I try to deal with it; I don't make everything into drama. I just don't parse the NVC words appreciably differently than a normal, polite request. (Overt hostility does push my buttons, but short of that, it doesn't seem to matter.)

Just saying that NVC isn't magic. If the person making the request has a reasonable point, I'll acknowledge and do what I can to adjust my behavior. If they seem to be asking something less reasonable, wrapping it with NVC language doesn't change the request materially for me at all.

> It drives me crazy when I find out people just sit there and don't tell me when I'm upsetting them. Communication, my men! If you can't fix it in your own head, get other people involved and talk it through.

Agree that people should generally be open about issues. But there's appropriate context for everything. I really don't want coworkers coming up to me and asking to work through an emotional issue for an hour because something I suggested was different than their suggestion, and my suggestion bruised their ego. Close friends? Sure. I probably have higher than average tolerance for such conversations among those I care about. But I choose my close friends, and largely don't get to choose specific coworkers, and so demanding that level of emotional work seems outside of the job description.

Also: Totally agree about telling the contractor that dust got everywhere and letting them know that's a problem. But for me, it wouldn't be at all about "my feelings." It would be about a request to a contractor to adjust their behavior or that of their subs based on reasonable expectations. I would personally feel foolish taking an NVC approach with a contractor in that situation, TBH. Not "It makes me feel disrespected when dust gets all over the place," but something more like, "Hey Jim, someone didn't seal the plastic around the construction area and we had a bunch of dust we needed to clean up. Can you be sure that everyone knows that it's important to keep the dust seal closed? Thanks." Heck, the latter is even less confrontational than the "you left the plastic open" in the OP's comment.

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