When navigating the often uncomfortable journey to non-judgement, there can be a lot to balance.
Between staying within the framework, balancing professionalism with authenticity and learning to gain, spend and repair trust… it’s a lot!
On my journey into mental health support work and non-judgemental listening, I always found it helpful to simplify as much as possible.
This post is one such simplification you can use to stop yourself from falling into the trap of taking sides.
In this post I’ll explain the power of skipping out on value judgements and being selective with your validation.
How Value Judgement Happens
Let’s examine a very common, very normal mistake people make when learning to listen with non-judgement.
Imagine you’ve been chatting for a little while, you’re starting to wrap your head around this person’s story and they make a very strong bid for connection. They smack the ball squarely into your court with a very obvious, clear expectation for you to back them up.
Do you think it’s fair that my parents blame me for losing their home in the fires – even though I was overseas?
Or perhaps even worse…
Is it really my fault my parents broke up…?
It’s a tough situation!
You’ve immediately got a few conflicting desires. One part of you might be falling into an Empathic Block such as wanting to problem solve or fix everything. Another part of you might feel guilty, knowing you’re not meant to offer personal opinions. And yet another part of you might be getting triggered into wanting to people please or take on the caregiver role!
This is why self awareness plays such a huge role in learning to deeply communicate. I digress.
The two questions up above bring to mind two questions for you to answer while navigating your own conflict.
What is being implicitly asked for?
Lines have been drawn and now we’re being asked to take sides.
What is the cost of taking sides?
It might be tempting to simply give your opinion, because that would be so much easier.
Our Personal Stuff Pulls Us Out Of Position
Have you ever been asked for your opinion and then given it directly?
It’s a common thing that most crisis supporters will do at one point or another.
For example the question about their parents, it would be so easy to get pulled out of position and answer that with our opinion, to emphatically deny their personal responsibility maybe something like; It wasn’t your fault.
If your internal caregiver has been hooked, then it’s probably the reason why you gave that answer -or one like it in a similar situation- despite the feeling that something was wrong about doing so.
What you’re trying to do with such an answer is validate.
You’ve given your opinion to discharge your tension.
The feelings came up of discomfort, disgust (toward the parents), protectiveness, whatever, and your response was to attempt to confirm that the situation was not fair. You’ve fallen out of alignment.
This Is A Normal, Natural, Judgemental Response
By doing all of the above we’ve made value judgements based on our personal worldview.
But the trade-off is that we have slipped out of non-judgmental listening.
The difference is subtle yet profound.
It might ping inside your guts or your chest as a pang of guilt, or it might be even further below conscious awareness but regardless, there is another way to validate which offers far more utility and value.
By removing yourself from your validation, removing your own personal opinion, you give a far more empowering space for your counterpart to fill.
You Can Be On Their Team Without Taking Sides
The trick is to distinguish between confirming situations and validating experiences.
The situation and the experience are completely different things.
Let’s give an illustration.
When somebody is going through having their parents divorce… What’s the situation they are facing?
Fights at home, lots of big decisions, sides are constantly being taken, instability has become the new normal.
And what experience are they having?
Maybe a lot of confusion. Perhaps they feel their loyalties torn. Maybe they feel there are navigating passed landmines constantly. There could be feelings of frustration… Guilt, anger, injustice, blame…
Can you see the difference between the situation and the experience?
When we validate an experience, we actually cannot go wrong. If we are properly validating the experience from non-judgment… There is literally always a safe way to offer validation.
The key is to remember that no matter what feeling or experience someone is going through, it’s valid!
It’s all valid!
Guilt, shame, grief, bitterness, anger, every emotion that people can feel, it’s all valid.
When we are truly listening without judgement, it means that the person we are listening to is allowed to feel how they feel.
We do not say to someone you shouldn’t feel that way.
Even though it may be true! It’s a personal judgement, which doesn’t belong in crisis support. Let’s talk about why…
Taking Sides Equates To Collusion
When we give our personal opinion it always includes taking a side.
There’s no way we can give our opinion without doing so. It’s just a part of opinions.
At first instinct it might be easy to want to defend making a statement like it’s not your fault. Such a stance is totally valid because making judgements like that are critical for everyday life.
The challenge for us as crisis supporters comes in the fact that this work is anonymous.
When you’re doing true crisis support, you doing so as a representative of a greater whole. You have organisational authority backing you.
In Their Eyes Your Judgements Are Not Just Your Own
When you’re in the hot seat and somebody is looking for you to support them, they’re not looking at you personally. They’re looking at you as a representative of the organisation. They’re seeing the uniform, advertising, branding, stories in the news, conversations they’ve had with others about you. They’re looking at an authority.
When you decide to take the position your organisation has given you and weigh in, one way or another, on somebody’s situation, you’re not only lending your personal weight… You’re also lending the weight of your organisation.
That means your judgements, be they value judgements or opinions, carry extra weight.
Have Respect For Your Role And Your Counterpart
To summarise basically this entire article; you can always validate experience and emotions, but if you’re confirming someone’s opinion about their situation, or sharing your own opinion, you’re probably in hot water.
Chances are in a situation like that you’ve fallen out of alignment with your counterpart and the framework within which you operate.
Maybe you’ve had some empathic blocks come and interrupt connection. This is super normal and it’s ok that we make mistakes, nobody is perfect, however we don’t stop trying to improve.
Keep working on your self awareness, lean in to supervision and professional development and if you want to take it a step further, treat your reflective practice as though someone’s life depends on it.
This post is written specifically for crisis support and mental health work, if you’d like to read more, click here.
I would really appreciate every stray thought and piece of feedback you have so please do reach out via socials if you’d like to chat.