When we hurt someone we love, or lose our tempers or patience with someone we are connecting with, it can sometimes be difficult to know how to mend the situation. We have written about the concept of the TLLR Tool and Layer Cakes in the past. Both of these tools explain the basics of how to navigate difficult topics or moments with your partners, friends, or colleagues. We have yet to clearly outline the anatomy of what a repair might truly look like until now. A simple layer cake repair consists of 4 easy elements: 1) The Conflict, or Moment of Losing Calm and Curious, 2) The Heart Repair, 3) The Classic Repair and 4) The Layers and Logistics Repair.
***Note: A Layer Cake is a Topic or Behavior where one or both people lose calm and curious. See the following article for Layer Cakes 101.
[ 1 ] Losing Calm and Curious
Okay, so here we are. You have lost curious, and calm and are finding yourself inadvertently getting frustrated with your partner, spouse, friend or colleague. You may be struggling not to show your feelings or outlet your full frustration on your partner. You may already have started to exhibit harmful behaviors (eye rolling, passive aggressive tendencies or possibly even name calling). You may feel the “little angers” or “baby rages” and all of these may be coming through you in the form of micro-aggressions. You may not even be aware of them.
This is the perfect time for the TLLR Tool. Somebody first has to stop the conversation in order to propose using the TLLR Tool. Either you catch the opportunity, or your partner catch it. Here are the 4 steps of TLLR: 1. Stop the conversation topic or behavior by tabling it for later (T = Table It), 2. Give the topic a cute name to remember it by (L = Label It), 3. List it somewhere to revisit later (L = List It), and remember to revisit with them together once you have returned to a state of calm and curious (R = Revisit It).
Note: avoid the tendency to troubleshoot and “catch the cake while it’s hot” before you have done a heart repair. This is because it can be confusing to have the problem “solved” but still not feel connected at the heart level, especially if you are a more heart-centered right brained style being. This advice is equally relevant for left-brained style trouble shooting beings who might want to “solve” the problem before there has been adequate time for the neurons to build out a framework for understanding the difficulty; remember we differentiate topics slowly so that we can integrate them fully. That means patience and more time can be our friend, if we remember to keep up with the Listing and Revisiting.
[ 2 ] Heart Repair
As soon as feels possible, the next step is to repair the heart connection and assure your partner, friend, or colleague that you still care for them. You will want to reconnect at the heart level with them. For close friends or family, affectionate touch such as a shoulder squeeze, or hug might do a lot to reassure them your relationship is still intact and healthy: that they are of course still loved! Let them know you care deeply for them and value your friendship, and even share how the interaction made you feel. This helps to restore a space of WE between you. The Heart Repair is often non-verbal and tends to be a more right-brained approach to restoring the WE. Your goal is to restore a sense of sweetness and good humor between you.
[ 3 ] Classic Repair (Sweetness or Cuteness Repair)
The 3rd level for the Full Layer Cake Repair is what we might call the “classic” repair. Here the goal is to use words to assure the person of what happened, and begin to share lightly about what happened for you in the interaction, and then try to understand what was happening for them. Then together, you can really come up with a good name for the topic that dropped one or both of you out of your center, and also create an intention to do better next time. The expression that you intend to do better next time about not losing calm or curious can be really important in some cases. So make sure to share this, if it feels applicable for your case.
[ 4 ] Layers & Logistics Repair
Lastly, once you have returned fully to calm and curious, and have hopefully restored a level of trust and “sweetness” in your interactions it is time to explore more deeply your layers of what was happening, and what was the story underneath. This is the time to enter into dialogue, using one of the many compassionate communication modalities you may have practiced (including deep listening, NVC, Compassionate Dialogue or Centered and Exhilarated Dialogue). Together, you can use this time to deepen your connection, build better trust that you can recover from and share difficult conversations together and also create an action plan for how to navigate the topic / behavior in the future. Remember to take it as slow as you need to be able to both stay in calm and curious, as much as possible. And remember to strive for conversations that are replenishing, nourishing and inspiring!
This might take some creativity…such as talking about it over a walk, talking about it over tea, or in a public space, with a friend present, talking about it while eating actual cake! Or maybe diagraming it out together. Get creative! This is your unique layer cake with this person, and it will likely look different for every cake, every person, every time.
Once, you have successfully reached shared meaning, and are able to talk about the topic / behavior without being flooded or triggered, and you are able to successfully maintain your center, you can move on to logistics. The logistics part of the repair is where you create an action plan and come up a with a creative solution which honors both parties involved. If you can’t come up with a solution: it at least looks like scheduling another date to meet again, and give yourself some “homework” or research in the meantime.
Note: if you sit down to start talking about your layer cake (remember a layer cake is a difficult topic with many layers) and lose calm and curious right away, it is still very helpful to table it again, and revisit it at a later date. Sometimes, 3 is the magic number and it can feel right the third time you discuss it. Other times, it might be important to bring in a friend or a mediator, or outline the areas to talk about without actually talking about them. This is kind of like building a table of contents together, but not going into the story yet. Then you can talk about what part of your shared “book” you want to tackle. Or using the cake metaphor, maybe you just want to stay at the easy frosting level to start with.
Every time you sit down and are successful, even at the frosting or cherry level, you are building the ability to talk about more and more difficult topics with ease, and one day, maybe just maybe, they might even be fun.
