Difficult Conversations:
Ground Your Identity: Sometimes projecting yourself into your own future can help you feel better about what's happening now with the reassurance that eventually you'll feel better, and that someday it may not seem so important. To help yourself maintain and regain balance include: letting go of trying to control their reaction and preparing for their response.
Stop Arguing About Who's Right: Arguing may seem natural, even reasonable. But it's not helpful. Through any difficult situation, the information available to us is overwhelming. We simply cant take all the sights, sounds facts, and feelings involved. We notice different things. Some of us tend to see ourselves as victims, others as heroes, observers, or survivors. The info we attend to varies accordingly.
Don't Assume They Meant It: When we've been hurt by someone else's behavior, we assume the worst. Once we think we have someone figured out, we see all of their actions through that lens, and the stakes rise. The worse our view of the other person's character, the easier it is to justify avoiding them or saying nasty things behind their back.
Abandon Blame: Blame is a prominent issue in many difficult conversations. Focusing on blame is a terrible idea, it can injure relationships and cause pain and anxiety. Blame inhibits our ability to learn what's really causing the problem and also serves as a bad proxy for talking directly about hurt feelings.
Have Your Feelings or They Will Have You: Bring depth and complexity to the conversation by expressing the broader spectrum of your feelings and sharing everything you feel.
Forum Theater: A form of theater where once the performance has been played through, the performance starts again but the second time, the audience can pause at any moment and attempt to switch up the scene to change the outcome. The class' research topic was peer pressure and drugs. Each group was to make a skit revolving the topic.
My Groups Skit: Me and my group's skit revolved around two 10th grade high schools friends. The skit starts when Chad (protagonist) walks into the bathroom to stumble upon his friend Evan (antagonist) smoking weed. Evan convinces Chad to take a hit which evolves into several. After weeks of drug use causing Chad's grades to drop, Chad and Evan make they're way to the bathroom again but this time followed by a fellow student Yefferey. When Yefferey confronts the two, Evan then pools Yefferey aside and convinces him to only snitch on Chad. Chad then gets expelled from school. Weeks after, Evan is on the roof of his house along with chad smoking. Evan slightly reveals that he convinced Yefferey to only snitch on Chad. Chad then gets mad and a heated argument breaks out leading to Evan's death when Chad out of pure anger pushes Evan off the roof.