View Single Post
Old 05-28-2010, 12:14 PM   #11
Keith Larman
Dojo: AIA, Los Angeles, CA
Location: California
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,604
United_States
Offline
Re: Some words are worth a thousand nikyos

I guess my only problem with lists like these is that they are often used insincerely. For example, sure, if you *do* over-react, by all means say "I'm sorry, let's start over, I think I over-reacted". But if all you're doing is saying it to defuse a situation when you in fact don't mean it, what are you really doing?

I think this points to a bigger, more important issue of learning to be honest in your discussion, both with yourself and the other person, and not let emotion, anger, whatever push you away from honest discussion. To have "special phrases" you whip out to try to defuse the situation strikes me as manipulation albeit done with "good" intentions. To be quite blunt, when someone starts talking to me like that I often find myself getting angry feeling as though I'm being patronized. Especially if I think they're insincere.

My own special phrase in a heated discussion is "Well, I'm sorry we're arguing. This isn't an important enough issue for me to invest so much time and emotion in discussing it further. Let's talk about something else."

  Reply With Quote