The power of provocative questions

One of the most powerful lessons that I’ve learned is this: any time someone tells me something that I really, really dislike hearing, there’s something in what they’ve said that I really, really need to hear.

This started in couples work, which my now-husband and I started years before we were ever married. He’d say something I didn’t like hearing, perhaps something as kindly phrased as, “I notice that when you ___________, I feel __________,” that was totally endorsed by our coach, and I’d think, “He’s being a jerk by saying this to me and he’s trying to blame me.”

It didn’t matter how kindly he was delivering his feedback. I was irritated with him for offering any suggestion that my behavior needed to change as part of creating a better relationship.

Really, though? The issue was my own shame. I couldn’t handle hearing his feedback because way deep down, I was so ashamed of my behavior that owning my part and truly taking responsibility for it felt like more pain than I could handle.

To that end, for years most of my self-help work existed on a periphery, on edges. I’d meditate on chakras; I’d recite affirmations; I’d try to manifest goodness; I’d “focus on the positive.”

I was not willing to look at anything that involved me actually taking responsibility for my behavior (because that triggered my shame). I was not willing to hear critical feedback with an open mind (because that triggered my shame).

If it was airy, light, positive, and flowery, I was all about it. Keep it high vibe!

But if someone tried—even kindly—to get me to hear five minutes worth of feedback in which it was clear that my behavior and choices had been unattractive? If someone wanted to tell me ways that my behavior was directly in conflict with my vision for my life?

I could easily justify ten reasons why they were the asshole who was trying to “bring me down” and hurt me. My defenses against hearing any critique were so finely honed that I didn’t think twice about it.

Why We Avoid Facing Ourselves

This is a common issue that I see in the self-help world, and it’s easy to see why it happens:

If you take a whole lot of people who have been criticized and berated by others, or who have been criticizing and berating themselves, and put them in the world of self-help where you are encouraged to be kinder to yourself? That will feel like a relief.

It is a relief to just hold crystals and call this doing the work. It is a relief—quite literally to your somatic system—to meditate. It is a relief to recite affirmations and try to focus on a positive future if you have walked through the difficulty of a painful past.

This work ^^ is not bad to do. It’s just that when it’s only this work, and not a true reflection or self-examination? We’re not really doing the work.

Really doing the work involves self-reflection and self-awareness, including facing our own shame. It is much, much harder to get really, really, really real about the ways in which we, as adults who no longer live with mom and dad or whoever hurt us decades ago, are now responsible for our own lives. It is much, much harder to face the fact that we might be continuing to focus on or create situations and circumstances where we recycle our old pain, or act out old patterns, that impact others.

We feel shame when we face those places, and that shame is hard to face—so we try to avoid facing ourselves, and try to just stick to the work that feels nice.

Being Kind vs Being Nice

Our culture has conflated being “kind” and “being nice.” They are not the same.

Being kind involves doing the things that are actually helpful and that actually make a difference, with respect for where someone is at and the resources available to them. It’s kind to offer a helping hand to someone who doesn’t know what to do. It’s kind to try to create equitable access to resources. It’s kindness that empathizes with the stuck space someone is in. It’s kindness that gently tells the truth when the truth needs to be told.

Kindness will tell someone (respectfully) that their fly is down, before they go up on stage to give a talk.

Being nice is the performative form of kindness, where lip service is paid to what might be kind without necessarily following through with action or taking into account a person’s needs or available resources. It’s smiling and not saying what needs to be said, couched in not wanting to “stir up” drama, even if it would actually be more helpful to respectfully say the thing. Nice is saying something palliative that makes you feel better about yourself, even if it’s no help to the person who is in pain (eg, at a funeral, “Don’t be sad; they [the person who died] are in a better place.”). Nice is saying that it’s just too bad that there isn’t equitable access to resources, but never doing anything (voting, volunteering, donating, etc) to actionably change that. Nice is pitying rather than empathetic.

Niceness won’t tell a person that their fly is down before they go on stage—that would be “mean.”

We think we are being kind to ourselves when we are avoiding honest self-reflection, when in fact we are only being a performative form of nice.

When we are only being nice in our self-help work, we are avoiding even looking to see if our own “fly is open” when in fact, that would be the kindest possible option.

You can tell the truth—be kind—and still be respectful. You can let someone know that their behavior is destructive without tearing them down.

You can tell the truth about your own life, to yourself—and still be respectful. You can undertake self-examination, and honestly recognize destructive or unhelpful behavior, without tearing yourself down. That’s where we’re trying to get to.

Provocative Questions

I mentioned that when people began to give me feedback about my behavior, even when it was respectfully phrased, I was so armored up that I would not take it in—and eventually, I learned that any time someone told me something that I really, really disliked hearing, I had learned that it was in fact something I really needed to hear.

Maybe you recognize yourself there, too. So how does someone get out of that pattern? I think the path out for me was through provocative questions.

You can sit with provocative questions and go deep, without actually berating yourself. You can be with those provocative questions, and just get curious about them instead of reacting to them.

For example: someone gives you critical feedback. Somatically, you feel everything in you tighten and resist that feedback. You feel fairly certain that they are being a jerk.

Some provocative questions you can ask yourself:

What is this moment trying to teach me?
Why do I feel myself tightening up and resisting this feedback—what am I trying to protect?
When I want to resist this feedback, what am I trying to justify or keep in place in my life?
What can I learn from this person’s point of view, when they share this with me?
Is my shame activated right now? And if so, how can I attend to my somatic needs and get grounded, so that I’m not reacting from a place of shame?
If my shame is activated, what is one thing I can say to myself right now that is compassionate and forgiving, that will not reinforce the shame?

These are provocative questions because they don’t try to get to the habitual reaction of, “Let me get away from this feedback, or make this person wrong for their feedback.” (I’m using the word ‘feedback’ here because really, everything in the world is just feedback, though you might personally feel it’s more criticism or critique).

If all of my attention goes to how their feedback has to be wrong and they are bad and mean, then I have no opportunity to learn anything about myself, my behavior, or to even effectively evaluate their perspective.

I also love asking provocative questions because they invite space and room to actually have a process. Questions are intended to be considered and turned over. You don’t have to rush to an answer. There can be many answers.

Just because we feel triggered by something, it does not necessarily mean that we are definitively being attacked. When you’ve had a history of being criticized or verbally attacked by the people who raised you, it’s far more likely that you’ll respond to any criticism at all—even helpful criticism or helpful feedback—thinking that it’s an attack. Even as you examine yourself, you might think that you’re attacking yourself when in fact, the truth is simply a difficult one to sit with.

Slow down a bit. Give yourself the gift of being able to ask yourself provocative questions that bring forth insight.