Handling Conflict Right with Amanda Ripley
July 23, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. I think that by the end of this hour, we will all know how to do life a little bit better, because life is about if nothing else, life seems, to me, to be about conflict, and all different kinds of conflict. You guys are laughing. Is it not? I think it is.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s been my experience, but I just didn’t-
Abby Wambach:
It’s not-
Amanda Doyle:
… about that.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. It’s-
Glennon Doyle:
No, but conflict, I mean it in all different ways, I don’t mean it in like … It’s about progress through the meeting of two different ideas, even when it’s your own self, a new idea and an old idea inside of yourself.
I think conflict is how we grow in a trillion different ways, and nobody teaches us how to do it better.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I think maybe what we’re going to try to do here is redefine conflict.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
Because conflict, for me, is a negative.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh.
Abby Wambach:
It’s like, “I want to stay away from conflict.” I’m conflict-avoidant.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Abby Wambach:
So, I think we’re going to talk about … I don’t know.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. How conflict is good, and not bad, but the right kind of conflict is good-
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
… and then the bad kind of conflict, very bad. Let’s stay away from that, here’s how to spot it, here’s how to get out of it, but good conflict, that’s our lane, y’all. That’s where things get done.
Glennon Doyle:
So, today, we are going to have a conflict expert who blew my mind with something she said six months ago, which I will tell you when we greet her. Her name is Amanda Ripley. She’s an investigative journalist, an author. Her most recent book is High Conflict, which chronicles how people get trapped by conflicts of all kinds, and how they get out.
Her previous books include The Unthinkable, and The Smartest Kids In The World, a New York Times bestseller, which was also turned into a documentary film. Welcome, Amanda Ripley.
Amanda, I want to tell you, maybe six months ago, I was listening to a podcast, which is unusual. I don’t listen to podcasts ever, including this one. I’ve never listened to this one, and you were on it.
And after it, I wrote my whole team and said, “Please, for the love of God, get us this woman.” Okay. It was because of one … You said a bunch of brilliant things that were blowing my mind, but there was one thing that you said that forever changed my approach to engaging with people who think very differently than I do.
Okay. Now to put it in context, I think about that a lot, how to engage with people who think very differently than I do, and what is my responsibility in that, and how … I have times in my life where I was only doing that, I felt like it was my mission to enter spaces where people felt so differently than I, and somehow … I don’t know.
Then I had times where I was like, “Absolutely fuck it. Actually, the smartest people I know are not doing it at all. Let me carry on with my little life, and let everybody think whatever the hell they want to think,” and, honestly, Amanda, that was a joyful time for me. Okay?
Amanda Ripley:
It is nice. The, “You do you” part of-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
… your experience.
Glennon Doyle:
I told myself, “Oh, that was just co-dependency. I don’t have to do that. Let them have their beliefs, I will have my beliefs.”
Now I’m listening to you talk, you say … Someone asks you, “Why do we even have to engage with people who have opinions that might be dehumanizing to us as human beings, or to other people as human beings? Why do we even need to have that kind of conflict?”
And you said something like this, “The reason that we have to continue to engage with people that think differently than we do is because we have children together.”
Abby Wambach:
Oof.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
Damn it.
Amanda Ripley:
I know. Such a bummer. Right?
Glennon Doyle:
And then she went on to say, “When we disengage to protect ourselves from people who think differently than we do,” the people who suffer in nations, in families, in communities are the children.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
That is in divorces, when we just give up on each other, because it’s too effing hard. That is true in war. That is true in religion. And that, well, Amanda, it ruined my life again. Thank you for that.
Amanda Ripley:
You’re welcome. Yeah. It was a central bummer of the last 10 years of my work. It’s like you can’t give up on people. You can. You can, and you do, and I do, but there’s a cost.
Glennon Doyle:
And I think when it was framed as the cost is always the most vulnerable, the people who don’t get to decide whether they’re going to give up or not, is what reframed everything for me.
What do you want people to know about conflict? How would you start this conversation? Let’s say you were on a podcast that was only going to be a hour long. Okay? How would you frame the importance of understanding conflict differently? Why do we have to care? Besides what we just said.
Amanda Ripley:
I’m going to answer that differently than I have before, because I think there’s an objection in people’s heads, and I would rather just address it directly. Right? One of the objections I hear is, “How does this have anything to do with power and racism and sexism?” There are these huge injustices that we are trying to fight, and how does this help? Maybe I need to be severed from different groups, and protected from different groups.” Right?
And so, that objection, I think it’s better to just talk about it, I’m starting to think, as opposed to wait for someone to raise it, and the first answer to that is, “You’re right. There are times for sure, and people with whom you should not engage.” Absolutely. Right?
The second answer I think, and the one I’m trying to articulate better each day is that we fight our fights on two levels. Right? We fight them out in public, or in our interactions, interpersonal dramas, but, also, internally.
And so, what I’m starting to come to is that there’s a certain amount of suffering, and sadness, and anger that we need to go through. If I let myself fall into high conflict in my own head, regardless of what else is going on out here, no matter how atrocious it is, if I let that happen in my own head, then I suffer twice as much.
Do you know what I mean?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I do very much know that.
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah. Yeah, and so, even people will say to me, “It’s fine for you, but what about when there’s a real power imbalance?” And I say, “I was talking to a former guerrilla member in Colombia,” so she was a member of the FARC, which is the biggest guerrilla group in Colombia in their 50 year civil war.
She did not have a lot of power living in the jungle. She had weapons, but she did not have a lot of institutional power. What she told me was, “Once I got out of that high conflict,” because she, for a bunch of reasons, voluntarily left the conflict and disarmed, she kept fighting the fight she was on, which was a fight for fairness, and a fight on behalf of poor people in Colombia.
It’s not like she stopped fighting that fight. What changed is she could sleep at night. So, even though, she was wildly outgunned, literally, and those are big problems that need to get fixed at a system level, there was a way in which she was fighting that fight more effectively, and, also, it’s just better for your soul.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. God, I love that.
Glennon Doyle:
What is high conflict? Because my understanding is conflict is better than no conflict. Right?
Amanda Ripley:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. That’s an important point.
Amanda Ripley:
Ding, ding, ding. Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay? People who just are having no conflict-
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah. No good.
Glennon Doyle:
… are not necessarily … No good. Not even trying. Not even trying.
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Can I read this quote about no conflict? Because I think it applies in relationships, and marriage, and politics, and everything. You said, “People who try to live without any conflict, who never argue, or mourn, tend to implode sooner, or later, as any psychologist will tell you.
Living without conflict is like living without love, cold and eventually unbearable.” That is the same kind of can’t sleep at night as high conflict, when you’re so empty and disconnected, and you haven’t done that work with anyone, that will keep you up at night just like high conflict takes residence in your brain, and keeps you up at night.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
So, I love you making that.
Abby Wambach:
I actually hadn’t made that connection, but you’re right, Amanda. There’s a loneliness to both, because you’re not showing yourself, and you’re not seeing the other person. In high conflict, the other person is a caricature.
Amanda Ripley:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Right? So, you’re not seeing the complexity, and in no conflict, no one is seeing you. And so, there’s a way in which you’re very much alone with no conflict.
Amanda Ripley:
So, yeah. To define high conflict, basically, it comes from the research into conflict. There’s something called intractable conflict, or malignant conflict, or high conflict. They’re all roughly the same idea, and, basically, it’s conflict that becomes conflict for conflict’s sake, where it escalates to a point where it takes on a life of its own. It’s usually an us versus them conflict, and the main thing is we make a ton of mistakes.
So, all of our normal cognitive biases get much, much worse. So, we miss opportunities. We literally lose our peripheral vision, and figuratively. Right? We make a bunch of mistakes, and our life is smaller.
So, high conflict comes from high conflict divorces. So, in the ’80s, lawyers noticed that about a quarter of American divorces were what they would term high conflict, that they were stuck in perpetual cycles of blame, and discord, and this was costing everyone a lot of money, and it would go on for years and years, and, of course, as you mentioned, Glennon, who suffers the most? It’s kids. Right?
But you can have high conflict politics, high conflict leaders, high conflict bosses. There’s no end to the way in which we can get bewitched by high conflict, and it truly is like being under a spell, and I think we’ve all probably felt that. Right? To some degree.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. I’m here to affirm.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Is the spell trauma? I wonder about … Okay. Let me give you an example. Abby’s very good at conflict when she allows it, because she has the right intention. My question to you is I’ve recently figured out that I’m pretty sure that most of the wars are just by dudes who are in an ego fight. It actually isn’t anything about the thing, it’s about their own.
My relationship with Abby, I’ve realized after years, that when we went into a conflict together, Abby’s intention was to grow from this moment, to do better together, to take care of each other, to learn something about each other that made our future better.
Amanda Ripley:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
My intention was to prove that I wasn’t crazy. Truly, really, after years of, “Oh, the reason why we’re not settling anything or moving forward is because we actually have different intentions.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, and, also, different traumas. Right? I’m more conflict-avoidant, so it took me a long time to get to it, and, also, I think that because of my attachment issues, conflict is so hard for me, because I am so afraid to lose that love. Right?
And I think, for you, one of your traumas is thinking that you’re crazy, and so you are trying to always prove through conflict that you, in fact, are very not crazy.
Glennon Doyle:
So fucking sane, Amanda. So fucking sane.
So, is that something we have to start with is my question. How do you know if you’re even in conflict with someone who you could go in thinking, “We’re in divorce therapy,” or mediation, the intention is to figure out who gets this couch, when, in fact, the other person’s intention is to protect themselves from childhood trauma, to punish you, to whatever. Do we have to start with intention?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
Man, this got deep really fast.
Abby Wambach:
How do we know it’s about the couch-
Glennon Doyle:
How do we even know it’s about the couch, or about the country?
Abby Wambach:
Or is it about our own personal issues, or relationships with conflict?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
This is the fun stuff. This is the best part. This is where we can try to switch from being a combatant in conflict, and ideal, this is ideal. Right? From being a combatant to being a detective, an investigator.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
What is it really about? So, when we do workshops with folks, we talk about the understory of the conflict. What is this conflict really about? Is it about the couch? Almost never. Right?
Money, arguments about money. John and Julie Gottman, who study marital conflict, they were listing all the things money is really about in when couples fight, and they got to 100, and just stopped.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Amanda Ripley:
Because there’s just too much. So, there’s an understory of the conflict, and, yes, we’ve got to figure out what that is much more quickly, as a country, as a civilization. This is our fundamental problem is we are so bad at fighting.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
And one way to get better at it is to investigate the understory very quickly, and really develop a muscle memory for that, and the way that I know to do that best is to do a tactical listening technique called looping. There’s different ones out there, but that’s where I’m really trying to listen for clues.
So, when you’re talking to me, I’m trying to figure out, “Okay. You’re talking about the couch,” but there’s something used, maybe a slightly stronger word than I expected, or maybe used a metaphor, that’s usually a sign of an understory-
Glennon Doyle:
I’m just laughing, because that’s all I do. Okay. Go ahead.
Amanda Ripley:
Is that making you think of something, Abby?
Abby Wambach:
Glennon is the queen of metaphors, so it’s hilarious.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, it’s right. Right? Because the thing represents something else to you.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
So, the metaphor is perfect. If it’s the couch, my mother-in-law is a divorce attorney, and she’ll talk about this all the time, how there will be a $500 couch, and both of the parties have spent $6000 in legal fees fighting over the $500 couch. There’s no more perfect metaphor for high conflict. You’re actually hurting yourself, because it’s not about the couch. The couch represents you being humiliated by that person leaving, and it represents that they never gave you anything you deserved emotionally, so you deserve the fucking couch.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Nothing is about the thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Everyone’s just fighting-
Amanda Ripley:
Totally.
Glennon Doyle:
… for their lives.
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah, and it is actually really fun to ask divorce attorneys for examples like this, because they all have incredible stories.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
I was talking to a divorce attorney in California, and she said that she had a couple just go to war over who was going to get the Legos.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh my God.
Amanda Ripley:
The kids’ Legos. It just didn’t make any sense, but, ultimately, of course, it came out that there was one child, and they felt like wherever the Legos went, so too would the child’s affection.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, God.
Amanda Ripley:
Even though, that wasn’t conscious. It was subconscious. Right? Because they know they could buy new Legos, but the Legos represented something much more important, but until we start chipping away at that understory, we’re going to fight forever, and that’s the mood that we’re in right now I think as a country is one day it’s fights over books in libraries, and the next day, it’s Drake and Kendrick Lamar. It’s like there’s a never-ending fuel for this, because that’s the nature of high conflict. It’s not really about what it seems to be about.
Amanda Doyle:
So, the technique that you were talking about is looping?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I want to know about that.
Amanda Doyle:
Is that right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Can you walk us through that? Because that’s fascinating.
Amanda Doyle:
And I also love the overarching theme of when we’re talking about high conflict in your book is it’s not because it’s morally correct … The morality is irrelevant. You may think it’s morally correct to try to understand your adversary, or your partner, or whatever, but you’re just saying this works better.
Amanda Ripley:
Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s actually practically the only thing that works.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. You’re not just … Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Could you just go everywhere I go, and say that, Amanda?
Amanda Ripley:
I would love to. Because I feel like one of the worst parts about talking about this book is that I am, by nature, a fighter. I’m not a kumbaya person. Do you know what I mean? And so, I hate that people assume sometimes that that’s what I’m saying as that, “Why can’t we just have bipartisan unity?” That is not what I’m saying.
I’m just saying I want this to actually work.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
Let’s not just keep having nonsense fights forever.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
And, by the way, I don’t always succeed. We just had an argument with my husband last night in the car about whether we should get a handyman, because he’s been really busy, and so have I, and things aren’t getting fixed, and it got really heated, because we weren’t talking about the understory, which was, for me, it was about care and concern.
So, this is the good news. I have good news, and then we’ll get to looping.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
The good news is there’s only four understories out there. So, you don’t have to spend all day on it. You can figure out pretty quickly what combination you’re dealing with, and it’s care and concern, respect and recognition, power and control, and stress and overwhelm.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That sounds right.
Amanda Ripley:
Which is when you just get enraged, and it’s actually because you’re just really tired, or hungry. You know what I mean?
So, anyway, in the handyman argument, for me, it was about care and concern, because, really, what I was saying is, “You’re working too much, and I feel like you’re not here, and you don’t love us.” Do you know what I mean? In so many words, which too bad I couldn’t just say that.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
Wouldn’t that have been nice?
Amanda Doyle:
It’s impossible.
Amanda Ripley:
Still, after all the training, still, wrote a book, still can’t always get there, especially with people who are very close to me.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
With a stranger, I can go … I’ve gotten a lot better with strangers. I handle sudden public conflict much, much better than I used to. But with a loved one, I think, Glennon, to your point about trauma, it’s like because it feels threatening, to me.
My husband, thank God, is a little more like Abby, where he actually does not want to burn down the house that we live in. So, he’s trying most of the time, but, for him, there’s an understory too. Right? I think for him it’s more about respect and recognition. He felt like it’s his job, usually, he’s fixing these things. We’re not that gendered in everything, but, in this case, it was things that he normally is, and he feels bad that he hasn’t done it. Right? He knows he’s been negligent, and he doesn’t like being called out on it, and he doesn’t want me to hire someone, but I’m also like, “I’m not going to sit here forever with no dryer, or working bathtub.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
So you know what I mean?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I do.
Amanda Ripley:
But too bad we couldn’t have just gone there right away.
Abby Wambach:
And it’s interesting, one of the things that I’ve noticed with Glennon is that it’s too vulnerable to say the actual understory, to admit to it-
Amanda Ripley:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
… for her, and that’s one thing that I try to cut into conflict, to try to shorten it quickly, is I get as vulnerable as I possibly can. I don’t know. One day, I’ll say, “My feelings are really hurt. Period.”
Glennon Doyle:
What do you do with that? I’m like, “Fuck.”
Amanda Ripley:
She’s giving you nothing to fight.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s hard to fight.
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
“I feel abandoned,” or, “I’m feeling,” or, “A part of me,” whatever it is, and it’s like that really cuts through, and it takes Glennon a little bit longer, sometimes a day, usually, it’s only a day for you to circle back, and say, “I think my …” Whatever it is.
But it’s a vulnerability, especially for folks who actually accept more conflict into their life, or seek it, I think it’s harder, at least, in the case with Glennon, you’re definitely more conflict-positive, I would say.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I like conflict-
Amanda Ripley:
Prone.
Glennon Doyle:
… I feel like it settles things.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
It makes progress, and it helps you know each other, and it’s like, “What’s the point? If you’re not …”
But what I do wonder about, because of my own suspicion of myself is when you say, Amanda, “It works,” what that suggests is that both people are trying to work toward the same thing. So, I am entering a political conversation with somebody who has … For me, the biggest conflict would be somebody who has “conservative” values, but sometimes you can enter a conflict where your intention is, “Let’s find the middle ground. Let’s work together to find a way forward,” but the other person is actually not trying to do that.
Amanda Ripley:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
They’re trying to sow discord, they’re trying to get their ego met. So, it’s two people playing different games. If we were both entering a room, where we were trying to find common ground on how to save the planet-
Amanda Ripley:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
… if we were really trying to save the planet together-
Amanda Ripley:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
… but that’s not often what the other person is doing.
Amanda Ripley:
No. Agreed. Right, and you don’t want to be vulnerable … Like, Abby, you know what her intentions are, but with someone else, you don’t want to make yourself vulnerable for someone who actually is a bad faith actor.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
Right? Who has ill intentions. It’s funny. You know where I hear this a lot is from members of Congress, because there are conflict entrepreneurs who keep getting now elected, and they literally want to sow discord.
Glennon Doyle:
Tell us what a conflict entrepreneur is, and Pod Squad, just think about everyone you know.
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah. So, conflict entrepreneurs are people, or companies, or platforms that exploit, and inflame conflict for their own ends, who do it over and over again, who seem to delight in conflict.
Sometimes it’s for profit, but I actually think even more it’s for attention-
Abby Wambach:
Sport.
Amanda Ripley:
… or a sense of power and belonging. Right? A belief that you matter. So, you hear this a lot among members of Congress, and their staff, that, “Look, I’m here to make a deal, to make things better for the country, but these yahoos over there, that’s not what they’re about.”
You also hear it from gang members. Right? It’s like, “I would love to make peace, and have this block be less violent, but these guys are not about that,” and that’s true. I’m not saying it’s not true.
I think part of it is shifting what the goal is. I was taught by Gary Friedman. So, for my book, I followed people who were stuck in high conflict, and shifted into good conflict, or healthy conflict, and one of them is Gary Friedman, who is a really renowned conflict expert, who ran for office in California, and, as he said, it took about an eighth of a second for him to fall into high conflict, because we are all susceptible. Right?
And what he taught me about his mediations, he’s mediated 2000 different cases, and trained thousands of judges and lawyers and journalists, like me, and he said, “The goal is not to agree, or to even solve the problem.” You’ll never hear him say the word compromise, or middle ground. “The goal is it’s a successful mediation if people leave the room, and one of three things has happened. They either understand the other person, themselves, or the problem better.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Amanda Ripley:
Right? So, if you go into an encounter with someone who is a conflict entrepreneur, just understanding that about them will be helpful to you.
Glennon Doyle:
Ah, okay.
Amanda Ripley:
Does that make sense?
Abby Wambach:
That’s so important. That reminds me so much of the time that I spent playing on the national team, that we spent so much time sitting around dining room tables, just talking about everything, and we didn’t agree on everything, and we never came to an agreeance on stuff. It wasn’t like, “Oh, well, let’s meet in the middle somewhere,” whether it’s politically, or religiously, or whatever.
We would stand up from the table, and we would leave, and then we would still somehow figure out how to find our way on the field, playing hard as hell for each other, even though, we might have disagreed on four, or five of these really important things to me. Right? Like, my right to marry whoever I wanted to, or who I was voting for at the polls. We would talk about it, and I do think that what you’re saying is really important. There was nothing wrapped up in a little bow, that made us go, “Kumbaya, we’re all besties here.” It was like actually just saying of the thing out loud …
Because so much of the discontent in these relationships is the unsaid, “Oh, I know they’re”-
Amanda Ripley:
Like, the simmering.
Glennon Doyle:
The simmering.
Abby Wambach:
… “I know they’re conservative,” or, “I know that they’re this,” and, “I don’t believe or agree with that,” but you don’t say it, so it makes you dislike them, but as soon as you say the stuff, and you’re like, “Oh, well. Yeah. That’s not something I’m going to change about them, but I can still play with them.”
So, this is a side note.
Glennon Doyle:
Huh. Interesting.
Amanda Ripley:
That’s so interesting, Abby, and was that true on every team you were on, or was there something about that team?
Abby Wambach:
Every single team I was on, you had people who thought differently about the way that the world works, thought differently about … It’s not just politics and religion. It’s like how you deal with a friend, or how you are in a space full of type A people. There was so many different relational things always ever happening, that it was very fruitful to talk about everything that was going on in our lives, and I would handle a certain situation differently.
But I think one of the things that I have found the most value in all of the teams that I played on, being in close proximity to so many different kinds of people, that we were able to agree on one thing, and it was playing soccer, whether it was for our nation, or our club team, and that was one thing we could agree on, and so it gave us the ability to go out, and, even though, that there was these other things, we were able to actually go, and do the thing, it was-
Glennon Doyle:
However.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, here we go.
Amanda Ripley:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
And I have a question for you, Amanda, because, and this is something Abby and I talk about a lot, and it’s sensitive, that was a different time. I believe that Abby’s ability to work side-by-side with people, who may or may not have believed that she had the same rights as them out in the world, had something to do with the time she was in, where she was conditioned just to be grateful to be there, just to accept her own marginalization, in a way, that the same queer players in this day and age-
Abby Wambach:
Today. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
… might feel more agency to not feel comfortable alongside people who don’t believe in their full humanity.
Amanda Ripley:
What do you think about that, Abby?
Abby Wambach:
I think two things. One, I knew, because this was happening in the early 2000s, middle 2000s, 2010s, where the world hadn’t really gotten onboard with gay rights yet, our country, the world was still new around this, and you had to be very progressive-minded to be in the position that I was in, especially even for some straight folks. Right? It was like a real big bridge that some people crossed to become allies with the queer community.
So, for me, it was really important to be a voice for the folks that possibly one day could straddle, and walk across the bridge to become an ally of the queer community, that they needed to see, talk, and hear my story, that they needed to be in communion with me, in some ways, that they needed to see that I wasn’t growing weird things off of my head. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that is the kind of position I knew that I was in, that I was going to create allies just by opening up myself, and being vulnerable to, “Hey. This is really hard, for me, that I legally can’t marry,” and, at the time, “Will never be able to marry somebody, and have the same legal protections and rights as you all do.”
And that conversation starts to change the minds. So, yes, I do know we were in a different time, and that is just what my experience was.
Glennon Doyle:
No. It’s beautiful. I want to get to Amanda’s things on conflict, but it also mirrors our individual conflict. You actually had a very honorable, universal intention whereas I would be more fighting for my life in that situation.
Abby Wambach:
It feels more like a long-term play versus a short-term play.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
The difference there.
Amanda Ripley:
So, there’s something called intergroup contact theory, which is this idea that the only way we can reduce prejudice by groups is through interactions like that, through relationships, under certain conditions, where you’re roughly on equal footing in the room, if not in the world, ideally, where you have a transcendent common identity, like you did with the national team, something else you care about, and some kind of container for those conversations to happen.
This has been tested, contact theory, in 500 experiments all around the world. It is the only known thing to reduce prejudice.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Amanda Ripley:
We don’t have another answer.
Glennon Doyle:
What?
Amanda Ripley:
So, it’s, at once, true, that this is the only way, and, also, not fair, and not always your job. Right? It shouldn’t be everybody’s job, if you’re the only Black person in the room, or the only gay person in the room.
I guess I see what both of you are saying, that those conversations would be harder today, because there would be less tolerance for intolerance. Right? Depending on who’s in the room.
But the stronger those relationships are, the more they can hold. Right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
But you have to set up the container, but the bad news is there’s not another cure for prejudice, that is actually proven. It’s those encounters. It’s seeing someone, and knowing them as a complicated human, who you like, and then they also are gay.
That’s what deep canvasing, and all of these things that we know were helpful with gay marriage, but it is very difficult, and the more inflamed things are, and the more threatened people feel, and the more frightened they are, it gets almost impossible. Right? But not impossible, but almost impossible.
Glennon Doyle:
Besides examining the understory, it makes me rethink … We get calls from the soccer world often, and somebody will say, “This person is homophobic. Can you talk to them?” I’m like, “Are you kidding me?”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
But it makes me rethink that, if that’s the only way … Anyway, moving along-
Amanda Doyle:
It’s the only proven way, because it’s the only thing we’ve tried, because the people who are the most marginalized have to pay the price for it, which is why we’ve tried it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
So, that’s why we can study it, because it exists, because the marginalized people are doing the work. So, I don’t think it’s the only way. It’s the only way that’s been documented, because we’ve tried it effectively.
Amanda Ripley:
That’s a good point. Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
I just feel like if we thought more broadly, and tried to say, “Imagine a world in which the not marginalized people had to do the work, and really committed to it, would it work?” We don’t know, because we’ve never had the audacity to ask them to do that.
Amanda Ripley:
That’s a really good point, and I should add, there is a way in which the not marginalized people can do this work, and it is proven to work, which is vicarious contact theory.
So, in other words, if I go out, and do a story about people who are different than I am, and different than my audience, or you, Glennon, have someone on the show who is different than your audience, you don’t, literally, have to, yourself, your audience gets vicarious benefits from that interaction.
So, you don’t, literally, have to be in the room, because not everybody should have to be in the room, or can be in the room, but if there’s storytelling around it, then you get this broadcast effect where you give vicarious immunity to that prejudice.
So, that’s really cool, and something that you all are already doing, because people are experiencing your relationship, and your encounters, secondhand. Right?
Glennon Doyle:
That makes me feel good. That makes me feel good.
Amanda Doyle:
So, next time they call, you can just send them a podcast, and say, “Tell them to listen to this.”
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah, or depending on the person, if you have a relationship with them already, maybe you do have them on the show, and then your whole audience gets to hear that encounter, and you set it up in such a way that it’s more likely to succeed, and then you do have that effect, because people trust you, who are listening to the show. Maybe they don’t trust that person.
Anyway, so, that’s just something to think about. It’s like not every conversation needs to be the person who is most in jeopardy in that dynamic.
Glennon Doyle:
Whether we’re in conflict with a neighbor, or our partner, or our kid, or another political party, or someone at work, first of all, I want to know, how do we know we’re in high conflict instead of good conflict?
And then I want you to tell us if we are in high conflict, how do we become better? Looping is one, but what are the things we avoid and go towards?
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah. So, I have on my Instagram page, a little quiz you can take, “Are you in high conflict?” So, it’s like, “Do you lose sleep about this conflict? Do you have imaginary conversations with the other person?” I definitely do this.
Glennon Doyle:
Me too.
Amanda Ripley:
I’ve had long conversations with politicians I’ve never met. Right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Same.
Amanda Ripley:
I’m in a feud right now with the National Zoo, but they don’t know. They don’t know me, they don’t know, but it’s near where I live in DC, and I used to go running there all the time, and they just, in my opinion, really did not step up in the pandemic, and now you need tickets.
Anyway, you can see how I’m … It’s as if we’re in a relationship, but we’re not. Right? But that’s not a healthy conflict.
Glennon Doyle:
God.
Amanda Ripley:
So, those are signs. It’s all you can talk about, and you keep repeating the same story, like, all my friends have heard that zoo story from me. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, “Really? Oh my God. She’s still talking about this?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
People are going to listen to this, and be like, “Oh my God. Amanda’s talking about the zoo.” So, yeah. Those are some of the signs where the other person’s behavior, or the other side’s behavior is just baffling, like, it makes zero sense, and it feels very threatening, and sometimes it is very threatening, but sometimes it also just feels that way. Right?
So, those are some of the signs that you might be slipping into high conflict, and to avoid it, you want to, first of all, the most basic thing you can do is avoid the four tripwires that lead to high conflict, which in good conflict, we call fire starters, and so that’s humiliation, do not humiliate your enemy, which means do not do anything on social media, don’t do anything where there’s an audience, if possible, have a private conversation, or don’t say anything at all. It’s just not worth it, because, as Nelson Mandela once said, “There is no one more dangerous than one who has been humiliated.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
“Even when you humiliate him rightly,” which I love that he added that on there.
The second one is conflict entrepreneurs. That’s another tripwire into high conflict. Right? So, if you have them in your life, you want to maybe distance them. If you have them on your social media feed, you want to maybe stop that, and the number one rule is every day, and in our current climate, you just don’t want to be a conflict entrepreneur, because it’s very easy, there’s a lot of rewards, there’s a lot of incentives right now to be a conflict entrepreneur. Right?
So, humiliation, conflict entrepreneur, false binaries. Notice when you are slipping into us versus them thinking, or when you’re lumping 74 million people who voted a certain way into one camp, because the truth is we just can’t do that. You can’t do it. It’s madness. Right?
But any time I’m slipping into two groups, because, usually, that means you’re missing … Israelis, Palestinians, what about the people who are both? You’re missing really important … So, when we train journalists, what we focus on is having go-to sources for your stories that are about conflict, who are in-between, or crossover, who don’t fit, because that’s a lot of people, it turns out.
If you take the United States, and you try to break it into groups about their deepest values on politics, which More In Common did. Great research company on polarization. And, really, the smallest it could get was seven groups, not two. It’s seven, and, even then, you’re making huge generalizations. Right? So, avoiding false binaries.
Then the last one is corruption, real or perceived. So, the more we can bolster our institutions, our neighborhoods, our families, our police departments, our schools, everything we can do to bolster the integrity of those institutions, the less likely we are to fall into high conflict, because when you can’t trust institutions to do what they’re supposed to do, when you can’t trust the referees, you will eventually take matters into your own hands, and you will start trusting people who really shouldn’t be trusted, because we need trust. You can’t actually get through the day with zero trust. So, you’ll just trust the wrong things.
Glennon Doyle:
Because when those institutions are not full of integrity, that is an opening for conflict entrepreneurs. So, there’s Steve Bannon. Right?
Amanda Ripley:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
That is the window for people who don’t have the good intentions to come in, and say, “See, this is messed up, and follow me instead,” and that’s how we get these horrific-
Amanda Ripley:
Yes. That’s what leaves us so vulnerable to conflict entrepreneurs, and they interact, to your point, so all those four fire starters interact. So, conflict entrepreneurs will often frame everything as a humiliation. That’s one sign of a conflict entrepreneur. If you listen to Putin’s speech before the invasion of Ukraine, the whole thing is about the humiliation of Russia. So, that’s one sign.
So, yeah. These things interact, and any entry point you can get in your particular conflict to try to turn down the volume on one of them will destabilize the whole conflict system, even though, it won’t make it go away, but, because they interact like that.
Glennon Doyle:
Thinking about the idea of our instinct when someone hurts us is to embarrass them, and when we embarrass people, we create an enemy for life. Amanda’s not saying, “Don’t embarrass people, because that’s sad and it will hurt their feelings, and do unto others as they will do unto you.” No.
Amanda is saying, “That is the most dangerous thing you can do for yourself in the long run,” and I’m just saying this, because I’ve experienced this. Once you embarrass somebody publicly, you could be waiting 28 years, it’s coming back.
Abby Wambach:
Yup.
Glennon Doyle:
People don’t forget that in their bodies.
Abby Wambach:
They don’t forget.
Amanda Doyle:
And they usually pass it onto their children, who then double … Then it’s in the name of their parent, which is-
Glennon Doyle:
Or their country or-
Amanda Ripley:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
And often victims of humiliation become perpetrators of humiliation. Right?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’s what I love about this, it’s all evidence-based, it’s all just, again, practical. Let’s not even worry about what’s right or wrong, let’s talk about what actually works, and when you humiliate people, it doesn’t work. It makes you feel good for one hot second, and it’s not effective, and it’s counter-effective.
So, what I love about everything that you do is you just name at the top everything that you are going to want to do in a conflict that’s intuitive is exactly, and precisely, wrong.
You need to throw all of that away, and do the opposite of what’s intuitive, and I have been thinking, and working with this, even in my own marriage, the idea of when I am clearly right when we’re talking about something, everyone would agree I’m right. Okay? Everyone. And he has a different opinion, which, obviously, is wrong, obviously, then I would need to show him how everything is wrong about what he’s saying, so that he can get to the right side of things, and understand the correct position.
What you’re saying, “Hear this, good people of America, we know you’re right, and that other person is wrong. Nonetheless, it is not effective for you to just continue to tell them you’re right. You need to say to them what you hear them saying, because people who do not feel heard, do two things. They either shut down, or they shout louder.”
Amanda Ripley:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
People who do not feel heard shut down, or shout louder. So, you need to get them to understand that they are heard in their ridiculous opinion, in order for them to see another thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. “This is what I hear your ridiculous opinion is.”
Abby Wambach:
Is this looping?
Glennon Doyle:
Amanda, is this looping? Amanda-
Amanda Ripley:
Yes. This is looping.
Abby Wambach:
Okay.
Amanda Ripley:
You got it.
Abby Wambach:
Good. Good. Good.
Amanda Ripley:
We’ve come full circle.
Amanda Doyle:
This blew my mind, the average person feels understood 5% of their daily life. So, of course, you are meeting people in every circumstance, who already feel misunderstood. So, if you can do the magic work of being part of that 5%, what I hear you saying is, “Let me make sure I totally understand what you’re saying,” it’s not validating what they say, it’s not giving more airtime to what they believe that is clearly wrong, it is just being in that 5% that makes them feel understood, which allows them to do a different thing other than shutting down, or shouting louder.
Amanda Ripley:
Exactly. Yeah. So, looping is exactly what you describe, it’s, basically, these steps. Listen to what the person is saying, listen to what’s most important to them. Right? You’re really trying to get out of your own head, and listen. What are they really trying to tell me here? What do they care about here?
Then you take into your most elegant language you can come up with, and play it back for them. So, you paraphrase, “I feel like you’re saying that the sky is purple, and that the reason the sky is purple is something that none of us can ever understand, because it’s holy. Is that right?” That’s the third step.
And this is the one I used to forget the most when I started doing this is check if you got it right, and you have to check like you’re really wondering, like you’re actually curious. So, it’s like, “Is that right?”
And just like Amanda said, what will happen is people, right away, their shoulders will lower, they will sense that you’re trying to understand them, which almost never happens, even as you disagree, and then they will add to … Usually, they’ll say something more revealing, and you’re starting to glimpse the understory now, slowly, slowly, slowly.
Or, they’ll be like, “No, actually. It’s more like X, Y, Z,” and then you’re like, “Oh, okay. Let me try again. Let me do this paraphrase, check for understanding again.”
Until you get to a point where they say, “Exactly.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, that’s beautiful.
Amanda Doyle:
You just keep going, and then in people’s bodies when they’ve done studies, they have found that you actually are more open to nuance, your brain is wider to nuance after you have been looped, and heard, then if you weren’t looped and heard, that you can get a wider bit of information into you from the other side.
Amanda Ripley:
Exactly. So, it’s like a game of Chicken. Like, who is going to listen first? Right? Nobody is going to listen until they feel heard. So, the least I can do is make them feel heard, and then they might listen to me.
Glennon Doyle:
Amanda, it’s not just, though, so that the other person feels heard. I think the way this is being presented is like, “Well, that just makes the other person feel like, so that they will be more open to nuance.”
Abby Wambach:
It feels like a manipulation.
Glennon Doyle:
But what I’ve heard you say over and over again is that you learned about yourself, that you weren’t as good of a listener as you thought, so what we know is we don’t see people how they are, we see people how we are.
So, what you’re doing also is checking for your own filters, your own bias, your own story, your own trauma, because when I say to someone, “What I hear you saying is this,” and they say, “No. That’s not what I’m saying at all,” I know that I am bringing something to that, that changes me.
So, looping changes both people.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
Yes. It does, and it keeps you humble, and it keeps you present.
Amanda Doyle:
And the third thing it does is it dethrones the entrepreneurs, the conflict entrepreneurs, because what the conflict entrepreneurs need is for us to never listen to each other, because then they own the entire kingdom below them, and they are telling the people what to believe, and they are telling the people what we believe, but if we take them out of the middle, and talk to each other, that is where there is possibility, and that is where you can potentially dethrone the conflict entrepreneurs, because you realize what they’re telling you is horse shit.
Amanda Ripley:
Exactly. Right now we are being played. We are being turned against each other as Americans for other people’s benefit.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Ripley:
And it is like, I don’t know, but most people don’t like to be played. Most people don’t like to be chumps. So, I feel like the more we can use the vocabulary, and understand how we’re being manipulated, the more immune we will be to each new conflict entrepreneur.
Abby Wambach:
It feels a lot like so much of … Because this is more like communication. This is where I want to destigmatize the word conflict, in a way, because, honestly, I feel like conflict is all about how we are actually communicating with each other, and so much of the miscommunication, or the lost in translation is cut through with this looping technique, where you’re like, “Here’s what I’m hearing you say.” It makes it less opinionated, and it brings more fact into it.
There might be an opinion about a fact, but, to me, it makes it less judgemental. It’s like, “Here’s what I heard you just say,” and it allows there to be more … You’re missing all of the morality. You bypass the morality, and you’re getting to the actual thing, which I think is helpful.
Glennon Doyle:
I have to stop us here, sadly.
Abby Wambach:
Ugh.
Glennon Doyle:
I know. Amanda, would you come back some time soon?
Amanda Ripley:
I’d love that. Of course.
Glennon Doyle:
Because I just feel like we just got started.
Amanda Ripley:
Are you kidding? It’s the highlight of my month.
Glennon Doyle:
Me too, and I just feel like it’s just the most important thing in the world, and we just got started, and I just love talking to you about this. So, we have seven more pages of questions. So, if we could just come back together soon, that would be amazing.
Amanda Ripley:
I’d love that. I feel like you all are telling me things I didn’t know about my own book. So, it’s been really fun. So, thank you.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a really good book.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
And also so fun to read. I was like, “He did what now?” It was fun.
Amanda Ripley:
Oh, good. Good. It has to be, or else we can’t ask people to read books. You know.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yeah.
Amanda Ripley:
We can’t ask people to read books, unless there’s some characters and some fun.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. That’s right. Okay. So, Pod Squad, go off, and we’re going to work on looping, and understories, and the when Amanda comes back, we’re going to get more-
Amanda Ripley:
Oh, yes. Homework.
Glennon Doyle:
… assignments. Okay? That’s our homework.
Amanda Ripley:
My favorite.
Glennon Doyle:
Looping and discovering the understories, which the looping is what gets us to the understory, which I enjoy a pattern. So, thank you.
Amanda Doyle:
And the understory is for you as you’re in your fights this week, care and concern, respect and recognition, power and control, stress and overwhelm.
Amanda Ripley:
You got it. Nailed it.
Amanda Doyle:
Which ones are you actually fighting about when you’re fighting about dinner?
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Amanda, thank you so much. We’re going to put your book in the show links, and, wow, We Can Do Hard Things Pod Squad. See you next time.
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We Can Do Hard Things is created, and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle, in partnership with Audacy. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.
I give you Tish Melton, and Brandi Carlile.