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Episode 812: The Willingness to Hear with Mónica Guzmán · The Trauma Therapist

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Trauma Therapist Podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early and ad free right
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now. Become a Plus listener by going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma
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Therapist Podcast and signing up today. All right, welcome back to the Trauma
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Thepist podcast. My name is Gamiferson. My mission is to help trauma therapist
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be their incredible selves, to be human, to be real, not just
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a clinician. I'm a big believer in who we are is more important than
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to the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com.
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Let's get started, all right, Monica, here we go, so
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five or three, two and one? Ok So, welcome back to the
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podcast. I am very excited. Happens my kids today? Monica Kuzman,
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Monica, welcome, Thank you for having me. Hello, we welcome.
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So. Monica is Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, a nonprofit
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working to depolarize America. She's also host of a Braver Way, a podcast
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that equips people with the tools they need to bridge the political divide in their
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everyday lives. She's also a founder and CEO for Claimed Curiosity, an organization
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working to build a more curious world. Monica is also the author of I
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Never thought of it that way. How to have fearlessly curious Conversations in Dangerously
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divided Times. Monica is the inaugural mcgerna Fellow at the University of Florida,
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working with researchers at the UF College of Journalism and Communications and beyond to better
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understand ways to employ techniques described in her book To Boost Understanding. Monica,
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welcome, Thank you, thank you for having me. You're welcome. So
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before we can come and sure with the listeners where you're from originally and where
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you are currently. I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and I immigrated
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to the States when I was about six five or six, I keep forgetting,
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and I'm currently in Seattle, Washington. Okay, awesome. So I
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came across your work and you know, immediately, what immediately jumped out to
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me amongst the many things you're doing is passion. I mean, you're obviously
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passionate and you're on a friggin mission. I don't know what it is.
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We're gonna find out, but how how did all of this start for you?
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Yeah? I love that you brought that up passion. I do tend
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to be a bit fiery. My husband is very calm, pool water type
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element, and I'm always is this scar So I'm that kind of person.
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So I guess if it shows, it shows the way I got into the
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work, which I would describe as bridging work, bridging the political divide,
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bridging any difference that matters to people. One is through my journalism. So
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I've been a journalist my whole career, and what I realized was that the
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thing that really draws me to journalism is this belief I have that people need
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to be able to understand each other, and that by trying to tell,
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learn, and then tell people's stories to their communities as responsibly as I can,
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I can maybe help contribute to that end goal. What happened in journalism
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sometime over the last decade a bit of a slow boil, was my coming
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to realize that there's so much distrust and kind of a foundational brokenness across elements
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of our society, so many silos where reality starts to look really different,
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and it's hard to communicate or share stories across all those spaces. And so
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I realized, if I want to help people understand each other and I just
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do it through journalism, it's not gonna be enough, because there's too much
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brokenness. So I stepped back from daily journalism to work on this. The
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other big thread that brings me to this work, and I suppose the passion
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is my family. So I'm a Mexican immigrant, I'm the daughter of Mexican
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immigrants. They are Republicans who voted twice for Donald Trump, and I'm a
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Democrat who voted for Clinton and then Biden. And you can imagine the tensions
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that came up in our family. I'm sure a lot of listeners have related
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to those in their lives. It got very real, and we are a
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pretty open family. I'm very close to my parents. I still am.
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But there were some dark times. There were some very loud conversations, louder
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than normal, and some how that heat actually led us to some real understanding.
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And if I'm honest, it was mostly me who craved that understanding because
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of how I felt about the candidate I did not vote for. And yet
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I was able to really learn a lot about my parents and the process of
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asking a lot of questions about what led them to their beliefs. And then
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I looked around the country and saw that brokenness just get worse within families,
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within communities, a lot of vilification, a lot of in curiosity. That's
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understandable given how high stakes everything is and how hard it is to feel like
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you have resources at hand. So that led me to what became a pretty
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obsessive quest to figure out what was getting in the way of us understanding each
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other, what was blinding us in these divided times, and how we can
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get it out of our way so that we can see each other again.
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When I say that I work to try to build a curious world, what
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I mean by that is a world that sees itself now before we kind of
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work to unfold that. You know, you talk about this kind of insatiable
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curiosity for understanding and to help people understand. Where does that come from?
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For me? Yeah, there's some surprising twists. I was a very shy
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kid. I didn't want to talk to strangers, And as I trace my
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story back and back, I realized that there were these two competing tendencies within
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me. One was this shyness I didn't I just I did. I got
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very very nervous around strangers. I remember this one time that my mother,
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we had a burger King near our house, and she made me I wanted
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salt, and she made me go up to the counter and ask a human
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being for a packet of salt. And I was traumatized. I didn't want
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to do it. It was just like, why can't you do it?
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So there was that shyness like I just don't, like, don't care to.
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She's like, you are going to go and get yourself? What's all?
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That's fine, you aren't going to get yourself. Uh. The other
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tendency, honestly, is uh this fascination with people. And I don't really
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know how far back this goes necessarily, but it got stronger and stronger that
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this sense of people are so interesting. Uh. There was actually a moment
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in second grade, I want to say, where I was like finished with
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a test or whatever it was, and I handed it in as this little
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spelling thing handed it in, and I grabbed another piece of paper, brought
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it to my desk, and I just started writing what people were doing,
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you know, like Jennifer Puck went up to get a tissue, you know,
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Craig Maggio just like I don't know, changed the way he was sitting.
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This somewhat boring resitation of the events of people around me. The teacher,
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you know, just got up to close the door. So I just
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observe people. They're so interesting and they're always surprising. So at some point,
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and I'm pretty sure this happened in my journalism internships in college, my
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shyness went up against my fascination with people and lost. So they're just too
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interesting. I want to ask a lot of questions. And what's happened in
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my journalism and is probably one of my favorite states of being is when I
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just get lost in an interview. I just get lost. I am transparent
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and I'm in someone else's story and I'm helping them look around and realize how
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interesting they are. A lot of times they didn't even know. And I
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think it's one of the coolest gifts to give someone to let them know that,
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in fact, they are interesting. This is very obviously a timely conversation
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given the world, you know, the state of the world, political state
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of the world at which we're living. How do you go about how do
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you begin to help two parties disparate in their beliefs and ideology. How do
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you begin to help them understand? Where do you start with that? There's
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a lot of potential places to start, but I think the most important place
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to aim your curiosity when you don't understand someone else is within yourself. And
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what I mean by that is one of the biggest barriers to our curiosity.
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That is also really sneaky is our own assumptions. So we as human beings,
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make assumptions all day, every day, all the time. A lot
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of them we just need, right Like if we assumed that every little noise
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we heard was a reason to go, what's that? What's that, we
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couldn't get anything done. Some assumptions make sense, others really don't, and
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our brains just take shortcuts. It's what they do. The arch villain of
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curiosity is certainty, because when you think you know, you won't think to
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ask. So assumptions are answers to questions you never actually asked. Your brain
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just answered them for you. So what we have to do is notice the
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assumptions we're making about other people. Now, when you encounter or approach someone
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who is very different from you, and you know that a lot of assumptions
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are going to come to mind. There's a lot of social science research in
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the last few years. It's pretty chilling about the misperceptions that exist between political
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parties people who have different political beliefs. This exists across almost any division and
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difference in disagreement, but it's particularly pronounced with our political divides because of all
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the things that we all feel, the tribalism going on, the high stakes,
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you know, the sense of threat. So aim your curiosity inside yourself,
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notice your own assumptions. You're your conservative and you're approaching a young I'm
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going to just traffic and stereotypes from it. You're approaching a younger person with
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some tattoos and some piercings, right, and they tell you they have they
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then pronouns and if you if you're conservative, and again i'm generalizing, that
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might that might be very uncomfortable. What do you assume about that person?
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And the way that you defeat assumptions control over your brain is to turn them
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into questions. Right, So if you assume that this person is someone who
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if I talk to them, they would cancel me the first moment. The
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worst chance they get right is that true. Maybe ask some questions, get
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to know them. You know, if you assume anything about them, this
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person, I'm religious and they're probably not. They probably hate religion. You
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don't know this person, how do you know that? And I could give
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the exact same example with you know, someone who's more liberal approaching someone who's
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conservative, who's sending signals in any way to them that download assumptions into their
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mind. So that's one very very important thing is to remember each person is
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a bottomless mystery, So to be real careful with throwing assumptions around like that.
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One of the things. You know, as you're speaking, I'm thinking
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to myself that this conversation almost seems like a mind field of assumptions. It's
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hard to talk about this almost without making assumptions. It seems to me,
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however, that this, this invitation to curiosity and awareness is something that not
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all of us are willing to take on. You know, in order to
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have this conversation, we have to be willing to look at ourselves and as
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you're saying, start looking inward. But not everyone's willing to do that.
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What do you say to that I mean, because how are you going to
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bring two parties together if one maybe they are disagreeing, but they're not willing
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to even begin to look at theirselves themselves. Well, I look at a
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state of unwell willingness as being a state. We can all be in that
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state of unwilling to be curious. I do it every day, you know,
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I try to peel myself open, So it's not a permanent way of
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being. That's one thing. And one of the things that I think causes
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an unwillingness and a rigidity for being open to how people might surprise us and
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whatnot is when we have a lot of unacknowledged concerns and we have been practiced
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in this idea, or we have steeped ourselves in spaces that have these narratives
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that tell us it's it's those people's fault. It's those people's fault. Those
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people will listen to you, they never will. They never will, so
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why should you listen to them? Or or when we're in narratives about harm,
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you know, those people just want to hurt you. That's all they
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want. They want you to lose, So why would you talk with them?
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You're just going to give them AMMO right. So, the more that
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we are steeped in spaces that give us those narratives, and the more conditioned
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we are by being in those spaces where this is apparently permissible to just make
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blanket assumptions about lots of people all the time, then the more that we
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will also be met with a sense of threat. You know that our bodies,
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in our minds when we approach people who are different from us, are
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just going to immediately be on guard. We don't want to be open,
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we don't uh no, you know. The only way we engage right now
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is if we can convince them they're wrong and lessen the threat. I'm not
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okay until that person changes. So I think a lot of people are in
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this place, and it's because of certainty, and because certainty can be very
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soothing when you have a really tough question why did they vote that way?
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And it's a really anxiety inducing question. You will manufacture certainty if you read
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a thought piece on the internet that gives you a sense and it's very confident,
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you could just choose to believe all of that. You know, I've
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just read I've just read a story that tells me why they voted that way.
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So I don't need to go ask them. Why would I need to
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do that? I already know. So yes, it's a mix of certainty
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and fear and the experience that we all hate of feeling unhurt. So the
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book is titled I never thought, never thought of it that way? How
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to have fearlessly curious conversations in dangerously divided times? What was the impetus for
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the book? Seeing where we were as a society, feeling that alienation from
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journalism, which is where I had identified my professional fulfillment for a long time,
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and feeling like it wasn't enough. A real big thing came after the
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twenty sixteen election when I live here in Seattle, very Democrat liberal place,
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surrounded by fellow liberals, and I would hear the fear, especially right after
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that election, the discomfort and the anxiety and the insecurity, and I would
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share it, and I would see conversations almost inevitably turn toward who to blame,
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and it would be those horrible people who voted for Trump. You know,
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anyone who votes for a monster must be a monster themselves kind of thing.
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And what started to happen in me is that I started taking it personally
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when I heard my fellow liberals say that, And it was because they're talking
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about my parents, and my parents are great, and they're saying these things
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about them that really aren't true, right, and yes there are lots of
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differences, and yes there are high stakes, but and it just started to
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feel like I have to say something back, but I don't know where to
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start because it's not like they're quote unquote wrong about Yes there are deep disagreements,
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Yes there's hard issues we need to talk about. Where do you begin?
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And so I started to get quiet. At some point, I started
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to get quiet, and I started to go into my own notes and I
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pulled up like I started this whole like slack channel for myself and it started
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populating it with all these notes and that led That was like two years later
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I had a book and I guess that was what I would say back,
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and it wasn't. I really believe in stories and I really believe in tactical,
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practical things. And I was also writing that book for myself. What
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can I do to still be curious in an increasingly blinded world? What can
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I do? Because I don't want to be a person who can't see the
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world as it is. I don't want to be a person who lives in
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silos because they think that's the only safe place. So what can I do?
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And then what can I do to make those tools more accessible to other
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people? So is in the goal and part to not necessarily disagree with the
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fact that there are factions and different ideologies, but to have a discussion.
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And as you said, see where everyone is at. Is that what you're
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after? In a sense? Absolutely, It's not about Okay, we got
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to change everyone's minds. Obviously, that often gets in the way. It's
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about seeing the world in its full complexity and going through the journey it takes
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to actually be able to do that. You talked about the unwillingness, right,
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there's a lot of barriers in our way. But yes, that's it.
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I don't believe in a functional democracy where everyone agrees. I think that
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is impossible, and I think that would be horrible for us. I believe
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in diversity. We should have diversity of views and opinions, But what good
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is a diversity of views and opinions if they're not in conversation with each other?
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What good is a diversity of views? And opinions. If each camp
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begins to believe that they are the only ones with any right answer ever,
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and they already have all the right answers, that's just dumb. That's just
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never true. So the fact that we are losing that communication, those spaces
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between factions where there can be that communication, that's a huge problem for us.
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So there is that altruistic sense. But let me also speak to a
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lot of people don't really care about that. They're like, whatever, someone
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else can save the world, you know, that's not on me. Well,
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I look around and I see elevated levels of anxiety, I see pain
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at brokenness in relationships. I see relatives who can't talk to each other anymore,
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and I see trust me. I get a lot of emails and notes
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from people who have holes in their heart right over this, And how when
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you look at it, it's like, really like our politics can do this
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times cause this anxiety and this pain, and so it becomes really important to
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question our fear and question our certainty because of the consequences it's having just for
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our sanity every day. If we could live a little bit less scared of
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our neighbors, we would be more creative more expansive and more at peace,
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and we could solve the problems that are actually staring us face instead of the
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problems that we assume are staring us in the face from the exaggerations on social
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media. What do you say to someone listening who and we just had holidays.
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I'm sure there were a lot of difficult, challenging conversations over the over
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the dinner tables, But what do you say to someone who does have a
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relative who is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, and who is
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adamant about about their beliefs and doesn't doesn't even want to enter into a conversation.
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I mean, it's it's more than just to me, like honoring someone
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else's belief I mean a lot of these beliefs on both sides of the spectrum
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stand for something right, They represent something. How could you believe in that?
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How could you vote for someone who did that or said that? Mm
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hmm, well it's exactly what you just said, but it's a different tone.
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Instead of how could you believe that? How could you possibly believe that?
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If you change that question in your mind to how could you believe that?
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How could you possibly believe that? It becomes a curious question instead of
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a demand or an assertion that that person is invalid. So the thing that
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is hard to accept but is an inconvenient truth and I think will never change,
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is that people can only hear when they're heard. If you have someone
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in your family who is adamant, who is inflexible, who never going to
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hear you, the one path to that person is to hear them. And
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you might say, well, I've tried, maybe you have, maybe you
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have for a long time, and I cannot guarantee that it will ever open
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up. But if you are really curious, and if you do want to
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establish some connection, and if you do someday want that person to hear you
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and the things that you believe that bother you so much about what they believe
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in the first place, the only way it is to begin by hearing them.
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And I will say from a lot of experience, the nut can crack
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a lot faster than it thick. It is very difficult. I shouldn't say
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difficult, It is just very rare. It's not difficult. It is very
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rare to hear someone fully, and that experience is like sticking a key in
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a lock. Even can you hear someone you disagree with for five minutes where
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you do not jump in with your opinion, and where you in fact ask
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questions to understand them better. So is this what you mean or is it
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that tell me more about that? What led you to believe that, Uncle
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Bob? And in each of those questions you are not ready to pounce.
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You are giving the tone of curiosity. Can you do that for five minutes?
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That's my challenge. Just start there and then move on, Okay,
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past the turkey, whatever we're done. We do not have to get satisfaction
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or resolution of any kind. The best conversation is the one you can pick
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up again later. And so, uncle Bob, after five minutes of being
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heard by you curious the heck was that with no judgment at all, is
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going to be like, well, that was kind of interesting. He was
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interested in me. And I got to tell you, as a journalist people,
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everybody wants to be seen and heard, and when you are really seen
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and heard, it's a really powerful experience and we want more of it as
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long as we can trust that person, you know. And again, the
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goal is not to find some resolution or even commonality, but to hear and
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appreciate and hopefully understand and be curious about the person the other person's experience.
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That's the first goal. I think it would be disingenuous to say that,
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gosh, it would be really great if this other person agreed with me.
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I think it's fine to admit that to yourself, but understanding that there are
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ways that you can sabotage that for yourself, and one of the first ways
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would be come in with judgment, not actually hear this person out or believe.
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So many of us do that they have nothing to teach us, and
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especially when people hold more extreme beliefs, we really believe that not only they
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have nothing to teach us, but they are horrible people. They are evil
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people. If we're opening the Pandora's BOXX, then ah, oh no,
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we're implicated now their horrible words have spread in the world and will infect others.
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It's like all of these things that we do to ourselves because we think
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it'll ensure that we are good people are actually creating I think, more harm
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because they're making a more distrustful world where communication is impossible. We dismiss the
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harm in that, you know, when we tell ourselves it will be harmful
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for me to talk to this other person at all. There are ways to
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make it quite harm less, at least at least if you yourself are ready.
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And I have to say, there is no universal prescription for this.
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You know, there are some topics with some people in some situations that I'm
25:11
not about to wait unto and that's probably true for everybody. The thing is,
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everyone has their own unique formula, and I tend to reject there's some
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people who say, you know, if you hold this identity or this race,
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or this whatever, or this origin or this belief, you should never
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talk to Pearson with that belief or that origin or that. I don't believe
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that. I think I think people are a lot more complicated than that,
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and I think we close ourselves off too much. It's it's a safety mechanism.
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It's a coping strategy, you know. I just don't want to think
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about it in these ways. And look if that, if that works for
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you, now, that's great, because all the only ask here is to
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get one step more curious. So it does not mean and like you know,
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triggering language coming up, but it does not mean go talk to a
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Nazi tomorrow. Does not mean that Nope, nobody wants that. It means
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build the short bridges. Somebody that you agree with on a lot of things,
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this one thing. That's where the practice starts. So everybody knows where
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they can and can't wait. So as we kind of wind down here,
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let's talk about the podcast. It's called a Braver Way. Why did you
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start that? Because I think the conversation about why this is important has been
26:22
robust and it's more understood that something is broken and we need to do something.
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I think that's clear. The word polarization is out there, right,
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Politicians, people in the media. We all know how divided we are.
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We get it. Now the big question is how how do we do this?
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Okay, I get it. It's a good idea, great, I
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get it. It could help us. Fine, but how right because I've
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got this particular situation or this particular relationship, or what does it do to
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my rights? Or don't I betray my own views? Or am I not
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abdicating my values? Or this, that and the other thing. So this
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is a podcast too equip and extract the tools from real stories of people who
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have bridged the divide across a difference, and then equip our listeners. With
27:11
those tools, every episode is designed to do exactly that. Every episode tells
27:15
a story. I'm exceedingly proud of this podcast as a journalist. I even
27:23
break some rules in journalism in it, because I have come to learn that
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I think the best role of a journalist or anyone who is trying to help
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society understand itself is not just to tell and search for truth, but also
27:41
to help people build trust. And sometimes those two purposes are at cross purposes.
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If you are working on building trust, you can't spend every breath correcting
27:52
someone or telling them they're wrong. You have to listen for something underneath.
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They're deeper concerns. Tell me a story. You know, maybe you believe
28:02
something I think is a total lie, but I want to understand what meaning
28:04
you find for your life in that before I just dismiss you out of hand.
28:11
So we do that. We do that on this podcast. So let's
28:15
say if we can, can you can you give us a specific example,
28:19
kind of in a in a thumbnail version of what one of your episodes looks
28:23
like, who you do, you bring guests on? And so forth?
28:26
Oh yeah, yeah, so yes. Episode four of our first season featured
28:32
Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, and the leading LGBTQ activist in Utah,
28:40
Troy Williams, definitely on opposite sides of a lot, but they agree
28:45
on one thing, which is that the best way to fight for what you
28:49
believe is not to dehumanize the people who disagree with you. They have done
28:56
that in their own work in pretty remarkable ways, and it has actually led
29:00
to some pretty extraordinary policy stories in the state of Utah, which I could
29:06
go into, but you should just go to the listening episode. There's a
29:07
lot of them, and they're really really cool. One of the things that
29:11
Troy Williams does that I think is like radically awesome. He once had his
29:18
nonprofit Equality Utah go get a booth at the Republican convention in Utah, Okay,
29:26
and big surprise there, right, And they arrived ready to hear people.
29:32
You know, they had their materials about trans rights and gay rights,
29:34
but they arrived ready to hear people. And so one of the things Troy
29:37
did and still does is when he talks with someone who is just really uncomfortable
29:41
with some of the things he advocates for, he listens to them and he
29:45
offers his perspective and his arguments, but at the end he always closes by
29:48
saying, I want to give you the last word. What would you like
29:52
to leave me with? So Troy does that with somebody else that's remarkable.
29:57
So anyway they bring they bring up these strategies, and it's the kind of
30:00
thing where you'd think no politician and no activists whatever do anything except throw grenades
30:04
at the other side rhetorically, and that's simply not true. There are people
30:08
doing different things. So that's one of our stories. One of the takeaways
30:14
for me here is the power of being able to listen to each other and
30:19
how that seems to just naturally diffuse the whole situation. Right. We don't
30:26
become reactive, we don't become retaliatory. We're able to listen and hear and
30:32
appreciate each other. Yeah, their differences, but in a human, humane
30:37
way, which at this time in the world now it just seems like that's
30:45
not being done a lot. We're not listening. Everyone's got there, you
30:49
know whatever, Ready are their handguns? Ready to go? And I live
30:55
in Bend, Oregon, which is a very interesting political It's a very interesting
31:00
place because it's definitely polar. I mean, you've got fifty to fifty it's
31:06
divided. Yeah, and it's it's you feel it. You know, you
31:11
feel this. This ans you don't feel what you're talking about. Is this
31:18
willingness to listen? Yeah? And here yep. And it's because people are
31:23
scared, you know, it's it's because they have good reason to be scared.
31:26
I suppose we just need to make sure we're not too scared. All
31:33
right, Monica a braver Way. What's the best way for people to learn
31:37
about you? To find out about your book and your podcast? Yeah,
31:41
so if you go to Monigouzman dot com. That's my website has everything a
31:45
braver Way podcast you can find anywhere podcasts are published. And then braver Angels
31:51
dot org that's the national nonprofit that's dedicated to this work where I am grounded.
31:57
Awesome, all right, we'll have all that linked up the show notes
32:00
page here. Manicad, thank you so much. Super interesting. And you're
32:05
you're on fire. I mean you can feel it. I guess it's that.
32:08
Yeah, the firingus comes out. It's awesome. Thank you so much.
32:13
All right. By