SETTING THE CONTAINER - Brian Ammons

A friend of mine told me a story last week about blowing up at an old friend on his high school buddies’ group chat. He’s one of a small handful of close friends I’m fortunate to have that reach out to each other to reflect on what’s beneath the surface when we find ourselves in conflict, or even in situations that just feel awkward. This particular friend and I have a call every couple of weeks with another friend for just that purpose. For years, we’ve checked-in and told each other stories from our lives, looked for affirmation about what we’re seeing, and counted on each other to help make sense of what we’re missing.  

The details of my friend’s interaction on his high school buddies’ thread aren’t particularly important, other than it seemed familiar, and reflective of a larger trend. A group that mostly shared memes, inside jokes, and updated one another about day-to-day life was thrown off balance when someone started posting political news stories. It wasn’t even the most obvious version of how that unfolds these days—as he describes it, they’re a group of friends that are fairly coherent in their worldview. Sure, there are some differences in opinion, but it’s not like they’re knowingly on the opposite sides of a polarized society.  

In this situation, it was one friend, particularly (and meaningfully) close to a situation that’s wrapped in controversy who perhaps suspected her stance was out of sync with others in the group. Maybe consciously, maybe not, she seemed to be testing the waters as she linked to stories aligned with the case for her position. She seemed to be asking, “is there room for me here with my passionate belief?” — but instead of asking directly, threw out a few articles and waited for the blowback she anticipated coming.  

I don’t know these folks (other than the one friend who relayed the story), so I can’t speak to all the ins and outs of their dynamics, but I do know this pattern. I’m pretty sure I’ve participated in it from nearly every angle over the last few years. I’ve sometimes thrown the controversial opinion into the mix, sometimes taken the bait, and more often fallen silent and frustrated by what I was witnessing unfold. And, like my friend, the frustration that hooked me wasn’t just about a fundamental difference in opinion, something else was going on. It felt like a violation, but not the one presenting itself on the surface.

I’m actually pretty skilled at engaging across lines of difference, and I often really enjoy it (though admittedly sometimes find it difficult). But, I’ve noticed my exhausted and frustrated reaction these days sometimes comes up even in response to folks with whom I agree. Don’t get me wrong, the content of those articles my friend’s old friend matters — it matters a lot.  I’m not trying to downplay that, it’s just that the content is only part of the irritation for me in similar situations.

What I’m coming to understand, particularly in a digitally saturated information culture, is that I get annoyed when I land in a conversation that I didn’t agree to engage with and then encounter an expectation to respond—where even not responding feels like a response itself. The facilitator in me bristles, “Wait! We haven’t set the container well to hold this interaction!” Setting a container is a bit like blind baking a pie crust; it’s an extra step in the process, but it keeps the filling from soaking through and making a mess. A little bit of extra work, making sure the container (like the crust) is ready to hold what’s coming, keeps things from falling apart. Setting a container requires a bit of attention, ensuring that the folks involved in the conversation agreed to the conversation that’s happening. My sense of violation arises when I thought I understood the agreed guidelines we were working with, but then suddenly realize that someone else I trusted wasn’t working with those same agreements.

I understand it’s sometimes awkward and tiresome to set formal agreements for every conversation. Maybe it’s a manifestation of my neurodivergence that finds me often wishing for more explicit rules of engagement, and perhaps that plays into why I often feel so worn out by parties. Social groups usually operate in complex and subtle agreements that set a context for how we engage, and when something is thrown into the mix that violates those agreements I nearly always flinch. But here’s the deal, most of the time those agreements are informal and implicit and not everyone is making the same assumptions about what we’ve agreed to.  

This comes up all the time in my marriage. Particularly because I work with my spouse and we also manage a complicated set of logistics around splitting life between two countries, we are in constant negotiations about what to talk about when. If we aren’t careful, every conversation turns into a discussion of the perpetual to-do list. Added to that dynamic is that we recharge from the exertion that to-do list asks of us in really different ways at different times of the day. As we are settling onto the sofa after dinner, Gareth may lead with, “I read this really interesting article in The Atlantic about the future of democracy…” and all I’m thinking about is whether or not someone will get a Hollywood Handshake on British Bake Off tonight. When I’m up for talking about our taxes (this is theoretical, as I’m almost never up for talking about our taxes), he wants to watch a movie. My logistics brain wakes up in fifth gear, and his creative brain kicks in when I’m wanting to take a nap. 

We are colleagues, lovers, best friends, and roommates, and as the roles intersect and overlap, it’s quite easy for a misfired conversation to lead to a long processing of the conversation, even when we both know that we aren’t in the best headspace to hear each other. We have lots of conversations about our conversations. That’s often helpful, and also sometimes just tedious for us both. I suspect we’re not the only folks sharing a home life for whom this is true. At our best, we read subtle cues and issue invitations to engage and fall into an easy dance of sharing our lives. At our worst, we barge into each others’ spaces (either physically or with a long string of texts) and demand attention in something that feels more like an accidental mosh pit. When we’re doing well, we listen to each other with curiosity and open hearts. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, we focus our energy on being heard and wishing the other would make more space for whatever it is one of us wants to happen in the moment. 

Gareth and I have invested fourteen years learning how to negotiate shifting and contextual agreements to support the communication that facilitates our rich and full lives, and it’s still the thing we mess up most often. Thankfully, we’ve also spent those years learning to regroup and repair when we do. It’s not perfect by any means, but we’ve built a container together that usually can hold pretty well when the fissures erupt in the moments we’re operating from different assumptions about the agreements of a given interaction.

It requires some intentionality, but like in a marriage, a more cohesive community and a more cohesive society can learn to sustain the fissures when they come. And still, there’s a skill to practice around setting the containers for the conversations we want to have, and it often includes explicitly naming our commitments to remain present with one another.  

I wasn’t on that thread with my friends’ high school buddies, but I wonder how it might have played out differently if before sending a link to a news story, his friend had sent a message saying, “Y’all, I’m really impacted by this thing going on in the world, and I don’t know if we’re all in agreement or if where I’m coming from will make sense to you, but I’d really like to be able to tell you about why this matters to me, are you up for hearing that?” Maybe they’d say yes, maybe they’d say no. Maybe a subgroup would spin off on another thread. Maybe there would be room after being heard to listen to why someone else felt just as passionately about a different perspective. Or maybe, that group would be able to collectively figure out that it’s not the right container for that conversation, and then deal with the feelings that come up around that awareness.

Please hear me, I’m not much of a fan of constant calls for civility. I know those calls often function to privilege the dominant opinion and are about as effective as one spouse telling another to “calm down” after causing them real hurt. I’ve got room for messiness and conflict.  What I am suggesting is that making our implicit agreements more explicit and checking to see if we have some consensus about the container we’re in together — including the power dynamics and vulnerabilities at play within it — might be a helpful place to start. 

It’s worth noting that this isn’t a “one-size fits all“ proposition, and sometimes other strategies are called for (including a direct challenge, or simply walking away), but when in situations in which the playing field is fairly level, like my friend was in with his high school buddies, it can be an effective tool. Right now, I know a lot of folk are making conscious choices to disengage with folks that disagree with them, and particularly for folks whose very personhood is on the line in such interactions, I fully support that decision. But for those of us who choose to stay engaged when we find ourselves caught in conversations as they’re going awry, naming a container breach and renegotiating the terms may be the way to create space for dialogue. Making the decision as to whether or not it’s worth it to stay engaged is worthy of reflection, but frankly, I need some of you to keep talking with your high school buddies, and I have a responsibility to others of you to keep talking to some of my old friends from summer camp.

So, if you find yourself in a messy container with me and our agreements need revisiting, most of the time, I’ll go there with you if you’ll flash a turn signal first. If I’m not in a place to handle what you’re asking me to hold, I’d much rather tell you that up front than react poorly when I’m caught off guard. I don’t want to drop you — I want to do this work of being in community together. Even when it’s hard. 

Brian Ammons is spiritual director, coach, teacher, and pastor, with a particular interest in the ways we construct stories about ourselves as we negotiate and rework our relationships to larger cultural and societal stories. Brian is the co-convenor of The Porch and the Order of the Rocking Chair.

Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash