Role play and fantasy are playful opportunities to break routines and enhance excitement and pleasure in the bedroom. And all it takes is a little imagination. ‍

‍Imagination transforms the limited repertoire of sexual positions into limitless possibilities to explore your desires, sexuality, and partner(s).‍

‍When it comes to sharing role play ideas with our partners, we tend to hold ourselves back from the fear of it being awkward or intimating — an over-the-top costume just isn’t for me. I don’t even know where to start or what I like. What do I even say?‍

‍But role play is so much more than elaborate accouterment and a cheesy script. It’s about tapping into your erotic mind and temporarily transforming yourself and the environment around you to give new life to your desires and connection. To be somebody else because you want to be together in a different way.‍

‍We all have imaginative resources that allow us to play and be curious, to go beyond our lived experience, and to ask ourselves: what would it look and feel like to be intimate together in a different way? All it requires is a foundation of communication, playful exploration of yourself and others, and a willingness to try.‍

Let go of elaborate role play ideas

The definition of fantasy is simply anything that intensifies the sexual experience. The weather, the time of day, the location or the pacing are some simple elements that may enhance the sexual experience between you and your partner. So let go of any expectations about elaborate role-play that may intimidate you or stymie you from the beginning. ‍

‍To get started, go back to the basics. Role play and fantasy do not have to include elaborate costumes, props, and rehearsed scenarios. Forget shopping online for hours to find the perfect replica of an 18th-century Victorian maid’s outfit with elaborate silk ruffles and free yourself from the shackles of whips and chains (although, by all means, use them later if you want). ‍

‍You also don’t need a well thought out script. Try starting with a playful yet simple invitation; knock on the door and say, “Hello, room service is here.” Leave it at that or choose your own adventure from there.‍

Start from a place of reassurance 

Talking about sex can be tricky – especially when you’ve never done it before. Frequently, there is the fear that if we speak our desires aloud, our partner will shame us or they will feel like they have failed to satisfy us in the past. Insecurity and vulnerabilities swirl around our sexual selves. ‍

‍Start by reassuring your partner that you enjoy what you do have. Ask them if they’re comfortable talking about fantasy. Start slowly and ease into these conversations. Here are some suggestions to open the dialogue:

• “You know what, we’ve never talked about this and I’m really nervous…”
• “I’ve been doing this course, please don’t make fun of me — I would love to talk to you about it.”
• “Are you open to talking about what turns you on?”
• “I’m really curious about what you like…”

‍Alternately, write a note. Or speak on the phone — which allows an intimate distance. Of course, the earlier you open up this dialogue in a relationship, the easier it is but nevertheless, start today because that is where you are now.

‍Talk more and try more…

The door is now open to dialogue and for you to share your fantasies. A conversation about fantasy is about play, curiosity, transcending the limits of reality and moving beyond your usual boundaries. You can test out fantasies through talking —“Is there something you’ve always wanted to try?”— but you can also test through action. ‍

‍For instance, if you start kissing your partner on the couch, but they are pulling you towards the bedroom, they are showing you what they are comfortable with – this can also raise an opportunity to express your desire to have sex in the living room. Through a combination of action and words, allow yourself to be playful and open. ‍

‍We act, we see and we wait for a response, then we try again. As children well know, you need a playmate to play. If you are shamed or rejected when you start to play a game, you retreat into yourself. So willingness is key. But so is the ability to try again if the door is not opened the first time.

‍Get inspired to create new role play ideas together

I often suggest to couples that they use a third item — a transitional object — such as a book, a movie or an overheard conversation to allow for fantasy and play to enter their sexual experiences. Reading to each other, for instance, can be a way to create desire.

The book Behind Closed Doors offers fantasies from women and men’s point-of-view that can be read aloud. The lens of a movie or book allows for you to ask questions like: “Is that something you’d be interested in trying?” or “Does that turn you on?”‍

Unlock your erotic imagination

In the sanctuary of your erotic mind, you can be anything or anybody you want. So as well as cultivating mutual experiences, you can step into a different body or role inside your own mind – you are free to fantasize when you’re with your partner. You can imagine you are taller, younger, more powerful, less powerful and on it goes. You can go beyond the limits of your own conscience, body type or abilities, particularly when you have a partner you feel safe with.

‍Some common scenarios include, but are definitely not limited to:

• Strangers: a first date, bumping into each other at a party, having a drink at the same bar.
• Service provider: erotic masseuse, delivery person, maintenance.
• Authority figure: doctor/patient, grad student/teacher, boss/employee.
• Artist and subject: painter and muse, photographer and model.

Role play is all about finding what feels fun and sexy to you and your partner. Identify what turns you on — power dynamics, swapping power dynamics, the risk of being caught, mystery, novelty — and create your characters from there.

What’s the last thing you stroke at night before you fall asleep? What’s the first thing you touch in the morning when you wake up? 

Be honest. Is it your phone? And are you holding that phone while there is a person next to you lying in bed with whom you used to talk, cuddle, enjoy quiet time, or make love before falling asleep? Perhaps you’re using social media to escape the terror of our current moment, or you find yourself doom-scrolling into the night, consuming more and more news about Covid-19, protests, and the economy, only to wake up tired, overwhelmed, and unable to talk to your partner about anything else. In a moment of mass virtual connection with the outside world, at the end of day, our internal lives feel a bit lonely. Ironic, isn’t it? 

Loneliness isn’t new, but it’s also no longer just about being socially isolated. Over the last decade, we’ve experienced a new type of loneliness—the loss of connection, trust, and capital while we are next to the person with whom we’re not supposed to be lonely. And the isolation that comes with comparing our lives and relationships with the perfectly-curated social media profiles of our friends and people we don’t even know. Recently, as every other dynamic in our lives has been upended, the loneliness dilemma has intensified. In isolation, we’re spending more time online than ever before, working and desperately trying to keep up with new information. But we’ve also been thrown into the main emotion that underscores loneliness in a brand new way: Ambiguous Loss, a field first created by Pauline Boss. It’s what we feel when a loved one is physically present, but in all other ways absent from a relationship:

• Have you ever experienced your partner half-listening, face alight in the soft blue glow of the phone? You’re talking to them but they’re elsewhere, in the digital vortex.
• How about that lag on the phone when you’re talking to a family member who you suspect is surreptitiously multi-tasking or checking their social media? 
• Do you have a friend to whom you consistently reach out only to hear back a few days later with a feigned wish to catch up, but never a commitment? 
• Are you finding yourself filled with feelings weirdly reminiscent of middle school as you negotiate who you can see—and who you want to see? And who wants to see you?

All of these situations leave us hungry for connection. It’s like eating without being satiated, food without sustenance. At this moment, Ambiguous Loss has created an even greater hunger. We walk the streets, but they’re not the same. We go to our favorite surviving restaurants, but we don’t step foot in the door. Even home life has changed, as my friend Carmen Firan described in the Spring issue of Lettre Internationale: “It was enjoying a read in solitude before, but it is stressful to do now, in isolation, under stress.” That solitude can be unbearable at times now. 

Unable to mourn the mountain of losses we’ve experienced this year, we’re left with unresolved grief. And we expect our relationships to hold the weight of that grief. How many of us are feeling our partnerships collapse under that heaviness? At this point, it may seem easier to connect with our phones than with each other. But what’s to show for it—are we in an apex of loneliness? 

Crisis Can Leave Us Feeling Alone in a Relationship 

We have a knack for delegating uncomfortable feelings. In moments of crisis, our already differing coping mechanisms become more extreme. Worried and stressed, one partner maximizes while the other one, trying to keep things calm, minimizes. The one who worries leaves the soothing to the other. The one who soothes refuses to worry. If we tend to over-activate, the other will under-activate. We see this in our conversations, our planning, our sex lives, our desire to try new things, and more.

When the issues of the outside world come inside our homes, as they always do, it fuels our connection—“we both feel passionate about racial equality”—as much as it fuels our seemingly unbridgeable differences. “She wants to send the kids back to school; I feel it’s not safe and that we need to come up with a way to homeschool them.” This month, I’ve been writing and speaking about how the challenges in the public square often play out at our dinner tables. These ongoing debates become a river of tension that forms the undercurrent of every conversation. 

The year 2020 has been a chaotic whirlwind of prolonged uncertainty. But 2020 is not the sum total of your whole relationship. Your relationship is not the state of the world or politics. It may seem silly, but we have to remind ourselves and our partners that many of our fights right now are playing out at every dinner table in every home. That fundamentally means that we’re not alone. Don’t be afraid to reach out to friends or even to virtual forums like Reddit’s r/rrelationship_advice section, like this woman did. It may surprise some of us to know that our partner feels lonely, too, even if they don’t say so.

When Feeling Alone in a Relationship Becomes the Norm 

What is more difficult are the problems that have always been there, that have only gotten worse in the past few months. For those of us who had already been living on separate continents under the same roof, that separateness has only intensified while living on top of each other 24/7. I’ve said it before: crisis exacerbates existing tensions—within our society, and within our partnerships. If we felt alone in a relationship before, this year has revealed new depths of that loneliness. I frequently hear the varied situations:

• The partner who feels that they have to always initiate every conversation
• The partner who wishes the conversation would end when there’s nothing left to say
• The partner who resists conversations altogether because they’ve never seen anything good come out of them
• The partner experiencing a lack of empathy
• The partner who doesn't feel safe to bring anything up because the other takes it as criticism and responds defensively
• The partner who makes everything about them
• The partner desperate for physical intimacy, experiencing lack of touch as sexual rejection

That last one comes up frequently in the new season of my podcast Where Should We Begin? In “The Chronic Philanderer,” a woman speaks poignantly about what it feels like when her husband, with whom she wanted an intimate relationship, replaces her with another woman. In an episode coming out later this season, a couple reveals that they haven’t touched each other in six months. We discuss the effects it's had on their relationship and how to reconnect. As I shared with Krista Tippett on her podcast On Being, it is so hard to feel lonely when we are next to someone with whom we once did not feel that way, especially when we’re in a relationship in which we may even be a loved and cherished spouse, but remain a famished lover. Being loved and being desired is not the same. Feeling sexually rejected is an emotional loneliness of its own kind.

When we feel alone in a relationship, every room in our home becomes a stage upon which loneliness performs. We see our solitude in the overcooked rice that we begrudgingly made as our partner played video games or took “me time” scrolling Instagram. We see desolation in the bathroom mirror when we wonder if our partner still finds us attractive. In the yard, we see our kids forming bonds with the “fun parent,” whose vetoed petition to take the kids to the playground despite the risk of Covid-19, is now making up an imaginary world for them on the property. The depth of solitude becomes unbearable when we wonder why our partner can so easily access their imagination and their sense of playfulness with others, but not with us. 

Reconnection Requires Going a Different Way

Getting to a new depth of connection means taking a different path to get there. That path is full of hard conversations that I want to help you have. Let’s start here:

• Make an appointment around an activity and set a time limit: “Can we take a fifteen minute walk tonight to talk about some things?”
• Changing the environment by taking a walk together, a bath, or having coffee together in the morning can help shake up the conversational rut.
• Preface the conversation by acknowledging that you know that it might not be pleasant and that you appreciate that they are willing to engage. 
• Mention a productive conversation you had together recently. 
• Keep it to one issue at a time.
• Try listening to them from a place of curiosity and inquisitiveness.
• If your partner indicates that they feel overwhelmed, or if they start to shut down, there is no need to answer “but I didn’t do anything.”
• Just ask them: “tell me more.
• Know that one of the most powerful ways for people not to feel deeply alone is for them to feel listened to.
• And listening doesn’t mean agreeing. Remind yourself and them of this.
• Likewise, acknowledging another person’s experience doesn’t invalidate your own.
• Don’t compete by upstaging their grievances with your own. Ask them to do the same for you.
• Remember that you’re not responsible for making their negative feelings go away in this situation.
• And they’re not responsible for making your negative feelings go away.
• Remind each other that you’re not going to solve all of your issues in one conversation, but every conversation is an important step.
• You can always ask your partner, “is there something I can do to make the conversation more productive?"
• If the conversations feel impossible, try writing to each other. It can make all the difference.

Lastly, remember the context we’re all living in right now. People prone to depression, anxiety, and stress are triggered. People who are experiencing those issues for the first time may not realize or understand why they are feeling and acting the way they are. Instead of approaching the conversation with “You’re making me feel like X,” or “you never do Y,” try “I’m worried about you.” These times require frequent pulse checks with one another. Even the seemingly small act of being present while you check in on a loved one—really being there with them and listening to them—can up new channels of connection. 

We carry the responsibility of our desire. Why? Because desire is an expression of our free will. Nobody can force us to want. So if it is ours, then it is also our responsibility to activate it. Freedom always comes with responsibility. We can turn ourselves on and we can turn ourselves off. We can have thoughts that will instantly shut us down and thoughts that will keep us open to possibility and curiosity. We can enliven ourselves and we can numb ourselves. Eroticism blooms from the tension between excitation and inhibition and manifests in the things we say and do, by how we act, and by how we think. We tend to think of eroticism as a sexual state shared by two or more people, but really, it starts with the individual. And it requires practice. 

What is Eroticism? 

Eroticism isn’t sex; it’s sexuality transformed by the human imagination. It’s the thoughts, dreams, anticipation, unruly impulses, and even painful memories which make up our vast erotic landscapes. It’s energized by our entire human experience, layered with early childhood experiences of touch, play, or trauma, which later become cornerstones of our erotic life. We know that even things that give us the most pleasure can come from the most painful sources. Eroticism is not comfortable and neat. It unveils inner struggles, emotional tensions, a mix of excitement and anxiety.

How do we access it? 

I often talk about how couples who are plagued by sexual boredom find themselves there because of a lack of vulnerability with their partners. They prioritize getting it done over exploring the hidden desires that turn them on. The same can be said for the individual. When we’re on our own, we mostly know what gets “the job” done. Porn. Toys. Intense focus on a specific sweet spot followed by a quick finish. But to truly experience the benefits of eroticism, it can’t be treated as a job. So why are we so quick to punch in and punch out? Are we afraid of what may happen when we slow down and really spend some quality time with ourselves?

Now more than ever, we are our own panopticons, experiencing social control from the inside. We measure and judge ourselves, at times experiencing our body as a prison rather than a chateau full of rooms to lingeringly explore. And if we struggle with being inside our bodies, why would we take the time to explore them? Or for that matter, how could we ever feel safe to invite anyone else in? I'm not talking just about penetration. I'm talking about entering our personhood, our dreams, who we are, our heart and soul. Many of us are so self-critical that we forget these internal wonders. 

‍Erotic self-care begins with diminishing our inner-critic and giving ourselves simply the permission to feel beautiful, to enjoy our own company, to be more compassionate and realistic with ourselves without vacillating between excess and repression. I’m thinking of the many people who have described using their fingers to swipe the multitude of possibilities—better kept fantasy than reality—when those same fingers could be used pleasuring themselves. 

I turn myself off when… 

Incorporating eroticism into a self-care plan is basically about loosening the noose of a highly-developed cultural mandate about self-control so that we may explore what brings vibrancy and vitality into our lives. Whether we seek to explore eroticism on our own or with a partner, it always starts at the source: our self. 

Drawing on the work of the late therapist, Gina Ogden, I like to ask patients to complete this sentence: “I turn myself off when…” The answers are endless. “I turn myself off when…I check email before bed; when I worry about the kids; when I stress about work or the state of my finances; when I overeat or don't exercise; when I don't take care of myself.” Notice that, in this list, there is very little that is specifically sexual. What turns us off are the things that sap the energy and liveliness out of us.

I turn myself on when… 

The same is true in the reverse. When I ask people to complete the sentence, “I turn myself on when….” the answers usually have to do with taking time for self-care: going into nature; dancing; pampering; connecting to body and sensuality, nurturing. We turn ourselves on when we energize ourselves, when we are embodied and focused—not on any particular goal, such as having an orgasm, but on the present moment. Maybe it’s the sensation of a small square of dark chocolate melting on our tongue. Or the moment when, in the shower, we start noticing the hot water on the nape of the neck, underarm, and chest. There are so many parts of our bodies that we never think to wash, check, or touch.

Sometimes we ignore these parts of us because somewhere along the line, we began to shut them down. Maybe we were deeply wounded and don’t trust ourselves to open up again. Maybe we feel like we no longer deserve to be attractive because we no longer have the fit body or full head of hair we once had. Or perhaps illness has transformed us, confiscated our breasts, uterus, testicles or another part of us, that makes us feel unsexy or unattractive. Sometimes we are in mourning or feel guilty, as if we don't deserve to be sensual or awakened because we've just lost somebody. Sometimes we’re just annoyed. From the stresses of the everyday, to resentments, to deeper wounds, there are a lot of reasons for people to feel out of touch with their erotic selves. Often, shutting down feels like the only thing we can control. Incorporating eroticism into our self-care plans can alter our relationship with control and transform our state of being.

It’s about being receptive, willing, open, and responsive.

These are very important verbs in the realm of the erotic. It's not about saying yes or no to everything; it’s about a willing to be influenced, receptive, curious. When we’re shut down for a prolonged period of time, we don't feel open or responsive. We want others to make us want but that doesn’t work so well, remember? Wanting is something that we fully own. No one can make us want except for ourselves.

Desire and self-worth go hand in hand. In order to want, we need to feel deserving, an idea Susan Rubin Suleiman explored in her book “The Female Body in Western Culture.” Sadly, way too often when we don’t feel attractive, we can’t imagine that somebody else sees us with different eyes than the way we see ourselves. And we certainly don’t feel like we deserve their sensual touch or our own, for that matter. This is one of the ways that self-rejection speaks. I want to encourage us to change the script: I deserve to take a break. I deserve to stop working. I deserve to lay down. I deserve to make myself feel good. In that healthy sense of entitlement, we don't produce anything; there’s nothing to measure. It's a radiant interlude, a decision to notice what we generally don't pay attention to, to open ourselves up to receive and respond. 

Widening the Realm of the Senses

When we widen the realm of the senses, we invite the world in. I love to ask people the following questions. Answer them for yourself:

• What's your favorite temperature of water? 
• What's your favorite temperature generally outside? 
• How do you respond to sun, wind, air?
• Are you aware of what touches your skin, of what hovers around you? 
• When you wash yourself, what’s your relationship to the body that you’re washing?
• Do you enjoy touching yourself? And I’m not talking about genitals only, but pleasing and soothing yourself. 
• When you drink coffee or tea are you just gobbling or savoring? 
• Are you aware of your experiences in sensory, sensual, and physical ways? 
• Which is the sense with which you make love the most? 
• Which sense do you barely notice or use?

Incorporating Eroticism into Your Self-Care Plan

Self-care isn’t just about facemasks and mindfulness, though those are great, too. It’s about tuning into our bodies and letting them teach us what we like, what we don’t like, and what we don’t know about ourselves yet. There are so many ways to incorporate eroticism into our self-care plan, from integrating different types of touch—energetic, affectionate, sexual, and erotic—to exploring massage, stroking, tickling, and kinky playing. Jaiya, a sexological bodyworker who has joined us on Sessions, does a magnificent job of explaining the phases of touch, starting with hovering to healing and beyond. I also recommend Chen Lizra’s series “Somatic Intelligence,” in which she teaches Sabrosura, which is rooted in the Cuban art of seduction. Lizra teaches confidence, body awareness, and how to keep the tension through attitude movement. Try this: let your fingers roll from your elbow to your wrist in the absolute slowest way you can. Then go even slower.
‍
For me personally, dancing has been my thing. We can cry when we paint, listen to music, read, or write, but we can't cry when we dance. The body won't let us; it can't move while it weeps. For others, it may be the self-soothing that comes from self-massage, that simultaneous giving and receiving. Some of us find eroticism across multiple practices such as tantra and yoga. Being in our bodies is not about performance or results. It’s about coming home. It's a pleasurable, sensual connection that reminds us that life is worth living even when we are in pain or struggling. If we want to be able to connect better with our bodies, we must invite ourselves to explore different experiences around our senses, and around our sensuality. Befriending our bodies and making peace with them is the beginning of one of the best relationships we can ever have: the relationship with ourselves.

Everyone comes to work with a relationship legacy, a resume if you will. They bring the hidden histories of their other work relationships, as well as the ones that they grew up with at home. Do they reach out when they have a problem or do they go it alone? How does that impact their approach to delegating, asking for help, collaborating, and competing with others? When people say you should bring your whole self to work, my response is always this: They already do. But it’s in conscious and unconscious ways. When we begin to recognize these unseen dynamics, we can learn the tools that will help us understand and manage them. 

I’m not alone in this view. Stanford Business School now offers a Group Therapy course, required reading for which includes The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Why? According to Noam Wasserman, a professor at Harvard Business School, 65% of businesses fail due to relationship breakdowns between partners, a dynamic I explored in my recent First Round Review article. This is why, in addition to my therapy practice, I also operate as a kind of Chief Relationship Officer for a number of startups. It isn’t unusual for them to call me to facilitate difficult conversations, just as a couple in a marital crisis might. Because the reality is, being in a business partnership is a lot like being in a marriage. ‍

In fact, no matter where you are in the hierarchy, if you work, you usually have a “work family.” And there’s never been so much pressure on these collegial relationships. As I shared at SXSW this year, we used to go to work to make money; now we go to work to make meaning. We want to evolve, find self-fulfillment, and figure out, as HR pro Netta Nahum says, not what we’re going to do next, but who we’re going to be next. And we don’t get there alone. 

Whether I’m consulting for a company or conducting sessions between colleagues for my new podcast “How’s Work?,” I want to meet the people before I meet their problems. When they talk about their fights, I look for the hidden story causing the contracted state, in which everything is viewed through the lens of the problem. What is the unspoken issue that hides behind the manifest complaint? Not surprisingly, when a situation affects us deeply, it’s because it resonates with something else we have experienced before. If Mitch is micromanaging, it could be because his brother always managed to get away with doing less. If Jane feels consistently invisible despite ample recognition, perhaps it’s because it’s not the first time she has felt unseen. If Oscar is acting like a “control freak,” maybe he was screwed over before. In all of these situations, there’s more than the two people in the room. 

Once we know what causes the problem, we have to look at what maintains it. It’s an ecological perspective. I’ve seen relationships break down to the point where colleagues are barely communicating, patching over small cracks instead of making structural repairs to build a stronger foundation. As couples therapy researcher Howard Markman has explained, there are hidden dimensions at play underneath the majority of interpersonal issues, whether at home or at work. I tend to focus on these three:

• Power and Control
• Care and Closeness
• Respect and Recognition

These are not neat categories that can be cleanly separated. There’s overlap and issues often bleed into each other. But thinking of these three broader dimensions as a framework will help you get to the bottom of your own work conflicts. So, what do they mean?

1. Power and control: it’s about money, status, and who has the final word.

Who’s priorities matter more? 
Who gets to make the decisions? 
Who stays late and grinds harder? 
Who takes the high-level meetings?

Conflict in the workplace rooted in power and control looks like:

• A co-founder complaining about how decisions are made unilaterally or how their counterpart hoards information.
• An employee harbors ambivalence about the company’s success, threatens to leave, or takes on secret side gigs that show they’re not “all in.” 
• Colleagues argue over who is more essential. Whether it’s the engineer building the product or the sales and marketing whiz running the business, these discussions often boil down to who needs who more. “I can do this without you, but you can't do this without me" attitudes often pervade fights that fit into this category.

Go Deeper:  

On Episode 5 of “How’s Work?,” we meet two co-founders, college friends who built a successful communications company together. A decade later, they’re barely speaking to each other. The company is on the rise; the relationship is sinking. In our session, we got to the heart of their impasse when one of them says: “When I was running the show and you were kind of secondary, I included you in everything. And now that it's your turn at the helm, instead of valuing our friendship, you're trying to inch me out.” An example of this was when one of them was left out of a company picture. Ouch. When you are deleted, you’re powerless.

If you’re dealing with this, try: 

Starting with your own reaction. Blame and defense comprise the language of power and control. In some instances, one person puts the other down in order to elevate themselves, maintaining their power and cementing their control. Notice and remove the belligerent language that escalates the conflict. Don’t start with “you’re wrong” or “you did this.” Find a middle ground and go from there.

2. Care and Closeness - it always comes back to broken trust.

Do you have my back? 
Are we in this together? 
I thought I could count on you.‍

When trust is broken, it shatters all of our assumptions about the relationship and our value in it. I often ask co-founders this telling question: “What hurts you more? The fact that he did it in the first place—or that he did it without you?” The former is an issue of power, the latter is an issue of care and closeness. 

Conflict in the workplace rooted in care and closeness look like:

• A colleague takes meetings on her own, even though her colleague wanted to be there.
• A collaborator feels like her input isn’t valued in the decision-making process.
• One partner levels accusations that the other is selfish.
• An employee fears that he will be edged out, that his manager will hire someone else to replace him.
• One team member values the relationship more, while the other values the business more.

Go Deeper: 

On Episode 3 of “How’s Work?,” we meet a mother-son duo who, together, run a real estate company. The mother started from scratch; enabling her son to go to business school and build upon what she created. When he joins the company, he thinks he knows better. Eventually, after he matures and recognizes his arrogance, they get to the real issues: that she will not be around forever. Listen to this counseling session to see how issues of care and closeness play out in real life.

If you’re dealing with this, try: 

Practicing reflective listening. Acknowledge, validate, and empathize. Acknowledging that what the other person said makes sense. Reflect back, don’t rebut. Take responsibility for your actions; it softens the adversarial stance of “either/or” in favor of “both/and.” Instead of waving their flag and insisting that they’re right, they recognize the validity of the other person’s point of view. A simple “I can see where you’re coming from” can be deeply validating. Once you take responsibility for your part, others can do the same. You can stop pointing at each other and look at yourselves.

3. Respect and Recognition: it’s about integrity and self-worth.

Are my contributions being valued? 
Are you taking all the credit? 
Do I matter?

Conflict in the workplace rooted in respect and recognition look like:

• One of the team leads never gives praise, only hands out criticism.
• Employees feel like they need the company more than the company needs them.
• The founder is rallying the employees based around a mission they themselves do not demonstrate. 
• Language of empowerment seems to be covering up exploitation. 
• Employees are given goals they can only meet by cutting corners.

Go Deeper: 

On Episode 4 of “How’s Work?,” we meet two creatives who are reeling from the trauma of company-wide lay-offs, and are struggling to move past how insignificant it has made them feel. They feel alienated and resentful, and keep oversharing these frustrations publicly. And their trauma is preventing them from starting anew. 

If you’re dealing with this, try: 

Initiating a reset. If you are personally causing others to feel undervalued, take every opportunity you can to dispel the myth of the lone genius. Anticipate what your actions might symbolize to someone else and recognize the validity of others reactions. And if you’re the one feeling small, take stock of where you are. Sometimes it’s good to know when it’s time to leave. Regardless of if you have a choice in the matter, it’s time to start engaging in meaningful conversations with key people. Whether it’s your current manager or an external ally with influence, try to have these conversations in person, rather than on Slack or email. There’s a world of possibilities out there. Don’t limit yourself. ‍

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Take it from me: people spend so much time in therapy sessions talking about work. It’s time to acknowledge the roots of our work-related frustrations and become active in healing them. When you get down to it, conflict in the workplace affects our business’s culture, productivity, and profitability. Do you recognize any of these hidden dimensions in your own work experiences? Maybe it’s time to go deeper.