I have to say it. So here's a question from Johnny. He says, Hi, David. I'm really enjoying the series and the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. I had a query about disarming. It seems to me that it could be easy to fall into the trap of the unexpressed emotion model. I imagine he might be talking about the hidden emotion. Yeah. When using disarming, I could imagine myself agreeing with what I find valid in the other person's point of view and avoiding expressing my own anger or sadness, etc. I noticed in your example, you did express your anger with the borderline personality disorder client. And it sounded like it didn't undermine the disarming. But I would really like to hear more of your thoughts on this. How do we use disarming and avoid unexpressed emotion? It seems to me that if I lead with I feel angry and upset, this might undermine the disarming technique.

But this might be my lack of skill in expressing anger and sadness. Well, I'm sure you can comment on this one too. It's such a great question. But I emphasize the importance of using all the Five Secrets, not necessarily with every single response. But that you would want to include I feel statements when you're using the disarming technique or thought and feeling it. But the other wise, you'll sound mechanical or phony or manipulative. So absolutely sharing your own feelings is a part of it. In fact, I think of it as EAR, empathy, assertiveness, respect. Empathy is hearing what the other person has to say, acknowledging their thoughts, their feelings, finding truth in what they're saying. Assertiveness is sharing your own feelings with I feel statements in a diplomatic and respectful way. And then the stroke in is conveying warmth and respect, even in the heat of battle. A helpful thing that a colleague mentioned to me once when we were jogging on the weekend and around Haverford College in Philadelphia. It was just a simplistic little thing, but I'd never heard it. It was that you can share angry feelings or you can attack with angry feelings. And that's the whole thing. Are you going to share the way you feel in a respectful, vulnerable way? Or you're going to act them out by attacking the other person? And if you act out your angry feelings with sarcasm, defensiveness, arguing, put down, it will escalate. But if you share your feelings while using stroke and disarming and empathy, then it can make your communication far more human and deep and real.

Yeah.