How to say the unsaid

A tactic from a hostage negotiator proves useful af

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I find a lot of concepts in therapy useful, but the language surrounding them feels feminine. As a result, they don't resonate with me.

One of those concepts is "intuition". There’s loads of advice out there for women to trust their intuition. Often this advice is in the context of personal safety or avoiding bad relationships. Those are not chief concerns for me, so I tend to ignore the concept.

But there’s a type of intuition I do envy when I see it: saying the unsaid. 

We’ve all experienced times when there’s tension in a room. Our intuition tells us there’s a truth that’s not being acknowledged. Because we want to be liked or be polite or because we just don’t think it’s that big of a deal, we don’t say anything. And yet, we appreciate it when someone does say the thing out loud. It cuts the tension and focuses the conversation where it should be.

It is also hard to do. The most common example of failing to "say the unsaid" in my life is feeling fear, anger, sadness, or shame and not saying anything about it. Take two examples:

• I forget my brother's birthday which makes me feel shame. I act sheepish around him as a result instead of talking to him about it.

• My boss is pissed off for some reason and is speaking curtly to me. Instead of asking him about it I respond by speaking curtly back to him.

Emotions are everywhere. We sense them, consciously or not, throughout the day, and only rarely address them directly.

My hot take is that confronting these situations by saying the unsaid should be a core skill for men. Saying the unsaid helps people feel safe, and most men want to create safety. The only issue is that it requires building emotional intuition, and how to go about doing that is not clear.

How to say the unsaid

Luckily the solution is simple: label the emotion. Here's how that's done.

If you’re the one who’s feeling some type of way: Identify the emotion and say it out loud. Examples:

• If you’re feeling shameful because you forgot to call your brother on his birthday, tell him that. Don't give him a whole story. Just say "I feel ashamed because I forgot to call you". If you can’t tell him directly, tell whomever you're with this is how you're feeling. The important bit is to say it out loud to someone.

• If you’re with your partner who does something that sets you off and now you feel like throwing an adult tantrum, be a man and say you need to throw an adult tantrum. I've been on the receiving end of this. It is impossible to react with anger to someone saying “I need to throw an adult tantrum.” Instead I was way more receptive to hear what they had to say.

In the heat of the moment, saying "I feel X" is hard to do. I’m not often conscious of whatever emotions are beneath the surface. I have things to do most times of most days and I’m focused on that. 

The way to practice this is by "checking in" with yourself every day. Stop whatever you’re doing, take a deep breath, and name whatever emotion is present for you. Do it as part of a morning routine. Do it during lunch. After a few weeks of doing that every day, you build an intuition for what emotions are commonly present. 

Or even better: do it with someone else. Checkin with your partner or roommate after work. In the men’s group nonprofit I volunteer with, All Kings, we do this at the beginning of every meeting. It’s interesting to see how my checkins change throughout the course of a day.

If you sense someone else is feeling some type of way: Label the emotion and the reason you think they’re upset. Tell them it “it sounds/feels/seems like you’re X due to Y.” Examples:

• If your partner feels upset because of something that happened last night, tell them: “It seems like you’re upset from last night.”

• If your Uber driver is visibly heated and you have no idea why, throw them a "tough day?"

A few notes:

• This is different from asking: “why are you upset?” or saying “I don’t want you to be upset”. The goal is to label and let them respond - not to insert your opinion.

• You don't need to be right when labeling the emotion. Make a guess and be deferential in tone. They'll tell you if you're right or wrong, and the conversation and trust builds from there.

The specifics of this tactic come from former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss. He calls this practice “labeling” and as he puts it, labeling negatives diffuses negative feelings. Every time. It is the #1 tactic he relies on for diffusing tension of any sort.

Chris recommends practicing labeling by thinking of 4 or so labels you could commonly use, and hand writing them down. This will make them more accessible in your head when they’re actually of use. He describes the exercise here. 

The grand idea and secret agenda

And if there’s a grand idea to this post, it’s this: feelings have information. Chances are we learned to ignore emotions in ourselves and other people to get stuff done. Somewhere on the road to adulthood, that tactic stopped serving us. All of a sudden, emotional information becomes useful to solving everyday problems, and this constrains us.

Labeling is a way to build that muscle of using emotional information. It is extremely useful, and we should treat it as such. In my opinion, labeling deserves its seat as a core practice like going to the gym.

And if there’s a secret agenda to this post, it’s this: I want terminology for emotional development that resonates with me and other men. I don’t care about trusting my intuition because it implies I’m prioritizing my own safety, which is not a chief sensitivity for me. But skills that allow me to create safety for others? I’m interested in that. Even if, in practice, they’re the exact same thing.

I have a feeling these terms are more likely to come from hostage negotiators than therapists. I’m cool with that.

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JD is first and foremost a husband and father of two.

He is the founder of the mental health ecosystem, Fragile Moments, which seeks to create the tools and community for the mind that advances the conversation toward of healing.

He is also the charismatic host of the podcast "Dads Cry Too" from the Montessori Dad publication,  an authentic parenting story told through the eyes of a Montessori dad to educate and support others on their parenting journey.