Virginia Satir
Four stances under pressure
Placate, blame, compute, distract
Satir on communication stances
In a fight people turn into somebody else. This is the list of who they turn into.
What actually happened?
Under pressure, Satir found, people fall back into placating, blaming, being super-reasonable or distracting. Placating gives up the self, blaming gives up the other, super-reasonable gives up both and keeps the logic, distracting gives up the subject. All four are automatic and all four avoid what is actually happening. She proposed a fifth, congruence, holding self, other and situation at once, and insisted it is trained rather than inherited. She would also stand a family up as a sculpture: who is near whom, who has their back turned. Set it up, she said, and everyone sees it at once.
The stances set each other off
Blaming usually pulls placating or super-reasonable out of the other person; distracting pulls harder blame. So escalation is not a question of who went too far, it is two stances locking together. Reading the pair is more use than establishing who started.
The more carefully you set out the logic, the louder he gets: that is super-reasonable meeting blame, and neither of you is in the room.
Placating has the best-hidden bill
Placating costs least in the moment, which is why it so often passes for maturity. What it does is take your own needs out of the account, and the account gets settled somewhere else: in a sudden detonation, or in years of quiet distance.
Fine, whatever you want, for years, and then one small thing sets off the whole backlog, and the other person genuinely cannot see where it came from.
Congruence is not saying whatever you feel
Congruence holds three things together: what I feel, where the other person is, and what this occasion is. Drop any one and it is not congruence. Only yourself is venting, only the other is placating, only the occasion is being super-reasonable.
Contradicted by a junior colleague in public, the congruent move is neither crushing it there nor pretending it did not happen, but saying your piece to him afterwards.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the conflict starts and both of you turn into somebody else.
Ask first: which stance did I fall back into? Which one is he in? Are the two of them setting each other off?
Where it goes wrong: using the four as labels for people. You are just a blamer is itself blaming.
Lines to keep
Under pressure people placate, blame, go super-reasonable, or distract.
Congruence holds three things: myself, the other person, the situation.
A family's real structure cannot be said. Stand it up and everyone sees.
Same situation, other people are asking
I say yes, then spend the week regretting it.I keep managing other people's moods and calling it kindness.I can't stop pleasing people · all 2 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.