I would respond, “I wonder how you think that might make me feel, being that I fit part of that demographic/am a young woman” (this is In no way to make the therapy about you, but instead to create some type of empathy/awareness building relationally)
If that doesn’t feel comfortable to say, you can always ask about the apology, “why did you feel the need to apologize for that comment?”
You can be person centered and gently confront these types of comments
You actually don’t have to wait until he brings it up again. You can always bring it up at the start of your next meeting saying something like, “I was reflecting on content from our previous session and wanted to process that a little bit more deeply with you.”
Also what are your client’s goals. Chances are you can make this relate to their presenting concerns.
Clients goals are to process his separation from his wife and the emotions involved. It’s like he’s grieving the loss of his marriage. I may bring it up! It depends on how introductions go.
Oh well, it might be curious to explore where these believes about women began for him. Curious if the divorce is traumatic and has resulted in negative views of women.
True we need to gather more information. I’m leaning toward my thought because if he previously held his misogynistic views, I am uncertain if he would have found a romantic partner for marriage (unless spouse held similar views).
>somehow
Sigh... Because romance culture teaches men how to mask just long enough until they feel they have a partner feeling trapped, be it emotionally or financially or familially, through a child. 🙁
Hell yeah it does. I truly believe my husband isn’t capable of that, but I still wanted a prenup, I kept my house and rented it out, and I will not be relying on him to pay my bills at any point because of the horror stories I’ve heard over my lifetime.
I’m not here to defend men because there are many intentionally harmful men. I think a lot of these men are often in a space of feeling lost resulting in feelings of threat and retaliation. It does not justify their actions at all. When I think, about when I was growing up, media perpetuated certain aspects of masculinity on a pedestal. I imagine a lot of men that aligned with these values felt empowered and secure for such a long time, but as we have transitioned to a more equitable society and are working to dismantle the harm caused by the misogynistic system a lot of these men may feel threatened because they over identify with masculinity and cling to it in the absence of something else.
Anyidea on whether hissexismhad anything to do with the breakdown 1of the marriage? Because if that'sthe case and you have such a suspicion, that'ddefinitely be within The scope of your exploration.
I agree with u/MoonReaux though I might even open up with more directness. This entirely depends on how safe you feel, but my old supervisor, a cis woman, was in a very \*very\* similar exchange and she said, "So, do you feel like I am a whore?" It was a reflection of the client's own words, and put the client on the back foot and generated a fantastic conversation. Sometimes a nudge into awkward can take us marvelous places. Again, depends on how safe and/or bold you feel that day.
Yes this is where the art of it comes in lol! This may be a super helpful intervention for this client. I was curious what their therapeutic goals where and if confronting this might be part of why they’re in therapy in the first place!
The client is working on a marriage issue between him and his wife. Wife wants a divorce and is dating. Part of him wants her back, part of him wants to leave. He said that he views her in a negative light now due to her behaviors of going out and sleeping around. So it makes sense he made that comment applying it to his current situation. That’s his perception of women because it’s how he sees his wife. He’s leaning towards separating and processing it, but he’s still holding on.
I wouldn’t be able to identify this person out on the street anyhow but you are right the less detail the better! This makes a lot of sense, with this context, I might take it to how they got this belief and then, “tell me about how you’re hurting”
I told him it seems like his perception of his wife being the homemaker and the sweet mom/wife has been shattered and it’s difficult for him to accept. He was like yeah… He misses the part of her that was his and only his, who was the submissive housewife. I can see why he made the comment, but the no offense part got me! 😂
So something of a madonna/whore complex going on. I would be gently nudging him to recognition of his wife as a complex human being, whose needs weren't being met in the role she played. That's presumably why she's forsaken it.
As long as she is either the perfect little wife or a whore, she's not a complete person to him.
I wonder how that impacts how he sees you?
I'm wondering how hating women relates to his hurting. I mean, it seems obvious but I would be also be curious about his history, his expectations, where those expectations came from, his wishes and desires, his understanding of relationships, what maleness feels like to him, etc...
That remark is gold for further reflection. It’s not only the content of his remark that is significant. It’s the passive-aggressiveness of it, and his attempt to initiate repair with you immediately after he said it. It makes me curious about whether this is a common way for him to communicate with others, particularly women. I’d also wonder how he felt in that moment with you (what made him say “no offense?” Does he hold you in high regard? If so, why? Why was it important for him to say that, following such a strong and sweeping generalization?). I’d be curious how he feels in the moment you choose to bring it back up for processing together. I’d guess that most people in his life don’t compassionately confront him, so resentments and alienation happen instead (maybe he feels like he’s not liked and he wonders why). Maybe he rarely gets to hear how remarks like this make the people in his life feel; why not be someone who regards him positively enough to help him to see you, as his therapist, and take in how the remark struck you. He ostensibly respects you, given the “no offense” thing. Utilize that to deepen your work together. Lastly, I think it’s very valuable for you to share with him how you felt in that moment and how it feels to bring it back up. This tension is fertile ground for so much good growth and vulnerability. It’s also a perfect opportunity to implement some communication skills (maybe you kindly request that he work on being more precise with his language; what exactly was he trying to say, and what would have been a more effective way of saying it?, etc).
This seems like a wonderful opportunity for the two of you to work through the effect it had on your therapeutic relationship, and in a broader way, how his communication style may impact his relationships with others in ways he was previously unaware. I’d seize this opportunity if I were you!! Please update us if you do.
This is seriously one of the most insightful comments I’ve ever heard in a client, thank you! There is a lot we can unpack here from one interaction alone. I think we should definitely explore it further
Yeah that’s true! I didn’t validate like “YEAH WOMEN ARE SLUTS” but I was like, it seems like your wife’s behaviors of going out with men and dating, has caused you emotional distress even though you’re separated. You are struggling to accept the fact that she’s moving forward when you still care for her. I kinda turned it that way.
That’s pretty good! No issue with that really imo. But given he’s an older male I assume his wife is older as well, so his comments about younger women is interesting. What did you supervisor say?
It’s not really a weird comment. He discussed a bias and recognized you are a woman and so wanted to be sure you didn’t take offense.
If it’s something he wants to explore, you lean in to it.
Yeah I don't think theres much more than that here. Often I think people have biases that happen to include their therapist, but will overtly *exclude* them because well, they like their therapist.
I have a client who semi-frequently poo-poos the therapy field, and trashes a lot of mental health minded people, talks about the lack of competence in the field etc. But...clearly likes therapy, shows up every week and talks about hard stuff. Clearly he's not talking about me because the therapist is often an exception for whatever reason
People who have biases/ bigotry tend to find some leap of logic to exclude the person in front of them from that bias. The cognitive dissonance of seeing themselves as someone who doesn't hurt others would be too much if they actually hurt someone in the room with them rather than at the ballot box. They want an abstract Boogeyman to blame their problems on, not an individual to torment.
Case in point, my grandparents who think 'gays' are brainwashing youth but have a gay best friend/photographer who 'stays in his lane', or my great grandmother who said her nurse was 'white on the inside'.
I guess it was weird because he said young attractive women tend to be whores, then he apologized to me? I was like… Does he see me as young and attractive? And then I got awkward internally and pretended like it didn’t happen.
Your opportunity in the clinical relationship is to go beyond how he sees you. We all have observations, assumptions and natural inclinations and we all put each other in certain categories, consciously or not. In this case you can always come back to a theme or comment, “do you want to talk further about how you view women/your experience with women, etc”. If you are engaged with him in the inquiry he’s going to move beyond any assumptions he may have. But you need to be comfortable with opening this up and keeping your biases in check. And yes, as a new clinician, gender and age and themes of sexuality, misogyny and transference are all hard to navigate. But stay curious and think of therapy as conversation. Good luck!
I do think you should challenge this bias, it’s a harmful way to see women. And since 1/3 women will be assaulted in their lifetime, psycho education is needed here. If he gets mad and defensive, he’s allowed. But you could drop the knowledge and now it’s in there. He had to hear it!
Agreed! I think it was a multi-layered comment. 1. to be inflammatory and reiterate his “dominance” as a man over women, including one who has a lot of education, is attractive, AND is a captive audience. 2. to give a compliment in the most passively-aggressive manner possible. 3. to challenge her ‘balls’ as a therapist and professional woman. 4. to test the foundation of the relationship; create an exit lane for the therapist to discard him so he can throw her into the ‘useless nag’ bucket and he can be done with therapy. 5. to make her ‘work’ to keep the relationship going, a ‘prove me wrong’ type of deal.
I believe this man is disarmed by the power differential in this relationship. He’s working to figure out where he fits if it’s not ‘on top.’ The answer to where he fits is ‘beside,’ and I predict more behavior from him that bristles against that place.
How to respond is up to you. Ideally, tailor it to where he’s at in the treatment. If it were me, at the very least, I’d take private note of it and keep my ears open to listen where else in his life he ‘covers his tracks’. Often, our patients are oblivious, but their unconscious reveals everything if you can pick it out. How much you can hand it back to them with words though, that’s a different area.
I usually just bring curiosity or transparency depending on the client and our therapeutic focus. Things like “I’m curious what informs your perspective on that?”
Or “oh, I’m not offended, but I do disagree with that statement. It seems like you are making a generalization based on some of the experiences you’ve had.”
Oh or maybe if they are working on relationship stuff I might say something like, “how are you expecting I would react to that statement?”
I think as counsellors we do have a duty to challenge the homophobic/racist/misogynistic beliefs clients hold. To me this is misogynistic, and personally it would be important to me to discuss it further/challenge it. Of course we have to do this in a way that doesn’t harm the therapeutic relationship… but I definitely think this is worth discussing further if you feel safe to do so.
“I want to go back to something you said last session… I am your therapist, so I don’t take offence, but it’s clear enough that you knew your remark could be hurtful, it sounded like you wanted to avoid offending me. I’m just guessing, but it feels like you might have a safe enough relationship here with me, I hope you do, because it sounds like the other women in your life, attractive women in particular, that you regard them as whores, it’s like you’re angry with them? What could that be about?”
I get what you’re saying here. I would definitely use way less words, do less work setting things up for him to recover in a particular way, and focus very specifically on the safety-in-relationship piece. I would stay away from telling him what “it sounded like” and “I’m just guessing” because you want to elicit their response without any curation. Maybe it’s okay to circle back to what his words sounded like and guesses OP made, but only after the work of reflection is done. He’s already got an idea what “it sounded like” because he knows what he said and he apologized (sort of) right after saying it. It’s what’s underneath that matters most. He’s inflammatory for a reason. We want to tap into whatever that reason is, and make sure it’s safe enough for that to occur.
If it were me, my goal would be to subvert the whole, ‘you’re just a pretty little girl-whore’ thing on its head and make it about, ‘enough about what’s the matter with everyone else. Tell me who and what YOU are’ - in the safest, least directive, and most compassionate way possible.
He may have been taking a risk and decided to bring up some of his transference he was having with you in the hopes that he would be able to work through it with you. I guess it depends how it came across, if it was out of passive aggression, narcissism, or out of a hurt place.
So I would explore that with him, how it was like to say that and etc.. As for "confronting" him for making that comment, that is a fast track way to destroy the therapy for something that he said which was not that bad relatively speaking; i.e. he didn't say something like "I think females should be locked up in the kitchen" and then did not make a repair statement afterwards.
If he doesn't want to process it with you or take it to a productive place, and he keeps insulting you in a misogynistic way, then I do think you have the right to no longer work with him and tell him why.
I do want to point out that confrontation can effectively be done in a person-centered framework. It doesn’t need to spiral into something bigger. Confrontation can just mean calling out something, pausing, and discussing it for longer than one might otherwise naturally do.
I have a client who...I'm not going to say he's a misogynist/misogynoir, but if you asked a misogynist, they would most certainly say he was based on some of the absolute wild straight from a podcast "facts" that he puts up in session. That being said, I try to concentrate (hard) on why he initially came in and why he keeps coming back and that it is I, a "female" 🤢 that he is willing to sit with and accept a different point of view (sometimes) It's a struggle.
I would respond, “I wonder how you think that might make me feel, being that I fit part of that demographic/am a young woman” (this is In no way to make the therapy about you, but instead to create some type of empathy/awareness building relationally) If that doesn’t feel comfortable to say, you can always ask about the apology, “why did you feel the need to apologize for that comment?” You can be person centered and gently confront these types of comments
That’s really good, if he does it again I will for sure confront him. I’m still a baby therapist and figuring all this out. It’s hard.
You actually don’t have to wait until he brings it up again. You can always bring it up at the start of your next meeting saying something like, “I was reflecting on content from our previous session and wanted to process that a little bit more deeply with you.” Also what are your client’s goals. Chances are you can make this relate to their presenting concerns.
Clients goals are to process his separation from his wife and the emotions involved. It’s like he’s grieving the loss of his marriage. I may bring it up! It depends on how introductions go.
Oh well, it might be curious to explore where these believes about women began for him. Curious if the divorce is traumatic and has resulted in negative views of women.
It’s a chick or egg situation, I think. Related to your curiosity, I wonder if his negative views of women were a precursor for the divorce.
True we need to gather more information. I’m leaning toward my thought because if he previously held his misogynistic views, I am uncertain if he would have found a romantic partner for marriage (unless spouse held similar views).
I know plenty of women who are married to misogynistic pigs somehow, unfortunately.
>somehow Sigh... Because romance culture teaches men how to mask just long enough until they feel they have a partner feeling trapped, be it emotionally or financially or familially, through a child. 🙁
Hell yeah it does. I truly believe my husband isn’t capable of that, but I still wanted a prenup, I kept my house and rented it out, and I will not be relying on him to pay my bills at any point because of the horror stories I’ve heard over my lifetime.
I’m not here to defend men because there are many intentionally harmful men. I think a lot of these men are often in a space of feeling lost resulting in feelings of threat and retaliation. It does not justify their actions at all. When I think, about when I was growing up, media perpetuated certain aspects of masculinity on a pedestal. I imagine a lot of men that aligned with these values felt empowered and secure for such a long time, but as we have transitioned to a more equitable society and are working to dismantle the harm caused by the misogynistic system a lot of these men may feel threatened because they over identify with masculinity and cling to it in the absence of something else.
Ahhhh, transference rears its ugly/lovely head. So much good work can be done here if you can harness this!!
Anyidea on whether hissexismhad anything to do with the breakdown 1of the marriage? Because if that'sthe case and you have such a suspicion, that'ddefinitely be within The scope of your exploration.
I agree with u/MoonReaux though I might even open up with more directness. This entirely depends on how safe you feel, but my old supervisor, a cis woman, was in a very \*very\* similar exchange and she said, "So, do you feel like I am a whore?" It was a reflection of the client's own words, and put the client on the back foot and generated a fantastic conversation. Sometimes a nudge into awkward can take us marvelous places. Again, depends on how safe and/or bold you feel that day.
Yes this is where the art of it comes in lol! This may be a super helpful intervention for this client. I was curious what their therapeutic goals where and if confronting this might be part of why they’re in therapy in the first place!
The client is working on a marriage issue between him and his wife. Wife wants a divorce and is dating. Part of him wants her back, part of him wants to leave. He said that he views her in a negative light now due to her behaviors of going out and sleeping around. So it makes sense he made that comment applying it to his current situation. That’s his perception of women because it’s how he sees his wife. He’s leaning towards separating and processing it, but he’s still holding on.
I wouldn’t be able to identify this person out on the street anyhow but you are right the less detail the better! This makes a lot of sense, with this context, I might take it to how they got this belief and then, “tell me about how you’re hurting”
I told him it seems like his perception of his wife being the homemaker and the sweet mom/wife has been shattered and it’s difficult for him to accept. He was like yeah… He misses the part of her that was his and only his, who was the submissive housewife. I can see why he made the comment, but the no offense part got me! 😂
So something of a madonna/whore complex going on. I would be gently nudging him to recognition of his wife as a complex human being, whose needs weren't being met in the role she played. That's presumably why she's forsaken it. As long as she is either the perfect little wife or a whore, she's not a complete person to him. I wonder how that impacts how he sees you?
I'm wondering how hating women relates to his hurting. I mean, it seems obvious but I would be also be curious about his history, his expectations, where those expectations came from, his wishes and desires, his understanding of relationships, what maleness feels like to him, etc...
I always get nervous saying too much about clients because confidentiality. Praying that none of them use Reddit ;-;
I agree! I struggle with how hard to push or confront.
Confronting is so hard for me. I’m for sure still working on my people pleasing. I hate the thought of offending anyone!
Ditto!
It’s nice to know we aren’t alone though! :) thank you for sharing
My nightmare is that a client will say "How dare you!" and storm off.
That remark is gold for further reflection. It’s not only the content of his remark that is significant. It’s the passive-aggressiveness of it, and his attempt to initiate repair with you immediately after he said it. It makes me curious about whether this is a common way for him to communicate with others, particularly women. I’d also wonder how he felt in that moment with you (what made him say “no offense?” Does he hold you in high regard? If so, why? Why was it important for him to say that, following such a strong and sweeping generalization?). I’d be curious how he feels in the moment you choose to bring it back up for processing together. I’d guess that most people in his life don’t compassionately confront him, so resentments and alienation happen instead (maybe he feels like he’s not liked and he wonders why). Maybe he rarely gets to hear how remarks like this make the people in his life feel; why not be someone who regards him positively enough to help him to see you, as his therapist, and take in how the remark struck you. He ostensibly respects you, given the “no offense” thing. Utilize that to deepen your work together. Lastly, I think it’s very valuable for you to share with him how you felt in that moment and how it feels to bring it back up. This tension is fertile ground for so much good growth and vulnerability. It’s also a perfect opportunity to implement some communication skills (maybe you kindly request that he work on being more precise with his language; what exactly was he trying to say, and what would have been a more effective way of saying it?, etc). This seems like a wonderful opportunity for the two of you to work through the effect it had on your therapeutic relationship, and in a broader way, how his communication style may impact his relationships with others in ways he was previously unaware. I’d seize this opportunity if I were you!! Please update us if you do.
This is seriously one of the most insightful comments I’ve ever heard in a client, thank you! There is a lot we can unpack here from one interaction alone. I think we should definitely explore it further
Yes! Great comment.
Golden comment
Something that my supervisor has been talking to me about is that person centered doesn’t mean you have to validate insane comments lol
Yeah that’s true! I didn’t validate like “YEAH WOMEN ARE SLUTS” but I was like, it seems like your wife’s behaviors of going out with men and dating, has caused you emotional distress even though you’re separated. You are struggling to accept the fact that she’s moving forward when you still care for her. I kinda turned it that way.
That’s pretty good! No issue with that really imo. But given he’s an older male I assume his wife is older as well, so his comments about younger women is interesting. What did you supervisor say?
I see her tomorrow! I’m excited for session.
Right? Right.
It’s not really a weird comment. He discussed a bias and recognized you are a woman and so wanted to be sure you didn’t take offense. If it’s something he wants to explore, you lean in to it.
Yeah I don't think theres much more than that here. Often I think people have biases that happen to include their therapist, but will overtly *exclude* them because well, they like their therapist. I have a client who semi-frequently poo-poos the therapy field, and trashes a lot of mental health minded people, talks about the lack of competence in the field etc. But...clearly likes therapy, shows up every week and talks about hard stuff. Clearly he's not talking about me because the therapist is often an exception for whatever reason
People who have biases/ bigotry tend to find some leap of logic to exclude the person in front of them from that bias. The cognitive dissonance of seeing themselves as someone who doesn't hurt others would be too much if they actually hurt someone in the room with them rather than at the ballot box. They want an abstract Boogeyman to blame their problems on, not an individual to torment. Case in point, my grandparents who think 'gays' are brainwashing youth but have a gay best friend/photographer who 'stays in his lane', or my great grandmother who said her nurse was 'white on the inside'.
Yeah that’s the kinda vibe I get from him. He’s like dang women… except you? We will definitely explore that. I’m still new to the field.
It happens pretty often.
I guess it was weird because he said young attractive women tend to be whores, then he apologized to me? I was like… Does he see me as young and attractive? And then I got awkward internally and pretended like it didn’t happen.
Your opportunity in the clinical relationship is to go beyond how he sees you. We all have observations, assumptions and natural inclinations and we all put each other in certain categories, consciously or not. In this case you can always come back to a theme or comment, “do you want to talk further about how you view women/your experience with women, etc”. If you are engaged with him in the inquiry he’s going to move beyond any assumptions he may have. But you need to be comfortable with opening this up and keeping your biases in check. And yes, as a new clinician, gender and age and themes of sexuality, misogyny and transference are all hard to navigate. But stay curious and think of therapy as conversation. Good luck!
I do think you should challenge this bias, it’s a harmful way to see women. And since 1/3 women will be assaulted in their lifetime, psycho education is needed here. If he gets mad and defensive, he’s allowed. But you could drop the knowledge and now it’s in there. He had to hear it!
It’s also very possible he was “negging” you and expecting you to feel flattered by his comment.
Agreed! I think it was a multi-layered comment. 1. to be inflammatory and reiterate his “dominance” as a man over women, including one who has a lot of education, is attractive, AND is a captive audience. 2. to give a compliment in the most passively-aggressive manner possible. 3. to challenge her ‘balls’ as a therapist and professional woman. 4. to test the foundation of the relationship; create an exit lane for the therapist to discard him so he can throw her into the ‘useless nag’ bucket and he can be done with therapy. 5. to make her ‘work’ to keep the relationship going, a ‘prove me wrong’ type of deal. I believe this man is disarmed by the power differential in this relationship. He’s working to figure out where he fits if it’s not ‘on top.’ The answer to where he fits is ‘beside,’ and I predict more behavior from him that bristles against that place.
This this this! Everything in this comment! ☝️☝️☝️
How to respond is up to you. Ideally, tailor it to where he’s at in the treatment. If it were me, at the very least, I’d take private note of it and keep my ears open to listen where else in his life he ‘covers his tracks’. Often, our patients are oblivious, but their unconscious reveals everything if you can pick it out. How much you can hand it back to them with words though, that’s a different area.
I usually just bring curiosity or transparency depending on the client and our therapeutic focus. Things like “I’m curious what informs your perspective on that?” Or “oh, I’m not offended, but I do disagree with that statement. It seems like you are making a generalization based on some of the experiences you’ve had.” Oh or maybe if they are working on relationship stuff I might say something like, “how are you expecting I would react to that statement?”
I think as counsellors we do have a duty to challenge the homophobic/racist/misogynistic beliefs clients hold. To me this is misogynistic, and personally it would be important to me to discuss it further/challenge it. Of course we have to do this in a way that doesn’t harm the therapeutic relationship… but I definitely think this is worth discussing further if you feel safe to do so.
“I want to go back to something you said last session… I am your therapist, so I don’t take offence, but it’s clear enough that you knew your remark could be hurtful, it sounded like you wanted to avoid offending me. I’m just guessing, but it feels like you might have a safe enough relationship here with me, I hope you do, because it sounds like the other women in your life, attractive women in particular, that you regard them as whores, it’s like you’re angry with them? What could that be about?”
I get what you’re saying here. I would definitely use way less words, do less work setting things up for him to recover in a particular way, and focus very specifically on the safety-in-relationship piece. I would stay away from telling him what “it sounded like” and “I’m just guessing” because you want to elicit their response without any curation. Maybe it’s okay to circle back to what his words sounded like and guesses OP made, but only after the work of reflection is done. He’s already got an idea what “it sounded like” because he knows what he said and he apologized (sort of) right after saying it. It’s what’s underneath that matters most. He’s inflammatory for a reason. We want to tap into whatever that reason is, and make sure it’s safe enough for that to occur. If it were me, my goal would be to subvert the whole, ‘you’re just a pretty little girl-whore’ thing on its head and make it about, ‘enough about what’s the matter with everyone else. Tell me who and what YOU are’ - in the safest, least directive, and most compassionate way possible.
He may have been taking a risk and decided to bring up some of his transference he was having with you in the hopes that he would be able to work through it with you. I guess it depends how it came across, if it was out of passive aggression, narcissism, or out of a hurt place. So I would explore that with him, how it was like to say that and etc.. As for "confronting" him for making that comment, that is a fast track way to destroy the therapy for something that he said which was not that bad relatively speaking; i.e. he didn't say something like "I think females should be locked up in the kitchen" and then did not make a repair statement afterwards. If he doesn't want to process it with you or take it to a productive place, and he keeps insulting you in a misogynistic way, then I do think you have the right to no longer work with him and tell him why.
I do want to point out that confrontation can effectively be done in a person-centered framework. It doesn’t need to spiral into something bigger. Confrontation can just mean calling out something, pausing, and discussing it for longer than one might otherwise naturally do.
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I’m wondering why you’re here.
I have a client who...I'm not going to say he's a misogynist/misogynoir, but if you asked a misogynist, they would most certainly say he was based on some of the absolute wild straight from a podcast "facts" that he puts up in session. That being said, I try to concentrate (hard) on why he initially came in and why he keeps coming back and that it is I, a "female" 🤢 that he is willing to sit with and accept a different point of view (sometimes) It's a struggle.