Practice Relationship Repair: Skill 3: When you notice the impulses or behaviors that involve defending, justifying, or making others wrong/bad, call a pause to engage your anchor

Each MCD Relationship Competency identifies 6 Skills, along with specific practices for learning each. For more context about MCD Relationship Competency 10: Relationship Repair, see Skill 1: Distinguish effective repair from common tragic strategies for repair and Skill 2: Engage an effective strategy for working with the four alarms before beginning repair dialogue.

Skill 3: When you notice the impulses or behaviors that involve defending, justifying, or making others wrong/bad, call a pause to engage your anchor

Before you enter a challenging repair dialogue, make an agreement with the other person that you can call a pause at any time. When a pause is called you maintain silence while engaging in a regulation strategy and anchor. You can download a document describing both of these in our free handouts page of the Wise Heart website.

Practice

Take a moment now to download the regulation strategies table on our website. Choose a regulation strategy that you will access in your next repair dialogue.