The Incident of the Negative News Dump

On a gorgeous winter afternoon in a Southern California garden, my friend and I chatted about world events. This is normal—we’re both intrigued with the world at large. But on this afternoon, I groaned inwardly. Rather than politely listening and responding, I gave myself a Conflict Crunch time out (from Step Two of the Crunch). I stopped thinking, and I began feeling. This is one of the many tips from the Crunch.

By the way, this friend is empathic and grounded. She’s the friend who orchestrated massage therapy in my home when my fiancé died over a decade ago. She and her husband met me daily for lunch mid-way through hospital visits.

Normally I enjoy our chats about the world in all its complexity, but on this late winter day, in her sunny garden, I felt unwilling to think about thorny problems. My throat clenched as my friend shared news regarding Covid’s scary new tentacles, the plight of contraception-seeking women in Venezuela, and beleaguered Texans, reportedly boiling snow simply to flush their toilets in the most horrific winter that state has known.

There was a time Before Crunch (BC) when I held tightly to the fierce habit of pleasing others. If I felt dismay, I opted for politeness rather than authenticity. Mini-crises BC piled up into a heap of missed opportunities. But this is AC time (After Crunch), and I had the practice of feeling my dismay in the moment.

Instead of allowing my tension to turn to exhaustion and even resentment, I reached for a Crunch strategy of stopping my thinking in order to address my feelings. Here’s how that played out.

I told my friend I felt sad and helpless. Then I asked her how she felt. She said, “I’m detached. My guy’s writing (her husband was a political journalist) calls for objectivity. We’re used to bad news.”

I saw that my emotions were useful (I do what I can to contribute to worthy causes because I feel), but I also saw that I was longing for a break from bad news. In fact, I was passionate about wanting to relax. So much so that I was ready to feel irritation at my well-informed friend. Instead of mulling over my thought (could this get more depressing?), I made a simple request: "Can we switch gears?"

"No problem," she said.

"Where did your son go to high school?"

We shared stories about our kids. "My son was homecoming king," she told me. One topic led to another. We recalled our younger selves—she, a writer in Beverly Hills, and I, a student of comparative literature at Loyola in L.A.

I learned about her writer friends who wrote nothing of import for years and years in their tiny Beverly Hills apartment, and then came up with two spectacular screenplays—Starman in ‘84 and Stand by Me in ‘86.

Crunch Clincher: My cool friend wrote me a text thanking me for our uplifting time together.

Crunch Take-Away: No crisis is small. One conversation at a time, dare to be real.