When was the last time you found yourself trying to point out the harm that someone else caused, only to have them respond with denial, indifference, or gaslighting? How about the last time you found yourself subject to someone else’s overblown reaction, blamed for something you honestly didn’t do, or distrusted based on a misunderstanding of your intent?
If we look deep enough into these situations, we can see that what we all long for is dignity. Dignity as honored not only by justice served when others cause harm to us, but by a sincere awakening of care in their heart when they come to fully understand the impact their actions had.
Likewise, we want our dignity to be preserved when we unintentionally cause harm to others. We want the positive intent of our actions to be understood and the necessary or unintended nature of the impact to be recognized as we are treated with respect in our learning process.
We commonly hear two opposing arguments:
- Positive intent doesn’t matter because at the end of the day it’s the impact that counts.
- The end justifies the means. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Impact is incidental to intent.
We can go in circles between these two perspectives indefinitely. Both are half-truths, rooted in either-or thinking. The polarity of Intent and Impact integrates this paradox, revealing the full picture:
When we fear the loss of our dignity, we have already fallen into the trap of believing that others have the power to take it away. In this distortion, we inadvertently disempower ourselves. At any moment, we could claim our dignity and choose to live according to it regardless of how others behave. The disintegration of this polarity shows up in two different ways:
- If we fear being villainized, that making a mistake means we are a bad person, then we may be tempted to hide behind our positive intent as a way of trying to protect our dignity. But when we only focus on our positive intent without being willing to learn from the impact we caused, we fail to show up for the other person and for the learning opportunity. They may become angry, criticizing us for our apparent lack of concern. In turn, this can increase the perceived threat to our dignity, causing us to retreat further into defensiveness. Either-or thinking causes us to question the validity of the negative impact, on the basis that our intent was entirely positive.
- If we fear being victimized, that harm caused to us by others would damage our inherent worth, then we may be tempted to blame the other person, demanding that they pay for their mistake. We may be unwilling to see them for their positive intent, deluded by our fear into labelling them a bad person. By unfairly villainizing them in this way, it can backfire, decreasing our chances of being heard and taken seriously. Either-or thinking causes us to question the validity of their positive intent, on the basis that the impact was negative.
Presence, and the practice of mindfulness, is an ally here regardless of which role in the drama triangle we tend to slip into. In presence, we let go of our stories and become more receptive to what’s really happening right now. In presence, we can listen to what our higher wisdom is telling us.
True dignity arises from a deep sense of knowing one’s own worthiness of respect. We are all worthy of respect, always. Regardless of our wounds and our mistakes. Being treated by others in a way that feels disrespectful is not what threatens our dignity. In fact, such situations are a normal part of life, and our dignity is what moves us to respond with healthy boundaries that are respectful towards the other person even when they aren’t behaving respectfully towards us.
The real, hidden threat to our dignity is our own shame. It is shame that tells us that we are worthless, that we need to hide so that others don’t find out. It is our shame that gets triggered and unconsciously draws us into the drama triangle. When we fail to recognize that it is our own shame that is the real threat, we project that other people are the threat, and our own vulnerability becomes liability instead of an asset.
This disowning of our own vulnerability, which is nothing but a misguided attempt to protect ourselves against our own shame, is what actually destroys intimacy and blocks us from experiencing a true sense of dignity in our relationships with others.
This is also what can make it seem so difficult to create healthy boundaries. Without access to the emotion of dignity, our attempts to set boundaries will tend to be focused on controlling the other person. At best, all this accomplishes is to prevent the triggering of our own shame. Healthy boundaries enact the will of dignity, grounded in acceptance of our own vulnerability and in acceptance of the fact that we have little control over the actions of others.
So, what does it mean to leverage the polarity of impact and intent? Well, just because you had a positive intent and didn’t mean to cause any harm, doesn’t mean there’s nothing valuable to learn here. Likewise, just because you were harmed by someone else’s actions doesn’t mean they are evil and must be stopped at all costs. This polarity asks us to embrace the messiness of life with the wisdom that we are not what happens to us, and we are not the mistakes we’ve made. Likewise, we must strive to see other people not for what has happened to them, and not for the mistakes they’ve made. Healthy boundaries arise naturally when this perspective is taken to heart.
When both positive intent and negative impact are validated, the resulting trust that is produced allows us to discover ourselves and each other more deeply. The resulting creativity produces innovative solutions that respect the original positive intent while seeking to minimize unintended negative impact. But perhaps more importantly, we tend to collectively support these solutions without question because of how the conflict resolution process itself changed us and brought us into greater wholeness.
For a comprehensive conflict resolution process that can be used to leverage this polarity in fifteen steps, see the Mindful Conflict Resolution Tool.
