One reference to the expression “bite my tongue” is “To forcibly prevent oneself from speaking, especially in order to avoid saying something inappropriate or likely to cause a dispute”.
In conflict situations this idiom comes up when there is something we feel compelled to say but catch ourselves from doing so. This might be because we instinctively know it would result in an escalation of matters, be hurtful, stir up more emotion than is necessary and so on.
The imagery is interesting in that if you’ve ever bitten your tongue (haven’t we all?) it HURTS!! It would appear then – considering the idiom’s meaning – that to stop ourselves from hurting someone’s feelings we hurt ourselves physically.
Though it’s not usually the case that we literally bite our tongues and are in pain as a consequence, it is the case that not saying what we want to can cause us inner pain. That is, we may feel our experience of the conflict is not being expressed; we might resent we are being careful about the other person but our emotions are not being reciprocated; we might regret we do not have other skills and tools to effectively make our point without causing damage; and so on.
In this week’s Conflict Mastery Ques(ions) blog consider a time when you “bit your tongue” as you respond to this set of questions.
Reprinted from The Texas Mediator, Volume 18, Number 2, Summer 2003 A publication of the Texas Association of Mediators www.txmediator.org If confidentially is the heart of mediation, self-determination is its...
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