Learn How to Get Emotional Consent
Emotional consent is a way to show up with greater love, care and gentleness for the people in our lives by checking in before we dive in. Have you ever had a conversation with a friend where you wanted to tell your story only to have your amiga launch into advice-giving? Have you ever found yourself being the “should”-er, telling your pal how to deal with her situation only to have her say, “Gosh, I just wanted to share”?
This way of being in conversation has been so beautiful in my life and has helped me to show up for the people I love in a more aligned way. One that recognizes and honors their autonomy and sovereignty and thus, my own.
It is a simple tool for improving conversation and connection.
Emotional consent may be a new concept for you. It was for me a while back. Early in my journey, I was giving everyone super useful information on how to live better because I truly wanted their lives to be better.
What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t getting consent before sharing my opinion. That is not loving, kind or feminist. Oops.
Emotional consent is a lens through which to think about consent.
Hopefully we all have a working understanding of the concept of consent, meaning that we ask for permission before we do a thing that involves another person. Asking for consent is a vital feminist framework in which we respect other people’s autonomy and sovereignty and their right to control their body in all of the ways.
While many of us are familiar with the concept of consent around sexual intimacy, emotional consent hasn’t yet found its way into mainstream conversations. The idea of consent is to respect other peoples’ autonomy by asking before we get involved in their space. A feminist approach to consent is one that values our emotional lives as much as our physical lives and holds space for the importance of emotional consent.
Therefore, emotional consent means you respect your and another person’s ability to self-govern or self-direct in the emotional space.
When a friend comes to you in a highly emotional way, wanting to share something or express themself, you hold space for them. You allow them to be in their emotions without robbing them of their right to feel what they feel. You don’t insert your own emotions or thoughts, unless they’re interested in hearing them.
I believe in consent as an opt in practice. That is, we don’t assume consent. We ask someone to actively give that consent to us. It’s each of ours to give or not. Similarly, when we are in our own feelings space, with practice, we can learn to approach others in a way that acknowledges that they may be in a different space and unable to meet us where we’re at.
We make sure to get their consent before we lay out our struggles. This sometimes means coming out of our emotional or feeling space, just enough to ask for consent, which takes time and practice for sure. While no one else controls how we feel, no one can make us feel anything ever.
This way of showing up helps you and the person you’re talking to feel loved and cared for.
That’s a gift for you both.
By being conscious, thoughtful and loving with our communication, we create stronger loving bonds. We create and respect the trust between two people. When we make sure that others are open to hearing us or conversely, that we are in a space to really hear others, we are setting ourselves up for more clear and effective communication.
Imagine a friend comes to you and says, “I’m fighting a lot with my roommate and things are really hard around simple things, like doing the dishes, taking out the garbage, having guests over for the night,” or whatever the case may be.
Often our natural reaction is to start offering suggestions or to start badmouthing their roommate, to commiserate and agree that this situation sucks.
The impulse to do so generally comes from a loving place.
However, if you take a moment to remember a time when you have been on the receiving end of unsolicited advice, I suspect you might have felt put upon when you just needed to vent.
Just as in the realm of intimacy, checking in about emotional consent is a way of slowing down the conversation enough to get everyone on the same page.
That allows for effective and respectful conversations to occur.
What I’ve learned to do is to respect that other person’s autonomy and that they might just not want my opinion, which is totally fine. They might just want to vent or share or get something off their chest.
I get consent to share by quite simply saying, “Hey Megan, I hear you about your roommate situation and I hear that it’s really hard for you right now. I’d like to share my thoughts. Would you like to hear them?”
So in that moment, Megan gets to take stock of her own situation, her own thoughts or feelings and she gets to say, “Yeah girl, lay it on me. Tell me all about it.” Or, “Actually I was really trying to vent here. I don’t really want advice, thanks.”
Asking for consent gives the people we love a chance to decide how they want to engage with us, how they want to be engaged with and what opinions they may or may not want to hear.
The other place where this comes to bear is if you have expertise in a particular area.
A friend may just be saying, “Oh, you know, my belly has been a hot mess lately.” They may not be asking you to give them mountains of healing advice around their IBS. They may just literally want to say to a friend, “Ugh, my digestion,” and then want to move on.
If you’re an accountant, your friends might not want your tax advice. If you’re an entrepreneur, your friends may not be looking for the minutiae of how to run a webinar, right?
Your friend might just be wanting you to show up and be with them. Just hold space.
If a friend were to say to me, “You know, I’ve been really anxious lately,” I have trained myself to get that emotional consent by saying, “My darling, you know that I have so many thoughts about so many things you can do to help yourself to heal your anxiety. You let me know if you want to hear about it.” I leave it at that, which gives the person I’m talking with the space to say “Yes, please,” or “Whoa, no thank you.”
Making this a habit, pulling back and asking for consent before sharing an opinion or an idea, takes time and commitment.
When we commit ourselves to asking for emotional consent, we not only show respect for a person’s autonomy, but we also model how we want to be treated ourselves. Through our actions, we show others how we would like them to interact with us.
The most effective way I have found to build this habit of asking for emotional consent is a simple three step process that takes just moments.
Step one is to recognize that your conversation partner or you are in emotional or feeling space.
Awareness is key. Just noticing that emotions are doing the talking is the first step.
Step two is to take a deep centering breath, in through your nose, and out.
Emotionally pump the brakes, get into your body, ground and center yourself in yourself. Remember your goal to show up for the person you’re speaking with, with love.
Step three is to get curious.
Remember that when someone comes to you with a problem, struggle or emotion, it’s about them, not about you. Hold the space for your friend and let yourself get curious. This doesn’t always involve talking, but rather in your mind and your heart, getting interested about the person who’s come to us in their emotional space and honoring that they’ve entrusted you to be their listener.
They may not have asked you to be their advice giver, or coach. There’s a saying in my community, “You don’t coach without consent.” You may want to jump in and help your friend to see how her thoughts may be keeping her feeling less than awesome but it’s not your place to do so unless she consents.
We can acknowledge the emotional issue at hand. Take a breath and start with curiosity and consent.
“Gosh, that sounds like a hard situation. Can I ask you some more questions,” or “Oh, babe, that sounds challenging? I have some suggestions from when I had roommates’ struggles. Would you like to hear them?” Or quite simply, “My darling, my love, my sweet friend. How can I support you right now?”
Asking for consent in a conversation helps you show up as your best self. You can meet your conversation partner in a loving way and increase the chances you’ll be met with loving receptivity.
Most of us have an inclination to go in a specific direction in conversations, like problem solving. However, it’s a gift to ourselves and the other person to pause and to realize that supporting others is not about you. It’s not about how you want to show up.
You can pause and not jump into problem solving or commiserating.
Showing up for someone in this way, by honoring them and asking for consent, makes you feel good. It’s a way of honoring your words by making sure they have a loving home.
Avoid getting caught in resentment, yours and theirs, by simply asking for consent.
Another benefit of engaging in this practice of asking for emotional consent is that we can learn so much about our own emotional responses to other peoples’ issues.
Do we tend to get sucked in and take their problems on as our own? Do we jump to help or insist on the changes they should make? Do we stay distant and change the topic? By becoming our own watcher, we can start to notice patterns and how we react. That can help us to see how we react to our own feelings as well.
We may notice patterns that are healthy and aligned with how we aim to be in the world, but even the most aware among us strays from how we would like to show up. Often when we’re hungry, angry, lonely or tired or otherwise stressed.Someone else’s stress can often bring out or trigger our own stress responses.
When we take the time to slow down, acknowledge the situation, hold love in our hearts for the person we’re talking to, breathe and get curious, we learn about our conversation partner and about ourselves. It’s only by noticing patterns and discerning which serve us and which hold us back that we can start to make meaningful change.
I’m not talking about not speaking up in a meeting at work, in a situation in which you’ve been asked to contribute your ideas. Sharing your opinion when it’s been asked for is fully respectful. Even if the content of the opinion may be contrary to what the other person was hoping to hear.
We don’t need to ask consent before disagreeing with someone when they’ve already agreed to enter into a conversation and have asked for your input.
Rather, here we’re looking at the opposite scenario—getting into someone else’s business and making it your own. Centering yourself in the conversation when that’s not the explicit ask.
I know that you can be a good listener and can stay on your side of the street. It just takes raising your consciousness and getting really thoughtful in these often tender moments.
This practice gives you the gift of getting to examine your own motivations for being the advice giver, the savior, the one who steps in to save the day. I get how uncomfortable it can be to see someone struggling and to feel like I can make this better. It’s a great opportunity to step back and to recognize that you can’t save anyone else.
Each of us gets to save ourselves, heal ourselves, make our own best decisions and to honor another person’s autonomy is a gift to the world.
You get to pause and be your own watcher as opposed to being someone else’s fixer.
You get to rewire your brain, which is such a rad thing.
Over time, you can train yourself to show up with curiosity and love. You get to ask yourself if you’re focusing on the other person’s problems as a way to buffer and avoid your own. Instead, I get to honor my own process and needs by not projecting my anxiety or worry onto someone else.
If you weren’t listened to as a child, you may be quick to react from that place when someone’s sharing hard things. It is such a gift to show up for your inner child and to repair it yourself by showing up for others the way you would have liked to have been shown up for.
Getting emotional consent is an act of re-parenting and it’s beautifully healing.
First, you can start to practice awareness.
Start by bringing your focus and awareness to the times when you really want to step in and be the fixer, the commiserator, the gossip, the one who says, “Oh my God, he’s such a jerk,” and launches into a diatribe.
Ask yourself why you want to do this and if it’s in line with your highest self.
See what it feels like to get consent before responding and notice how awkward and also lovely it can be for the person speaking.
While asking for emotional consent is super common in some communities, most of us haven’t experienced being asked how we’d like to be listened to.
Sit with that. Experience it. Hold space for it.
Give it a try the next time a friend calls with a sad story, an upset story or anger. See what it feels like to get emotional consent.
Thank you for taking the time to read Feminist Wellness. I’m excited to be here and to help you take back your health!
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