Get live statistics and analysis of Ann Pierce's profile on X / Twitter

Hey hi hello. It's me, Ann, the yellow sweater-wearer. I gave this talk at The Love Symposium. It was called Understanding Interpersonal Conflict. Here's generally how it went: -A conflict is a disagreement. Not all disagreements escalate into fights. -Fights are caused by threat (real or perceived). Some people are more threat-sensitive than others and will even read into neutral situations to see threat -- especially related to a core insecurity or fear. People who are highly threat-sensitive can be scary and controlling, but it comes from a tender and hurt place. Still you should probably steer clear of them if you don't like fighting. -The most ubiquitous threat most of us encounter day-to-day is invalidation. Invalidation = communication that conveys you are bad or wrong. Even if we are logical people, our body processes this like "you should not exist." It takes a strong sense of self and skill in emotional regulation to remain stable when someone is invalidating us. -We invalidate each other all the time though, and here's why. Perspective-taking is computationally expensive for our brains, so what we do instead is called projecting. Projecting is when you assume other people are like you. The problem is, because we're constantly projecting instead of empathizing, everyone appears to us like failed versions of ourselves -- doing things we would not do for reasons that are not immediately obvious. So we bucket this confounding behavior into catchalls like "bad" and "wrong." -Because our projecting brains give us the illusion that we understand others more than we do, we misunderstand each other constantly. Like just about always. -If you want to collaborate with people effectively, you need to reduce threat and create safety. This isn't "kumbaya" nicey-nice stuff; the world's top negotiators teach this exact thing. Threatened people are defensive, calculating, focused on "winning." They are limited in what they can see and think. People who feel safe can be honest, objective, creative, collaborative. -Fights are almost never about the thing they appear to be about on the surface. When people feel safe, they can start to tap into their subconscious and communicate what they really care about. So if your spouse wants to move to a new city because they desire adventure, but you fear losing touch with your family, you can begin to surface possibilities related to increasing adventure and keeping in touch with family. The deeper you go into these underlying concerns, the more you realize there are many more than 2 options here, and you can both have what you want. -Emotional validation is a near-panacea for decreasing threat and increasing safety. Validation means approval. Sometimes you don't approve of what someone is doing, saying, or the conclusions they've reached. But no matter how much you disagree, you can always validate someone on the level of feeling. That's because emotions are just bodily functions. Emotions originate as changes in our body (slowed digestion, increased heart rate, diverted blood flow) brought on by perceived threat. These signals eventually travel to our brain where we attempt to interpret them intellectually. But all things said, they're involuntary. So there's no reason for judgments like "You shouldn't be angry." We say things like this when we want to control the other person. But this just increases threat, intensifying the feelings. So instead you should show acceptance and concern for emotions (e.g. nod, mirror someone's frustration back to them on your own face). -The other thing is to make room for multiple perspectives to exist. Most people inherently take a "monologue stance" about conflict. They practice what they will say with the intent to deliver it as a declaration about the other's badness/wrongness. But the truth is, as sure as you feel, you just don't have all the information. People are incredibly surprising when you seek clarification from them. Turns out, you misinterpreted what they meant. Or there was a reason for their behavior you would never have guessed. So it's much better to approach people neutrally like, "Here's what I was feeling and thinking and the way I interpreted this. What was it like for you?" -Ultimately, if you invalidate someone, they'll invalidate you back. If you try to control someone, they'll try to control you back. You win by letting go. Even in an extreme case e.g. someone you love is diagnosed with schizophrenia and is not taking their meds because they don't believe they're sick. You could try to force them to believe they're sick, but you'll fail. Disagreements will escalate into fights. If instead you allow them to be who they are, feel how they feel, think what they think.. you can start to have an honest relationship, and then you're not so stuck. e.g. They tell you that the thing they can't stand about the meds is fatigue. So you can start to address that together. -"Conflict is the test by which people learn how much they matter to each other." Disagreements will happen. The more you interweave your life with someone, the more likely that is. Voicing that disagreement is a risk. It's scary. The other person could judge you, dismiss you, label you "not worth it." But dealing with disagreement is an investment in the long-term potential of a relationship. When both of you take that risk and invest energy into hashing things out, a deeper level of intimacy is unlocked. The relationship is stronger than it was before. When your friend knows that you won't make them bad/wrong, invalidate their feelings, or push your perspective on them, that safety feels a lot like love. Anyway. That's my talk. If you liked it I'd love to hear from you!

This genuinely sucks so much to hear, but the way to resolve emotional pain is by feeling the uncomfortable sensation in your body, not continuing to explain yourself to someone whose misunderstanding of you is psychologically load-bearing

I've researched this quite a bit! The biggest predictors of relationship trouble are actually: High Neuroticism, Low Agreeableness, Low Conscientiousness. Trouble increases if both partners have the trait. (Or on the flip, a marriage is more solid if both partners are High Conscientiousness, High Agreeableness, etc.) Not a Big Five personality dimension, but Low Impulse Control (e.g. not having good internal strategies for emotional regulation) is very predictive of bad outcomes. After that, it's true that Low Openness people stay together more easily than High Openness people, but couples that MATCH on Openness have less friction than mismatched ones. Research is mixed on Extraversion, but it seems like having a slight difference is ideal. Being extremely different OR the same seems to cause more friction. It's also ideal to have difference (complementarity) in Dominance and Submission. Being the same has the most friction. Ultimately, there's a dance of sameness and difference. Stability seems to come from sameness on core values and difference in action (wanting a similar kind of life but having complementary roles and strengths - augmenting each other rather than stepping on each other's toes). AND there is no such thing as a 0-friction couple. AND your life is your own - you can marry whoever you want! If two dominant people want to be a power couple, then they should. Higher friction correlates to sexual chemistry - so as with everything, there's pros and cons. The way that people meet and fall in love has a kind of magic to it, and when there's something good there, people make it work.

Dating as an adult is hard because you’re trying to pattern-match the best traits of your 2-3 most important exes that cannot exist simultaneously in one person and without the inextricable downsides that led to your breakup

The final boss of becoming securely attached, for anxious people, is accepting that some people will forever think you’re stupid or crazy or a bad person. The time to walk away is when it’s clear they aren’t listening, not the mythical point at which you’re understood.

Afraid of conflict → contorts to avoid disagreement → constant inner conflict Afraid of getting yelled at → acts slippery/dismissive/defensive → the other person yells to be heard Afraid of losing → dominates and pushes people → loses their trust, generosity, cooperation

It’s occurring to me: most people don’t know that emotions originate in the body (e.g. changes in heart rate, digestion) which are later interpreted by the brain. If you think emotions are simply thoughts/words, it’s easy to erroneously believe LLMs can “feel”

Shame to low-empathy pipeline: When they listen to others they hear that they are bad → stop empathizing with others to not feel bad → without attunement to others, can’t feel the consequences of their actions → more people saying they’re bad

When I was confronting shame a few yrs ago I kept having this thought “I’m not a real person” - meaning I’m this kind of monstrous exception/defective in a way that others aren’t. Last night I was watching a TV show where the protagonist, who had been abused, said the same. exact. words. and OOF. Weighs heavy on me today. For whoever needs to hear it: Literally no matter what you think went wrong or distinguishes you from “normal” people… you are wrong. You belong here. You are one of us.

If you can't self-soothe through a tough feeling, you'll always demand the world bend your way, agree with you, shield you from difficulty. You'll convince yourself this is decency, that the trigger is evidence of badness and wrongness. You won't stay curious enough to find out.

Everyone wants to date someone just like their ex except for “that one thing” But “that one thing” is load-bearing (it holds up that entire person)

People subconsciously mirror each other, yes. I think this is especially consistent on the negative end, with behavior that signals low consideration/cooperation. So if you’re careless and unkind, so your world will be. On the positive end, I don’t think what you give is exactly what you get. People have a range of what they’re capable of, and when you give them the chance to mirror something like warm curiosity and consideration, they won’t always meet you there. Many people just can’t *see you* really, so they’ll flail at the projection they see instead. Others don’t have the scaffolding or skill to do what you’re doing e.g. to be authentically themselves or to consider another person’s interests *alongside* their own. And others yet developed in a context where cooperation seemed a losing strategy over competing or dominating, so all they see is foolishness or a trick or a trap. Not to mention, certain kinds of over-functioning just tend to magnetize under-functioning (what use does over-functioning duty have for another dutiful person anyway?). So okay, giving hell will get you hell, that is the most certain. Otherwise it’s not a 1:1 what-you-give-is-what-you-get. Still, being basically kind (seeing people with curiosity and care) has the highest likelihood of receiving the same back. I’ll take those odds.

Years ago, after healing shame, getting in touch with my emotions, becoming authentic in my relationships, I started being honest and vulnerable with *everyone*. This had some awesome effects, but I also had a few run-ins with some pretty scary people. It's not nice to think about, but if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, you can get physically hurt, acquire a stalker, get caught up in mess that steals years from your life. This is one of the reasons I preach so hard about integrating opposites (remembering that two things can be true at the same time). Learning to speak up is WORTH IT. Insanely nourishing, close, loving relationships are on the other side of this. Living with more ease, getting what you want and need is on the other side of this. Many people can't even see safety when it's in front of them, and that's a tragedy. AND. There's a time and a place to hold back and even to pretend. I'm launching a conflict course in October and will teach simple ways to test for this - along with all the good stuff that eliminates stupid fights from your life, deepens relationships, allows you to move through the world with more lightness. I'm excited to get this stuff out.

How you treat people is a reality distortion field. If you’re harsh and competitive, the world will seem harsh and competitive back.

I'm not perfect or anything but I honestly have so much joy in my life that I think a depressed person could benefit from shadowing me just to see what's possible. I just bought someone plane tix to test this hypothesis.

My advice for building community: Don’t ask people what they want. They will know it when they see it, otherwise they have no idea. Just try stuff - preferably that you really really like. If you love it and they love it, it will flow

Hey hi hello. It's me, Ann, the yellow sweater-wearer. I gave this talk at The Love Symposium. It was called Understanding Interpersonal Conflict. Here's generally how it went: -A conflict is a disagreement. Not all disagreements escalate into fights. -Fights are caused by threat (real or perceived). Some people are more threat-sensitive than others and will even read into neutral situations to see threat -- especially related to a core insecurity or fear. People who are highly threat-sensitive can be scary and controlling, but it comes from a tender and hurt place. Still you should probably steer clear of them if you don't like fighting. -The most ubiquitous threat most of us encounter day-to-day is invalidation. Invalidation = communication that conveys you are bad or wrong. Even if we are logical people, our body processes this like "you should not exist." It takes a strong sense of self and skill in emotional regulation to remain stable when someone is invalidating us. -We invalidate each other all the time though, and here's why. Perspective-taking is computationally expensive for our brains, so what we do instead is called projecting. Projecting is when you assume other people are like you. The problem is, because we're constantly projecting instead of empathizing, everyone appears to us like failed versions of ourselves -- doing things we would not do for reasons that are not immediately obvious. So we bucket this confounding behavior into catchalls like "bad" and "wrong." -Because our projecting brains give us the illusion that we understand others more than we do, we misunderstand each other constantly. Like just about always. -If you want to collaborate with people effectively, you need to reduce threat and create safety. This isn't "kumbaya" nicey-nice stuff; the world's top negotiators teach this exact thing. Threatened people are defensive, calculating, focused on "winning." They are limited in what they can see and think. People who feel safe can be honest, objective, creative, collaborative. -Fights are almost never about the thing they appear to be about on the surface. When people feel safe, they can start to tap into their subconscious and communicate what they really care about. So if your spouse wants to move to a new city because they desire adventure, but you fear losing touch with your family, you can begin to surface possibilities related to increasing adventure and keeping in touch with family. The deeper you go into these underlying concerns, the more you realize there are many more than 2 options here, and you can both have what you want. -Emotional validation is a near-panacea for decreasing threat and increasing safety. Validation means approval. Sometimes you don't approve of what someone is doing, saying, or the conclusions they've reached. But no matter how much you disagree, you can always validate someone on the level of feeling. That's because emotions are just bodily functions. Emotions originate as changes in our body (slowed digestion, increased heart rate, diverted blood flow) brought on by perceived threat. These signals eventually travel to our brain where we attempt to interpret them intellectually. But all things said, they're involuntary. So there's no reason for judgments like "You shouldn't be angry." We say things like this when we want to control the other person. But this just increases threat, intensifying the feelings. So instead you should show acceptance and concern for emotions (e.g. nod, mirror someone's frustration back to them on your own face). -The other thing is to make room for multiple perspectives to exist. Most people inherently take a "monologue stance" about conflict. They practice what they will say with the intent to deliver it as a declaration about the other's badness/wrongness. But the truth is, as sure as you feel, you just don't have all the information. People are incredibly surprising when you seek clarification from them. Turns out, you misinterpreted what they meant. Or there was a reason for their behavior you would never have guessed. So it's much better to approach people neutrally like, "Here's what I was feeling and thinking and the way I interpreted this. What was it like for you?" -Ultimately, if you invalidate someone, they'll invalidate you back. If you try to control someone, they'll try to control you back. You win by letting go. Even in an extreme case e.g. someone you love is diagnosed with schizophrenia and is not taking their meds because they don't believe they're sick. You could try to force them to believe they're sick, but you'll fail. Disagreements will escalate into fights. If instead you allow them to be who they are, feel how they feel, think what they think.. you can start to have an honest relationship, and then you're not so stuck. e.g. They tell you that the thing they can't stand about the meds is fatigue. So you can start to address that together. -"Conflict is the test by which people learn how much they matter to each other." Disagreements will happen. The more you interweave your life with someone, the more likely that is. Voicing that disagreement is a risk. It's scary. The other person could judge you, dismiss you, label you "not worth it." But dealing with disagreement is an investment in the long-term potential of a relationship. When both of you take that risk and invest energy into hashing things out, a deeper level of intimacy is unlocked. The relationship is stronger than it was before. When your friend knows that you won't make them bad/wrong, invalidate their feelings, or push your perspective on them, that safety feels a lot like love. Anyway. That's my talk. If you liked it I'd love to hear from you!

Dating as an adult is hard because you’re trying to pattern-match the best traits of your 2-3 most important exes that cannot exist simultaneously in one person and without the inextricable downsides that led to your breakup

I've researched this quite a bit! The biggest predictors of relationship trouble are actually: High Neuroticism, Low Agreeableness, Low Conscientiousness. Trouble increases if both partners have the trait. (Or on the flip, a marriage is more solid if both partners are High Conscientiousness, High Agreeableness, etc.) Not a Big Five personality dimension, but Low Impulse Control (e.g. not having good internal strategies for emotional regulation) is very predictive of bad outcomes. After that, it's true that Low Openness people stay together more easily than High Openness people, but couples that MATCH on Openness have less friction than mismatched ones. Research is mixed on Extraversion, but it seems like having a slight difference is ideal. Being extremely different OR the same seems to cause more friction. It's also ideal to have difference (complementarity) in Dominance and Submission. Being the same has the most friction. Ultimately, there's a dance of sameness and difference. Stability seems to come from sameness on core values and difference in action (wanting a similar kind of life but having complementary roles and strengths - augmenting each other rather than stepping on each other's toes). AND there is no such thing as a 0-friction couple. AND your life is your own - you can marry whoever you want! If two dominant people want to be a power couple, then they should. Higher friction correlates to sexual chemistry - so as with everything, there's pros and cons. The way that people meet and fall in love has a kind of magic to it, and when there's something good there, people make it work.

It’s occurring to me: most people don’t know that emotions originate in the body (e.g. changes in heart rate, digestion) which are later interpreted by the brain. If you think emotions are simply thoughts/words, it’s easy to erroneously believe LLMs can “feel”

Can I be really real? Lately I’ve been in this slump obsessing about the limited capacity of the brain. Like we have this idea that we go through life accumulating knowledge, but we don’t really, we forget almost everything. And even when knowledge makes its way into long-term memory, we can only access the teeniest tiniest bit at a time. We have this false sense that we’re seeing the big picture, that it’s getting clearer and clearer - but we’re just seeing one tiny dot’s worth of knowledge, and then we see a different dot and forget the one we saw before. I think this is what people mean when they say “well we’re only human.” They’re referring to our tiny capacity. Like we struggle our whole lives with simple 2-parters e.g. “love yourself and love others” - failing to consider our own well-being while caring for others, failing to see others while concerned for ourselves. Not because we’re immoral, but because we can’t actually see/do more than one thing at a time. I think the natural way of things is like- when one idea proves inadequate to solve all our problems, we seesaw to the opposite side, adopting this new position as “right.” e.g. When we’re on the “love yourself” side of the seesaw, we’re prone to shout about how tending to ourselves is life’s #1 imperative - forgetting that empathizing with others is equally important, along with 26748648378 other important things actively holding up our lives. Because of this, I think most change isn’t progress per se, it’s cyclical. e.g. An ideology is invented to solve a deeply human problem like fear of the unknown or getting people to contribute their fair share to a group. Then the ideology creates new problems - especially for those who never experienced the original problem it was invented to address - so it’s reversed or replaced. Until the original problem resurfaces, and the initial ideology is presented again to solve it. I have a lot of compassion for all the generations that thought their thing was gonna solve all problems. I don’t love religion, but you can see how in many ways it was the best we could do - the way it fits into our human-sized context window and patterns onto our innate behavioral mechanisms. I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I work on my book. In a basic sense, I think everyone already knows how to get along - that it really is just “love yourself and love others at the same time.” But we struggle to do that within our capacity. I have a strong drive to synthesize a model for interpersonal conflict that fits into our tiny brains and patterns onto existing impulses. But I also know that conflict is nothing new. We’ve long had much of the same information - we’ve just been kinda re-summarizing it and shuffling the pieces back and forth all this time. No model that fits in our head will have the amount of detail (context and clarification) to hold up to scrutiny and stand the test of time. I don’t want to end this in such a cynical place, so I will acknowledge that in many important ways, the world *is* a much nicer place than it used to be! Motivated people do meaningfully improve their lives! Not all that’s good is lost. Maybe AI will even help. In a way, realizing that change is so cyclical, that much of progress is limited by the brain’s capacity… is a bit of a relief. It gives “everything is already okay.” (Maybe this is me getting old?)

Friends, which fit for Love Symposium Day 1?? I would give you the full body but my mirror is dirty. Assume red dress gets red lip.

This genuinely sucks so much to hear, but the way to resolve emotional pain is by feeling the uncomfortable sensation in your body, not continuing to explain yourself to someone whose misunderstanding of you is psychologically load-bearing

The biggest problem I have in my writing is being scared to talk about real people. Everything I know can be traced to real-life experiences - often with notoriously difficult people. When I write these stories, the words just flow, but it feels unsafe to share them. Even if I anonymize and paint each character with compassion, there’s a real chance of triggering ire. So I feel sorta stifled about it and end up reaching for generic examples instead :(

I'm not perfect or anything but I honestly have so much joy in my life that I think a depressed person could benefit from shadowing me just to see what's possible. I just bought someone plane tix to test this hypothesis.

When I was confronting shame a few yrs ago I kept having this thought “I’m not a real person” - meaning I’m this kind of monstrous exception/defective in a way that others aren’t. Last night I was watching a TV show where the protagonist, who had been abused, said the same. exact. words. and OOF. Weighs heavy on me today. For whoever needs to hear it: Literally no matter what you think went wrong or distinguishes you from “normal” people… you are wrong. You belong here. You are one of us.

How you treat people is a reality distortion field. If you’re harsh and competitive, the world will seem harsh and competitive back.

The final boss of becoming securely attached, for anxious people, is accepting that some people will forever think you’re stupid or crazy or a bad person. The time to walk away is when it’s clear they aren’t listening, not the mythical point at which you’re understood.

Shame to low-empathy pipeline: When they listen to others they hear that they are bad → stop empathizing with others to not feel bad → without attunement to others, can’t feel the consequences of their actions → more people saying they’re bad

If you're in an argument and you have a lot of shame, you need the other person to be bad. Because if they aren't the bad one, it means you are.

Anyone in SF (or the Bay Area) wanna collab on a 6-9pm sober dance party with substance-free state-altering stations? Like- over here is breathwork for energy. Over here is a dare station for excitement. Over here is a confidence boost exercise etc. If so DM me!