How can we reframe defiance?
Src: Anika Huizinga @iam_anih Upsplash
We played in the lush, backyard garden area. My 3-year-old granddaughter coloring on the ledge of a quiet fire pit. Me resting on sun-warmed cushions nearby. We’d just finished reading one of my favorite books, The Most Magnificent Idea, about a little girl and her side-kick dog finding ideas everywhere. A slight breeze blew a few strands of blond hair that escaped from her pigtails as she clutched a crayon, jerking it back and forth on the page trying to keep the red within the lines. My husband and I were watching her while her baby sister napped so her parents could have some couple’s time.
My granddaughter glanced up with her eyes wide, a big smile on her face and asked me to color with her. I thought a moment. My husband and I spent the day walking everywhere. I said, “I’d love to, but BB’s tired. How about BB watches you color?” Her lit-up face switched off like a light, as she quietly stared at her picture for a moment. She got up and walked past the outdoor dining table into the kitchen. I followed her thinking she had to go to the bathroom and watched her plop down on the floor next to the sofa. She sat criss-cross applesauce with her head in her little hands.
“Are you sad?” I asked.
“Yes.” She said quietly without looking up.
What is defiance? How can we reframe defiance? And why is learning how, so important for our relationships and mental health?
what is defiance?
A few weeks ago while in Amsterdam at an AirBnb with our adult daughters and two granddaughters, I was reading a book about defiance. How we, especially girls, could benefit from rethinking the concept of being a good girl (which is really shorthand for behaving as expected and not making a fuss).
During this month’s thought echoes podcast I interviewed Dr. Sunita Sah, author of Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. We had an invigorating conversation about the concept of defiance.
When I heard about Dr. Sunita’s book, my initial reaction was to see her project on defiance as negative and aggressive. She wrote about big important examples from Rosa Parks and George Floyd. I wondered how I was going to tie those stories into my curiosity around the topic of reframing.
Then I started reading her book. Her concepts of: good girl, finding our true yes, and comply versus consent — struck a chord one by one. There were large historical moments, but also everyday moments as examples to learn from — like the story about her son not wanting to watch the Olympic torch. And when my granddaughter took a pause — confidently, not putting up a tantrum to go to a private spot to be sad after I didn’t color with her - I felt I was watching a reframe of defiance in the little body of a 3-year-old. What could I learn from both Dr. Sunita and my granddaughter?
According to Dr. Sunita, “We need a new definition. We need to reframe it. The old definition is that defiance is to challenge the power of another person openly and boldly. My new definition is simply acting in accordance with your values when there's pressure to do otherwise.”
Dr. Sunita invites us instead, to not view defiance as bad and compliance as good, but to dig deeper into why we sometimes feel pressured to comply and that sometimes when we comply, it does not mean we consent or agree. She also shares how our individual acts of consent and dissent build a society, starting at home, and in our workplaces and communities.
how can we reframe defiance?
According to the American Psychological Association, reframing is “a process of reconceptualizing a problem by seeing it from a different perspective.” Reframing is all about finding another way to approach a situation.
During the trip I was able to reimagine, to reframe the generational “good girl” echoes as I overheard my daughter encourage her 3-year-old that it’s ok to be sad when she doesn’t get her way. To watch my granddaughter find a quiet place to take a private moment. Or when my daughter asks her daughter to make a choice (active encouragement that she does have choices) whether to eat what’s on her plate or what to do for five minutes before she goes to bed — and most notable for me — that one of her choices is “no.”
Dr. Sunita emphasized the importance of “recognizing tension in the moment and taking a pause to assess the situation. I call this the power of the pause.” She explains how people feel tension in many different ways. “It could be like a punch in the gut, or it could be your throat closing up, or it could be a conscious thought — this doesn't feel right to me.”
During our interview she went on to describe tension as resistance to resistance that comes up when we need to resist something even though we’re conditioned to comply. She explains how “we push away our doubts and feeling uncomfortable. We end up resisting being defiant.”
In Dr. Sunita’s book she outlines the results of decades of research with the 5 stages of defiance: recognizing tension, acknowledging it, articulating it, taking a pause, and acting.
It all starts with tension.
“The reason that attention to tension is important is because it’s the first step. Does the situation violate my values? You’re remembering who you are, what your values are, and thinking, does this situation violate those values? Then you want to look at the situation and think, maybe I want to defy, but is it safe and is it effective? And is this the right time?”
As I read her book while on vacation, her insights provided me encouragement to reflect on how I viewed opportunities for defiance in my past. I was one of a few women in a high-tech company in the Pacific Northwest. Early in my career I was at a sales meeting at a resort on the east coast; my job was to provide technical training as part of a new product launch. After dinner one night, one of the guys invited all of us to watch a comedy show back in one of hotel rooms. There were lots of people going so I said sure. I liked all these guys and felt perfectly comfortable around them.
When I walked in someone offered me a seat close to the TV. People were drinking beers and voices grew louder. I was talking to someone, not really paying attention to the show until everyone started to laugh. I did too, at first. The comedian was Andrew Dice Clay. I wasn’t familiar with him at the time. I laughed with everyone else, then the jokes started leaning more and more offensive.
What made it more uncomfortable was the fact that I was pregnant. Not so much not to travel, but definitely showing. There weren’t any managers there and I didn’t get up to leave. Felt like a challenge to wait it out, act like it was no big deal to be accepted. But I felt awful afterwards. Definitely a situation where if I’d made a scene or even walked out of the room, it felt like I’d be considered somehow less than, as if laughing at Clay’s jokes made me a better software engineer. For decades there were times where I thought — it’s not going to make any difference if I speak up … but years of off-color comments and sexism wore on me.
Later in my career when I was a manager on a technical conference trip, one of the engineers put his hand on my knee while watching a demonstration in a movie theater. I didn’t hesitate to pluck his hand off my knee and leave. I didn’t report him to HR. The power dynamic was different. I did not feel threatened for my job and he got the message based on our discussion the next day.
Reading Dr. Sunita’s stories about people not always defying in the moment somehow drove home that there are times when we don’t defy. Although it may feel like a missed opportunity, it may just not have been the most effective time.
why is learning how to reframe defiance important to our relationships and mental health?
When I asked Dr. Sunita for any words of wisdom she could offer in navigating our relationships and contributing our mental health, she talked about making defiance a practice.
“We need an action plan that really starts before the moment of crisis. We have to remember that defiance is not a character trait, it's a skill.” When we honestly do not know what our yes is, we can pause and ask what’s at the opposite end of that no? I’ll admit, sometimes I need to examine my no before I can articulate my yes.
Once we know what we want, then we can proactively practice. Dr. Sunita walked through concepts of: visualizing, scripting, role-playing, and practicing defiance. She quoting a Greek poet, “under duress, we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
When I asked about advice for parents or interacting with kids she said, “We all want to raise children who know their boundaries and can navigate relationships effectively … We you want to raise what I call Moral Mavericks that can take responsibility and speak up and act when necessary.” She refers to the Defiance Domino Effect, where children see their parents and the adults around them defying and can learn to do the same.
What I’ve learned from both Dr. Sunita and my 3-year-old granddaughter, is that reframing is looking at life experiences, both at a macro and micro level as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves. It’s about getting our heads above the ocean of our lives to see where we are going and what values we share with others. And that it’s ok to take a pause to be sad.
WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR COMMENTS. HOW DOES DEFIANCE SHOW UP IN YOUR LIFE?
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