When it comes to difficult conversations, I have a way to go. I often swing between hyper-assertiveness and retreating entirely, but both avoid vulnerability. I often tell myself silence is “skilful”, though it can easily turn into passive aggression. And avoidance has consequences – not speaking out of fear can create distance and irreparable damage to relationships and communities.
As the Buddhist activist-scholar bell hooks says: “to know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others … Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat of love.” That, to me, is the kind of love I aspire to, even if I often miss the mark.
So how can we intentionally cultivate our capacity to have difficult conversations in a way that lovingly acknowledges our radical interbeing while honouring what must be said?
From a Buddhist perspective, life itself – not simply formal meditation – is our broad field of practice. Which means this question demands serious contemplation. The way we speak and respond to one another, and ourselves, shapes experience and has the real power to harm or to support.
The psychiatrist Dan Siegel’s “interpersonal neurobiology” reveals how our nervous systems co-regulate through relationship – through language, tone and presence we bring can either settle or activate another.
We are living through times where speech has become a battleground, easily weaponised to shame or silence. The line between freedom of expression and our responsibility to prevent harm is more strained and politicised than ever before.
It is no surprise, then, that difficult conversations challenge most of us, even well-seasoned spiritual practitioners. We may sense something needs to be said but we fear rupturing a relationship, so we avoid speaking. Or we may speak impulsively and from a place of reactivity, even rage, with little regard for the damage we will cause.
While many of us are committed to speaking our truth (or “the truth” as we see it), we rarely reflect on how to speak with courage and care in a way that supports the collective good rather than eroding it.
In Buddhist thought, speech is not merely an act of individual expression but a relational act, one that has the potential, if intentional and compassionate, to contribute to a field of radical, communal care.
The psychologist Carol Gilligan’s ethics of care, later taken up by the Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor, shifts the ethical question from “what is right?”’ to “what would a caring response look like here?” This is not sentimental, nor is it about being agreeable. It is a radical ethical position, to take relationship seriously and to prioritise mutual interdependencies over rigid positionality. It softens polarisation.
From this lens, a difficult conversation is not an argument to be won or a confrontation to be avoided. But something even more creative: a ripe opportunity to know yourself and the other in a deeper, more complex way and to clarify values and bring insight into how we might avoid harming each other in the future.
It asks for timing, self-awareness and courage.
In the Eightfold Path, the Buddha offers direct guidance in the form of wise speech. It invites us to speak what is true, useful and kind in a way that serves clarity and reduces harm. Our state of mind is relevant before, during and after a conversation. Are we speaking from fear, ego, or a need to be liked? Or are we rooted in clarity, courage and care? Of course, we won’t always get it right but the task is to consciously orient in this direction, over and over.
Wise speech is often misunderstood as a call for restraint at all costs, as though we should always be agreeable and nice. But that is a misreading of the Buddha’s words. If we are using kindness to avoid discomfort or maintain control, it no longer aligns with the spirit of the teaching. The Buddha was clear that wise speech includes difficult truths, but only when they meet certain conditions.
In the scriptures, the Buddha names five such conditions, explaining wise speech should be timely, true, gentle, beneficial and loving. If one of the conditions is not present, we might decide to stay silent and wait. So, sometimes the art is to hold back, manage our own emotions and simply tend the ground by building enough safety so that truthfulness can take root.
The “best” hard conversations I have had have one thing in common: a deep foundation of trust. But when that foundation is missing, the same words could have been wounding or counterproductive.
Choosing to bring intentionality to our speech (even on social media!) challenges our tendency to abandon and disconnect from those we do not agree with. In Buddhist practice, we do not use speech to create further distance but to tend to a shared field of care.
Speech is a generative force and, with every difficult conversation entered into with heart, we disrupt cycles of harm and sow seeds for a different future rooted not in being right but in honouring our web of interdependence.
It may sound utopian but the work is pragmatic and grounded, and the paradox is this: tending to our world with care contributes not only to an ethics of care but also our own sense of peace and integrity in the here and now – a win-win.
Courageous and caring conversations are not simply personal development; they are an expression of solidarity in the here and now, solidarity that our shared future depends on.
Now – to make a phone call.
Dr Nadine Levy is a senior lecturer at the Nan Tien Institute. She coordinates its health and social wellbeing program and the graduate certificate in applied mindfulness
