Dr. Sunita Sah
speaker
332 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 6 Feb
Dr. Sunita Sah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Number two is actually we don't really understand what consent and dissent actually is. We don't understand what defiance actually is. And I'll come back to that. And then the third one is about once you want to define, you understand that you don't have the skill set to define. So we need to learn it. But the consequences of defiance, people always think about it's going to
affect this relationship? You know, I'm going to disrupt the harmony. It might even cost me my job or might be some physical danger. So we do need to think about the consequences of defiance. Like what type of situation is this? There's sort of two questions we ask. Is it safe for me to defy and will it be effective?
But what we don't often think about are the consequences and the costs of complying, because there's a lot of costs for continually complying with other people and putting aside your values. If you're always bowing your head to someone else, disregarding your values, it really has an effect on you.
Yeah. if we reflect on what happened in that situation, you in these particular incidents that happened, me with a CT scan, and then think about what factors enable our defiance and what makes it harder for us. Understanding that is really key. But anticipating, even when we think about all the
the big heroes that defied and had huge moments like Rosa Parks saying, no, I'm not going to move on the bus. There were lots of compliance moments before that moment. And so we shouldn't have so much shame. But that rumination is actually really helpful to think about what is it I wish I had done in that situation.
Because if we can then visualize it, if we can anticipate it, then that takes away the surprise, right? So the next time I was asked to go for some more radiation that I didn't need, I wasn't as surprised. I was anticipating it. I had practiced what I wish I would have said, and then I was able to say it.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. That anticipation is so key. There's this famous saying that's often attributed to Bruce Lee, but it's actually a Greek poet that said like under duress. We don't rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to our level of training. And so that training aspect is so key. And I didn't realize it, right? Because it does change those neural pathways. So anticipating.
And we can anticipate more than we actually think. Sometimes we're caught off. But I know because we've experienced situations before when at the workplace, a particular colleague is going to say something inappropriate or they're going to make a sexist remark. We can kind of predict things that might happen so we can start anticipating.
then we can visualize it and practice it. If you don't have like that behavioral training of actually practicing, if it's just the intellectual part, it's not going to make a difference. So you need to actually practice it. And this presentation workshop I went to, I just love the phrase that they use.
If you practice, your ears get used to hearing it and your mouth gets used to saying those words. That's really useful to know that that's what makes a difference.
Even the insinuation anxiety feeling, I've said it's an aversive state. It's uncomfortable for a reason because your defiance might be causing harm to someone else.
Yeah. It's there for a reason that somebody is expecting something of you. What does it mean? Right. So I think understanding that too, sort of naming it and knowing that we have two kind of ideal selves, especially in America, we have this ideal independent self. We want to act on our agency. We want to do what we think is right.
But we also have this interdependent self, which is that we want to remain in harmony with everybody around us. And there are two sort of ideals like Hazel Marcus and Shinobu Kitayama talk about these ideal selves. We can't ever achieve one state or the other state. And they're there for a reason.
Exactly. And so we do need to think about that. But we also need to hold dear to ourselves what are our values.
It's what I call those defiance hierarchy. Some people are allowed to defy, even rewarded for it. And others, they have more costs. There's more severe consequences. There's more backlash for being defiant.
And it's interesting that the people that are in that category, which is anything from the dominant norm, the tall white male, anything that deviates from that group, you actually need to be defiant more often because you're expected to be more compliant.
It can be exhausting. You have those extra burdens that you carry.
I mean, it'd be interesting what people might choose between those things. It's one where I often describe as being on a balance beam for some people. There's only a narrow set of behaviors that are possible for you to do without being punished. But sometimes you can get to firmer ground where you can find this is now safe and effective for me to define and find places where that is accepted.
So compliance is something that we just go along with someone else. It's usually externally imposed or default. We're not really thinking about it. We kind of slide into it.
Consent. I take the definition of informed consent in medicine and I apply it to the other decisions that we make in life, which I find really useful. There's five elements that are required for informed consent. So first of all, this capacity that we have the mental capacity to make a decision. So we're not under the influence of drugs or alcohol or we're not sick. And then knowledge.
Showing 181–200 of 332 · page 10 of 17
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