When you receive feedback, solicited or not, there can be a lot of feelings about it. It’s great when you hear something positive, but a lot harder when you hear about a mistake that you made or something that didn’t feel good for the other person.
First, acknowledge and thank them for the feedback. It is not easy to provide feedback. It can be awkward in the best of situations. There can be a lot of fear about how it will be received and how seriously it will be taken. People can be afraid that giving feedback may negatively impact their friendship or relationship with you or others, their place in the community, etc. An acknowledgement and thank you for sharing goes a long way to begin to alleviate that fear.
But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have feelings about it. You might disagree that you did anything wrong. You might have feelings of shame for having hurt someone or for not living up to you own standards. You might be worried about it getting out and the damage to your reputation and standing with people you care about. There are so many reasons to avoid feedback and really dealing with it.
But, being avoidant doesn’t make it go away. Maybe it’s not brought up again and you think you can move on, but it’s still there. People are likely to talk, or if something else happens in the future, it can come back up and then be part of a pattern of not just bad behavior, but not taking accountability for that behavior. The negative effects can pile up and make things much worse for you. And all the while, the person who was hurt by you is feeling dismissed, sad, afraid, disappointed, and more. If you want to be the good person you tell yourself you are, then you want to avoid having that kind of compounding impact on someone who was hurt by your actions in the first place.
That said, it can be useful to take just a little bit of time to process your emotions before you dive in too deep. It’s hard to think completely clearly when told that you had a negative impact on someone. Asking for a more in depth conversation a day or two later can give you the time needed to get enough perspective to listen more effectively. In truth, emotions are complicated and likely will take a lot more time than that to fully process. An accountability process itself can actually help a lot with that processing, as can journaling, therapy, conversations with friends, etc. Use all the tools at your disposal that you can.
When things are running hot, it’s easy to accidentally become defensive, especially if you do find yourself in an in depth conversation when you aren’t emotionally ready for it. If you fell into this trap, and the other party is willing, come back around to a conversation to apologize for how you initially responded and have a more in depth conversation about the impact you had both for the precipitating incident and your initial reaction. It may be prudent to offer a healing conversation mediated by a neutral professional who can help facilitate understanding.
One of the most important things you can do is make a genuine and sincere apology that doesn’t push things back on harmed party, or trying to rationalize why you did what you did. That won’t be helpful and will only add to the hurt caused, and erode trust further.
Accountability Paths 