Freedom of speech can facilitate mental health, and cancel culture is currently threatening both. With exceptions like vicious gossip or negative rumination, freedom of expression can be an incredible aid for developing mental clarity, exploring ideas, generating insight or self-awareness, resolving conflicts, and strengthening your social support network. Social support, which hinges on language, is such an essential component to mental health that as a clinical psychologist I am required to assess it as part of a basic evaluation. Evolutionary psychologists have speculated that our gift of language is partly why we were able to evolve to such a sophisticated species: Language allows us to quickly exchange information, build social bonds, and collaborate to face challenges. Freedom of expression helps put our inner life into words, which has been demonstrated to decrease anxiety while improving self-control and judgment skills.
Our current climate of cancel culture has curtailed freedom of expression. Many people are afraid to express something that others may dislike; or they may feel extremely threatened just by hearing others disagree. Disagreements can trigger social anxiety for some, or anger in others– perhaps even a combination. This is somewhat understandable: Anger is a natural reaction when we feel our boundaries have been violated, and anxiety is adaptive when we fear our boundaries may be encroached upon. This means that the threat of cancellation can escalate minor disagreements to outsized eruptions of anger or anxiety from ourselves or others when we discuss sensitive topics (which includes basically everything, these days) with a friend, neighbor, coworker, or anyone else with whom we might have a casual conversation. The threat of cancellation evokes a “fight or flight” survival attitude, which can be unproductive when we’re just having a conversation (since words are not, after all, actually violence).
The fear of cancel culture can make it tempting to stifle your words in order to avoid any chance of conflict. To a certain degree, tailoring our self-expression to fit our environment is a wise and socially appropriate thing to do (for example, your choice of topics and mannerisms are hopefully different at a dinner with clients compared to a late-night outing with old friends). However, too much stifling of your words can decrease your self-awareness, degrade the quality of your social support, and sandbag the many other benefits to freedom of expression already discussed. This is why we need to practice communicating and listening carefully during disagreements –this is much healthier and more productive than constantly stifling ourselves or others!
If you would like to practice building your own freedom of expression and encourage others to speak freely around you, you might try a three-step technique called Reflective Listening.
How does it work? Well, let me break it down so you can understand completely.
Step one: Start by choosing a partner. Explain in advance that the first person will make a short point (no more than 1 minute long) and then the second person will repeat the point back. The second person will make sure to use a calm, rational tone that conveys respect and/or compassion for the person who spoke first– despite potentially disagreeing with what they said. If you struggle with how to speak respectfully or compassionately during disagreements, please share in the comments and I may write another piece with some techniques.
Step two: Repeat Step 1 until the first speaker confirms their point was correctly understood. Sometimes this happens on the first attempt, sometimes it takes a few. It is essential that the speaker doesn’t talk more than a minute at a time, otherwise it can be very hard for the listener to accurately recapitulate the point. There’s no shame in using a timer if helpful. Some people like a timer because it helps them develop self-awareness about how much they’re asking the other person to comprehend at once; and other people like it because it actually encourages them to speak a little longer than they normally might. The timer can also help everyone stay calmer as it neutralizes any sense of having to compete for space in the conversation (feeling interrupted or verbally cut-off during a disagreement can heighten power struggles or other tensions). However, if neither person feels the need for a timer then there’s absolutely no need to use it.
Step 3. Next, the speaker and the listener switch roles and repeat the exercise– this time the new speaker making his or her own independent point or reaction to be recapitulated by the new listener. For the listener, it can be helpful to take in a slow deep breath while you listen– but no need to do this if you’re already feeling relaxed.
And that’s it. Though you may have to keep repeating Steps 1-3 till both sides feel understood. I do want to stress that the goal is not necessarily to agree, but to increase understanding. That may seem cheesy, but this technique actually works. It’e been shown to diffuse arguments and decrease misunderstandings, which strengthens relationships. It slows our thought process to facilitate deeper thinking around important topics. It helps us develop new perspectives when appropriate. And most importantly, it helps us create an environment where others are more receptive to our ideas.
And in this era of cancel culture, all of those things are needed now more than ever. Even before the cancellation frenzy, disagreements could easily become personal or threatening, in the heat of the moment. That led to something of which cancel culture is only the most extreme recent manifestation: what psychologists call hot cognition. Now, hot cognition has its benefits, but one of its drawbacks is that we can stop listening too soon, or send signals of escalation that we didn’t intend.
It is in your best interests to keep a strong social support network that can withstand disagreements and includes a diversity of viewpoints. This is much easier — and more fun– when we know how to communicate our thoughts as well as listen to the ideas of others, even when we disagree. So why not find a friend who sees things differently, and rather than fighting, try a little reflexive listening? You could find yourself with a deeper perspective, a closer relationship, and enhanced communication skills that will serve you well no matter where life takes you. Yes, the extreme response that is cancel culture is unhealthy and must be defeated. But the goal of the cancellers is, ultimately, to make it so they never have to listen to anyone else. Cultivating that skill with family, friends, and a wider community is a vital step toward making that kind of extreme response not only politically impossible, but also something that everyone can agree is unnecessary because we all know how to listen.
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