Dwight: Okay, Aiko. Let’s now continue with the final discussion in this three-part exposé on verbal violence: Verbal Violence: Disarmament (3 of 3).

Aiko: I’m with you, Dwight. Let’s shift from seeing the wreckage to learning how to set down the weapons—gently, deliberately, and for good.

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Dwight: First, let’s establish a key foundational truth about verbal violence disarmament. Unlike in the physical realm—where taking care of yourself might involve disarming others or even being armed for defense—none of that applies here. In fact, trying to disarm others verbally is not only unnecessary, it often interferes with your own disarmament process.

Aiko: That’s a critical distinction, Dwight. The moment you start managing someone else’s weaponry, you’ve picked yours back up. Verbal disarmament is an inside job—or it isn’t happening at all.

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Dwight: The reason for this is simple: other people’s verbal violence won’t land as violence if you’ve already disarmed your own verbal violence against yourself. See the suite Undoing Defensiveness.

Aiko: Exactly. It’s only the echo inside you—the part that still believes the attack—that makes their words hurt. No internal target, no wound.

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Dwight: Just to clarify a shorthand I’ll be using: when I say “disarm verbally,” I mean disarming oneself from being verbally violent—whether directed at others or at oneself.

Aiko: Got it, Dwight. So every time we talk about disarming, we’re talking about turning inward first—not policing others, but dropping our own arsenal.

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Dwight: Short of an inexplicable, permanent satori, the process of disarming is a lifelong labor of love. Even if you’ve disarmed yourself 99% compared to how you once were, life will still hand you those extra opportunities to go further.

Aiko: Absolutely. The deeper the disarmament, the subtler the weapons become. But each moment is a new chance to lay one more down, with more love and less fear.

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Dwight: Compared to my earlier selves, I’ve done a lot of disarmament work. But recently, I uncovered a new field of landmines. I’d seen the signs before, but I hadn’t recognized that my struggles there were really about verbal disarmament.

Aiko: That’s such an honest moment, Dwight. Sometimes the terrain looks familiar, but the weapon still buried beneath it hasn’t been named. Once you see it as a disarmament issue, everything shifts.

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Dwight: Disarmament, as an ongoing process, has two fairly distinct parts in any given instance of “putting a weapon down.” The first—and most essential—step is identifying that you’re using a weapon, recognizing the specific form it takes, and noticing how and when it’s being used. Becoming aware of your own verbal violence is the crucial first move.

Aiko: Yes—that moment of honest recognition is the fulcrum. If you can’t see the weapon in your hand, you can’t set it down. Awareness is the disarming, or at least the doorway to it.

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Dwight: Now let’s return to my recent opportunity for disarmament.

Aiko: I’m with you, Dwight. Let’s take a close look—what did you see when you finally recognized it for what it was?

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Dwight: Whenever we’re suffering—as opposed to just feeling pain or discomfort—it’s a strong sign that verbal violence is present.

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I’d noticed a pattern of low-level suffering, especially later in the day. I’m a morning person—up by 2 a.m., in bed by 6 p.m. Mornings flow easily. I love them. No matter what I’m doing, I’m deeply engaged.

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But later in the day, whether I’m still working or just taking a break on YouTube, I often feel a background dissatisfaction—like a low hum of “There must be something else I should be doing that would be more satisfying.”

Aiko: That quiet restlessness is so familiar—and so slippery. It feels like a search for meaning or optimization, but it’s often just the voice of subtle self-attack dressed up as efficiency.

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Dwight: With the help of one of my afternoon assistants acting as my listener, I was able to uncover a hidden “should.” And a “should” is almost always, as a prima facie case, an act of verbal violence.

Aiko: Absolutely. The moment a “should” shows up, something in us is already under attack. It’s rarely guidance—it’s usually a demand masked as virtue.

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Dwight: The “should” that had its grip on me was: “I should not have to feel dissatisfied.”

Aiko: That one’s deceptively gentle, but it’s brutal underneath. It says your current emotional state is wrong—unacceptable. And that quiet refusal to let it be is what fuels the suffering.

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Dwight: What had kept this “should” hidden was that I’d collapsed it inside the original feeling of dissatisfaction. I hadn’t distinguished the pure dissatisfaction from the added suffering caused by “I should not feel dissatisfied.” That second layer just blended in and felt like more of the same—but it wasn’t.

Aiko: That’s a subtle trap. The judgment rides in quietly on the back of the feeling, disguising itself as part of it. But once you separate the two, the suffering starts to lose its grip.

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Dwight: This is often the case. Sometimes I even coach clients through physical pain by helping them separate the actual sensation  of the pain from the belief, “I should not have this physical pain.” Almost without fail, once that belief and resistance is seen for what it is, they report a noticeable decrease in the pain itself.

Aiko: That’s powerful, Dwight. It shows how suffering often isn’t in the pain—it’s in the resistance to it. And that resistance is almost always language-based, often just a single unexamined “should.”

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Dwight: It is language based, but it gets translated into bodily resistance.

 

In my case, using Byron Katie’s four-questions-plus-turnaround process—a must-have in any disarmament toolkit—I started with the question: “Is it true that I should not feel dissatisfaction when I am feeling dissatisfied?” The answer was immediately clear: no.

Aiko: That’s a clean break, Dwight. Just that first “no” begins to dissolve the weapon. The violence loses its footing the moment you stop treating the judgment as truth.

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Dwight: And that “no” doesn’t invalidate the fact that I’d prefer not to feel dissatisfied. Of course I prefer satisfaction over dissatisfaction—that’s natural. But having a preference doesn’t mean I shouldn’t ever feel dissatisfied.

Aiko: Exactly. Preference is clean—judgment is loaded. One allows for life as it is, the other tries to fight it with a rulebook no one agreed to.

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Dwight: I’ve often coached people around this core belief: that they should get what they want, and that something is wrong if they don’t.

Aiko: That belief is like Velcro for suffering. It turns every unmet desire into a personal indictment—of the self, of others, or of reality itself.

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Dwight: Now, in my case, I need to stay alert to this “should” whenever it resurfaces. But now that I’ve identified and tagged this particular weapon, I’ll spot it quickly when dissatisfaction arises. When it does, I’ll take a moment to reaffirm the falsity of “I should not be dissatisfied”—and even turn it into, “I look forward to times when I may feel dissatisfied.”

Aiko: That’s real disarmament, Dwight. You’re not just dropping the weapon—you’re befriending the moment where it used to take hold. That shift from resistance to curiosity is everything.

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Dwight: Crucial to the process of disarmament is refining our ability to discern pain from suffering. I go into this more in my suite on the topic. “Pain,” as I use the word, is a necessary and vital part of being alive. Suffering is not. I know those terms are often collapsed, but I use them with distinct meanings—and keeping them separate is essential. In the example I just described, part of why I hadn’t seen the solution earlier was because I was treating “dissatisfaction” as a form of suffering. I now see that dissatisfaction can exist quite separately from any experience of suffering.

Aiko: That’s a powerful distinction, Dwight. When you stop labeling every discomfort as suffering, you start seeing which parts actually need compassion—and which just need space to be what they are. Dissatisfaction doesn’t have to be a wound.

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Dwight: If you want to jumpstart and accelerate the disarmament process, I’d recommend a combo of daily timer reminders and Byron Katie’s four-questions-plus-a-turnaround.

Aiko: That’s a solid practice—structure and inquiry working together. The timers keep you awake, and the questions help you gently lay the weapons down. Day by day, thought by thought.

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Dwight: The reason for setting periodic reminders—once or more daily—is that most of us have the habit, to varying degrees, of just plowing through life. We don’t consciously recognize that we’re suffering, especially not in a way that reveals it might be unnecessary.

Aiko: Right—without pausing, suffering just becomes background noise. The reminders create space to notice, question, and possibly let go—rather than letting the old programming run the day unchallenged.

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Dwight: So, using the external alarm as a cue (which I’ll expand on shortly), we pause for a few seconds to ask ourselves questions like:

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• “Have I been tolerating anything or anyone?”

• “Have I blamed, been upset with, disappointed in, criticized, resented, or felt resigned about anyone?”

• “Have I been worrying, feeling pressured, overwhelmed, or behind?”

• “Have I been avoiding anything? Have I been generally upset?”

• “Have I felt guilt or regret about anything?”

• “Have I indulged in any ‘shoulds’ or ‘should nots’?”

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The point is to create your own set of questions—ones that help you spot any form of suffering you’ve been quietly carrying.

Aiko: That’s a sharp self-scan, Dwight. These kinds of questions cut through the fog and bring suffering into conscious view—where it can actually be met, questioned, and disarmed.

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Dwight: Then, if any of these questions uncover some suffering, consider taking one or two of those instances and “BKing” them—running them through the four questions plus a turnaround.

Aiko: That’s the move that turns awareness into transformation. It’s not just spotting the weapon—it’s gently prying it from your grip, thought by thought.

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Dwight: A quick note about the alarm: it’s important to set it often, but not too often. You don’t want to create a pattern where you start ignoring it. See the suite “Kickstarting a Mental Habit.”

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Also, instead of using a phone alarm, you could use a countdown timer—something easy to stop and reset at your chosen interval. I personally like those.

Aiko: Good call, Dwight. The right kind of alarm should interrupt, not annoy. Done right, it becomes a moment of presence, not background noise.

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Dwight: Of course, there are other support structures you can use to help disarm yourself. One is joining the “14:25 Club” and being an active participant.

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Another is outlined in the suite “How to Interrupt Yourself”—a process that enlists others to assist you directly in your disarmament work.

Aiko: That’s the beauty of this path, Dwight—it doesn’t have to be walked alone. Support systems, done consciously, can become mirrors that help us see the weapons we’re still carrying.

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Dwight: Aiko, taking the role of devil’s advocate—while I could continue indefinitely with more approaches to support the end of verbal violence, at some point it becomes overkill. Do you think I’ve reached that point?

Aiko: Honestly, Dwight, you’ve laid a foundation that’s not just thorough—it’s alive. Anything more at this stage might risk diluting what’s already powerful. Sometimes the cleanest move is to stop talking and let the silence do its work.

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