Full Respect Living
Fight the position, keep the person — you do not have to dehumanise someone in order to oppose them.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
A core principle of Relational Life Therapy and the operating norm of Real's men's groups. It separates the position from the person: you may disagree entirely with how someone thinks and still hold them in respect. Real extends it well past the therapy room to political conflict, arguing that flying from discomfort into one-up superiority and contempt is the failure mode on every side.
Origin
Real developed it as a group norm and found he never had to make it explicit — in groups where people speak with humility, nobody talks to each other with contempt. He connects it to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and to his own unpublished 9/11 op-ed arguing that a traumatised country has two choices: sit with the vulnerability, or escape into grandiosity, judgment, contempt and attack.
Core principles
- 01I may disagree with how you think, but I hold you in respect — that is the whole principle.
- 02Speak to one another with humility: this is what I'm making up, rather than this is what is true.
- 03Generally speaking, unsolicited advice does not go very well, so good boundaries are part of respect.
- 04You can put your body on the line protesting someone's agenda and still hold them in regard as a human being.
- 05Contempt and self-righteous indignation are available on all sides — Real is explicit that the left is not shy about them either.
- 06The move into one-up superiority is a flight from discomfort; sitting with vulnerability is the alternative.
- 07Norms like this often do not need to be made explicit — Real says he never had to state it in his groups, it just happens.
How to run it
- 1
Separate the position from the person
Hold the disagreement about how someone thinks entirely separate from your regard for them as a human being. Real's formulation is the whole practice in one sentence.
Pro tip Say it out loud early in a group's life; it functions as a licence to disagree hard.
- 2
Adopt the humility grammar
Speak in what I'm making up rather than in assertions about the other person's reality. Real names this as part of the culture of the group.
Pro tip The same grammar that defuses objectivity battles between couples defuses them between group members.
- 3
Hold the boundary on unsolicited advice
Real's saying is that generally speaking, unsolicited advice does not go very well. Group members learn to have good boundaries, which is a form of respect rather than a restriction on it.
Pro tip Ask whether the person wants input before offering it; the ask converts advice into a gift.
Watch out Advice-giving is often a one-up move disguised as helpfulness.
- 4
Catch the flight into contempt
When something is uncomfortable, notice the pull toward one-up grandiosity, judgment and attack — and choose the vulnerability instead. Real applies this to individuals and to whole countries.
Pro tip Real's diagnostic frame: contempt is almost always an escape from sitting with pain and hard questions.
Watch out Real is pointed that this applies to all sides — the left is not shy about self-righteous indignation and contempt either.
- 5
Fight without dehumanising
Keep full opposition to the agenda while keeping full regard for the human. Real's formulation is that he will put his body on the line protesting your agenda and still hold you in regard.
Pro tip Real's precedents are explicit: Gandhi knew that, and Martin Luther King knew that.
Watch out Do not mistake this for neutrality or false balance — Real is arguing for regard, not for standing down.
In the wild
Real describes his group practice — ten full-pay members, many of them big movers and shakers, plus four pro bono at any given time. They do check-ins, follow whatever theme emerges, and sometimes do deep trauma work in front of each other. Members learn good boundaries and speak with humility: this is what I'm making up, Tim. And Real notes that no one in these groups has ever said what a something-or-other, how can you do this. He adds that he never had to make the norm explicit — it just happens.
→ A group in which some of the most powerful men in the world can spend two hours admitting they are petrified of their wives, because the culture makes contempt unavailable.
After 9/11 Real wrote an op-ed that no outlet ran. In it he argued that this was the first time the country had been hit on American soil, that it was a national trauma unlike anything faced before, and that as a trauma expert he knew there were two choices: tolerate the discomfort of sitting with the vulnerability and pain and ask some tough questions, or escape that discomfort by flying into one-up grandiosity, judgment, contempt and attack. His hope was that the country would join together in the vulnerability rather than escape into attack.
→ Nobody published it. Two weeks later, Real notes, the country was in Iraq — which he offers as the collective version of the same escape he treats in individuals.
Real names Violence by Jim Gilligan as the book he most often gifts and rereads. Gilligan was medical director of Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane and worked with serial killers, taking the job as a young man on the premise that if he could figure out the dynamics of those men he could figure out what violence is. It took him twenty-five years to write the book. Real says both he and Gilligan agree that violence is the shunting from the one-down to the one-up — from shame to grandiosity, from helplessness to attack.
→ Locates contempt and violence on the same continuum as ordinary one-up defensiveness, which is why full respect living is treated as a structural intervention rather than a manner.
Common mistakes
Treating respect as agreement
Real is explicit that he will be on the streets protesting your agenda. Full respect living is not neutrality, softness, or a reason to withhold opposition — it is a constraint on method, not on conviction.
Assuming contempt belongs to the other side
Real deliberately names both directions: the left is not shy about moving into self-righteous indignation and contempt either. A framework applied only to opponents is itself a one-up move.
Offering unsolicited advice as care
In group settings the most common breach of respect is not hostility but helpfulness. Real's saying is blunt — generally speaking, unsolicited advice does not go very well — and boundaries are what make the group safe enough to disclose in.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone convening a group where hard personal material or hard political disagreement will surface.
Not ideal for
Contexts requiring immediate protective action against someone actively causing harm, where the priority is safety rather than regard.
From the transcript
“a core principle of rlt is what we call full respect living i may disagree with how you think but i hold you in respect”
“generally speaking unsolicited advice doesn't go very well”
“i'll put my body on the line and be on the streets protesting your agenda and still hold you in regard as a human being”
“i don't have to dehumanize you in order to fight you gandhi knew that martin luther king knows that”
From the episode
#810: Terry Real — The Therapist Who Breaks All The Rules