If you've been following this journey, you know I've been searching for a replacement for "faux feelings." The search is over. I've landed on storied feelings. This post is about why.

When I asked for your input on dropping "faux feelings," I didn't expect the depth of response that followed. What began as a simple question became a genuine collaboration. Here's where we are now.

The term "faux feelings" has served the NVC community for years, but does the word itself undermine the message? In this post, I explore why I'm reconsidering the term, the alternatives I've weighed, and why "story feelings" may better honor both the experience and the insight. I'm asking for your input before making the change.

Why analyzing your triggers often isn't enough — and what plants, San trackers, and Michael Pollan reveal about a more ancient way of paying attention.

I've been working on Chapter 9 of Tracking Triggers, which focuses on listening and empathy. The chapter teaches empathy as a cooperative act: when you genuinely receive another person's experience, their nervous system registers safety in yours. Co-regulation. The prefrontal cortex comes back online. They shift from protection to openness. All of this is true. But a thoughtful reader pointed to something I hadn't made explicit.

When I posted two cover options for Tracking Triggers, I asked two questions: which cover has the real lion tracks, and which one draws you in? I expected a clear winner. What I got was something more interesting.

Faux feelings are feeling-words that embed interpretations about another person's intent. They don't just name an internal state; they imply a narrative about what someone did to you. The experience behind these words is fully real. What makes them "faux" is that the language points outward rather than inward.

A reflection on language, precision, and meeting readers where they are: I've been working on Tracking Triggers: From Reactivity to Responsiveness, and a thoughtful reader recently pushed back on something fundamental: my definition of "trigger."

Archive won. It names a place where things are stored and recovered. Reservoir felt too utilitarian. Depths describes a quality, not a location.

Like the San trackers of the Kalahari—who can read a landscape that appears empty to the untrained eye and find the animal that passed through hours before—mediators learn to read the emotional terrain of conflict. We listen for more than words. We follow the subtle spoor of tone, posture, silence, and story to discover what's really alive beneath the surface. We track it to its source.

Two significant additions are being made based on reader feedback about cultural appropriation, credit to the San people, and historical context for my South African background.

A trigger is a disproportionate reaction in the present, activated by something unintegrated from the past.

As I return to the Introduction of Tracking Triggers, I'm paying attention to what still feels alive—and what I'm uncertain about.

This journal documents the making of Tracking Triggers: From Reactivity to Responsiveness.