The feeling is not up for debate

A woman in Alexandria is three weeks into physiotherapy after a knee operation. Halfway through a step exercise she stops, grips the rail, and says she was sure the knee was about to give way.

Her physiotherapist has watched hundreds of knees do that exercise. He saw hers. It was steady, and the load was light. His first instinct is to tell her so, to explain the angles and the weight and why nothing dangerous happened.

He would be right about the knee. He would be wrong about her.

What she told him was not a report on her joint. It was a report on how she felt, and that part is simply true. She was frightened. Arguing with it will not make her less frightened. It will only teach her that telling him things is a mistake.

The better opening is to accept it. You felt it was going to go, and that was frightening. Only after that does it make sense to talk about the weight, the angle, and what she will notice as it gets stronger. The assumptions behind a feeling can be questioned. The feeling itself is information, and she offered it generously.

There is a distinction worth holding on to. Agreeing that she felt something does not mean agreeing that anyone in her place would have felt it, or that the exercise is unsafe. He can grant the first without conceding the second.

It is the same with an upset customer or a hurt friend. Start with what they felt. Then talk about what happened.