Observations About Walking on Eggshells

During the ongoing defamation trial, Amber Heard first described her situation situation with Johnny Depp as one where she felt she had to “walk on eggshells.” Hearing this, I was instantly transported to a recent situation where I myself was told by someone that they felt they needed to walk on eggshells around me.

I couldn’t help but reflect on that situation – in the moment, I wondered as to what the person was talking about. I think the words I used were, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that.” “I don’t want you to walk on eggshells, I want you to be free to say what you want.”

This person was rather guarded toward me at all times, so they didn’t respond directly. I asked, “what I could have done differently to have you not walk on eggshells?”, and they said “you’re not open to feedback”. “Could you give me an example of what you mean?” I ask. They reply, “I don’t have any specific examples, but I just feel judged whenever I try to talk to you about _______”

I find it useful to consider the results of our actions. A common pitfall that I’ve myself fallen into and I often see others succumb to is the one of assuming that performing a particular action will yield a particular result. Expecting a result makes sense for some things: For example, that saying “I love you” to your significant other will prompt them to say “I love you” back, or that when someone notices that you’ve tipped them, they say “thank you.”

This expectation begins to lose its power as we venture outside of what we know to be true. The following won’t be true for the handful of rocket engineers who read this article, but for the time being let’s assume that you’ve never built or launched a rocket before. To expect that when building a rocket for the first time, your rocket takes off successfully and lands on the moon, would be far-fetched. A reasonable expectation might be that the rocket gains some altitude – hopefully it goes upward – with the design you’ve made. But to have an expectation about where the rocket will go, like the moon, is likely more representative of the fact that the rocket builder just can’t stop thinking about the moon and less representative of the capabilities of the rocket.

Similarly, I think that people who say to others that they feel the need to “walk on eggshells” have an idea about what their “moon” is – that is, they know where they want to end up. And, they think that saying “you make me walk on eggshells” will take them to the moon – the moon being a place where the eggshell-walker feels fully free to express themselves. However, in practice, from Johnny Depp’s marriage to my relationship to others that show up when I search “walking on eggshells” – it doesn’t work. The strategy seems like another one that folks use without considering the result.

In a follow-up article, I’ll write about some steps that I’ve found useful for

• checking in with myself to see if I’m feeling fully expressed in the moment
• imagining a world in which I am fully expressed
• considering the concrete actions I or others around me could take that would help me to stop withholding and become fully expressed