Coaching practices for Repairing Harm

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Repairing Harm, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• After we fight we just let it sit for days with neither of us reaching out, and the hurt quietly piles up until I start reading even neutral things they do as another little jab
• I keep waiting until the argument's over to make things right, and by then the damage is done
• Something went wrong between us and everyone immediately jumps to whose fault it is
• We’re trying to settle this just between the two of us, but the truth is a whole group felt the fallout and their trust took a hit too
• After it’s over I’m left sitting in guilt about the damage I did to someone, just stewing in it

Practices that may help

1. Repair quickly and thoroughly
   Don’t let injuries accumulate — repair within hours or days, not weeks.
   Secure-Functioning Relationships
2. Make small repairs during conflict -- not only big apologies after
   A touch, a softer tone, a brief I love you mid-argument is repair -- use it.
   Repair Attempts: Gottman's Key to Surviving Conflict in Relationships
3. Ask the three restorative questions
   Start every harm conversation with: who was hurt, what do they need, and who is responsible for meeting those needs?
   Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr)
4. Involve the affected community, not just the two parties
   Harm rarely affects only two people — include those affected by the ripple.
   Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr)
5. Plan repair for the harms the behavior caused
   After understanding the chain, make a concrete plan to address the damage it caused.
   Behavioral Chain Analysis: The DBT Method for Understanding Problem Behaviors
6. Treat conflict as maintenance, not maintenance failure
   Repair well and quickly — because how you end conflict matters more than how you conduct it.
   Relationship Maintenance Behaviors
7. Repair Attempts: Gottman's Key to Surviving Conflict in Relationships
   A repair attempt is any move -- humor, an apology, a softened tone, a bid to take a break -- that tries to lower conflict tension before it spirals. John Gottman's research found that whether couples successfully made and accepted repair attempts was a key marker separating stable from distressed couples. It is not avoiding conflict that matters most; it is the ability to repair within it.
8. Rupture and Repair
   Ruptures — the inevitable misattunements, conflicts, and disconnections in any close relationship — are normal and unavoidable; what builds security is reliable repair afterward. Research from infant still-face studies, couples work, and psychotherapy all converges on the same finding: relationships are not made secure by avoiding rupture but by the predictable experience that disconnection can be named and reconnected.
9. Make the harm visible through an impact statement
   The person who caused harm must hear — in detail — what the harm actually did to the person harmed.
   Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr)
10. Let repeated repair build earned security
    Each successful repair teaches "we can break and come back" — which is what makes a relationship feel safe.
    Rupture and Repair

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