Three causes first

Here's the method, and it's small. When a slip stings and the charge arrives, before you let the charge stand, name three causes for the slip that don't require the person to have meant anything by it. Three, not one, because one alternative feels like an excuse and three feels like a list of ordinary Tuesdays. They don't have to be true. They have to be plausible, and they have to be things you've done.

Take the unanswered message. One, they read it somewhere they couldn't reply and it went under later messages. Two, they meant to reply properly and the proper reply got harder as the days passed. Three, something's going on with them that they haven't told you. Take the interruption. One, they thought you'd finished. Two, they'd been holding a point for ten minutes and lost track. Three, the meeting was running over and they were watching the clock. Take the email. One, they wrote it on a phone between meetings. Two, they write all their emails like that. Three, they're under pressure from above for the figures and passed it on without noticing.

You'll find the three come easily, because you've been all three. And you'll find that once they're named, the charge has to compete with them, which it couldn't do while it was the only sentence in the room. It doesn't disappear. It becomes one of four. That's the whole aim. Not to convince yourself the charge is false, which you can't know, but to return it to the status of a guess among guesses.

The habit here is the naming, done in the moment, which means before the evening starts. It takes about twenty seconds, and the twenty seconds have to be spent before the charge has become a position, because a position is much harder to give up than a sentence. If you're good at this, you'll come to do it as the charge lands, and the charge will start arriving already surrounded. If you're not good at it yet, do it late. Late is still worth more than never, because a charge that's had an evening to set can still be loosened by the three, just more slowly.