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Since it seems that what I do most when work­ing with cou­ples is talk about com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I thought I might write an arti­cle or two about this topic.

I sus­pect that the rea­son that most cou­ples have prob­lems in this area is that most peo­ple have grown up wit­ness­ing poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion. So let me define a few things that good com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not.

Good com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not:

• get­ting another per­son to agree with you.
• teach­ing, explain­ing, or lecturing.
• manip­u­lat­ing another per­son into doing things your way.
• bar­gain­ing, cajol­ing, or begging.

Good com­mu­ni­ca­tion is:

• clearly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between thoughts and feelings.
• being self responsible.
• being will­ing to hon­estly state what you know about your thoughts and feelings.

And lastly:

Learn­ing to embrace the East­ern con­cept of “mir­ror mind.”

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Most peo­ple grow up see­ing myr­iad exam­ples of poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion. They hear the adults around them speak­ing from a place of self-righteousness. They hear about wounded feel­ings, and learned (erro­neously) that other peo­ple or exter­nal sit­u­a­tions are respon­si­ble for what each adult is feeling.

And speak­ing of feel­ings, most adults have real trou­ble grasp­ing the dif­fer­ence between a feel­ing and a thought. So let’s start there.

Feel­ings Are Just That

Here’s a 100% rule for you:

Every­thing that is going on inside of you is about you, or bet­ter put, is “caused” by you.

The Bud­dhist con­cept of empti­ness speaks to this. We’ve talked about this a lot, but when we say “empty,” we mean “empty of mean­ing.” In other words, using the illus­tra­tion of speech, what some­one says to you is noth­ing more than sound. What you do with that sound is 100% up to you.

In a sense, because of this, I don’t believe in emo­tional or ver­bal abuse. It’s not that I don’t believe peo­ple can say some­thing that they intend to be hurt­ful. It’s that, and here’s the hard part, the inten­tion of the other per­son has noth­ing to do with what I do with his or her action.

In actu­al­ity, ver­bal and emo­tional abuse is self abuse. (And let me put in a note here: that com­ment does not apply to chil­dren, as they have no con­trol over their cir­cum­stances — they can’t, for exam­ple, leave. Adults, on the other hand, have com­plete free­dom to, for exam­ple, walk out, as opposed to sim­ply blam­ing the other person.)

Now, I know, those of you who think you been ver­bally abused are prob­a­bly look­ing for the “unsub­scribe” but­ton. But hear me out.

Once we become adults, we always have a choice about who we hang around with. If the per­son we’re with starts using ‘his’ words in an inten­tion­ally hurt­ful way, I can choose not to hurt myself over them, while at the same time indi­cat­ing that we either do ther­apy or I will leave.

Instead, what typ­i­cally hap­pens is the per­son on the receiv­ing end metaphor­i­cally “picks up the knife and stabs her­self,” demands that the per­pe­tra­tor stop, and goes imme­di­ately to, “This isn’t fair! He shouldn’t be treat­ing me like this!” This victim-based approach changes pre­cisely nothing.

Three things

In any sit­u­a­tion, there are actu­ally only three choices.

1. The first is to continue,
2. the sec­ond is to leave, and
3. the third is to whine.

Under “con­tinue,” there are two sub choices.

1. One is to accept things as they are, and
2. the sec­ond is to head into ther­apy, or some­thing sim­i­lar, to shift the situation.

I find it odd that most peo­ple choose the third option.

More on this down the line.

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So, to go back to the 100% rule, words are words, no mat­ter what mommy told you. Here’s how it actu­ally works.

Let’s imag­ine that Sally says to Sam, “You never lis­ten to me!” Now, let’s remem­ber that Sally’s inten­tion is imma­te­r­ial to Sam’s response. In other words, despite Sally’s inten­tion, the words only mean what Sam makes of them.

There’s really no way to deter­mine whether feel­ings or thoughts come first. But what hap­pens is this: the elec­tri­cal sig­nals that are Sally’s words reach Sam’s brain. At that instant, Sam’s brain simul­ta­ne­ously inter­prets the words, (decides who “you” is, remem­bers what “never” means, etc.) and then ascribes mean­ing, while also, per­haps, attach­ing a feeling.

All of that is Sam’s doing, and has every­thing to do with who Sam is, how he was brought up, and what his level of self-awareness is.

If Sam is nor­mal, (mean­ing bro­ken, and inept at com­mu­ni­ca­tion…) Sam is going to react instead of respond­ing.

• For exam­ple, he might flatly deny what he assumes is an accu­sa­tion. “Of course I lis­ten to you, you never shut up!”
• Or, Sam might specif­i­cally chal­lenge the word “never.” “I spent an hour lis­ten­ing to you this morning.”
• Or, he might go on the offen­sive. “What you mean I don’t lis­ten? You never lis­ten to me! And besides, we haven’t had sex in a week!”

And then, depend­ing on the feel­ing he cre­ates, he might sulk, walk away, start yelling, etc.

A self respon­si­ble per­son, on the other hand, would do two things.
First, he would indi­cate what choices he is mak­ing inter­nally.
Sec­ond, he would express curiosity.

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Inter­nal Choices

Here’s where we begin to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between feel­ings and thoughts. Accord­ing to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion model that we fol­low (the Haven Model), all feel­ings are felt in the body. (Thus, “I feel you don’t under­stand me” is NOT a feeling.)

For exam­ple, we can feel warm toward some­one or cold toward some­one. We can feel close to some­one, or dis­tant from them. We can be attracted, or repulsed. We can feel open, or closed.

Sam might say, “As I hear you say that, I feel cold and dis­tant from you.”

Now, notice that Sam did not say, “You made me…” He uses his lan­guage to own his feel­ings. There is a very prac­ti­cal rea­son for doing this. If Sam were to say, “You are mak­ing me sad,” Sam would be declar­ing him­self to be a vic­tim, and it’s quite pos­si­ble that the con­ver­sa­tion will get derailed — either Sam and Sally end up talk­ing about Sam’s sad­ness, or they end up argu­ing about whether mak­ing Sam sad was Sally’s intent. In either case, Sally’s (poorly expressed) issue gets trumped by Sam’s.

Rather, the self respon­si­ble per­son uses “I” lan­guage to describe their inter­nal, self-created “feeling-state.”
“
Here’s who I am, and here’s what’s up for me.”

Sam might then shift to what he is think­ing.

Dar­bella and I love to use the fol­low­ing clause — “So, the story I’m telling myself is…” You could sub­sti­tute “judg­ment,” or “inter­pre­ta­tion” for “the story I’m telling myself.”

Sam: “So, the story I’m telling myself is that you’re try­ing to pick a fight —and I am mak­ing myself anx­ious, and judg­ing that you no longer love me.”

Now, while the lan­guage is a bit kludgy, this is actu­ally a descrip­tion of what’s going on inside of Sam, and it’s devoid of any blame directed at Sally.

Curios­ity

If Sally is wise, she hears what Sam is say­ing — that he’s describ­ing his inter­nal expe­ri­ence and in no way is he blam­ing her. So Sally can have a breath, as opposed to get­ting all defen­sive. In other words, at most, Sally might say, “Tell me more.”

If Sam is wise, hav­ing expressed what’s up for him, he might remem­ber where the con­ver­sa­tion started. Sally was rais­ing an issue about think­ing that she was unheard. (Remem­ber, you can’t “feel” unheard — it’s a thought, not a feeling.)

Sam might say, “I’m curi­ous about what you think I’m not hear­ing.” This is an open invi­ta­tion for Sally to share more infor­ma­tion, while also notic­ing her own thoughts.

This is Sam, mir­ror­ing Sally.

The curios­ity ques­tion is a very clear mir­ror — “Here is what I heard — please tell me more.” And it’s called a mir­ror­ing ques­tion because it acts like a mir­ror. The reflec­tion in a stan­dard mir­ror is nei­ther more, nor less, than the object reflected.

Now, as some of you are going to want to argue that real peo­ple don’t talk like this — that fight­ing and argu­ing and name-calling are the basis of relating.

In the words of Dr. Phil, all I can say is, “How’s that work­ing for you?”

The only thing the “nor­mal approach” gets you is more of the same — resent­ment, more fights, the silent treat­ment, anger, drama.

If that’s what you want, by all means keep doing it.

Or, you could grow up, and get over yourself.

Next week, we’ll talk about mir­ror­ing from an East­ern perspective.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Related posts:

1. Mind Mir­ror
2. Drop Your Story
3. 6 Ways to Deepen Relationships
4. Integrity and Balance
5. The Dance of Relationships

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Tagged with: Anger • blaming • Buddhist • Communication

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