Sections
I want to dive into the psychology behind perception since it is our perception of others and events that rule our reality.
PERCEPTION:
Our perception of any thing or any one is based on three things: Story, Meaning, and State.
Story:
We are story telling and metaphor making machines. Whenever we look at a person, place or thing, we organize the information into a story. Its: “I saw this happen, and then that happened, and when I went over there, I heard this person say this and then I said that.”
Our stories include imagery, sequence, characters, and language. The more significant the story, the more vivid it is with robust color, language and pictures. We have stories about the people in our lives, about ourselves, about places we've visited, about events that have happened and ones we have yet to have happen.
*It’s crucial to note that the facts of our stories may be completely true, but the message of any story is in the interpretation.
Some of our stories are neutral. Most of them are more powerful than we think - either making us feel more empowered, or taking away all our power. The difference between a story that makes us feel strong vs one that weakens us is meaning.
Meaning:
All story is created from a belief about what something means to you.
A dancer gets hit by a cyclist, and her leg breaks - rendering her unable to pursue her dream as she’s known it. She grieves the loss of her dream endlessly, and years later, she’s sad and directionless. She never danced again even though she could have - just not professionally.
The cyclist, mired in his guilt, never bikes again. He’s stuck, and bearing the heavy weight of his accidental crime, loses all motivation in life.
A dancer gets hit by a cyclist, and her leg breaks, rendering her unable to pursue her dream as she’s known it. She spends time grieving the loss of her dream, but then decides to reinvent herself. She relentlessly pursues yoga and sports medicine, and with persistence and help, rehabilitates herself and now helps others do the same. This is her new dream.
The cyclist, mired in his guilt, takes time off from biking, but begins again, cautiously. The profound impact of that event inspires him to volunteer with crippled veterans which gives his life more meaning than it has ever had before.
The meaning we give any event will shape the story. The facts will stay the same, but the meaning we give it will change the arc of the story.
State:
Your “State” describes what your emotions and physiology are doing at any given moment. Our bodies are the most expressive instruments in the world and are doing emotion all the time. Whatever emotion we feel will be reflected in our posture, breath voice and endocrine system. Our states will impact our stories and meanings. The more integrated, grounded, and powerful our state, the more likely we’re able to look at an event from a more empowered perspective. The same holds true for our weakened states. Also, our stories and meanings will impact our states.
Whenever we attempt to resolve an issue with someone, whether it be small or large, we must look within ourselves first and examine our Story, Meaning, and State.
THE SCIENCE: Story + Meaning + State = Belief
When we “look” at an event and circumstance, we create a story about it (which btw, is not entirely fiction. There are facts), then we decide what it must mean, which will then produce an emotion that is expressed in our bodies.This then leads to: we form a belief about the event and the people involved in the event. Once we believe something to be true, it becomes indoctrinated into our subconscious, and it can be challenging to see another “truth”. This belief then reinforces our state, story and meaning. It becomes a circular vortex that creates our perception.
INVENTORY and PRACTICE
Reflect on a conflict with a loved one. If you’re in a relationship, focus on a recent conflict or one that keeps coming up. If you’re not, recall one with an ex, or with a family member. Then go through each stage of perception - story, meaning and state and answer these questions. *this exercise is to give you a clearer understanding of perception.
Write the story of the conflict down - the story that led to the conflict. Get as detailed as possible by describing as many aspects of that experience you can remember. What you said, what the other person did, where you were, the things leading up to it, what was going on before and after, and so on.
Look at your story. What meaning have you given it? Does it mean you aren’t enough? That you are being treated unfairly? That you’re not loved? Dig deep here. Try to identify the emotion of the meaning - how you feel and what you fear when you interpret the story.
When reflecting on this event, what is your body doing? Where are your shoulders? What is your jaw doing? How does your stomach feel? Are you breathing deeply or barely at all?
Describe your emotions when you focus on this story/conflict. Is it sadness? Anger? Back and forth? What are some of the things you are saying to yourself that are intensifying the emotion? Such as: “I can't believe….” “Why is this….” “I’m so upset”
What do you believe about the person who you’re in conflict with? What do you believe about their intention, emotions, behaviors? What is your belief about your relationship as a result of the conflict?
How does your belief(s) reinforce everything else?
Now reflect on a great memory recent or otherwise. It doesn’t have to be eventful, it can literally be about anything you’re happy about, content with, and pleased with. Go through the entire writing process outlined above again with this positive story.
WHAT REALLY IS HAPPENING IN AN ARGUMENT OR FIGHT:
SIGNIFICANCE:
When we feel insignificant to someone we care about, we'll often get angry to reclaim our feeling of importance in the relationship. Anger has a lot of energy supporting it. It increases blood flow and can make us feel temporarily very empowered because of the amount of cortisol and adrenaline it pushes into our systems. Its: “You don't care about me? No problem. I’ll SHOW you!!!”. But again, the trigger is feeling insignificant. Not important enough to be understood, listened to, respected, cared for or loved. Its fear. Its hurt and feeling helpless in the moment. It’s protective and primal.
When two people feel insignificant to each other, it will trigger an argument. When feeling insignificant becomes systemic, it’ll slowly erode a relationship, leading to more and more combat.
INVENTORY
Recall a time when you felt angry, upset and/or hurt. Dig deep beneath it and ask yourself: Did I feel unimportant in any way? How? Get detailed about your feelings here and journal any realizations you may have.
BROKEN RULES
We all have rules and expectations about how people should behave and how the world should be. Our rules are a product of our familial and societal conditioning and some are important while others block closeness and intimacy. When they do, its time to revise them to reflect more flexibility and leniency. A good indication that one of your rules is interfering with your relationships is if you find yourself perpetually disappointed by people. Sure, it could be that you're not choosing to be around like minded people, but more likely its because you have some rigid rules that need an update.
Examples of rules (and the meanings assigned to them)
Rule: People should be on time. Meaning: If someone is late, they are either lazy, disrespectful or selfish.
Rule: You don't yell when you’re angry. Meaning: if you yell, then you are crazy and something is wrong with you.
Rule: If you love me, you would______. Meaning: If you don't do _____ then I know you don’t love me.
Rule: People should respond to texts immediately. Meaning: If they don’t they don't care or are selfish.
These are just a few examples of ones I hear a lot. To be clear, you must have some rules that reflect your standard of how you want to live and be treated. Its up to you to figure out which of your many rules need to stay and which ones are interfering with various relationships.
When you’re angry with someone, it’s because you feel insignificant and they have broken one or more of your rules.
INVENTORY
How do you react when your rules are broken?
Do you have stricter rules for some people more than others?
What about for yourself? Do you have certain rules that make it impossible for you to always adhere to?
How do you feel when you’ve broken one of your own rules?
Which rules are interfering with your ability to feel fulfilled in your various relationships?
PRACTICE
Write down as many of your rules you can think of. Then go through each one and mark which ones are truly your standards and are non negotiable for you. For the others, try to revise them to reflect more leniency and flexibility.
NEGATIVE STORY AND INTENT
Whether it’s a small argument, a blow out fight, or chronic daily bickering, there will always be negative story driving the fight. Always. Your negative story about another person will “prove” that they have bad intentions: “always” and “never” usually begin the thought or the sentence. When we get caught up in negative story, we are not precise with our words. Remember the section on language?
Negative stories love strong language. The stronger the language, the stronger the charge of the story.
Whenever I speak with a client who is in the throes of a negative narrative about a loved one, I always ask: “Really? Is that true?”. I’ll ask that over and over again until my client finally surrenders, and admits something such as: “well, maybe not exactly.”
Here’s the thing about “negative story”: It not only feeds resentment and contempt for the person you presumably love, it also makes you feel like complete and utter crap.
A negative story about someone’s intentions, beliefs, character, and behavior will always be the driving force behind any level of miscommunication.
A negative story will block your capacity to listen. It will block your ability for understanding, it will be prevent any and all resolution. The only way to begin the process of repair is to drop the negative story. But what fuels the story??
FEAR:
If negative story is the driving force behind all combat, then fear is the fuel that keeps the story alive.
The instinct to protect ourselves is the strongest and most primal instinct there is and it isn't going anywhere. But from what? In this context, from all emotional pain. In relationship, all that matters is that we believe that we are enough for the other person so that we can be fully loved. The fear of not being enough will manifest in a myriad of “sub fears”, depending on who you are and what wounds you carry such as: worrying you will be left, scared someone will cheat, fearful that you’ll be misunderstood, controlled, yelled at, and much more.
When we think love may be taken away from us, even if slightly and momentarily, we’ll feel threatened. If you’ve ever been in an emotionally tumultuous relationship, then you know that the constant worrying about being enough and feeling secure will make you crazy.
So we protect. We protect ourselves with a negative story that makes us right and them wrong and gives us a hit of significance which then fuels both dopamine and adrenaline and in the moment, we will feel stronger. Vindicated. Validated. Until it wears off and we feel defeated, misunderstood, and sad.
This is the cycle.
COMMUNICATION MASTERY:
All communication mastery begins with a conversation with yourself. If you're in the throes of negative thoughts (story) with your loved one, you immediately have to ask yourself:
Do I want to actually resolve this, or do I want to get stuck here?
Is what I believe about this person and situation really true?
Am I fighting with my loved one, or the worst version of who I believe them to be?
Are they fighting with me, or the worst version of who they believe me to be?
Could it be that I’m afraid?
What am I afraid of?
Can I be open enough to listen?
How can I speak in such a way that it brings me closer to what I wish for us?
Through the asking and answering of these questions, you’ll be able to talk yourself off the ledge and manage your emotional state more effectively. This transitions you from being a primal reactor into a conscious responder. It’s the difference between being unconsciously dominated by your fear to working with it consciously.
Once you’ve had this talk with yourself, and your intention and goal is to resolve instead of stay in conflict, then you’re ready to do your part in an artful conversation.
How to speak and listen:
As the speaker:
Manage your state. If you’re angry and feeling combative, take some time to breathe and collect yourself. Exercise, meditate, go for a walk. Be sure that you do not have low blood sugar or you’re exhausted. Tiredness and low blood sugar are a recipe for disaster in the repair process.
Ask your loved one of he/she is willing to listen to you and can talk.
Give a report of what you witnessed. A report is not about your feelings or interpretations, instead it is stating the facts of your literal observations of behaviors. It begins with: “what I saw or heard”. There is no blame, no expression of emotions or feelings, and no criticism. It’s literally you being accountable for what your eyes saw and what your ears heard. Again, it’s a report.
Define the meaning and interpretation. The report is stating the observable scene of the crime, so to speak. This is the time to say what story you made up about it - in other words, what it meant to you. You are now expressing your perception, and the way to explicitly OWN that it is your perception is to begin with: “What I made up about what I saw/heard is….”
Share your true feelings. This is where we must step into our powerful vulnerability and say how what we saw and what it meant to us actually landed in our hearts. As described earlier in the vulnerability section, you must share real feelings and /or describe the sensations in your body. You must never start this sentence with “you”. It is always “I”. “I felt all this tightness in my chest and felt overwhelmed and scared. I was sad.”
Make your request: This is where you say what you would like to have happen in the future. It shifts the focus from describing a past event, and projects into a vision of the future. This is the core of skilled communication in the resolution process: Help your loved one be successful with you - by clearly stating what you need and how you need it. Its important that you do not request that the person change their character, beliefs, feelings, or thoughts. But you must speak to clear, actionable changes in behavior and attitude.
Tip: Couples tend to talk too much when attempting to repair. These steps should include brief sentences, not long drawn out narratives and explanations.
An example of skilled speaking in the repair process:
“When I saw you come home last night after not seeing each other all day and go straight to the bedroom without talking to me, I hypothesized that you were in a bad mood again and believed that you didn't really care about connecting with me. I got this heavy feeling in my chest and felt really sad because of this. In the future, I’d like for you to reassure me that it’s not me, and to let me know when you need some space to collect yourself - that would help me so much.”
If you read the above carefully, you will be able to identify all the speaker steps I outlined. In this example, the speaker breaks a pattern and is potentially able to single handedly create change in her relationship. In the past, her pattern may have been to:
Say nothing and walk on egg shells.
Complain about her partners mood.
Say nothing and be insecure and sad.
Rebel and retaliate by withholding love and / or getting angry.
As the listener:
Your state must be one of both openness and curiosity. Manage your emotional state so that you can surrender and listen rather than react and retaliate. This will mean that throughout your listening, you will need to come back to your breathing often and consciously focus on the areas of your body that tighten in reaction to fear and adrenaline. Additionally, be curious. The closer you are with this person, the more it behooves you to understand their psychology.
Put your emotions and agenda to the side while you listen. When you agree to hear someone out, it cannot be about you anymore, it has to be about the speaker.
As the listener, your job is to bite your tongue as many times as you need to in order to stay present and remain participatory, not confrontational. Until you’re the speaker, your job is to look for the truth in what your loved one is saying, AND look for their requests. Try to find the logic in their point of view. For instance, your internal dialogue: “hmm, I could see that if I saw it that way, I might think the same thing too.”
You also have another very important job: To keep you internal boundaries in check. This is much more applicable to those of you who have any co-dependent and/or people pleasing tendencies and struggle with your self-worth. To keep your boundaries in check, go through an internal check list as your partner is talking to you and “mark” each point in your head as “true” or “not true”. Because: Unless this person has done the same work you have in learning better communication, he or she may not be as mature as you would like when sharing their issues with you. Your job as a conscious woman is to still listen, but to not allow his or her reality to distort what you know in your heart to be true. Again, this applies more to those of you who struggle with boundaries or who suspect that you may be in a dysfunctional relationship.
Tip: As a listener, you’ll have to remind yourself that there's no objective “truth” or reality. There’s your perception, and then there is their’s. If from day 1 you’ve consistently believed “their” perceptions to be always off, or crazy, then rethinking your relationship is a good idea.Heart-felt Understanding. This is a major tenet of conscious listening and can be very challenging when you’re in an argument. Heart-felt refers to listening with your heart instead of your mind. Your mind wants to gather information and create charts. Your heart wants to feel. You must imagine yourself in this person’s body, looking at the world from his or her lens which is covered by the filter of all their past experiences. This is empathy. Empathy builds compassion and compassion ends the cycle of combat. Remember, no one is irrational to themselves!
***Inner dialogue: While listening to understand and not to reply, ask yourself: “what needs am I not meeting for him/her?” (If they're upset, for sure significance - but what about their need to be loved? Or their need to feel reassured and secure? Or their need for space?Respond with one goal in mind: Connection. As long as someone has spoken their truth in a way that isn't abusive - i.e. - they haven't yelled or raged, manipulated or name called, then your mission is to be generous here.
Clarify: this is when you confirm what you heard with what they have said to you in order to prevent further misunderstanding.
Acknowledge: Acknowledge their pain, frustration AND their request for different behavior. Admit to having deeper understanding than before, and if there's confusion, go back to “clarify”.
Accountability: Take responsibility for your part in the drama. Your loved one can’t be all wrong. And even if they were, you winning makes him/her a loser thats “wrong” and that is a miserable household to live in.
Tip: If you refuse accountability, then you will just confirm to your partner that you do not understand them. If you don’t understand, you will repeat the behavior which means that you are not to be trusted. Lack of understanding - mistrust - relationship breakdown = more fighting.
Example:
“Ok, so what I heard you say was______. Is this correct? Ok then I can really feel now how this would have hurt you, and I should’ve instead of ______ ,said ______ instead. I get that. I own that, and I’m really sorry. How can I help make it easier for us in the future? (wait for answer) Ok, I be more conscious of ______ and be more _______.”
In the next section, you will learn more on how to assert yourself.
INVENTORY
Take a moment here to drain your brain. What negative stories do you have about some key people in your life? Even if those stories coincide with positive stories. Just get them all out.
Please be kind to yourself here: I had no idea how to communicate in this manner until I learned to do so, and even then, this all requires serious maturity and the transcendence of all the fears that we are conditioned to have. That being said, there is no growth if we don't get real about where we are currently. Do your best to answer the following questions:
Where do you need improvement in your speaking skills?
And with your listening? Do you tend to want to interrupt and debate?
Are you clear in your requests?
Do you, or have you expected your partner(s) to read your mind?
Do you struggle to understand other’s point of view?
Do you struggle with being accountable?
Write down the ways in which you can strengthen your communication skills.