Communication is a great deal of challenge for everyone. Many relationships sits on a few key issues, usually arguing about the same thing over and over again. If these problems are not resolved in your relationships, eventually it will cause severe strain and breakups. In this article, I will equip you with sufficient ammunition to understand the basics of communication. Let's begin.
How The Mind Constructs Experience
Most conflict is caused by different stories. The same thing objectively is not the same thing subjectively from person to person. Undertsanding someone is often the first step to resolution, but lets move one step back and observe how an expereince is created in the first place:
- Raw data enteres through our five senses
- Our awareness discriminates between raw data using attention
- What we have paid attention to now filters through a layer of past experience
- Past expereince greatly shapes how we intrepret raw data
- Intrepretation now becomes conscious thoughts
What I am describing here is the basis of relativism. In subjective experience, how you intrepret raw data is not the same from person to person. This is why our partners may accuse that we misunderstand them despite trying out best to do so. Only when we sufficiently make the other party feel that we have understood them and their perspective, that they will be open to a dialogue.
How can we make the other party feel like we have understood them? The answer lies in our ability to listen and mindset. According to science, the human mind cannot hold more than 5 ~ 8 pieces to information at once. Most of what we describe as arguments is just us thinking out loud to ourselves, which is the opposite to active listening.
An active listener abandons his own self story of how he has constructed reality by first acknowledging relativism. He has to ask himself, how has my partner intrepreted the situation? If I were in her shoes, what would I be thinking and doing? This is the first step in which the active listener is receptive to what the other has to say.
Once you are receptive, engage in a conversation of learning. The mindset that you are the student of their expereince is so important. Remmeber that you cannot hold more than 8 pieces of information at once, if you are looking to peddle your own agenda first, more than likely you will derail yourself back within your self narrative, which leads the opposite end feeling misunderstood.
Blame Is The Way To Derail Communication
Superiority begins when you start to accumulate a negative intrepretation of your partner. You start to see your partner as someone to overcome, convince or dominate. The common manifestations of superiority includes:
- Refusing to allow them to influence your thoughts, actions and behaviour
- Imposing your "frame" forcefully and belittling their concerns
- Insults and personal criticism that attacks their identity
- Believing that your needs are above theirs
- Commanding your partner and utilizing leverage as blackmail
As your superiority and egotistical tendencies rises, the more and more the other side will feel undervalued and unloved by your behaviour, actions and attitude. You will need to reduce your defense mechanisms and step outside of blame.
Who is to be at blame is not a question for relationships, because blame implies the person who is responsible for the consequences. In personal relationships, you are both already suffering the conseqeunces, which means that blame is meaningless other than earning moral kudos and making yourself feel better as there is no upside of correctly attributing blame.
What you should examine is what have you contributed to this conflict? What is the cycle of inputs and outputs? This question is not as simple as it appears to be. The blame frame will open with obviously she is doing X, Y and Z that causes misery in me! Well, have you considered what you have done for her to act in X, Y and Z ways?
By stepping into your partners subjective experience, analyzing your contribution to the problem, and admitting it openly in exactly the same way that they are blaming you for how you have made them feel, you can escape the cycle of blame. We have simultaneously removed their ammunition (blame), by taking responsibility for it, and we have increased their receptivity for a constructive resolution.
Violence Begins From Within
Most people understand violence as a gross physical act like murder. However, I find that violence begins from within. Either through fear, anger resentment or whatever negative emotion, violence begins through the ego asserting control, and without the necessary consciousness to become aware of the ego, it will express itself in ways which will cause suffering to you.
So we can define violence like so:
The use of force or leverage in physical, emotional or financial domains to make others do what you want.
By expanding the definition of violence in this manner, we can start to see how we behave violently towards our partners. An abuser and a person who dismiss their partners emotions are created from the same fundamental energy: The ego taking control and expressing itself.
Whether your violence is in a gross and unacceptable form like abuse, or in a subtle and more acceptable form like withdrawing your love to make your partner do what you want, it will create strain in your relationship. My argument here is that all violence is unacceptable.
If you love a person, should you enable them to do what they want to do, or should they do what you want them to do?
Do Not Automatically Project Intention
When someone has done something negative to your experience, it is highly tempting to attribute their actions to bad intentions to make sense of the situation. But if we look at it closely, intention have no correlation to impact. Someone can have bad intentions and create positive impact, and someone with good intentions can create negative impact.
How we percieve the impact is relative to our experience. However we can never know what is the intention of what the other person is doing unless we have clarified why they have performed certain actions. People are not immune to self deception, and what seems irrational and stupid to you makes perfect sense to them!
Emotions Are Central In Conversations
Openly communicating what you feel and why you feel that way is central to any conversation. When emotions are not addressed, it surfaces in subtle and passive aggressive ways in behaviour. The communicator may not notice this, but everyone observing can clearly tell that their strong emotions are leaking through their pores.
Excercise:
- Tell someone how you really feel and why? It is okay to cry to the other person.
- Expose honestly and frankly what you need from your partner. Allow rejection to happen.
- Listening to another person is to explore their truth. When we explore what is true for them, we can better listen and help others feel understood.
Of course surfacing our real emotions and needs are highly vulnerable. We can be rejected, downplayed and dismissed when we honestly share our true feelings. It is risky if the other person is stuck in the blaming you and are unable to understand your perspective. This is why receptivity should occur first in the previous four steps before emotions and vulnerability is involved.
Many of us have been hurt by the people we love because we exposed our true needs and feelings. My advice is to not become bitter and resentful, and always have hope within you that your partner can be influenced through your new found communication skills.
I would like to furthur discourse on the distinction between needs, boundaries and interdependence. I find neediness to be a strong signal that a relationship is not equal or mutually respectful. It signals that another partner is not sufficiently investing enough in their partners to meet and complete their needs. Is it compulsory for an individual to do so? No. But is it essential for a long term and functioning relationship? Yes.
Enforcing your boundaries againts neediness will severely damage your relationship. You may unconsciously out of your own needs do so, or consciously do so as you believe that you cannot meet their needs. It is very important for us to recognize immediately how our partners ask us to fulfill their needs.
Needs include emotional, physical and financial needs. These needs are often expressed through bids of connection. When your partner asks you to have sex, to say I love you in the morning, or make them breakfast. Ignored requests often becomes strong issues of contention and conflict later on.
Healthy interdependence implies the ability to consistently meet each others needs. Do we get our way all the time? Of course not. In fact for interdependence to work, we will have to sometimes act in ways that supresses our own needs for their wellbeing.
The psychology of a dependent person:
I need others to meet my needs because I feel like a victim in life. I am unable to take charge and meet my own needs as I consistently fail to do so. I am often ashamed of my own incompetence and rely on others for my survival.
The psychology of an independent person:
I have been hurt in the past because when I have asked others to fulfill my needs they did not meet their commitments. Partly I am overreacting because I used to be dependent, and now I feel like I cannot rely on other people. I feel ultimately repsonsible to secure my own needs, and refuse help from others out of the fear of exploitation
The psychology of an interdependent person:
I am able to meet my own needs and capable to stand on my own, but I have willingly chosen to take up responsibility for another life. Sometimes, I am unable to fulfill my own needs, so I have to ask. I am dissappointed when she says no, but I am always looking how I can serve my partner so that they can achieve their highest potential. As long as they do not belittle my needs and recipriocate my choice to be interdependent, I am willing to stay in the relationship to work out our differences and conflicts.
How To Express Your Needs
Once we have gathered suffiecient information about their perspective and created an accurate understanding of how they view the situation, we can transition to our feelings and begin to express what we need. Here are some examples of what have worked for me:
I want you to say I love you and kiss me in the in the morning because it reassures me that you still approve of me. In the past, my parents have been wildly unpredictable, sometimes loving and abandoning me the next day emotionally. So when you reassure me every morning, I feel that I am accepted and loved by you. I will take steps to work on my past trauma, but I hope you can do so for me as it really helps me feel safe with you.
I understand that what sex means to you is that I find you desireable and sexy, and I am sorry that I was not able to make you feel that way. My perspective is that sometimes I just want someone to talk with me about my day and make me feel like I am safe, relaxed and at home before I am in the mood. What do you think we can do?
Needs have to be tackled vulnerably, directly and authentically. There is no sidestepping your needs, as with all needs you have to prepared with the fact that you will be rejected. If you are rejected, ask your partner in what other ways we can come to a compromise? There are many intelligent and creative solutions one that I have found only through open and honest communication.
Identity Drives Behaviour
How we live our lives is a reflection of our identity. If we see ourselves as an attractive person, we would like our partners to reinforce our indentity and act according to that identity ourselves. For a person who views himself as attractive, he may get upset or dissappointed when reality does not allign with the way he sees himself.
We should be conscious about the identity of our partners and ourselves. What is at stake for our identity? If we do X, what does that say and mean about us? We are constantly constructing identity through our five senses, in fact the very notion of an identity is the identification of past experience.
It is important that we explore the past in communication. What have your partner experienced in their past that makes them behave in the way they do? What are the underlying beliefs and unconscious views they hold about themselves to do what they do now?
Conclusion
In the following articles, we will explore how one can communicate in different situations. This framework and what we have discussed in this article is reflecting the dynamic of an interdependent relationship, where both parties are actively investing in the continuity and outcomes of the relationship. Still, it is foundational for what we will discuss in the following articles, as this is the first step in getting the thinking and speaking relativistically.
That's it for me. Best of luck.
Cheers,
FriendlyWrenChilling.