Self-Acceptance

I was noticing how when you do something for somebody and they thank you and say something like, “you’re so nice” – at some point I got to wondering “what does that mean?” I mean, I understand where the sentiment is coming from. It’s a kind gesture. But so much of psychological health, spiritual well-being, and general happiness is founded upon self-acceptance – and not only accepting, but loving everything about oneself. And that includes loving the parts that are not so nice. Like, it's OK to say that what someone did was nice, but it's not all of who and what they are.

I’m paraphrasing here, but Paramahansa Yogananda said something like, “praise or blame, to me they’re the same.” Now, he was a pretty seriously spiritually evolved individual, so let’s see if we can learn from what he was saying. I believe he was commenting on how we attach to being praised or approved of, yet we avoid being blamed and condemned. He was, I believe, speaking from the place of such self love and self-acceptance that any adoration or reproach that came from anyone outside simply had no effect. Maybe that’s hard to imagine, but let’s allow it to point us in the direction of a goal.

Here’s an example we can probably all relate to. It can feel like a challenge to love yourself after you’ve just lost your temper. But shaming yourself (“I’m such a bad, evil person!”) is not the way. If you do something that is generally not in alignment with your moral code, OK. Accept it. This does not mean that the times when you behave in alignment with your moral code are now all false, that you’re a big fake, that you may as well give up. NO! Relax. This is good. You’ve just been able to see a part of yourself that had previously been in your shadow. We all have a shadow. No Biggie. It just makes you human. Love yourself, and move on.

Communication 101: Layers of Emotion

We spoke last time about how you will often find hurt or fear below the surface of anger. This is often true that different emotions may co-exist at the same time.

Have you ever had the experience of getting into an argument and doggedly arguing a certain side, only to later find that, after calming down a bit, you can see alternative perspectives, and maybe have a slightly different opinion than you thought you originally had?

One way of thinking of this is that we sometimes get stuck in seeing things as either all black or all white, and only later get to see the grays in-between. So, emotions are often mixed. Someone getting married may be very excited and happy, at the same time as feeling terribly nervous and stressed out. Totally normal. Nothing to take offense to, nothing to feel rejected by – it’s just normal.

Communication 101: The Other F Word

Feelings!

So, let’s start off with knowing what you’re feeling. How’s that related to communication? Yes, it’s useful to be able to communicate how you feel, but I’m actually thinking about how much more important it is to know what you’re feeling while listening. Please allow me to explain.

We often have more than one feeling happening at the same time, especially when we are in a super heated, emotionally charged conversation. Let’s say you’re in a couple where your partner has just shared that her co-worker has flirted with her and occasionally she has found it alluring and has been tempted to flirt back. On the surface you may have fury and outrage, displayed by a red face, heat in your body, and the desire to yell at the person and possibly even exit the building. Sit with that a bit, and I bet that underneath that, somewhere more tender, more vulnerable, in your soft belly, there is probably fear of being left, or hurt about feeling compared to another person and not measuring up.

Knowing what you are feeling is not always about speaking what you are feeling and making yourself understood – in this instance it is actually about listening better, being able to know that you’re feeling scared, and you can let go of the anger and choose to not engage in the escalating fight that such a conversation would most likely devolve into, but rather to self-soothe a bit, to tend to your own reactions inside, and tell yourself kindly, “we’ll come back to this and take care of you in a minute,” and then reorient yourself to remain present with your partner.

Sometimes good communication and being truly connected with another multi-dimensional human being means having to sit through stuff that makes you uncomfortable. So, how do you know what you feel? You check in with your body. You allow yourself to pay attention to the subtle energies in your belly, in your shoulders, in your chest, anywhere where there is upset and tension, or even numbness. You listen past the obvious feelings, like the heat in your face, and ask yourself if there is something else there.

Some people say to think of anger as one side of a coin, and that the other side is always fear or hurt. I think that is a useful analogy, but I caution against thinking the hurt and fear are more real than the anger. Sometimes anger is absolutely real and needs to be tended to. But what is often true is that, once the fear or hurt is recognized, the anger generally fades away. All feelings exist for a reason. Anger's purpose is to try to protect you and warn you of danger, and, more often than not, it is only an initial reaction. When you listen to the softer feelings inside, you can usually find the hurt or fear that needs to be expressed.

Communication 101: Assumptions

Assuming in general – best not to do it, but hard to avoid. So, notice it. Become aware that you have just scripted in your mind the reason you are sure person A did that thing. Ask yourself, “if a video camera was set up here recording everything going on, what would it have picked up?” When you think in those terms, it’s hard to lay interpretations onto what’s going on. 

Ask yourself if you might be viewing this event through your own filter – something that happened in the past, or the way that you imagine this other person thinks, or some other way of assuming their intentions. Then be willing to throw that filter off. Be willing to hear their description of their experience – and be willing to believe them. 

There’s a word that I like to use for the calling out of the assumption – “naming” it. Naming is so objective, no judgment, no value or qualifications to it -- simply naming. As a silly example, you and your partner may both be sitting in different rooms, and you’re assuming that he doesn’t want to be in the same room with you, so you could name that assumption. You could say, “hey, I just realized I was sitting in the other room, feeling all rejected and dejected because I was assuming that you were in here because you didn’t want to be in the same room with me. Is that true?” Then at least you’re communicating honestly. 

Another thing to keep in mind is the idea of a regular reality check with your friend or partner. Every so often, ask yourself what you think is going on in the other person’s world. This can be a real eye-opener when you’ve been assuming how they are handling something only to find out they have a totally different response than you’d expected. For instance, let’s imagine person A has an ill parent, and you’ve been noticing person A is quite and withdrawn, so you assume it’s because they are worried about their parent. But you do a reality check and find out they actually are obsessing about a new work project, not their parent at all. 

The way that naming and reality checking can show up in a conversation could be like this:

Person A: “I really liked that movie.”

Person B: “Oh? What did you like about it?”

Person A: “Well, I thought it was really well crafted, you know, all the stories wove together so perfectly.”

Person B: “Yeah? Tell me more about what you liked.”

This may seem silly, to keep asking for more details, but the truth is, unless we hear it from the other person, we’re just assuming their reasoning, and from the other person’s perspective it might feel good that you’re showing an interest in getting to know why something matters to them. 

Word of caution: sometimes people get defensive and wonder why you’re asking so many questions. A response of something like, “I just care about you and want to know how you see the world,” ought to soften them up.

And, ultimately, stop resisting it. If you’re going to assume, just go with it, but why not give the benefit of the doubt? I like to think of it in terms of finding the rightness about someone else’s behavior. We may be wrong, but if it makes us happy to think the best of other people, to assume that they have the best possible intentions – why not?

Communication 101: Permission

There are a number of communication skills that are so foundational to effective communication that I go over them at some point with almost every client. These skills would be useful to know wouldn’t they? So let's start with the #1 foundational principle. 

Number one rule of communication is to give yourself and your partner or friend permission to make mistakes as you learn to improve your communication skills. 

Hardly any of us were taught from a young age how to communicate effectively, and even those who learned when they were older have a hard time keeping from falling back into old patterns and old habits – it’s because when emotional content is activated, our old reactions get activated, too. (see previous blog post “The brain is groovy, man!”).

As my former supervisor used to say, “under stress we all regress.” We may be emotionally flooded when having a difficult talk with significant people in our lives. No biggie. Forgive yourself and give yourself permission also to come back to the conversation and admit that you made a mistake and want to try it over – and then do it differently this time. Similarly, let your partner off the hook when they screw up and want a do-over. We’re all learning, and we have to know that it’s safe to make mistakes when we’re trying something new.

The Joy of Looking Stupid

Have you ever found out that some metaphor you use all the time to illustrate some point is not actually factual? There was no study at Yale to prove that written down goals improve the chances of achieving those goals, or that, if there was, it didn’t prove any relationship between the written goal and the accomplishment of that goal. Likewise, finding out that the little frogs whom we previously believed would stay in the pot as it heats, slowly boiling to death, do not actually boil – they jump out. Yay! This is very happy news for the frogs, but let’s not lose the lessons: that writing down goals is a good idea, and that we tend to get used to circumstances and situations when they change slowly, over time, even when those circumstances are to our detriment. 

There seems to be something that happens when we find out some axiom isn’t factual – we throw out the lesson because the vehicle by which that lesson was taught has been discredited. I think this is the addiction to being right and the vehement avoidance of being proven wrong or of looking stupid. If we could all get over the need to be right, or allow ourselves more freedom to be proven wrong from time to time, and even delight in occasionally looking stupid – wow, how much freer would we be? Wouldn’t we take more risks? Try more new things? Dance more? Sing more? Play more and be sillier? That doesn’t sound half bad, does it?

Quick Note: A New Paradigm

I kind of hate the idea that something is high or low, better or worse, and I especially hate the idea that light is somehow better than dark. I don’t want to live in a world of polarities like that. I choose a different paradigm, one in which everything is OK, because if we think about it, what’s the alternative?