Wouldn’t it just be wonderful if we could speak our mind to another person and they would hear us, understand us and reply back with their thoughts about the situation? Sometimes it does happen that way, however, in a conversation
Wouldn’t it just be wonderful if we could speak our mind to another person and they would hear us, understand us and reply back with their thoughts about the situation? Sometimes it does happen that way, however, in a conversation with another person, there are four filters to consider.
I’ve explained in earlier articles that we form our ego, which is our story about ourselves that we’ve built up by what people have told us about ourselves repeatedly so that we believe it’s true now. But we also create an ego story for everyone else! We do our friends and ourselves the dubious honor of creating stories for them. We start young. I remember as a little girl talking with my siblings about how mom loved them more than me, and they countered me. We’d made up stories about mom that weren’t particularly happy or true.
When I was in college, I’d go to the upperclassmen before I registered for my classes and asked them about the professors, so I’d be able to get a good teacher. That’s trusting another person’s story of a person. Or at work, there’s the brown nose, the hard worker, the team player, the know it all, etc. These are all stories we’ve made up about each other that may or not be true.
So when I’m having a conversation there is my story about me, my story about you, your story about yourself and your story about me that the truth gets filtered through. Now if there’s little emotional charge between the other and me, the story may not get too much in the way, especially if we make an effort to stick to the facts as much as possible … always safe advice. Describe when you’ve experienced in a factual manner and let the other draw some conclusions.
If there is emotional charge in our story about the other person, we’d better take a look at what that’s all about. Emotional charge occurs when something threatens my ego story about myself. Seriously, the ego doesn’t like for stories about itself to change quickly, although the ego can learn.
I may be experiencing charge because I’ve always seen myself as teacher’s pet, and now here comes B who seems to have too much of the teacher’s attention. Now we are put on a committee to plan the end of school class party. I’m seeing B as competition, and I have to win! No matter what it is, I have to be better than B to satisfy my ego story. It’s not fair to B, unless I rein in my ego. It gets easier with time, but here are some steps to help:
Recognize that you have emotional charge.
Then name the emotion. In this case jealousy.
Then decide what you really want. Do you still want your teacher’s care and respect? How would you get that? By being your true self, the one who is smart, caring, a good leader, whatever caught your teacher’s eye to begin with. And what would happen if you were rude to B? Would it get you’re your goal?
Prepare for the meeting, and have your plans written out. If you start to get emotional, you can let your plans talk for you.
Give yourself some reality therapy. In five years will this be important?
Do you think B’s story about B is the same one you have? What do you think her story is about you? She might be very appreciative of you, and a great admirer. She might be shy and it’s a great compliment to you that your teacher wanted your skills to rub off on her. So smile at her, and put all four of your stories at ease.
Take the same steps if there is a strong aggressive emotional charge. What part of your story is being threatened? Is it even true? I can think of four teen court cases of assault three, that occurred when friends were torn apart by another’s untruthful story about them wanting to fight each other. Neither did, but they still fought to save face, got busted and landed in Teen Court.
Anger occurs when we aren’t getting our way. Again, focus on what you want to have happen. Both boys felt betrayed by their best friend. Yes, they were best friends. I imagine they really wanted to know what caused their friend to want to fight them. Why didn’t they talk to each other?
I’ve done court-appointed-mediations when all one side wanted was to know what was going on and what the other person was thinking, but was too frightened to speak to that person alone. The person who called that mediation had a scary story going about the other disputant.
The opposite is also true. I might be a loud, quick-moving cloud of male energy who shouts out phrases to others with no idea of the pain that they are causing them. My story about myself needs some adjusting. Corral it back to the needs. Am I truly getting my needs met by acting this way? What do I want? I may mean to be friendly and open to others, but I’m scaring them away. What would work better? Watch the popular folks. Seriously. They must have some skills to get where they are. They can be learned.
Or you can go to the 72,400,000 Internet sites that popped up when I searched “Characteristics of popular people.” Start with smiling. It lets others create a story about you that says you’re safe. Listening to another without looking at your cell phone tells others that they matter, and we all want to feel that we matter. Being kind, respectful, trustworthy, being someone people can be emotionally safe with (That means that we aren’t going to judge them and they can be themselves with us) and having a sense of humor can all be learned, and why not have a nice story about ourselves to start with.
• Hale Opio Kauai convened a support group of adults in our Kauai community to “step into the corner” for our teens, to answer questions and give support to youth and their families on a wide variety of issues. Please email your questions or concerns facing our youth and families today to Annaleah Atkinson at aatkinson@haleopio.org
