#9 The words are not the message

I don't know about you but I regularly interact with people who don't articulate their feelings well. Sometimes they are unable to do so. They may not be in touch with their inner selves enough to know what lies behind their surface emotions. Other times they choose to hide their real feelings from me. Sometimes it's a combination. Hiding their inner feelings from me is an unavoidable part of hiding from themselves.

I recently triggered the defenses of a friend. In his “constructive criticism” response, he put a negative label on my viewpoint and told me I was blind to the truth about him and his actions. It was a struggle for me to look beyond the negative label I didn't want to wear and the word arrows being shot my way to recognize that the message my friend was giving me was that my words to him had hit a sensitive spot. I wanted to bring in proof of my visual acuity and persuade him to take back the negative label. I wanted to respond to his words rather than to the wounded spirit that prompted them. The urge to vindicate myself was strong.

When such scenes play themselves out, the words spoken tend toward extreme positions: “You never ...” “You always ...” They hold me personally responsible for bringing unpleasantness into the world. My own defenses spring to life and I make rebuttal statements. After all, the words contains untruths and I like to get the facts straight. But when I focus on the words I am missing the point. These negative words are generally not about me. They are a trap, a distraction. There is a message behind them that I'll miss if I'm not careful.

A couple of examples:

The words:
You are always late. [Not true. I am usually very prompt, seldom early, and do slip into late more than I like, but I am NOT "always late".]

The message:
The time I spent waiting for you has upset me.
Or maybe, I have had a bad day and your tardiness isn't helping.
Or maybe, I was hoping you would be early because I'm on a tight schedule today.

The words:
You didn't do a thing to help me. [Maybe not, but it's not as though I was sitting around doing nothing. Do you want to hear my excuses for not helping?]

The message:
I am tired.
Or maybe, I am struggling with this project.
Or maybe, this project has left me feeling isolated and alone.
Or maybe, I feel like our friendship is fading.

When words start raining down on me and my “truth detector” urges me to set the person behind them straight concerning their erroneous statements, I really need this reminder to look beyond the exaggeration, the non sequitors, and the accusations to the nature of the pain that brought out the word arrows. Otherwise, I'm just examining incoming arrows for balance and weight without figuring out who is shooting at me and why. If I can get beyond the words, I can ask the right questions to figure out what's really going on.

Even though it's almost at the end of my list of ten things to remember, this is in the running for the most needed reminder of the bunch. The words are not the message.