When my husband and I got married and were trying to blend our families, there was a lot of tension, and a fair bit of anger and acrimony. When tension and emotion are high, it is easy to say things that will hurt, and to leave terrible scars.
We went to family counseling, and the counselor recommended that we find a non hurtful way to express that we were hurt and disappointed. In our family, if you felt hurt or disappointed, the correct response was to say either, "If I had a barbeque, I wouldn't invite you," or "You're not invited to my barbeque".
It was a great way to handle conflict, and I wish I could remember to do it all the time. It is very hard when you feel dismissed or disregarded to respond appropriately. The natural human response to feeling attacked seems to be to attack back.
I've evolved enough that I can usually manage to make "I" instead of "you" statements. Things like "When you speak to me in that tone of voice, I feel like I am being disrespected." Or "When you called my idea stupid, my feelings were hurt". But I fail to take the really right response of, "You're not invited to my barbeque".
Now, I accept saying that to a perfect stranger would be very confusing, so this can only be used with family. But really, how often do we engage in conflict with people outside our families? Most of our conflicts are with family, or friends, or coworkers, all of whom can be consulted to develop a non hurtful, non hostile way to indicate we feel disregarded or diminished.
As for the world at large, the first question for me is always why I have given a stranger the power to make me feel disregarded or diminished. Why not just realize you two humans do not know each other, and that the other person may have something huge going on that has impacted their interpersonal relation skills? Offer goodness up to the universe on their behalf, and move on.
But what about those people who you are forming a relationship with? Should feeling disregarded or diminished prevent you from pursuing a relationship with them?
I think not. I think we all have moments where we speak or act with less consideration than we consider normal for us. I think that in order to have meaningful relationships, we have to give others permission to mess up sometimes, and we have to ask for permission to mess up sometimes ourselves. Meaningful relationships also demand forgiveness, and the hardest part is that they demand that we accept someone else's shortcomings, and ask some else to accept our shortcomings.
It is easy to get in the habit of feeling like all the compromise, all the overlooking of idiosyncrasy, all the forgiving is on our side of the equation. When we feed those feelings, it gets easier to respond in anger, hurt or frustration, and to say things that can't be unsaid, to create hurtful scars that can never heal.
When we carelessly use language to hurt or escalate, we can back ourselves into a corner that we never wanted to be in and can find no way out of.
And all of that starts with how we process the inputs we receive, and how we respond to them. If you start to feel that there is an imbalance of fairness or power in an important relationship, stop. Analyze why you feel that way. If there are concrete examples of situations that left you feeling disregarded, write them down. Ask yourself how those situations could have been handled differently so that a better outcome was achieved. Think long and hard about whether or not a productive discussion can be had with the other party in the conversation. If yes, initiate that conversation. If no, decide if you can process those situations in a way that does not end with you feeling disregarded.
There are some relationships that bring no positive effects to us. Those relationships may need to be preserved for many complex reasons. But there is no reason to give those people's words power over us. If a relationship is not positive and does not need to be preserved, let it go. All relationships need care and feeding. If you turn away from the maintenance of the relationship, it will go dormant, and some will die.
Every time we put hurt into the universe on purpose, because we failed to control our negative emotions, we diminish not only the person we are speaking to in a hurtful manner, we also diminish ourselves.
Words matter. Actions have consequences. Negativity breeds negativity. The pathways in our brains are strengthened by repetition. If I want better outcomes in my relationships, I have to examine the inputs I am providing, and the individuals I am providing them to. Often, I can see the same situation, the same conversation in completely different lights, based on how I choose to process the information.
The more I choose to ignore a careless comment that was not intended to harm, the more likely I am to be able to choose to ignore the next careless comment. We're all flawed. I can choose to focus on the flaw, or I can choose to focus on the rest of the individual.
The more I try to treat everyone the way I wish they would treat me, the more I reinforce the behaviors that I want to demonstrate. The more I demonstrate those behaviors, the more likely I am to inspire others to copy my behaviors.
Every revolution was started by an action. I am choosing today to start a kindness and compassion revolution based on how I respond to others.
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