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One of the foundations of emotional intelligence is being able to identify emotions. One way kids learn about how to talk about and handle emotions is from their parents, both directly and indirectly. How you handle emotions (yours and theirs) makes a significant impact. Yes, …
Happily Family does this parenting conference every year and it is always filled with great information. This year has some great topics like digital parenting, helping teenage girls navigate friendships online, supporting kids on the gender spectrum, transforming parenting triggers, how to address the topic …
A few weeks ago, we talked about how important it is to consider the possibility that what other people do is not always about you. People are responding to you in accordance to their own past, their own assumptions and their own tendencies. This is helpful to consider because it helps with not taking things so personally.
Yes, other people can trigger a feeling or bring about a response from you This is because whatever other people do or don’t do is received through your own lens of your past experiences, assumptions and tendencies.
Here’s an interesting way to think about this: psychoanalyst Carl Jung proposed that all the people in our dreams, when we dream, are simply representations or aspects of our own self.
Now, think about that in terms of your waking life. People in your life bring about or activate different parts of you, which creates your response.
Let’s say you find yourself getting frustrated with your boss. Turns out, upon reflection, the way interactions feel with your boss actually feel a lot like interactions with your mother.
So, the way you react to your boss has more to do with you and your experiences. In essence, how you react has more to do with you than your boss. Your boss is simply triggering a dynamic or experience.
…you could say that experience is happening to bring up this dynamic in current life so you can learn from it, learn how to do things differently or get a new perspective on why interactions with your mom felt that way.
See how this makes for a different experience? Instead of getting overly focused on your boss and what they are doing or not doing, you can focus on what you can learn about yourself and your relationship with your mom.
Your irritation has to do with you and the fact that you are in a time crunch, not the person in front of you trying to look for an address.
See how these things can happen in the very simple and short interactions as well as in the more complex and ongoing interactions?
Realizing that releases you from blaming yourself or others. It also alleviates a lot of unnecessary emotional pain from thinking that other are responsible for how you feel and what you experience. That leaves other people holding the power, not you.
Don Miguel Ruiz has good reason for including “Don’t take anything personally” in his Four Agreements. What others do or don’t do is rarely personal. And, the way you respond or react has relatively little to do with others.
Our very own Anna Pirkl, MFT, ATR, LADAAC partnered with South Bay Families Connected and created this wonderful series of short videos to support you in staying motivated during distance learning. I know everyone can use some support in this area. I love how the …
What a different “back to school” transition this year. Hopefully it feels a little more organized or manageable than having to suddenly switch to school online in the middle of a school year. And, I know that looking down the pike at many more months …
This comes up a lot. I get that it is confusing.
How can an interaction between two people not be personal? Meaning, how can you not take what someone does or says personally???
Well, it FEELS personal. Of course.
The things is, most of what people do is about them, not about you. In so many ways.
It’s helpful to understand this about yourself (how you act is about you) and about others (how they act is largely about them).
You are the person who is involved in the interaction that brought about a certain response. Yes, that is true. However, it’s more like you participated in an interaction that was a trigger or inspiration for a certain response.
So much of human response comes from past experiences and conditioning. It comes from personality. It comes from where someone is in that particular moment when an interaction occurs.
Do the mean words feel personal to the receiver? Yes.
How is it not personal?
The partner who said something mean is upset. That is the way they chose to handle their feelings. Maybe because that is how they’ve learned to defend themselves (get on the offense) or that is how they have learned how to fight. Not personal. Feels super personal, though.
Just because it is not personal does not mean it is OK.
The thing is, taking it personally would detract from the important process information: your partner fights by saying mean things. Is that how you want to work through problems in your relationship? That is the place you want to focus. You can argue and get all tangled up in feelings taking the mean thing your partner said personally, but then you never get to the important point so you can grow as a couple.
Let’s look at another example.
Does it feel personal? 100%
Is it? No.
It is how they are choosing to deal with their feelings and the issue coming up. Maybe this is what was modeled to them in their family about how to handle difficult moments. Maybe people in their family screamed and yelled and that was super uncomfortable, so they made the choice to never argue. They are giving the silent treatment because of them.
So what can you do? When things are better, approach that topic of the silent treatment. You might share what it’s like for you on the other side of that. You might find a way to compassionately ask why they handle things that way. Maybe it is too sensitive and it would be better to talk about this in a couples therapy session.
Does that mean they don’t love you? No.
They absolutely love you. What parent does not love their child??
How each parent shows that love is different, that is for sure. People often show love in the same way they were shown love, not how they think the person they are loving deserves to be loved.
That definitely feels personal. You might even get caught up wondering if what your best friend said is true about you.
Why isn’t it personal? People who tend to be critical were often raised by a critical parent so they have that dialogue going on inside all the time, you just happened to hear it out loud. They might be in a career that is based around critique or finding flaws and that is how they tend to look at things. They might unknowingly use it as an avoidance strategy to push you away when they need space.
Can you see how none of those possibilities have to do with you?
And how you could be in a fight with your best friend, lose a friendship or even spend days thinking about your best friend’s comment when it had very little to do with you?
I could continue with lots of examples.
The point is to help you start considering the possibility that something someone does or says may have very little to do with you.
This can save you a lot of time and struggle.
It also creates space for you to consider what you are bringing to interactions that is about you and not others. We’ll look at that in the next post.
If you want to go deeper with this, I highly recommend The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.
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Until I trained as a therapist, I never intentionally paid attention to what happens in the process of communicating with someone. Communication just happened.
As I learned what process vs content meant, I realized how much information is embedded in the actual process of communication. I spend time with clients in session often helping them refocus on the process instead of focusing so much on the content.
The process is what is happening in a conversation between the two people. Like the overall dynamic. Are two people listening to one another and being attentive to what is being said? Is someone getting defensive, being loving, trying to manipulate?
The content is literally the details of the words being said.
So, think about two people fighting over dishes being in the sink. Whose dishes they are and how long they have been there is the content of the conversation. We get so easily drawn into the content as human beings because it feels like we can argue these points concretely and this is where we are taught to focus. But as we argue about these details, we are literally getting nowhere.
The deeper level (the process) of what is happening in the conversation is how that communication is going down. Is someone getting angry or getting defensive? Is someone asking for help in a loving way? Is this conversation actually about something else that is happening in the relationship, but its easier to talk about the dishes?
See what I mean? There is so much more information in the process. If we can see into that level of the conversation, we can actually get somewhere.
How often are you left upset about an interaction when what someone else did or said has really very little to do with you? Wasted time and energy, friend.
Remember the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz? One of them is Don’t Take Anything Personally. There’s a reason for that.
For example, your partner may have had another experience of someone not doing the dishes before or not feeling supported or feeling like they have to do all the things, so they are triggered and communicating through that lens.
Or, the communication in their own household growing up was critical and so they see things and communicate through that lens.
Or they have a job that is centered around attention to detail so they notice when things are out of place more.
Or, they have always been criticized for leaving things undone because they get distracted easily and they are defensive when people point out shortcomings that result from that distractibility.
Notice how none of that has to really do with you or the dishes?
When you pay attention the process, you start being able to separate out what is about you in the conversation and what is about them.
Once you sort out what you are contributing to the issue, you can actually do something about that. Because that part IS about you. And you have control over you.
What is about you in the conversation might be that you are being reactive to your partner’s stuff because you are taking it personally. You have control over that when you start to see beyond the content and into the process.
Your part might be that you are not being mindful about the dishes. You can work on that. The other person’s part might be that they are not feeling supported, that could be part of how they always feel because its hard to ask for and actually receive help. No amount of dishes you do will fix that. There will be something else you are not doing sooner or later. Or vice versa.
What if the reason you are not being mindful about the dishes is because you are overwhelmed and your stress levels are too high? That’s probably impacting more than the dishes. It is impacting your health and your ability to be present in the important relationships in your life.
Maybe it is time to focus on stress management and get into communication with your partner about the fact that you might need a little bit of leeway until you get this under control. If you ask for leeway or support, make sure you are actively *doing your work* to address the issue you are asking for leeway to handle.
When you first pay attention to this level of the conversation, you might only catch it after the fact. Unless you are in therapy with a therapist having this conversation in a couples therapy or family therapy session. It’s OK to realize after the fact, that’s the first step. Keep practicing.
When you are in conversations with your loved ones, start to notice what’s happening as it’s happening. “Oh, I’m getting defensive” or “wow, they are getting defensive”.
If someone is getting defensive, that is because they feel threatened. Check if you are saying something critical, are you creating a threat? If not, maybe their defensiveness is not about what you are doing in the moment.
If it’s not about you, you don’t have to continue in the conversation. Find a way to wrap it up and give a little space.
If it’s important, talk about it later. Ask if you inadvertently said something that bothered your person. They might say no because they are not used to talking or reflecting on this level. That’s totally fine, you are building trust and creating space for a deeper level of communication. It doesn’t happen over night!
So keep paying attention, making comments about what is happening in the process (“I’m noticing that I’m getting worked up”) and saying reflective things about conversations after the fact. They can be nice and encouraging process comments too like “I felt really good when you said xyz”. The goal is to be building up that safe space so that you both can start to focus on process vs. content.
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