I’ve been thinking a lot lately about relationships and how we
are warping their nature in our society. Through the advent of social media and
reality TV we are shifting our attitudes and communication focus. Somehow we
are allowing ourselves to become desensitized to the power of our words and the
damage they can inflict. Reality TV showcases alliances adopted and then
discarded for power/influence/standing with no perceived emotional
repercussion. The audience is captivated by this vicarious freedom from social
morality and can’t help but watch the trainwreck. Social media gives us the
power of instant reaction. It allows us to parade our opinions and even our
need for validation to a mass audience. Then it invites that audience to pass
their own judgement and agree or disagree on the basis of a single statement.
It can be like putting a loaded gun in the hands of a child without explaining
what will happen if they pull the trigger in a room full of people they love.
This is the world we are creating.
We have always had misunderstandings in this world. They can
be as insignificant as a poorly phrased compliment or comment or as serious as
a global conflict. They are everywhere. But I worry sometimes that we are
creating an absence of accountability in our media choices that we’re going to
have to pay for someday. If we are not careful, we will become a society
plagued with grudges, vendettas and poison. I want to talk about the little
ones we’re all familiar with.
Sometimes they seem to be a simple case of miscommunication
– a “he said/she said” kind of situation usually involving the
misinterpretation of something that ends up wounding one party while the other
can’t understand what happened. Often a quick apology would resolve the
situation (whether or not justified) and it would be old history, but too often
it takes on an ugly life of its own, becoming a grudge.
We’ve all been there. We’ve been hurt and felt like it came
out of nowhere from one of the people we hold dear. We’re blindsided by this
sudden attack and like all good mammals, we pull the survival card and become
defensive, angry and aggressive. We usually feel justified in our emotions,
convinced that we have been treated unfairly. We often lash out, trying to
redistribute the pain to where we think it rightfully belongs. And we are
behaving naturally in our reaction, but we cross the line when it enters
“judgement territory.”
In a court of law there is something called “burden of
proof.” The burden of proof is often associated with the
Latin maxim semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit, the best translation of which seems to be:
"the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays
charges."[1] That means when we choose
to lay a charge of cruelty at someone’s feet, we are obligated to first prove
the validity of that charge. If we want to attribute a perceived attack on our
character to someone, we have to make that claim stick. Instead we allow our
feelings to become the proof and rush straight into passing judgement. The flip
side of burden of proof is benefit of assumption. This is often completely
ignored. It means that until proof exists, the other party is innocent and
cannot be judged guilty. That almost never happens when a grudge is in force. In
our social media age, a reaction is instantaneous and splashed before myriad
eyes in a split second. We cannot take it back. Our spears are launched before
we even realize we’ve thrown them. We don’t even begin to bother with proof or
real justification because we’re just flinging feelings, right?
There are some very
important things to remember. We have a right to our feelings. But they are
feelings, based on our background, perception, emotional health, environmental
stress, personal morality. They are only truth for us. They are a marker of our
emotional state. They are not proof. They are a message to our brain that there
is information that needs to be processed and put into its rightful context.
They are a valuable personal diagnosis tool for our benefit. Properly used and
analyzed they can help us have healthier relationships and perceptions. They
can teach us empathy and compassion. But used as a weapon, they create
confusion, mistrust, and more emotional and physical stress. One of my
favourite plays is a comedy that speaks some poignant truths.
“She speaks poniards, and every word stabs. If her breath
were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would
infect to the North Star.”[2]
Words are weapons. They can
cut deep. So why do we do it?
"A grudge is an anger that won't
quit," says Robert Enright, PhD, professor of educational psychology at
the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "When someone wounds you, it's
natural to get angry. Like a turtle pulling into its shell, you harden your
heart to protect yourself from further injury," says Frederic Luskin, PhD,
director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project and author of Forgive
for Good (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002). "For grudge-holders, grievances are
like planes on an air-traffic controller's screen, circling endlessly and
taking up precious air space." We hold grudges, Luskin explains, because
we lack the self-confidence as well as the communication and resolution skills
for dealing with a hurtful situation in the first place.[3]
Perhaps we are misled by
this counterfeit confidence of “righteous anger.” That initial burst of power
and indignation can be pretty heady. And if that feels so good, imagine if we
could get others to back up our opinion. And off we go to blog/post/tweet our
injustices. But we have little control over the damage it can create or the
following downswing in our mood once the carnage is apparent. Families are
fractured, marriages are wounded, children are emotionally scarred, and trust
is often obliterated. People stop talking and retreat to their respective
corners because they don’t want to be hurt again. And love is lost.
"If your parents nursed grievances, or
consistently treated you badly, you may be hyper-vigilant to affronts as an
adult," says Luskin.[4]
It’s unfortunate that what we experienced as a child can
reappear in the way we deal with others as an adult, especially when it was
deeply hurtful and left us never wanting to feel that way again. Our
programming often runs very deep, and unless we teach ourselves a different way
to resolve our conflicts and become less prone to grudges, we will continue to
hurt ourselves and others. There are
some things we can do:
Acknowledge
your hurt. Put a label on it. Admitting we are angry/betrayed/sad means we
know what we’re dealing with.
Control
your natural stress reaction. Question what we’re feeling. Ask ourselves
what’s going on. Why are we reacting this way? Are there external factors
affecting our perception. It could be as simple as sleep deprivation or low
blood sugar. Find our context.
Communicate
with the other party. This is the hard part. We actually need to talk with
the other person and establish what is actually happening. Perhaps they’re
having a bad day too. Perhaps they didn’t mean their actions to be perceived in
the way our brain is reacting. This is where we must establish “burden of
proof.” To continue without it is unfair to everyone. Notice that this part
happens after we calm down and identify how and why we’re reacting. Then we
give the other party “benefit of assumption” and let them help create a better
version of the real situation with us. We cannot off load this responsibility
to anyone else. It is our relationship to make or break. Involving others
creates only more misinterpretation and confusion, adding new viewpoints and flawed
contexts.
Find out
what relationship rules you are using. It can be surprising to discover
what some of our internal rules actually are. Sometimes they were established
as a reaction to a slight when we were children and no longer apply. We can give
ourselves permission to rewrite them and eliminate any that create stress and
unhappiness in our lives. If we really can’t play board games with our siblings
without fighting, we give ourselves permission to let go of that until we have
learned how to overcome the triggers that make us cranky (yep, that’s me). We
want to win relationships not games. Relationships are not games. This step is
ongoing and can happen at any time. It is not dependent on a conflict. It is
about becoming emotionally healthy and breaking the cycle.
I try to remind myself two things
whenever I feel hurt by someone.
No one is perfect. I am definitely not perfect.
I say stupid things. I don’t always pay attention or self-edit properly.
Because of that I shouldn’t expect someone else to meet a standard of behaviour
I am not able to meet.
I am not omniscient. I don’t know what is
happening in someone else’s life and have no understanding of their personal
context. Until I do I am not allowed to judge their actions. Even then I cannot
judge. My brain is not their brain, and judgement is not my right. And that means
I have to talk to them.
It’s not easy. I screw it up often
enough that I need constant reminders to think before I act. Hopefully by the
time I am old and not completely deaf I will have figured out how not to
judge/grudge others. It’s a lot of work, but it is definitely worth it. We all
want to feel safe and trusted in this world. But we have to be the first to
try. In this social media heavy, entertainment plastered world we need to be
doubly careful. The immediacy of our reactions and perceptions can seem to be
rewarded and become addicting. If someone “likes” our attitude we can believe
we are right. We can find ourselves holding that smoking gun with injured
friends and family at our feet without even realizing we pulled the trigger. I
really don’t want to be that person. Learning the skill set that prevents these
accidents and focuses on forgiveness is so much safer.
A servant of the Lord, President
James E. Faust put this alternative much more clearly than I can:
Dr. Sidney Simon, a recognized authority on
values realization, has provided an excellent definition of forgiveness as it
applies to human relationships:
“Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.”[5]
“Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.”[5]
We all want to belong. We want to be part of this
enormous human family and feel accepted and wanted. But we have to be the first
one to accept, welcome, trust and think before we act. That’s just how it
works. We need to remind ourselves to ask a few important questions before we
react to any situation, real or media-staged.
Is what I am about to say really the truth or
just a snap reaction to my feelings?
Who will this hurt?
Does this help to make me the person I want to
be?
No one knows what you’re actually
seeing and feeling in your head. When we give them a sliver of our reaction to
it and expect a truthful response we are being unfair. We are paving the way
for another grudge to burst into life. We have to stop that. Our loved ones
deserve nothing less.
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