Still Not A Communications Major But…
Emotions can be an interesting thing to navigate, process, and overcome (should the situation call for it). You can’t fault people for feeling the way they feel. They are experiencing something inside, be it good, bad, or even otherwise. I like to think that emotions are much like opinions, in that we all have them and we’re not wrong for experiencing and having them.
It’s all very personal and there’s a process to it.
We see things. We process those things. We have an emotional response to those things, even if that response falls along the lines of indifference. Not having a response IS a response.
But in general, how we see and feel about things will influence how we respond and react to those things.
As tends to be the case, at least with me lately, I have found myself in the midst of some communication difficulties with someone who frankly, I should not be arguing with. A lot of (though not all) what I’m writing in this post has been subject of many conversations between us and we still struggle. We struggle needlessly.
If I think back to some of those arguments and even one of our recent ones, I can’t help but hone in on the fact that rather than develop some understanding of those situations, perhaps reconsider some of her word choices, and even see things from my perspective, she would rather take a step back and resort to name-calling, attacking my response to what she said, and proceed to shame me for what she perceives to have been my overall behavior. For the time being, her behavior does nothing to solve the problem, nor does it help us reach some kind of resolution. In the end, we don’t come to any kind of understanding because she has taken an emotional reaction to the situation, rather than a logical one.
Now, I do not fault her for her feeling what she feels, because again, those are her feelings and those shouldn’t be attacked nor become a source of ridicule. But when her feelings are not quite what I would have intended for her to feel and experience, I would be experiencing some incongruency or dissonance because my words/actions and her responses to those words/actions are not consistent with what I would have intended. This is where a much deeper and meaningful conversation should have ensued, but it never did because emotions in general were running high. So rather than achieve the understanding that I would have hoped with we could have reached, I am instead met with the aforementioned attacks. Again, I don’t return those attacks because the last thing I want to do is fault her feeling whatever it is she is feeling. All I can do is acknowledge that she is experiencing certain emotions, process those myself, and react accordingly. She can attack me all she likes. I tend not to follow suit because as I said earlier, it doesn’t progress the conversation any and if anything, it can make things worse.
In an effort to stand up for myself and reply in an assertive manner, I refrain from responding to her in the exact same way she did to me. I don’t call her names. I don’t refer to her as a victim. I don’t attack her response or behavior. I might call out her behavior, not in an attempt to ridicule, but instead in an effort to understand why she reacted and responded the way she did, so that I can develop an understanding as to why she did what she did. I know that I would never take any pleasure nor derive any entertainment from seeing her traverse towards any kind of downward spiral because this is someone I truly care about. Why would I want to see that? Why would that ever be entertaining? I would want to develop that understanding, explain my perspective (and allow her to do the same), and ultimately, if we are successful, return to our baseline, where we get along, understand each other, and things between us are just grand.
It’s not about being right or wrong. Sometimes, someone might see things differently than we do. Someone might have responded differently to something we did, differently than we had intended. These perspectives can lead to uneasiness and arguments, which if we care enough about the other person, we will return to a conversation where the goal is to understand what happened and clarify why things were misconstrued.
A lot can be achieved through communication. Unfortunately, because of how we all see the world and respond to what happens in this world, sometimes misunderstandings can occur during that communication.
Do I care about her enough to fight through the misunderstanding and reach a resolution?
Of course, I do.
My struggle would be with my ability to disregard her emotional attacks, name-calling, and her criticism of my perceptions and subsequent actions.