…and by listening I mean speaking too!
For the last few months I have been playing with how to communicate on Facebook. Sometimes I will post something that will be of an emotional nature in different ways. Sometimes it will be a perspective I decided to take that day. What I’ve found is actually happening is that I am getting two different kinds of responses to either of these kinds of questions.
Either:
- They will tell me how to “fix” myself by giving some form of advice (I never asked for) which sometimes explains some story at some point in their lives where they have overcome a similar challenge
- They will challenge me and tell me how I’m wrong for feeling/believing that way, and then providing some form of alternative viewpoint
I am reminded of a friend who once told me that she went to visit her parents in their home and had had several years without a TV. When her parents had their show on, she got up and said “Ugh, I don’t want to watch this” and walked out. Her mother immediately followed saying “You have no right to tell us the turn the television off in our own home”. My friend looked at her mother and said “I just said I didn’t want to watch it, I never asked for you to turn off.” Her mother stopped for a moment, before saying “Oh, you’re right”.
So often when we communicate with people, two things are often collapsed: what we say & what we really want from them.
Sometimes we think communication always has a request behind it. Some fun ones are:
- I have some bad feelings (and you need to fix them)
- I think this particular thing is stupid (and you need to tell me why it isn’t so I can be more loving/accepting/all-embracing)
- I am taking this path in my life (and you need to tell me why I should be doing this/shouldn’t be doing this so I feel better/get a better way)
- I need to make a decision (and you need to tell me which one to make)
People, not all communications have requests in them. Not all requests need to communicate anything more than “I just need you to do this, will you do it?” (yes or no are the only answers). When most people speak, they just want to be heard…and THAT’S IT!
I have seen/heard people who are in a great deal of pain being “forced” to listen to someone else prattle on about how they are “doing it all wrong” or trying to “fix them”. This person walks away feeling even more dissociated and disconnected than they went into it. They not only had to hold their own experience (which may have been incredibly painful) but they also had to take on MORE which felt like “I am doing it all wrong. And I am being ungrateful because I find it really difficult to listen to all this right now”.
The person who should have been the audience becomes the performer and the person who needs to perform (read: speak their mind) has to become audience (captive audience) to their “opinions” (sarcastic use of quotation marks intentional).
Where are you most likely to turn someone into a captive audience? Is there one circumstance where you are more likely to do this?
For me, I am most likely to do this when someone is giving me their personal brand of “personal development” that I don’t believe much in. I will try and “transform” them back with my bestest ninja skills with just a pinch of sarcasm to get them to realize how much better my way is…
