One thing that really changed my life was to learn about communication. This is not about professional communication or public communication that we use at the work setting, but communication to our closest relatives. I used to think that I was a good communicator since I (think I) always nailed public speaking events, yet I realized I was the worst communicator when it comes to solving my daily problems. I thought I was assertive enough as I could calmly give feedbacks to my work colleagues, yet it turned out I had difficulties speaking out about how I felt to my family.
The revelation was all started when I read Filosofi Teras by Henry Panampiring. There he introduced the STAR framework — Stop, Think, Assess, Respond — before we react on anything. I really love this framework. It means that we need to take a pause when something happened, separate the emotions that came up from our logic, then think of the best reaction to the event with cold head. And to always remember this quote below:
“We must realize that external events are neutral, and only how we choose to react to them makes them good or bad.”
- Jonas Salzgeber, The Little Book of Stoicism
What’s surprising is that the emotions that came up in an event may not be related to the event itself, but it could be from the past. An example for this is when I got so fed up with my work colleague, because he couldn’t take my feedback and chose to put the blame on me instead. I was so pissed at that time, I even went to my therapist because the emotion was too massive to handle.
My therapist then told me that it’s quite normal that people don’t take feedback. In fact, a lot of people don’t. And a lot of other people are okay with it. Why wasn’t I? Then it got me realized that I was projecting my work colleague to my mom and the fact that I hate being unheard. Which is fair — since all emotions are valid. What not fair was my reaction towards my work colleague, because:
- He is not my mom (obviously?!)
- He doesn’t have the responsibility to accept my feedback
- What he thinks and does is outside my control, so it’s irrelevant for me to expect
So I changed how I behave. I now understand that it’s ok for my work colleague to not accept my feedback and I will accept him the way he is. And to realized that the emotions were irrelevant for the event, help me to respond better, to be more objective about the person and be more empathetic. It also helped to fix my relationship with my work colleagues (and to prevent bad blood and me burning bridges with innocent people).
When it comes to communication, my therapist also gave me a very good advice about “I” message. I then become more assertive when it comes to communicating my feelings towards my closest relatives.
An “I” message or “I” statement is a style of communication that focuses on the feelings or beliefs of the speaker rather than thoughts and characteristics that the speaker attributes to the listener. For example, a person might say to his or her partner, “I feel abandoned and worried when you consistently come home late without calling” instead of demanding, “Why are you never home on time?”
- GoodTherapy.org
However, for me, “I” message alone may not work as best, if we haven’t implemented the previous STAR framework. Because we can feel a lot of things and — as I pointed out earlier — our emotions may not always be relevant to the present moment. So it can be more elaborative if we can connect the dots first in our head before communicating it, even with “I” message.
This, though, really helps me to resolve problems with my husband. I used to “flight” when I’m faced with problems. Practicing “I” message helps me to talk things out without having to run away. Even though for myself, it doesn’t come naturally for most of the time and I need some times to process my emotions first before being able to really speak out what I feel.
One memorable moment was when I talked about it for the first time with my husband. I used to spend hours to process my emotion when a conflict happened. I didn’t know that it frustrated my husband when I did so. For him, he wanted to resolve a conflict quickly so he wanted me to talk immediately when I felt something was wrong. On my side, I knew for sure that If I was forced to talk, nothing good would come out of my mouth. So we talked it out and found common grounds. My husband told me that it frustrated him when I shut him off for too long. I told him that I need time to process my emotion so that I could come up with better words to say. The common grounds for us was to shorten my thought-processing time from hours to 15 minutes. We both agreed, as I still have my time but it’s not too long that he feels abandoned.
The conversation was quite like this:
“I don’t like you hurting yourself when we’re in conflict” – next time I learned that this was bad example. I should’ve said something like “it makes me sad when you hurt yourself”
“I did it because I feel frustrated when you shut me off. I don’t know what to do”
“I just needed some time alone to get my head cleared out”
“I understand, but I really can’t stand you not telling me what’s going on. Can you at least make your alone time quicker?”
“How long is acceptable for you?”
“15 minutes? Or at the latest 1 hour”
“That may work. I’m sorry for making you feel what you felt. I will try to gather myself up quicker and talk things out immediately.”
To be able to really understand what you feel and why you feel is really helpful (at least for me). Most of the time we got mixed up between past events and present moment. And it becomes more acceptable when we communicate what we feel, when we have sorted out where the feelings came from.
An example that I experienced was when I got annoyed with a cousin who I thought was so spoiled. It annoyed me so much to see that she needed someone to take her to the office (and home) everyday, simply because she doesn’t want to drive. Until I realized, it wasn’t her who got me annoyed. It’s the fact that I never got such privilege and that I had to take care of myself since high school. Deep down inside the annoyance was actually envy. My younger self felt envy with my cousin because I didn’t have what she has. And it’s nothing to do with my cousin and her privilege (she didn’t do anything wrong!). And if I reflect again at the present moment, the envy is no longer relevant (in fact, I enjoy my time driving).
From this event, I try to separate my feelings between what I really feel at the present moment and what I feel in the past. Or in other words, is it adult me who feel it or is it inner-child me who feel it. Both are valid feelings, though. It’s just that I can be more objectives to perceive every event and I can be more aware with myself.
And to be more aware about this, it also helps me to empathize other people even better. It is by thinking: other people may also project their past to the present event, so when people react negatively to me it may not be personal.
Another real event that I experienced with my husband was when he raised his tone when we talked about work. So we talked:
“I noticed you tend to raise your tone when we talk about work. Why is that?”
“I don’t like it when you compare yourself to me”
“I’m sorry to make you feel that way but I never compared myself to you. What makes you think that way?”
“I think it’s the way you talk. It reminds me of how my sister used to compare herself to me when we were kids”
It proved that my husband was not actually upset with me. He was upset with his memory about his sister who often compared herself to him. But it’s good that he’s aware with it, so that he can be more objective towards me (since I’m not her sister). And from that moment onwards, we can talk about work casually without any resentment.
I’m very happy with the dynamics in our relationship because we’re very open about what we feel and we’re not afraid to talk things out. Of course it was not easy from the start. We could take hours to get into common grounds. Or in some other times, it could also involve crying and shouting at the beginning. But I’m very grateful that we try our best not to keep things unspoken so we don’t hold grudges towards each other. High hope that this continues, and no matter how difficult the situations are, we can still sort things out together.
Now that I’m more aware of what I feel and able to communicate it to other people, I can be more assertive with my closest relatives. Yet it doesn’t stop here. What’s next – and what I find most difficult – is to be able to also put this learning in mind when responding to other people. Of course we can’t expect everyone to use “I” message everytime they speak. And sometimes it can be annoying when they don’t. When for a complete stoic, it may not be a problem. But for someone like me, I need to be able to “translate” it to the “I” message I’d like to hear.
It still annoys me when my mom said “you don’t care about me anymore, you let me live alone in this huge house”. Yet if I translate the sentence into: “I feel lonely sometimes, do you mind visiting me more often so that I have you to talk to?”, it would help me empathize my mom even more. So what I need to do is to perform the translation in my head, everytime I hear negative words coming. Simply because I’m aware that not everyone knows about “I” message or have the capacity to do it. Easier said than done, of course. But the intention is good enough for now, at least until some genius can invent that Google Translate capability in human brain.
Jokes aside, a lot of things to learn to be a better person. I’m still keen to be more loving and understanding towards other people. A long way to go indeed but that’s okay as long as we’re progressing. Cheers!
