Tag | assumption
You hurt my feelings
There are two sides of telling someone your feelings are hurt. On one hand, in order to walk open and honest, you need to express when your feelings get hurt. On the other hand, never lose perspective that your feelings being hurt is your issue. What that person did or said is filtered through your belief systems, perceptions, and past experiences. You are the one that had an issue with it.
The primary things that need to happen when your feelings get hurt is giving and getting information. You need to give them information of what they did or said, how you interpreted it, and how you felt. This will help them understand how you tend to translate things and communicate with you more compassionately. You need to get information about what they intended. In other words, find out what they meant by it.
Since it is critical for both of you to understand that your feelings being hurt is your issue, it is often beneficial to use I statements and take responsibility for what you’re feeling. You might say, “When you said, ‘Why did you do that?’ I took it that you were suggesting that I did it the wrong way. I felt hurt.”
So telling someone they hurt your feelings is actually not the most effective way to tell them they hurt your feelings. Hmm? Better to own how you interpreted it and how you felt.
The challenge is of course that when you are expressing your hurt feelings, it is challenging to own anything. Because after all, your feelings are hurt. It feels like they were mean to you… mistreated you… were insensitive… and whatever else. So there is a tendency to assume that they were.
So why not take a step back and ask them?… “When you said, I was ______, what did you mean by that?”
The vastness of reality
I have been observing myself. It is the perfect time of year for introspection after all. There are times when I will make assumptions about how things are or what someone intended. I then make a decision or series of decisions based on that. Or I’ll create these rules that disallow me from doing something, or that make a simple thing so much harder. At some point I look back and see that I limited myself by reacting to things that I contrived. They never were real.
I am starting to think that this is one of the ways that I manage the vastness of reality- that place were all things are possible. Perhaps part of me still doubts that I will be able to mange the vastness. So I indulge myself to be in a cranky mood- not willing to open, not allowing things in.
When I am open and allow things in, I am able to manage the vastness of reality. I see possibilities. Ideas come to me. My instincts are alive. I am able to trust myself. I take in all the information and make excellent decisions.
So I am starting to realize how important it is to be open- to embrace what is around me and to allow the experience in.
Why is it that I do not walk that way all the time? I suppose I indulge my anger, negativity, and fear. Something is not presenting itself the way that I feel it should be. I get even with life by shutting myself off from it and making assumptions about how things are. I’ll show it.
And then it shows me.
Take it personally why don’tcha
The sad fact is that most people do not have a clear notion of who you are. Most have not taken the time to get to know you. They do not understand you or how you process. They project themselves and how they process things onto you. They make assumptions about you. They accept/reject you and relate to you based on their notion of you. They judge you because what you do is threatening to them.
They cannot feel your feelings. They do not know how it feels like to be you.
Yet most of us look to others to get information about ourselves. We look to them for validation- to tell us that we are OK. When someone gets mad at us, we assume that we did something wrong. We take it personally. We ask someone out and they say no. Or we flirt with them and they do not respond. We feel rejected. There must be something wrong with us. We make a presentation and someone doesn’t not like it. It must not have been any good. We personalize it.
When someone does not like us or something we do, we are getting information about THEM. It has nothing to with us. It is, however, valuable information about them. We can draw on it to make determinations about what type of relationship and interactions we want to have with them (if any).
But… other people’s perceptions of you is NOT an effective way to get information about yourself- that has to come from you. Another cannot validate who you are; you have to validate yourself. Your estimation of yourself (self esteem) has to come from how YOU feel about how you interacted. You need to evaluate if you feel like you did everything you could to relate clearly to them or connect with them.
Do you feel good about how that went? Maybe you need to adjust how you interact with them. That IS about you. How they respond to you is about them. Let them have it.
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