This is the way we sabotage our chance to be heard

The most dangerous patterns we use when we speak

We like to believe we are “the captain of my ship”. That we have the power to choose. But is this true when we are not aware of what we doing? Or saying?

“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice” — Peggy O’Mara

I came across this line while reading this beautiful article about respectful parents written by Adelina Vasile:

But let's take a time travel one generation back when parents' voices were shaping our inner voice. And back one more generation, when our grandparents' voices were shaping our parents' inner world. We can go back step by step, watching how the ancestral heritage of kindness and harshness was preserved, modified, and passed through generations.

No doubt that our ancestors had struggles we cannot even imagine. I remember my grandmother telling me stories of war, loss, and struggles that were fitting in any WW movie.

No doubt that they filtered what their parents were passing to them. What was acceptable just a few generations ago sounds like horrors stories to our children and I cannot be happier about this.

But we still carry unexamined beliefs, patterns, and habits that were impressed upon us when we were children.

And if those beliefs, patterns, and habits are dysfunctional, our behavior is also dysfunctional. They limit our choice instead of freeing us. As long as they run in the background of our minds, our freedom is mostly an illusion.

Let's imagine two families. One plagued by dysfunctional dynamics in which the preferred “educational method” is violence. Either physical or emotional. The other, a functional one, use gentleness and kindness as their favorite instruments. Let us imagine a scenario when a toddler broke a pot with his favorite meal.

In the first case, the parents might yell at him. Calling him names. Beating him. Punishing him in exaggerated ways. Weeks after the incident they might remind him about his mistake, how clumsy he is, how undeserving, and how much he does not care about his parents' work and the efforts they make to raise him.

In the second family, the parents would find gentler ways to teach the toddler to pay more attention when he handles heavy things. They might exercise together a better way to grip a bowl. Or they might choose to put away all the breakable things for a while. They might ask the toddler to help clean the mess while telling stories about how his favorite character learned to ask for help when he was not able to do something.

Then, they might decide to give him a different meal. Something that the toddler would not be so enthusiastic about it. If the little one would ask for his favorite meal, they would simply tell him that they do not have more. It was the last portion and now they have to find another solution. This is why his favorite superhero is so good, he knows how to find a solution whenever he is in trouble. 🙂

In both cases, the children might feel scared and sad or frustrated, but while not having his favorite meal might feel like punishment, the kindness-oriented parents would be able to teach their child the difference between a punishment and a consequence.

More, they would teach him an even more valuable difference: the one between someone's behavior and his character. A child is not bad or stupid because he has tantrums. He just lacks the skills to regulate his emotions. And losing our temper over his behavior would not teach him emotional stability.

And yes, there is more, another lesson, as valuable as the other ones: a mistake is not something to fear and avoid at any cost, but something to learn from.

I want to introduce a disclaimer here. While I am considering two opposite scenarios, my article is not even a shadow of an intention to blame the parents. I walked this path for too long. This is not a path worth walking. Making someone feel bad about themselves is the fastest way to ruin a dialogue. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way.

Now, let's talk about the other child. The one who was labeled, punished, and made feel unworthy:

His takeaways from this incident would be totally different:

No way of learning that there is a difference between a behavior and his worth. He did that, so he is stupid, and he deserves to be punished and humiliated (at that age the parents are always right).

No way of learning that there is a difference between a consequence and a punishment.

And, depending on how often he will hear “you made me do this” he might have a crash course on denying responsibility.

As Robert Bloch said:

The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else he can blame it on.

And can we blame him? If all he learned is that he's a failure and he's the cause of all the troubles in the world, he has no choice but protects himself.

The good news is that those harmful behaviors and the unconscious programming that trigger them can be unlearned. Not an easy task, but a doable one.

There are many ways to start, one is by watching the way we speak. Here are three of the most dangerous habits we need to recognize and change.

1. Generalization — always, never, all the time, nothing, anything, anybody, nobody, and so on.

“You are always late.” “I never hear a good word from you.” “You interrupt me all the time.” “Nothing I am doing is good enough for you.” “Anything I am doing is annoying you.”

Yes, that co-worker might be late every day of the week, but if he hears “always” we will end up arguing about that day three months ago when he forgot about the time changing and he arrived half an hour earlier than anybody. “See, is not always, you are exaggerating.” Chances are you will not convince him to change anything.

What makes these words even more dangerous is when we direct them against ourselves: “I am always left out.” “Nothing I am doing is good enough.” “Nobody cares.” “Everybody blames me.

I believe I do need to explain this. There is a joke that says we know somebody is paranoid when they see a rugby scrum and they worry that the players are talking about them. This type of internal dialogue is the surest way to either paranoia or depression.

2. Labeling

I know this sounds obvious, but bear with me. I am not talking just about the negative and offensive labeling. And about the emotional pain that comes from labeling. I am talking about something more subtle and powerful than that. Those labels are strong enough to distort any situation.

I love the “black sheep” example. This is a dynamic I know well, as I was the one in my dysfunctional family. The black sheep has a role in maintaining what family systems therapists refer to as family homeostasis. Having a black sheep in the family means that the family can focus on “fixing” him or her instead of facing their problems.

This is exactly what we want to avoid when we have a problem. We want to be sure that our focus is on fixing the problem not fixing someone.

In my case, I was “bad since I was a baby” as my mother used to tell me. I fought against this label all my childhood… then I believed it. And my rebellion grew even stronger.

This is what it took. A distorted filter. A toxic belief and neither me nor my mother were not able to forge a loving connection. She was trying to change me, I was trying to prove her wrong. So much energy wasted, so much useless fighting! And so much pain!

But wait, how about good labels?

We need to be careful about them too. A kind word never broke anyone’s mouth… says an Irish proverb and it is true. Kindness never hurts.

What might hurt is the way we use those words. Are we trying to connect or manipulate?

And as if the things are not complicated enough, is the person we want to compliment an insecure person? Or an entitled one? In the first case, our words might make him more insecure. In the latter, we just feed his ego.

So what can we do? We cannot live fearing that anything we say might be misunderstood. And we cannot let our fears silent us.

We can start by learning to give proper feedback. We need to speak about behavior, not about character. Instead of “You are messy” we can say “you are not cleaning your desk at the end of your shift”. Instead of “you are lazy” we can say “I see you playing and your homework is still unfinished”.

3. Comparison

I have a personal story about this too:

Doina’s daughter

She was my childhood enemy. I never met her. I do not know anything about her except what my mother used to tell me about her. She was perfect. She was everything that my mother dreamed about, everything that I was not. She was behaving. She was ordered, hard-working, and polite. She was Cinderella, Snow White, and The Clever Elsie at the same time. So my mother loved her and loved to tell me and my sister stories about how perfect she is and how we are not like her. Especially me… I was nothing like her, I was just trouble. My mother used to compare me all the time with her, I hated her.

And I hated the way my mother was talking about her. Was I so bad? Was she dreaming about exchanging me for another child?

Then, years later, when we're already teenagers, my mom come home with an unhappy look on her face. I did not bother to ask her what was happening, as we were already estranged. But my sister, having a better relationship, was worried. She wanted to know why mom was sad. So she persisted with her questions until my mother told her what was the problem.

Doina’s daughter was pregnant without being married. This was more than 30 years ago and we lived in a communist country. Being pregnant without being married was one of the worst and shameful things possible for a woman. And for her family. That woman would have to face such shame and harsh judgments that now I cannot feel anything but compassion for her.

But then… I felt satisfaction. All those years of comparisons had been avenged…

Now I hope her family was stronger than mine and they were there for their daughter. I do not judge my younger self for lacking empathy. It was the best I was able at that time.

Changing our habits is not an easy task. Changing the way we see ourselves and others and how we communicate is a life-long project. I believe the most rewarding one.

There are a lot of resources available about improving our communication skills.

I want to finish this article on an inspiring note. So I let you with one of my favorite lectures on Nonviolent Communication.

Marshall Rosenberg presentation NVC The Power We Have to Create the World of Our Choosing

I love it. Marshall Rosenberg had many inspiring lectures but this one is like a stand-up comedy on Nonviolent Communication.

I love to come back to this presentation whenever I need a good laugh and a remembering about how powerful our words can be.

I hope you will find it inspirational. And that you will laugh and learn while laughing.

Thank you for reading until the end.

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