Acknowledging and validating

Now that I'm the parent of a toddler, I am noticing some of the things that I am perpetuating just because that's what I grew up with. For example, I am teaching Joel songs like "London Bridge is Falling Down" without having any idea what these songs are about. Yet, I am teaching Joel to sing these songs, and perhaps he will go on to teach other children to sing these songs without knowing what they're about. So far I haven't been too concerned about the contents of these songs and what negative effects might arise from my perpetuating the teaching of these songs.

But, there are other things that are commonly perpetuated just because that's what we grew up with that I am trying not to perpetuate. (Note that the operative word here is "trying!") For example, most of us grew up with having our feelings denied. This is something I'm still "growing up with" because of how I talk to myself inside my head. With my self-talk, I often find myself telling myself I shouldn't have certain feelings or trying to talk myself out of having certain feelings, and I've been working on noticing when I'm doing this and trying not to deny my feelings in this way. So not denying feelings is something I'm working on with how I talk to myself as well as to other people.

Here's another example that I've taken from the excerpts below:

Mom implies that she’s only following some complex set of rules [about how people “should” feel and behave toward each other] which she didn’t make up and which you don’t fully understand yet. (You, incidentally, will later also use these rules, but never fully understand them, since each of us, like Mom, improvises our own details of the rules as we go along, selectively uses the rules when it suits us and conveniently ignores them when that serves our purpose.)

We get a lot of messages about how we should and shouldn't feel. But, it seems to me that no matter what we can always at least acknowledge and validate everyone's feelings. That's what the excerpts below are about.

Excerpts

In the excerpts on this page, I've highlighted some key parts in bold, and I've added in some of my own thoughts in dark blue. Note that, although these excerpts are written in the context of parenting, they apply to interacting with people in general.

Framing things in terms of wants vs. labels (e.g., good, bad, right, wrong)

From pages 13 - 17 of When I Say No, I Feel Guilty

... [Parents often] teach us ideas and beliefs about ourselves and the ways people behave that produce feelings of anxiety, ignorance, and guilt. For example, place yourself in the shoes of a young child, your own child perhaps, or yourself when you were young, and look at the training you undergo. When you clean up your room and put all the toys away, Mom usually says things like: “That’s a good boy.” When she doesn’t like the job you do—if you do it at all—she usually says things that sound like: “What kind of kid are you? Only naughty children don’t clean up their room!” You soon learn that “naughty,” whatever that means, applies to you. Whenever it is used, Mom’s voice and mood tell you that something scary and unpleasant may happen to you. She also uses words like bad, terrible, awful, dirty, willful, unmanageable, and maybe even words like wicked or evil, but they all describe the same thing: You! What you are: small, helpless, and not knowing much. And what you “should” feel: dumb, nervous, perhaps frightened, and certainly guilty!

In training you to attach emotionally loaded ideas like good and bad to your minor actions, Mom is denying that she has any responsibility for making you do what she wants, like cleaning up your room. The effect upon you as a small child of using such loaded ideas as good, bad, right, and wrong to control what you do is the same as if Mom had said: “Don’t make that sour face at me. It’s not me who wants you to clean up your room. God wants you to clean up your room!” By using good-bad statements to control your behavior, Mom shifts the responsibility off her shoulders for making you do something. With external statements like right and wrong that have nothing to do with your interaction with her, she blames your discomfort at doing what she wants onto some external authority that made up all the rules we “should” obey.

This is nonassertiveness. This way of controlling behavior, i.e., “That’s a good-bad boy,” is very efficient, but it is manipulative, under-the-table control and not an honest interaction in which Mom would assertively, on her own authority, tell you what she wants you to do, and stick to it. Instead of asserting her wants to an assertive young child until he responds to her wishes (and he will), Mom finds it easier to make you struggle through bad and good with God, the government, the sanitation and safety department the old man with the white beard, the police chief, or whoever else you childishly perceive as the one who decides what is good and what is bad. Mom rarely tells you: “Thank you. I like it very much when you clean up your room,” or even “It must really bug you when I make you do your room over, but that’s exactly what I want you to do.” With statements like these, Mom teaches you that whatever Mom wants is important simply because she wants it. And that is the truth. She teaches you that nobody else is checking up on you but her. And that too is the truth. You are not led into feeling anxious or guilty or unloved because you don’t like what Mom wants. You are not taught that what Mom likes is good and what she dislikes is bad. If she uses simple assertive statements of “I want,” there are no implications or unspoken threats that “good” children are loved and “bad” ones are not. You don’t even have to like what Mom wants you to do; you only have to do it!

What a happy situation: being able to bitch and grumble to Mom and Dad to get things off your chest and know they still love you. Using psychological guilt to manipulate your behavior, on the other hand, is the same thing as teaching you that you have to like the taste of aspirin before it will cure your headache. Thankfully, when parents assertively assume themselves to be the authority on what their child can and cannot do, they then teach the assertive concept that when you grow up, not only can you do what you want, just like Mom and Dad, but you will also have to do some things you don’t care for so that you can do other things you do want, just like Mom and Dad.

Children unfortunately are taught to respond to psychological control of their learned emotions of anxiety, ignorance, and guilt in many childhood situations. For example, if you are playing with your dog in the living room and Mom wants to take a nap on the couch, she teaches you to respond to manipulative emotional control by saying: “Why are you always playing with Rover.” You then must come up with an answer as to why you are always playing in the living room with Rover. Not knowing any reason why except the fact that you like to and it is fun, you feel ignorant, because if Mom asks for a reason, there must be one. She wouldn’t ask for something that didn’t exist, would she? If you honestly but sheepishly reply: “I don’t know,” Mom counters with: “Why don’t you go play in your sister’s room with her?” Lacking a “good” reason why you prefer to play with the dog than with your sister, you are again induced to feel ignorant for not knowing why. Searching awkwardly for a reason, your mumbled reply is cut off by Mom: “It seems like you never want to play with your sister. She wants to play with you.” Feeling guilty as hell by now, you remain silent as Mom delivers the coup de grace: “If you never want to play with your sister, she won’t like you and want to play with you.” Now feeling not only ignorant and guilty but also anxious about what your sister might think of your attitude, you depart with Rover on your heels to take up your rightful station in life beside Sis and out of Mom’s hearing.

Ironically, all the tortuous finagling Mom goes through to convince you that you “should” like to play with Sis is more harmful to your natural assertive initiative than if she showed you her down-to-earth, obviously human grouchiness and said: “Get the hell out of the living room while I’m trying to sleep and take that mangy mutt with you!” Even with statements like this, she is exposing you to the hard realities of living with other humans. Sometimes the people you love and care for are going to treat you rottenly, because they are human. They can love and care for you and still get angry with you. Living with people is never just peachy all the time, so with occasional episodes of anger, tempered by everyday love, Mom prepares you emotionally to cope with this human paradox.

…

Framing things in terms of wants vs. rules

From pages 19 - 20 of When I Say No, I Feel Guilty

… Mom implies that she’s only following some complex set of rules which she didn’t make up and which you don’t fully understand yet (You, incidentally, will later also use these rules, but never fully understand them, since each of us, like Mom, improvises our own details of the rules as we go along, selectively uses the rules when it suits us and conveniently ignores them when that serves our purpose.) Faced with this formidable verbal tangle, you find it easier to retreat to the yard for a long session of grumbling and passively dragging your rake. Not only does Mom’s manipulative control of your emotions and behavior train you further in the arbitrary use of ideas like right and wrong, or fairness, but with the same words, Mom is conditioning you to think according to vague general rules that “should” be followed.

The flaw in this conditioning process is that these abstract rules are so general they can be interpreted in any way desired, in the same circumstances. These rules are external to your own judgment of what you like and dislike. They tell how people “should” feel and behave toward each other…

Mom does have the more promising option, however, of dealing assertively with manipulative statements from her children. More hopefully she uses verbal assertion in her response, and in doing so, she neither punishes nor countermanipulates her child. In coping with your criticism of her job assignments, for example, she can assertively and empathically respond with: “I can see that you feel it’s unfair that you do the yard while your sister is playing. That must upset you, but I still want you to rake the yard now.” By her assertive response in the unpleasant job of coping with your manipulation, Mom is telling you a lot of emotionally supportive and reassuring things. She tells you that even though you are going to do something you don’t like, you are entitled to feel the way you do and she’s not insensitive to you; despite the way you see your ordered, fair world crumbling, things are still going the way Mom wants them, and most reassuring of all, disaster is not lurking around the next turn because Mom is smart enough not to be “conned” by an insignificant little kid like you or your sister.

Framing things as how we can all get along despite having conflicting wants

When there's a conflict, often things get framed in terms of logical arguments, or who's right and who's wrong, or how reasonable or unreasonable things sound.

Different preferences and priorities and such

For example, my sister-in-law Abby

I've found that it makes a big difference if I at least get what I want out on the table, even if I don't end up getting what I want. It used to be that if I thought what the other person was proposing ........ then I wouldn't even bring up what had in mind.

When there's a conflict, everyone might not be able to get what they want, but we can always at least acknowledge and validate everyone's feelings.

I want to be able to get things done, and worrying about how clean I'm keeping things gets in the way of that. ???There's also often some urgency about what I'm trying to get done which has me concerned about how soon I'm going to be able to get it done.

a section from an essay that my sister-in-law Abby wrote

“Could you please ask your friends to be more considerate when they think I might be sleeping?”

“I just don't want people calling at 1:30 in the morning or your friends pounding on the door when I have clearly written, 'Sleeping, please don't knock.'”

You know, you go to bed earlier than anyone else in the whole dorm.”

Transclude!

italicize! <-- lower priority

Default ways of talking

"sportscasting"