I HEARD YOU!
The other day, I went with my family for a music concert. The hall was not very big, and we had reached pretty much in time. We went in and found one row of empty seats, starting from the aisle. As I was about to sit down on the aisle seat, someone sitting behind pointed out that the seat was broken. Thanking him, I moved further and we settled down.
During the first half of the concert, I diligently took over the duty of the person who had warned me of the broken seat, and everytime someone would start to lower himself or herself on the seat, I would repeat the refrain: “excuse me, the seat is broken”. They would thank me and move on. One gentleman however, took objection to my telling him not to take the seat, presuming that I had reserved the place for someone and glaring at me said: “But there are seats further down the row right? Why can’t you ask them to sit there?” Before I could explain further, he walked away, muttering to himself about uncivilized audience! For a minute I was affronted, then humor took over and I could not help being amused! Well, he actually did not even listen to what I was saying right? He was somehow preprogrammed to the fact that I did not want him to sit there, as I had ‘reserved the seats’.
How often we tend to do this in various other situations too. We foresee an answer to some situation from someone, and we are already framing our response to the situation, without giving a thought to what is being actually being said… In other words, we are not listening; we are only busy preparing our counter to the response. And then it goes on... and the miscommunication then assumes gigantic proportions.
There is this game that I am reminded of, wherein you are supposed to give answer to a series of questions. What makes the game a test on your listening skills is, your answer should be not to the current question, but to the one asked just before. So, you need to listen to this question carefully, in addition to remembering the earlier one, and continue remembering the current one, to which you need to supply the answer once the next question is asked. Try it: it is tough! Simply because our listening skills are poor!
We tend to believe that what we say is what is understood; more often than not, what is understood is not what is conveyed, but what the other person infers the meaning as! If only all of us are able to understand this core message in the art of communication, life would be practically devoid of misunderstandings!
Showing posts with label Social Intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Intelligence. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Pain bodies!
Pain bodies!
It is said that pain is the symptom that something is not right with your body; a signal that you need to attend to the cause of the malady. It may be caused by a ruptured appendicitis or plain simple indigestion, but unless you take care of the cause it would recur, and in the case of the former, it may even be fatal, if you ignore it.
How simple the diagnosis is, if it is seen on the physical level! But we do not understand that our emotional body also undergoes pain. And it tells us in the form of our emotions: of anger, sadness, depression or plain helplessness. But how many of us really understand that what needs to be attended to is the cause of this pain; these symptoms are only the superficial signs of a corrosion happening underneath. We need to sit down and listen; listen to the need of the emotional body, and find out what is causing us so much pain. Is it a failed, or a failing relationship? Is it an unmet need from somebody? Is it something that someone has said, or more important, something someone has not said?
A client who had come to me for a session shared a story with me, wherein the case was of pure unmet expectations. But the hurt was festering for such a long time, that when she came in for the first session, I realised that it was not an isolated incident and the probing revealed the source of the hurt going as far as her childhood. She was the second of three siblings and her parents had always favoured her elder sibling, simply because the latter had been suffering from some deep complex born of her own thinking and inadequacies. Though she resented this favouritism, she was willing to live with it, because she had found succour for her emotional needs outside and maybe she did not have the courage to either fight, or even voice her resentment then. . Things settled down after both of them got married, and since they all got busy with their now extended families, this rivalry took a back seat.
Unfortunately, it surfaced again with the younger sibling now, who was living with her parents in the same city, and who somehow felt victimised by circumstances to take care of the parents. (It may not be out of place to say here that the parents had a fallout with the eldest sibling and are barely on talking terms now; somehow she kept insisting, ironically that she was always put down upon!). Anyway, to cut to the presenting problem, my client called up her mother to share some discord that she had had with the younger sibling, but the mother jumped to her defense, saying that she was never able to understand her younger sibling, and not to bother her with undue conflicts between both of them. Now this was ironical, and the only message my client could get was that she was not given a hearing, (it was very reminiscient of her childhood) and that her sibling was!
The issue of discord is irrelevant here; what hurt was the fact that my client was straight away brushed aside, with a blanket pronouncement. What came to my mind was what a famous psychologist, Adler had written about the profound effect birth order had on the personality of a person. This client of mine had projected to be a strong, mature and rational individual and had been a source of support for the family throughout her life. When she did manifest her emotional needs, I guess the family was unable to understand it and handle the situation. It made them uncomfortable whenever she buckled, even for a while under a crisis. And all along, to live up to her image, she continued to reinforce the behaviour of being a strong, rational person.
She had not understood her deep underlying resentment she bore against her parents for compromising her position every time in a sibling fight. She had been given love: but conditional love. And when the conditions were not being met now, the family was unable to accept her.
How is someone to cope with an unfulfilled need? It was not easy… The level of acceptance had to be very high in her, to surpass this need of being accepted unconditionally by her parents, and she had to work on years of rejection and the silent resentment she had borne.
I had lot of raw emotions to handle; and it was not easy. She was speaking from hurt, not from reasoning. I had to give her time, before I could make her understand where her mother and her sibling were coming from. She had to deal with unmet expectations, and to use a Transactional analysis viewpoint, she was the rebellious child, talking to a critical parent. No wonder there was a cross transaction!
It is said that pain is the symptom that something is not right with your body; a signal that you need to attend to the cause of the malady. It may be caused by a ruptured appendicitis or plain simple indigestion, but unless you take care of the cause it would recur, and in the case of the former, it may even be fatal, if you ignore it.
How simple the diagnosis is, if it is seen on the physical level! But we do not understand that our emotional body also undergoes pain. And it tells us in the form of our emotions: of anger, sadness, depression or plain helplessness. But how many of us really understand that what needs to be attended to is the cause of this pain; these symptoms are only the superficial signs of a corrosion happening underneath. We need to sit down and listen; listen to the need of the emotional body, and find out what is causing us so much pain. Is it a failed, or a failing relationship? Is it an unmet need from somebody? Is it something that someone has said, or more important, something someone has not said?
A client who had come to me for a session shared a story with me, wherein the case was of pure unmet expectations. But the hurt was festering for such a long time, that when she came in for the first session, I realised that it was not an isolated incident and the probing revealed the source of the hurt going as far as her childhood. She was the second of three siblings and her parents had always favoured her elder sibling, simply because the latter had been suffering from some deep complex born of her own thinking and inadequacies. Though she resented this favouritism, she was willing to live with it, because she had found succour for her emotional needs outside and maybe she did not have the courage to either fight, or even voice her resentment then. . Things settled down after both of them got married, and since they all got busy with their now extended families, this rivalry took a back seat.
Unfortunately, it surfaced again with the younger sibling now, who was living with her parents in the same city, and who somehow felt victimised by circumstances to take care of the parents. (It may not be out of place to say here that the parents had a fallout with the eldest sibling and are barely on talking terms now; somehow she kept insisting, ironically that she was always put down upon!). Anyway, to cut to the presenting problem, my client called up her mother to share some discord that she had had with the younger sibling, but the mother jumped to her defense, saying that she was never able to understand her younger sibling, and not to bother her with undue conflicts between both of them. Now this was ironical, and the only message my client could get was that she was not given a hearing, (it was very reminiscient of her childhood) and that her sibling was!
The issue of discord is irrelevant here; what hurt was the fact that my client was straight away brushed aside, with a blanket pronouncement. What came to my mind was what a famous psychologist, Adler had written about the profound effect birth order had on the personality of a person. This client of mine had projected to be a strong, mature and rational individual and had been a source of support for the family throughout her life. When she did manifest her emotional needs, I guess the family was unable to understand it and handle the situation. It made them uncomfortable whenever she buckled, even for a while under a crisis. And all along, to live up to her image, she continued to reinforce the behaviour of being a strong, rational person.
She had not understood her deep underlying resentment she bore against her parents for compromising her position every time in a sibling fight. She had been given love: but conditional love. And when the conditions were not being met now, the family was unable to accept her.
How is someone to cope with an unfulfilled need? It was not easy… The level of acceptance had to be very high in her, to surpass this need of being accepted unconditionally by her parents, and she had to work on years of rejection and the silent resentment she had borne.
I had lot of raw emotions to handle; and it was not easy. She was speaking from hurt, not from reasoning. I had to give her time, before I could make her understand where her mother and her sibling were coming from. She had to deal with unmet expectations, and to use a Transactional analysis viewpoint, she was the rebellious child, talking to a critical parent. No wonder there was a cross transaction!
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
A different battle
I am sure enough and more has been written, rewritten and spoken about the terrible massacre by the self-styled protectors of religion, and the inhumane acts committed in the name of being the harbingers of the rule of the ultimate power on earth. The price that we pay each time we are plundered is something that cannot be measured, either materially, or psychologically. As mute spectators, we wait and watch, wondering when the next strike is coming…. Is there nothing we can do, to make at least passable peace with ourselves? The war that goes on within us, the sense of anger, angst, helplessness, and the sheer, quiet desperation, as Thoreau says, wrings my heart.
It is not a blame game, but let us face it, we as a nation are very complacent: be at the macro or micro level, we would act only after or just before a crisis. Take the current case on a global level for example. I read somewhere, that recognizing nuances of facial expressions, in fleeting seconds, for example, is a sign of social intelligence.
Forthrightness, according to Daniel Goleman, is our brain’s default response. Any attempt to be anything else does bring about a cognitive dissonance, however much a person tries to mask it. The conditioned and learned response shows. He talks about a man who had come to an embassy for a visa. The interviewer noticed something strange about this person as they spoke, and when questioned about the reason for a visa, there was a fleeting expression on the man’s face. The interviewer was alerted and asking the applicant to wait, went to check the data bank. He trusted his gut feelings; he used ‘social intelligence’ in reading the expression: something is not quite right here. He was listed as a fugitive, wanted by the police in several countries.
Now I wonder whether, if any of the Indian public, when face-to-face with a nameless, faceless radical, would draw on this inherent gift, this non-cognitive aptitude that we all have, and draw up a red alert? Imagine how safe we could start feeling, if each one of us had this preprogrammed antenna always ready to receive warnings of any untoward mishap, and take proactive action?
This gift for primal empathy, the ready ability to sense the emotions of another is one weapon we can use against the more tangible weapons of mass destruction. Forget about sophisticated weapons; forget about bullet proof vests and hi-speed jets, or boats. Can we start fighting this war on another level altogether? We can get our resources together on educating public servants on developing this innate human ability to read the human mind, which is reflected on the face. It could be a kind of mental x-ray, an ability that has been dormant and is coded in our genes, and can be developed through conscious effort and training.
It comes under relationship management. When we learn to manage our core associations and relationships, we need to go a step further and develop this ability to hear the unspoken, to see the finer nuances of expressions that the other person expresses: and learn to read it right. It helps in fine-tuning our relationships. It should not be difficult, considering we are programmed as a species to do it.
Once we are successful in doing this in our day to day relationships, we can extend it, I am sure to read it in a stranger’s ( read that as a terrorist’s) face. And build a fortress around all of us, where our only ammunition would be this ability to scan out one who has no respect for humanity, and our common bond would be the will and the desire to live: peacefully, in harmony, and in the beauty of life.
Mohana Narayanan
Nov 30, 2008
It is not a blame game, but let us face it, we as a nation are very complacent: be at the macro or micro level, we would act only after or just before a crisis. Take the current case on a global level for example. I read somewhere, that recognizing nuances of facial expressions, in fleeting seconds, for example, is a sign of social intelligence.
Forthrightness, according to Daniel Goleman, is our brain’s default response. Any attempt to be anything else does bring about a cognitive dissonance, however much a person tries to mask it. The conditioned and learned response shows. He talks about a man who had come to an embassy for a visa. The interviewer noticed something strange about this person as they spoke, and when questioned about the reason for a visa, there was a fleeting expression on the man’s face. The interviewer was alerted and asking the applicant to wait, went to check the data bank. He trusted his gut feelings; he used ‘social intelligence’ in reading the expression: something is not quite right here. He was listed as a fugitive, wanted by the police in several countries.
Now I wonder whether, if any of the Indian public, when face-to-face with a nameless, faceless radical, would draw on this inherent gift, this non-cognitive aptitude that we all have, and draw up a red alert? Imagine how safe we could start feeling, if each one of us had this preprogrammed antenna always ready to receive warnings of any untoward mishap, and take proactive action?
This gift for primal empathy, the ready ability to sense the emotions of another is one weapon we can use against the more tangible weapons of mass destruction. Forget about sophisticated weapons; forget about bullet proof vests and hi-speed jets, or boats. Can we start fighting this war on another level altogether? We can get our resources together on educating public servants on developing this innate human ability to read the human mind, which is reflected on the face. It could be a kind of mental x-ray, an ability that has been dormant and is coded in our genes, and can be developed through conscious effort and training.
It comes under relationship management. When we learn to manage our core associations and relationships, we need to go a step further and develop this ability to hear the unspoken, to see the finer nuances of expressions that the other person expresses: and learn to read it right. It helps in fine-tuning our relationships. It should not be difficult, considering we are programmed as a species to do it.
Once we are successful in doing this in our day to day relationships, we can extend it, I am sure to read it in a stranger’s ( read that as a terrorist’s) face. And build a fortress around all of us, where our only ammunition would be this ability to scan out one who has no respect for humanity, and our common bond would be the will and the desire to live: peacefully, in harmony, and in the beauty of life.
Mohana Narayanan
Nov 30, 2008
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