Of course, some of the most important inner work is prevention work. It includes making up our minds not to say or do those things we know will offend and learning to overcome our anger or to express it at better times and in more productive ways. We need to be deeply honest with ourselves and realize that most anger is merely guilt overflowing when provoked by the weakness of another. We can also make up our minds not to be offended by others. Taking offense is a choice. We may be hurt, but there is a big difference between being hurt and taking offense. Being hurt is having our feelings wounded—and it does smart for a time—but taking offense is choosing to act on that hurt by getting back, getting even, walking out, complaining to others, or judging the “offender.”
Most of the time offenses are unintentional. Even when they are intentional, we can remember that forgive—like love—is a verb. It’s the choice to move from reactivity to proactivity, to take the initiative—whether you’ve offended someone or been offended yourself—to go and make reconciliation. It’s the choice to cultivate and depend on an internal source of personal security so that we are not so vulnerable to external offenses.
And above all it’s the choice to prioritize the family, to realize that family is too important to let offenses keep family members from talking to one another, prevent grown brothers and sisters from going to family events, or weaken or break the intergenerational and extended family ties that provide such strength and support.
Interdependency is hard. It takes tremendous effort, constant effort, and courage. It’s much easier in the short run to live independently inside a family—to do your own thing, to come and go as you wish, to take care of your own needs, and to interact as little as possible with others. But the real joys of family life are lost. When children grow up with this kind of modeling, they think that is the way family is, and the cycle continues. The devastating effect of these cyclical cold wars is almost as bad as the destruction of the hot wars.
It’s often important to process negative experiences—to talk them through, resolve them, empathize with each other, and seek forgiveness. Whenever ugly experiences take place, you can unfreeze them by acknowledging your part in them and by listening empathically to understand how other people saw them and how they felt about them. In other words, by modeling vulnerability yourself, you can help others become vulnerable. The deepest bonding arises out of such mutual vulnerability. You minimize the psychic and social scarring, and clear the path to the creation of rich synergy.
Becoming a “Faithful Translator”
Really listening to get inside another person’s mind and heart is called “empathic” listening. It’s listening with empathy. It’s trying to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Of five different kinds of listening, it is the only one that really gets inside another person’s frame of reference.
You can ignore people. You can pretend to listen. You can listen selectively or even attentively. But until you listen empathically, you’re still inside your own frame of reference. You don’t know what constitutes a “win” for others. You don’t really know how they see the world, how they see themselves, and how they see you.
At one time I was in Jakarta, Indonesia, teaching the principle of empathic listening. As I looked out over the audience and saw many people wearing earphones, a thought came to me. I said, “If you want a good illustration of empathic listening, just think about what the interpreter or translator is doing right now through your earphones.” These translators were doing instantaneous translation, which meant that they had to be listening to what I was saying at the moment as well as restating what I had just said. It took incredible mental effort and concentration, and it required two translators to work in tandem, based on their level of fatigue. Both of those translators came up to me afterward and told me that what I had said was the finest compliment they had ever been given.
Even though you may be emotionally involved in a particular exchange with somebody, you can push your pause button and step outside of that emotion if you simply change the way you see your role—if you think of yourself as a “faithful translator.” Your job, then, is to translate and communicate back to the other person in new words the essential meaning (both verbal and nonverbal) of what that person communicated to you. In doing this you’re not taking a position yourself on what the person is talking about. You’re simply feeding back the essence of what he or she said to you.
Psychologist and author John Powell has said:
Listening in dialogue is listening more to meanings than to words. . . . In true listening, we reach behind the words, see through them, to find the person who is being revealed. Listening is a search to find the treasure of the true person as revealed verbally and nonverbally. There is the semantic problem, of course. The words bear a different connotation for you than they do for me.
Consequently, I can never tell you what you said, but only what I heard. I will have to rephrase what you have said, and check it out with you to make sure that what left your mind and heart arrived in my mind and heart intact and without distortion.
How to Do It: Principles of Empathic Listening
Now let’s go through a scenario together that will help us get at the heart of the understanding—or “faithful translator”—response.
Suppose for several days you’ve sensed that your teenage daughter is unhappy. When you’ve asked her what’s wrong, she’s replied, “Nothing. Everything’s okay.” But one night while you’re washing dishes together, she begins to open up.
“Our family rule that I can’t date until I’m older is embarrassing me to death. All my friends are dating, and that’s all they can talk about. I feel like I’m out of it. John keeps asking me out, and I have to keep telling him I’m not old enough. I just know he’s going to ask me to go to the party on Friday night, and if I have to tell him no again, he’ll give up on me. So will Carol and Mary. Everyone’s talking about it.”
How would you respond?
“Don’t worry about it, honey. No one is going to give up on you.”
“Tell me what they’re saying about you.”
“When they talk about you like that, they’re really admiring you for your stand. What you’re feeling is normal insecurity.”
Any one of these might be a typical response, but not an understanding one.
“Don’t worry about it, honey. No one is going to give up on you.” This is an evaluating or judging response based on your values and your needs.
“Just stick to your guns. Don’t worry about what others say and think.” This is advising from your point of view or in terms of your needs.
“Tell me what they’re saying about you.” This response is probing for information you feel is important.
“When they talk about you like that, they’re really admiring you for your stand. What you’re feeling is normal insecurity.” This is interpreting what’s happening with your daughter’s friends and inside her as you see it.
Most of us either seek first to be understood, or if we do seek to understand, we are often preparing our response as we “listen.” So we evaluate, advise, probe, or interpret from our own point of view. And none of these is an understanding response. They all come out of our autobiography, our world, our values.
So what would an understanding response be?
First, it would attempt to reflect back what your daughter feels and says so that she feels you really understand. For example, you might say, “You feel kind of torn up inside. You understand the family rule about dating, but you also feel embarrassed when everyone else can date and you have to say no. Is that it?”
Then she might respond, “Yes, that’s what I mean.” And she might continue, “But the thing I’m really afraid of is that I won’t know how to act around boys when I do start dating. Everyone else is learning, and I’m not.”
Again, an understanding response would reflect back: “You feel somewhat scared that when the time comes, you won’t know what to do.”
She might say yes and go on further and deeper into her feelings, or she might say, “Well, not exactly. What I really mean is . . .” and she would go on to try to give you a clearer picture of what she’s feeling and facing.
If you look back at the other responses, you’ll see that none of them accomplishes the same results as the understanding response. When you give an understanding response, both of you gain a greater understanding of what she’s really thinking and feeling. You make it safe for her to open up and share. You make it comfortable for her to engage her own inner gifts to help deal with the concern. And you build the relationship, which will prove immensely helpful further down the road.