How to win the battle between emotions and thoughts.
I felt rejected.
That was a big word for me to say out loud. In fact, I don’t know if I had ever said that to someone else. That feeling was so deep and powerful that I couldn’t seem to credit the years that I had never felt rejected by my partner, nor could I consider any other perspective to the situation in question.
When my attempt to express my feeling was met with an intellectual argument as to how I misunderstood the situation and therefore shouldn’t feel rejected, I further withdrew. My attempt to share a sensitive, tender emotion was not embraced, it was ironically, rejected.
Feelings of rejection consumed my body and tainted all interactions that followed. All of a sudden, small things were just another indication that he was rejecting me. He slept with his back to me, rejection. He didn’t get up for coffee with me, rejection.
By 9am the next morning I was ready to pack my bags.
I was briefly tempted to use some old relationship skills such as leaving to let him come to me, then making him feel lousy for being so insensitive. I could feel self-righteous and victimized and he might “learn a lesson”. Or break up and tell myself that I’m better off. I would need to be prepared to convince myself that this one incident was clearly worth ending a great, two-and-a-half-year, relationship.
The problem was, I had made a commitment to myself to pursue healthy relationships and direct communication. I believe in the power of vulnerability, and I won’t get better at these skills by fleeing the opportunities that require them.
So, I buckled up, took a deep breath, exhaled fully, prayed for strength and wise words, and decided to try the conversation again.
“I can’t seem to talk about the events of the situation until my feelings are acknowledged. I felt rejected by you and that is very painful for me. It takes a lot of courage to tell you this.”
(Note, I did not say he rejected me. I did not blame him or make any judgment on his actions at all. I said I felt rejected. HUGE difference friends. This is critical to resolving conflict. Check out my article called Emotional Games for more info.)
What happened next diffused the bomb.
He empathized – he connected with my feeling of rejection. He didn’t just state the emotion back to me, that would be parroting, not empathy. Empathy is feeling, connecting or recalling the feeling described by another person.
His empathy was validating.
I wonder if it is a desire for empathy that causes a hurt person to hurt someone? I’ve been there before. I hurt so I’ve wanted to inflict some of that pain back on the other person; making him feel my feeling, a sort of forced empathy. But that is childish and I don’t want to behave like that.
Rather, how powerful it was to have someone connect with such a big, dominating emotion simply because they are trying to relate to me. When he did this, the destructive power of that emotion was diffused, seemingly dispersed to another. Not dumped or forced, but willingly picked up and held for a moment by someone else…Someone I love.
Once the emotion was diffused I was then able to set it aside and shift into a conversation about our thoughts, recalling the event and sharing our differing perspectives of it. What made this part of the exchange so interesting was when he vulnerably shared what he had been feeling and thinking during that event and it was radically different from mine. I could finally see a different story entirely.
How interesting it is to me that this could happen. Two people who experienced the exact same situation had remarkably different feelings and thoughts about it. No one was wrong. There was no need to find someone at fault. Right or wrong was not significant; empathy, validating and vulnerability was.
In fact, had the argument only existed to replay the details of the event in search of someone’s error or to prove our own positions, I believe we would have missed a great treasure. Instead of being motivated by who was right or wrong, and how can I prove that, we instead decided to just share the feelings and thoughts that we had experienced during the event.
I learned two things that morning:
First, emotions are best met with emotions; thoughts are best met with thoughts. When we try to meet emotions with intellect, we miss the mark, and it can be frustrating and delay a solution.
Secondly, empathy and vulnerability are powerful and are acts of intimacy. If you are courageous enough, the next time you are in a battle between what you know and what someone feels, set aside your thoughts for a moment and recall a time when you too felt similar.
This is empathy. Start here.