It is obvious that a single man apparently unarmed, who dares to shout out loud a true word, who supports his word with his whole person and his whole life, and who is ready to pay for it very dearly, surprising though that may seem and although formally he may have no rights, holds a much greater power than the person who, under other conditions, has at his disposal thousands of anonymous electors.
VÁCLAV HAVEL
Czech writer, dramatist, and statesman
In this chapter, we shall be looking at the conditioning factors around conditional love and the way such love generates emotional insecurity and confusion in relation to meaning, as well as to violence.
Most of us have learned very well to do, not to be. I notice the use by recent generations of people in education (parents, teachers, child-care workers, religious orders, et al.) of a feeling followed by “you” without any mention of a need (“I’m happy when you do as I say; I’m sad when you don’t”). This conditional usage has generated terrible emotional insecurity, even damage. What most people with whom I work in counseling settings—and I myself for many years—have actually heard lurking behind “I’m happy when you …” is “I’m sad when you …” or “I’ll love you if …” or “I won’t love you anymore if you …”
I’m not saying that is what the person who was speaking intended to say. I’m saying that this is what was heard, what was taken on board by the listener. The reality of that deciphering is what interests me since it conditions the way we are in relationships, the way we are in the world.
The real message: “I love you when you clean up your room, when you work well at school, when you obey, when you’re good, courteous, kind, etc. I don’t love you when you are nasty, angry, absent-minded, excited, fanciful—when you don’t do as I say and don’t measure up to my expectations …”
We have been drilled to respond and measure up to others’ expectations, to adapt and over-adapt to them. We know exactly what to do to please a person, but we don’t really know how to be, how to simply be ourselves. We have learned to do everything to measure up to the image of good boy, good girl, listening to the good father and the good mother, and later we’ll attempt to do everything we can to measure up to the image of the good husband, the good wife, the good executive, the good employee. As we work at this, we often get wound up in many activities and projects; we will be zealous at work, in the family, and for social causes, without taking care of our inner well-being, since most of us have never learned to become conscious of it. Often we’ll only be able to love ourselves if we do a lot of things, and often loving ourselves is merely a function of the number of things we do. We aren’t living in a consciousness of being in the world, of enjoying our identity, and of our presence to all things—and the connection we have with them. Many of us live in a state of permanent deficit when it comes to good and bad conscience. We aren’t on the ship’s bridge of our life, taking stock of the stars in the cool sea air, getting our heading, trimming the sails, or holding the wheel and enjoying the pleasure of sailing. No, we’re down in the hold of the boat, looking over our accounts, in a state of slight, albeit constant, seasickness. Are we celebrating our consciousness—or constantly “keeping the books” on good conscience and bad?
Are we celebrating our consciousness—or constantly “keeping the books” on good conscience and bad?
Most of us tend to feel more or less responsible—and especially more or less accountable—for others’ feelings. If another person is sad or unhappy, we tend to believe it’s our fault. Such accountability in reality is more like accountancy—being a “bean counter” in relationships. We should have “done something.” We’re prone to guilt. In return, we’re keen to consider others responsible or guilty for our feelings (“I’m sad or unhappy because you …”). In neither case do we know “being.”
In the first place, preoccupied as we are with the belief that we’re responsible for others’ states of mind, we don’t know, for example, how to simply open our ears. Remember (in Chapter 3) the adolescent who wanted his father (or mother) to listen to him, but his father was unable to listen and could only proffer a thousand pieces of advice and ready-made solutions? Listening means trusting in the ability of another to be, which allows them to come up with their own solutions. When you accompany a sick person, a dying person, a grieving person, listening means accepting that there is nothing to “do.” Just being there with compassionate presence is what matters most. Allowing a person to go down into the well of their pain—and explore the tensions around their suffering by providing them with listening and support through our behaviors—is an opportunity for them to observe that they aren’t alone, that they’re accompanied. Often the tension of feeling “the other person is not well; I must do something” is such that we’re incapable of simply being present to another’s pain.
We have a tendency to risk getting caught up in a certain pride at our own performance. We force ourselves to do “the right thing.” We want to be the one who “says the right thing.” By doing so, we risk missing out on the essence of an encounter—the “connection” between me and me, between “me and thee,” and between the other person and themselves.
Caring involves helping another person to live what they have to live. It means not preventing them from doing so. It means not attempting to get them to spare themselves from suffering a bump in their road by minimizing it (“It’s nothing serious … Think no more of it … Come along and have some fun”) or by assuming responsibility for it (“It’s my fault … I shouldn’t have … I’m going to do this or that in their place”). It means helping another person to get inside their difficulty, to penetrate their suffering so they’ll be able to get out of it, aware that this path is their path and that only they can make themselves walk along it.
Caring means focusing our attention on a person’s aptitude to heal from some suffering and to solve some difficulty they’re experiencing, rather than providing a ready-made remedy. It means trusting that the other person often has all of the requisite resources to pull through, if they can succeed in listening to themselves and being listened to in the right place. This presupposes that we have acquired trust and self-esteem. How could we trust in another’s ability to be if we have not gained confidence in ourselves about our own?
If we assume responsibility for another, we run the risk of not being aware that it isn’t them we’re concerned about but rather about ourselves: our self-image as a good St. Bernard, as a savior, and often our need for recognition and good conscience. If there’s a risk, it’s that our attitude may not be appropriate, not adequate, because we’re looking after ourselves even though we believe we’re looking after the other person. This may maintain both of us in a state of frustration, confusion, or dependence.
My thoughts turn to Vivian, a forty-eight-year-old mother who assumes responsibility for all sorts of difficulties encountered by her twenty-year-old daughter Rachel, a university student. Vivian is convinced her daughter is not mature enough to manage her life and that she always has to be “after her” about something, and Rachel is content to let her mother assume these responsibilities.
Vivian organizes Rachel’s student apartment at the university, schedules her weekend activities, even ends Rachel’s problematic relationship with a young man. And the more Vivian strengthens the control measures (evenings out, encounters, tutoring, weekend activities, holiday destinations), the more Rachel demands, and the more Rachel takes liberties, then the more the mother builds up the controls—a vicious circle if ever there was one!
One weekend Rachel went on vacation with a group of friends who had rented a house. When the she came back, Vivian heard from friends who were there that it was her daughter who had organized the whole household, managed the budget, organized the shopping, the meals, the daily schedule, and barred smokers from smoking in the house. In a word, she was managing things very well all on her own (reproducing to a large extent a well-known model).
Vivian and I were working on this situation, and what transpired was that she was so tied up in her image as a “good mother who does everything for my daughter” that she was incapable of trusting Rachel—of even considering the possibility she might be having difficulties, burn her fingers a bit, or be pained in her heart—that Rachel had in her all the resources she needed to manage her life. So as soon as her daughter expressed an unpleasant feeling (“I’m sad, disappointed, anxious …”), Vivian leaped into action to solve the problem without allowing her daughter any opportunity to wallow a bit in her difficulty and to get in there and work at things in order to get out on her own.
Vivian and I worked on:
The need for identity: Can I be myself without exhausting myself by doing everything that has to be done in order to be a good mother, a good spouse? If I’m not a good mother, then who am I?
The need for emotional security: Can I be loved and love myself for who I am and not for what I do?
The need to trust others: May I trust the fact that things will work out OK even if I don’t control everything?
Having had a demanding and controlling mother herself (in relation to whom she had over-adapted as a good daughter), Vivian had not given herself an opportunity to truly be what she wanted to be. Therefore, quite unconsciously, it was difficult for her to admit in turn that her daughter was becoming what she wanted her to be. In fact, the freedoms her daughter wished to take were much too threatening for Vivian; she might have to become aware that she herself had remained a prisoner of her own image as a good daughter and then a good mother, too painful an observation for her to be able to handle without help. Together, we welcomed this newfound awareness and worked both on the grieving of the years of imprisonment and the awakening to a new life.
For this mother to be truly able to meet her daughter such as she was, she first of all had to meet herself. The beauty of this path is that as she became more and more herself, Vivian implicitly allowed her daughter to become more and more herself, rather than reproducing the maternal model to a greater or lesser extent!
In the second place, when we tend to have another person assume responsibility for what we are experiencing, we’re unable to listen to ourselves to understand ourselves, to assume responsibility for ourselves, and to become both autonomous and responsible. We often remain dependent, fearful of the judgments (real or imagined) of others.
Although we have learned to live up to the expectations of others, to apply pressure on ourselves for their sake, correspondingly we almost always expect that others should measure up to our expectations and get into action for us. Thus, we generally don’t learn to love others as they are but as we would like them to be.
In addition, if we bent over backward to measure up to the image of the good daughter to please our father, there’s every chance we’ll expect our spouse to live up to the image of a good husband to please us as we bend over backward to live up to the image of good wife and good mother to please him. If we stop ourselves from being ourselves, there’s a good chance we’ll find ways (subconsciously, of course) to prevent others from being themselves.
It’s only if we succeed in being truly ourselves—our masks off, our labels removed, tension-free—that we’ll succeed in allowing others to be truly themselves—their masks off, their labels removed, tension-free.
True connections take place between beings, not between roles. Connecting means, first of all, being.
Connecting means, first of all, being.
This doesn’t mean that we may not have a taste to evolve, to grow, and more especially to grow together. Growing together—as a couple, as a family, among friends, within a work group—is certainly one of the most profoundly nurturing sources of satisfaction. To love another as they are also means that we are interested in them and welcome whatever they may become. It means loving another with their potential for growth, openness, diversification. I see so many couples or families where each one has locked the others into roles, preventing or at least hampering any process of personal and interpersonal evolution. Anesthesia quickly takes root and, unfortunately, “grows.” What is love without respect? Christian Bobin expresses this wear and tear, this anesthesia, thus:
Life is worn out, it is less lovable in taste, it rubs against the soul, spoils the dream. And we cannot speak about it to anyone. We cannot confide in a person that we would like to leave this life for another and that we do not know what to do. How can one tell one’s family: your love brought me alive, now it is killing me? How can one say to those who love us that they do not love us?19
Thus, if someone begins to change, to evolve, to review their way of being, others become resistant: “You’ve changed; you’re not like you used to be (between the lines: ‘That’s not done; one has to stay what one always was’); you’re not being natural; don’t leave me.”
The movie “Dead Poets Society” is a good illustration of this tragedy. The father has a single-minded goal for his son: to become an engineer. However, during his final year at secondary school, the son discovers in the school drama group that he has a flair for acting. His father (doubtless convinced that it’s impossible to study to become an engineer and act) forbids the lad from rehearsing the end-of-the-year play. The son does so anyway and receives a standing ovation from the entire school and all the families at the end of the play, much to the fury of his father, who is in the theater.
When the play was finished, without saying a word about the talent his son showed, deaf to the applause the audience had just given the youth, the father dragged his son home, lecturing him on his future: “Your mother and I made such efforts to finance good schooling for you, and you will, therefore, become an engineer.” There was no negotiating this stance. The son went up to his bedroom and, with his father’s handgun, committed suicide.
The father was more attached to his (virtual) plan than to the reality of his son, with the best of intentions, believing that he was doing “his strict duty as a good father, tough but just.” The father believed that listening to his son would be like failing to do his duty. The son believed that listening to his father would mean the sacrifice of his talent. The father made demands; the son took flight. Ultimately, there was no connection. They tragically passed by each other, like two ships in the night.
Among couples particularly, I note how people often have plans “for” another person. They hold to a concept or a theory of marriage or the life of a couple, and (like the tragic father-son story just preceding) they are more attached to that than the other person!
If one party (in this case, say, the husband) starts to change, to revise his plans, to alter a theory, then the other’s full attention is not on listening to him, understanding him, loving him as he develops, nor on envisioning changes herself. Quite the contrary! Her full attention focuses on how to preserve her project, how to ensure that her husband fits in with the basic concept, how to maintain her theory unchanged.
Jacqueline is fifty-one years old. She comes along for a consultation on her own, completely disorientated by the departure of her husband after twenty-five years of marriage. From the outset, she told me that marriage is sacred and that there was no question of her divorcing. “When you get married, it is for life,” she said. After a few sessions, seeing that she often came back to this issue and dwelt on it, I tried with her to identify the needs underlying the behavior (once again, the example is much condensed):
“Jacqueline, when you say, ‘In my eyes, marriage is sacred; you do not get divorced; you are married for life (O),’ are you feeling really sad and torn by your present separation (F) because you would like to experience again the gentleness of intimacy with another, the well-being that comes from accepting trust and authenticity, the joy of being together (N)? Is that what saddens you?”
She looked at me, tears in her eyes, and I left a long silence before resuming. “Are you touched by what I said there?” I was thinking she would say to me, “Yes, that is why I’m crying, and that is what I’d love to regain.”
Instead of that, she said to me: “I’m so upset because in twenty-five years of marital life I never experienced the gentleness you just described to me. I’m becoming aware that I’ve lived all this time in a structure, and now I’m wearing myself out to get my husband to come back into the structure rather than trying to understand him.”
Indeed, every time she saw her husband again, they fought. She felt too insecure with the collapse of the structure to have any real availability for understanding what was happening. The more she tried to recover her husband through argument, chastisement, anger, or moralizing, the faster he fled.
One day, I suggested to her—and she accepted—that I be put into the shoes of her husband, who “said” this to her:
“Jacqueline, I’m fed up with our role-playing. I’m at the end of my rope. After twenty-five years behind a mask, I cannot go on (F). I need to live a genuine relationship where I can be myself rather than the ‘good husband who does well everything that’s necessary.’ I have a need for freedom and trust. I’m tired of all the controlling and programming. The problem is that I don’t have the words to say it. I’ve just learned to hide my feelings and be nice, so for a long time I just shut up. Now I want more. I’m leaving, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
And after the role-play:
“How do you feel when you look back at all that?”
“It’s really enlightening. I can see the scene that we’ve both been acting in. I think I truly loved my ‘life plan’ for the two of us more than our life as a couple—and my plan for a husband more than my husband himself. Now I can see my part of the responsibility, whereas I used to consider that he alone was responsible for my misfortune.”
Jacqueline and I worked on her need for identity, self-esteem, and safety:
Can I be myself, even if I’m without my husband?
Can I picture myself existing alone or with others even if our couple is undone?
Can I love myself even though I wonder if he still loves me?
Can I feel safe within myself even if the outside environment has changed?
The more Jacqueline began to trust herself, rather than simply trusting her role, the more she gained self-esteem as a person—and not simply as a good spouse and mother. The more she developed her inner security without being at the mercy of her husband’s attitudes, as well as the attitudes and principles of her family, the fewer quarrels occurred when she saw her husband again—and the more her husband, very gradually, began to talk about himself, to remove the armor plating and get into a more genuine relationship. Naturally, the work is very long, and stripping off the layers is painful. It’s a question of letting go of the old patterns made up of habits, clichés, preconceived principles, and getting beyond one’s fear of change and solitude and walking on tiptoe into novelty and authenticity. There is nothing to say that a caterpillar finds it pleasant to shed its cocoon to become a butterfly.
There is nothing to say that a caterpillar finds it pleasant to shed its cocoon to become a butterfly.
Does not the following question lie like a watermark beneath so many of our relationships, tainting nearly all of them with distrust: “If I don’t do what you say … if I don’t measure up to the image of the ‘good boy’ or ‘good girl’ that you have of me … if I stop being good, kind, courteous … if I differ from your expectations, will you love me?”
When we perceive difference, we tend to be scared. Sometimes excited and intrigued, but usually scared. Faced with another’s difference, what do we do? We avoid it, or we reject it. We tolerate another person insofar as there is “sameness” and “they love me.” To achieve this, we tend to gravitate toward people who think like us, speak like us, dress like us, have the same beliefs as us, pray like us, do the same things as us … It is so reassuring!
We often experience another’s difference as a risk, a threat. “If the other person is different, I run the risk of having to change, adapt, become what they expect of me and stop being what I believe I am.” This inner insecurity can be so strong that it gets externalized in the form of racism, fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, or xenophobia. However, more commonly, it is manifested through judgments, criticisms, rebukes, suspicion. Difference does not awaken compassionate curiosity but rather doubt and mistrust: “Those people are not like us!”
If we have learned to be pleasers, we are never totally sure of doing “the right thing” for another person, either at the right time or to the right degree. We run the risk of living mainly in a state of fear of disapproval, criticism, or indifference. We distrust the other’s reactions and have misgivings about our own qualities or skills. Thus, mistrust and doubt often appear as a double-edged principle of life, even a recognized modus operandi.
The other individual, to a greater or lesser degree, is perceived as a judge whose approval or disapproval controls our well-being. We ourselves, therefore, live in fear of not “having done enough” to deserve(!) other people’s consideration or to purchase their clemency. We tend to live in commercial relationships (buying recognition, selling authenticity), rather than truly human ones. Marshall Rosenberg develops this notion in Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by saying, “Used to a culture where purchasing, winning, and deserving are conventional modes of exchange, we are often ill at ease when it comes to simply giving and receiving.”20
As I stated at the beginning of Chapter 3, when presenting the expression and reception diagram of human communication, most of the time we hang around in an area of mistrust. We’re fearful of taking our place, of truly existing, of asserting our identity, because we aren’t sure of being loved and welcomed as we are. Therefore, we’re afraid the other person will take their place, truly exist, assert their identity because we aren’t so sure of being able to continue existing alongside this person! A 1969 book by John Powell, S.J., was titled Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? Inside, the answer to that question was: “If I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am, and it is all that I have.” The other person, even someone as close as a spouse, is to a certain extent perceived as a potential wet blanket. I wouldn’t go so far as to say an enemy, though I have often heard this comparison—someone who obstructs us from being who we are.
I’m used to hearing the following outburst: “And you believe that it’s possible for me to be myself while I have a spouse, children, a boss, parents! All of that prevents me from being myself!”
Well, actually, no. “All of that” does not prevent us from being ourselves. What prevents us is the way we see “all of that,” the way we live these relationships. What prevents us from being ourselves is that our needs for inner security and trust have not yet received sufficient attention to develop and allow us to experience “all of that” with greater ease. I don’t think we can eradicate fear totally because it’s simply part of our lives, along with trust, pain, and joy. What is liberating is to no longer fear being afraid.
This phrase came to me one day during a training course. At the end of a role-play, a participant had just become aware that her violence often resulted from the frustration she felt at having concealed her true feelings and needs in order to be nice. After years of being nice, she wound up exploding.
A moment after I said, somewhat in jest, “Let’s be genuine, not just nice,” a woman participant reacted instantly and said, “What you are saying clarifies what I often experience with my husband. I love going to the theater and the opera. I meet my girlfriends there, and I let myself get completely into the show and into the emotions of it. I always have a little cry, and I love chatting at intermission. But my husband hates that sort of thing. He gets impatient, makes loud comments about the actors’ performances, is about as emotional as a dead tree, and twists and turns in his seat all the time, sighing as he does so. So I lose my cool. That spoils my evening, and we have an argument at intermission and another one in the car. The only thing is, every time I book a seat for a show, he’s afraid I’ll miss the last bus or I won’t find a taxi. And so, to be nice, he accompanies me. And as for me, to be nice—since he is trying to be so nice—I accept! And both of us have a ghastly evening. It would be much better for me to be genuine next time and say to him, ‘I’m very touched (F) that you are so concerned for my safe return. I love knowing that my safety and comfort are important to you (N). At the same time, it doesn’t seem like (F) it’s really very much fun for you to go to these events (N). As I need both of us to have a nice evening (N) and particularly to be able to enjoy the show without worrying about your well-being (N), I suggest you do something you really like and I manage to get back on my own or with my friends (R). How do you feel (F) when I say that?’”
Here was a participant who was only too happy to get herself out of the miserable trap she had gotten herself into and finally remove her mask! (Also see the next section for a definition of the kind of “niceness” I’m talking about.)
If we wear a mask and the other person wears a mask, that isn’t called a relationship, it’s called a masquerade ball! And that is OK? If it’s fun, and if both parties derive pleasure from the masks and the games, we can rejoice. Unfortunately, experience has shown that a regular diet of such balls (literal and figurative) eventually becomes sad and distressing. They don’t unite, they isolate; they don’t get us dreaming, they prevent us from sleeping; they don’t conclude with a fireworks show, they shrink away!
As for niceness, let’s come to some agreement on the term. What I’m referring to here is niceness/complacency, a niceness of attitude not borne up by any real heartfelt enthusiasm, which I would term: a profound wish to give and to contribute with joy to another’s well-being. On the contrary, the niceness I’m describing is motivated out of fear of losing, the fear of rejection, the fear of criticism, the fear of asserting their identity. That sort of niceness is often a lifeless mask that stifles the sound of truth and siphons off vitality.
“Politeness is organized indifference.”—Paul Valéry
Behind this vacant mask of complacent niceness, we may as well get used to living anemic, bleached relationships that we could easily mistake for genuine, living, breathing human interaction and intimacy. Thus, if we never have drunk anything but water, we might spend our whole lives without ever imagining that it might be worth it to taste wine.
In my capacity as a lawyer and then a business consultant, for more than fifteen years I was well-acquainted with office courtesies practiced among business people and colleagues—smiles, warmth shown by tone or expression, perhaps even humor—masking deep indifference and a mere concern to settle a matter or just to get along without too much obvious rancor. Some people can be so nice with everyone that they have no idea who they are! Marshall Rosenberg, as I’ve already said, refers to these folks as “nice dead people.” No identity, no presence, no life.
Indeed, it often is easier, in the short term, to be nice rather than genuine. After all, being genuine carries some risks. When as children we pocketed our anger or sadness in order to be able to join the family circle, unconsciously we felt it simpler (perhaps even smarter) to be nice than to truly live what was alive in us. We thereby learned unfaithfulness to ourselves. In the long run, the price for that is high! Finding oneself takes time and energy. Ah, if only we were able not to lose ourselves. Fortunately, though we may have gotten into the habit, we also can lose the habit. If we (and others) programmed ourselves this way, we can deprogram ourselves (sometimes with the help of others, such as counselors or consultants) and reclaim our true nature, our true self behind the character. Quoting French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry above, I certainly have no intention to criticize the courtesy that stems from a true movement of the heart. Good manners, courtesy, and etiquette constitute some of the pleasures of life. I’m referring to a false or phony niceness. I think we know the difference.
When I’m giving conferences or doing workshops, I often hear this reaction, “Yes, but it’s not natural to speak like that, using feelings and needs.” What I think, in fact, is that it isn’t habitual to talk about feelings and needs, whereas in the final analysis it is natural to us.
A child will say: “I’m mad (F) because I want to go and play with my friends (N). I’m sad (F) because I want to stay here with you (N).” That’s natural. But then, over time the child (and young adult) will be taught a series of social graces—and these learned behaviors will cause them to do things or not do them “because you have to … because it’s time … because that’s the way it is … because that’s the rule.”
If niceness in the meaning I intend here is not necessarily good, it’s worth noting that true goodness is not necessarily nice. I personally have a decided preference for clear, straightforward truth rather than the uncertain masquerades of niceness. Just imagine the lies told to stay nice in couples, in families, in business relationships! Most of us have at one time or another invented fake stories—led someone “up the garden path”—in order to get out of a mess supposedly unscathed. And sometimes the lie is told to avoid hurting someone.
It’s as if truth were adjustable, as if one could parody it to suit oneself or to suit another without any consequences.
When looking at our overall responsibility as an inhabitant of the earth, I fear that such an attitude is just as irresponsible, dangerous, and polluting in the long term as the attitude of those who claim to share the ideals of protecting nature, yet don’t hesitate to throw their cigarette butt or their beer can out the car window without thinking twice about it.
My confidence in human nature doesn’t go so far as to claim that all truth is good to speak at all times to all people. Far from it! Doubtless there are circumstances when saying nothing will meet a need for patience, taking one’s time, a need to wait for the right moment, a need to think things over, a need for compassion or verification, and so on.
I am saying that if I choose to say something rather than to say nothing, I need to contribute to respecting truth and therefore not to distort it through complacency or “niceness.” In fact, I ask myself the following question: Today, do I wish to add to the confusion in the world? Canadian and French astrophysicist Hubert Reeves says pollution in the world is not one major problem, it is seven billion small problems. It seems to me that confusion in the world—its chaos and disorder—is not one major problem, it is seven billion small problems. We each can choose. We each have the power in our daily lives to contribute or not to clarity, transparency, peace. Amazing, isn’t it?
Finally, we can become conscious of the fact that being in touch with nice people—that is, people who don’t really say what they’re thinking for fear of hurting or being judged or of showing their vulnerability, their fragility, and/or their strength—makes us rather insecure. To feel at ease in a relationship, we need to be at least relatively sure that if another says yes, it is yes. If they say no, it is no. No games. If we have to continually imagine what another’s true reasons may be, because we don’t trust them to be honest, it’s exhausting and keeps us worried about things backfiring. For example, we’re all acquainted with the classic example of the person who helps you and declares that it was a pleasure to do so, whereas in fact it bothered them and afterward they complain to others about everything they have done for you and the lack of recognition for it or the fact that you don’t help them in return. How fatiguing such situations are!
When Valérie and I got married, we made each other this promise (doubtless an unusual variation on the traditional sweeping declarations of newlyweds, but of fundamental importance to the safety and comfort of our life as a couple): “I promise never to be nice to you but always to be genuine.” Thus, whenever we have doubts about the other person’s motives, and we worry they may do something unwillingly “to be nice,” we remove each other’s masks: “Are you being nice, or are you being genuine?!” And with a joke, this gives us an opportunity to agree on things to do, as well as on the reasons we have for doing them, so that neither of us does things out of duty or “because it has to be done … because there’s no one else to do it,” but instead out of the joy of giving and contributing to the well-being of our shared life.
What I’m talking about here appears to me to be a principle of emotional ecology as well known as it is unpracticed: We can do without truth and authenticity if we’re willing to live sustainable and unsatisfactory relationships or satisfactory and unsustainable relationships; but I don’t believe we can establish sustainable and satisfactory relationships without taking care of these two values/needs: truth and authenticity. Naturally it isn’t easy, because in the short term it’s certainly a challenge to be genuine. It requires vigilance and practice to acquire the strength to express oneself and the flexibility to be receptive to another.
In the course of my work, I have noticed a recurring reason to explain the widespread difficulty of saying no: We have not been invited to do so. We haven’t been invited to be different and to experience difference easily. As I stated above, it’s more that we have been invited to “do likewise,” “reproduce the same thing,” agree with Mommy, Daddy, the teacher, customs, religious practice, the social or professional circle. “When one is polite, one says yes. A good little girl, a good little boy says yes; it’s not nice to say no.”
Therefore, since, on the one hand, difference (of opinion, of character, of behavior, of priority, of sensitivity …) is experienced as a threat, and, on the other hand, obedience has for a very long time been promoted as a moral value, it’s often very hard for us not only to say no, but even simply to state that we don’t agree.
Contrary to an idea that has been so all-pervasive in the world of education for generations, obedience has seldom led to responsible human beings. The more likely result has been automatons. Once again, obedience is the expression both of mistrust and misgivings as to the ability of another to assume responsibilities and the inability to join the other person and to understand them. As we fail to get our need recognized and fail to get the other person to respect it, we make of it a demand and impose it on the other person without any discussion. We simply expect the other to obey!
Consequently, we often say yes in order to be nice, whereas we actually think no. Most of the time, we do this to avoid a quarrel: “If I get into a fight, will I still be loved? Will I remain lovable if I show disagreement?” Or, on the contrary, we regularly say no out of rebelliousness, out of a fear of losing ourselves, because this is the only way we have come up with to take care of our needs for identity, safety, and recognition: “I object, therefore I exist.” It works for two-year-olds, and it works sometimes for adults too!
Learning to say no is a stage in the process that I am very fond of because it invites us to work essentially on four values that are close to my heart:
Respect for the feelings and needs of another as for my own.
Autonomy to take the time to check out what I’m feeling and what I’m needing.
Responsibility for listening to the various components at play and for attempting to take care of all the needs present—not only the needs of the other person at the expense of my own and not only my own at the expense of the other person’s.
Strength in expressing my disagreement and proposing a solution or a behavior that is perhaps completely different from what was asked of me.
We now know that underlying any request is a need. We also know that we very often confuse the two. So let’s focus attention on the other person’s need, which lies upstream of their request, in order to clarify what is truly involved. Here is a simple and easy example:
My old friend Annie has left three messages inviting me to a barbecue, and I haven’t yet responded. I like Annie. I would be glad to see her again. At the same time, however, I don’t want to go to the barbecue. I really have a need for rest and time to myself. Formerly, in order not to disappoint her (and to be nice), I would doubtless have said, “Yes, of course” and gone along leaden-hearted, abandoning half of myself at home and running the risk of moaning and groaning that the guests are boring, the kebab is overcooked, the rose wine lukewarm, etc. It’s worth recalling that when we act counter to our needs, someone pays the bill—ourselves or others. Or perhaps I would have invented a story to wriggle out: “I’m not free; I have to work.” I would have lied in order to be nice!
The fourth time Annie calls, I’m at home and pick up the telephone. She begins:
“Well? You’re a fine friend! You don’t even answer my messages anymore?”
“Are you disappointed (F) because you would have liked me to respond sooner (N)?”
“Well, of course! But his lordship is never there, and his lordship just drops his old buddies.”
“Are you angry (F), Annie? Do you want to make sure I haven’t forgotten you (N)?”
“Of course! If I don’t invite you from time to time, we’d never see each other at all!”
“And you’d like to sense that I’m contributing to our friendship, that I give it some space (N)?”
“Yes, that’s right! That’s why I’m hoping you’ll be coming to my barbecue. Are you free that evening?”
“Yes, indeed, I am free that evening, Annie, and I’m hesitant (F). I’m touched by your persistence (F), and I truly want to invest time in seeing each other again (N). At the same time I feel exhausted this week and overwhelmed with encounters and connections (F). I truly need to stay alone and get back in touch with myself this weekend. This is my first free weekend after several weekends of training (N).”
“So I see you’re just dropping me!”
“Wait until I get to the end. If I come to your barbecue, we’re not going to connect as I would like. You know how things are: Everybody makes small talk with everybody and nobody. So I would really love to spend some time just with you and catch up on your life (N). How would it be if just the two of us were to see each other at lunchtime next week? We could go and have a salad together and chat (N).”
“You’d have time to do that? You’re always so busy. I never would’ve imagined you could find the time for lunch with me. That’s why I invited you to my barbecue. Of course that suits me. I also prefer to have time just to chat, the two of us.”
I said that it was an easy example. In this case, coming up with the true need (looking after our friendship) underlying the request (the invitation to the barbecue), observing that we share the same need at the same time and that we can nurture it in another way (the more intimate lunch) was both simple and pleasant.
Things can be much more difficult and much less pleasant when we notice that we don’t at all have the same need, that we don’t share the same feelings in this respect, and that we’re planning to use our time and energy in a completely different way from what is being suggested by the other person.
By practice in easy situations we develop our muscle power to be able to say no in more difficult instances. Succeeding in saying no, in setting boundaries while respecting others, is all the easier as we acquire both strength and flexibility in the way we live our needs for self-confidence, inner security, recognition, identity. By working on our own self-knowledge, we get better and better at knowing what we are saying yes to.
“Integrity needs no rules.”—Author Unknown
This results in more ease in saying no in a constructive and creative (and non-hurtful) way—or hearing someone else’s no without taking it personally. Rather than saying merely no in opposition, we shall focus our attention and our energy on what we are saying yes to. Here are a few examples where the expression of the need shows what we are saying yes to:
“No, I don’t want you to listen to music now.” We might say: “Yes, I need quiet, and I would like you to listen to your music later or elsewhere.”
“No, you are not going out to a nightclub at your age.” We might say: “Yes, I need to trust that you will be able to feel at ease and safe no matter who you’re with, and I would like to build up this trust little by little with you by suggesting that first of all you go out to the homes of people I know. Then we can talk about it and see how it went for you.”
“No, you will not take the car anymore.” We might say: “Yes, I need to be reassured about your awareness of the risks, and I would like you to think about it for several days. Then we’ll talk about it before planning to let you back behind the wheel.”
By developing our awareness of what we’re saying yes to, we also develop our awareness of what others are saying yes to when they say no. This opening of the heart is invaluable to avoid the unfortunate habit of taking any refusal from another personally. Because it’s hard for us to say no, out of the fear of rejection (or not being seen as nice), we may, on account of that very fear of rejection, have difficulty in hearing a no: “I was told no; therefore, I’m not loved.”
This same inner security enables us to hear a no without misgivings, without losing trust. This security therefore makes us available to listen to the feelings and needs of another behind their behavior and look for whatever they are saying yes to. The example of the little girl who did her hair in the bathroom at the moment the car was leaving for school, expresses a no: “No, I’m not going to come down with everyone else, and no, I’m not going to get into the car on my own.” We saw that if the mother felt secure enough to listen to what lay behind her daughter’s no, she could finally hear “Yes, I need a special sign of tenderness that reassures me that I’m truly loved as your last little child.” The solution that emerges is more constructive and satisfying than having a fight every morning!
Behind the fear of conflict almost always lies a need for emotional security. As I’ve already recalled, the background question is: “Can I still be loved if I’m involved in a conflict? Am I still lovable if I say I don’t agree?” I note that for people who complain of having this fear (and there are many of them) conflict has seldom been experienced as something enriching, a satisfying opportunity to get to know oneself and to strengthen mutual esteem. The result has rather been an impression of failure, mismanaged and undigested tension, and feelings of bitterness and confusion. The game “Who is right, who is wrong?” was decided by “Whose fault is it?”—and none of that has ever proved satisfactory in practice.
In systemics, the science of systems, we learn that any system tends first of all to perpetuate itself, to maintain its existence. This is the law of homeostasis. In such systems as the family, the couple, or a range of other relationships, difference and divergence produce fear because they represent a risk of compromising the system by destabilizing it. Faced with such fear, the trend is often to endeavor to reestablish unanimity as a matter of urgency, either through control or through submission. Thus, to regain equilibrium in our family, marital, or other relationships, that is, the homeostasis or stability of our system, we often impose solutions compelling everyone to agree, or we submit without a word of discussion. What you get is fight or flight, and there is no real encounter.
Yet conflict is frequently an opportunity for evolution. It makes it possible to work on our inner security, our autonomy, and our ability to listen and be empathic. Conflict is an invitation to connect more with ourselves and with others, to develop both interior strength and interior flexibility. It’s an opportunity for us to grow together, and it’s an invitation to creativity. I believe that in the fear of conflict lies a desperate quest for another’s approval. If we don’t give ourselves measured, just appreciation, we run the risk of spending much of our life desperately seeking disproportionate appreciation from others.
I see two reasons that anger is difficult to experience, whether it’s a question of expressing it or hearing it.
The first reason is of the same nature as the one that made us hesitate to say no: the fear of rejection. We have often enough heard “You aren’t fun to be around when you’re angry” and have understood that anger is neither socially accepted nor welcome. Thus, our own anger is experienced as a threat (“Will I still be loved if I show my anger?”), and the anger in the other person is threatening (“Will I still be lovable if someone gets angry with me?”).
The second reason, which urges us to stifle our anger and to prevent anger in the other person, is that every day we witness the tragic consequences of outbursts of anger when human beings let rip insults, blows, crimes … The world over, anger explodes in tragic ways. Because the consequences are often destructive, we tend to believe that anger itself is destructive. In fact, frequently there’s confusion between the feeling of anger and what each of us does with this feeling.
Although the consequences of anger can be tragic, anger in and of itself is a healthy feeling since it’s the expression of inner vitality. If our feelings are gauges on our psychic dashboard, anger is the red blinking emergency light: It shows that vital needs are not being met and that it’s increasingly urgent to pay attention. Indeed, everything else may need to be put on hold because there’s no longer a reliable driver behind the wheel. Saying or thinking “I’m beside myself,” which can stem from anger, indicates that the first thing to be done is to come back to myself. Thus, anger invites us to have ourselves “hospitalized” in the intensive care unit for our own listening and our own empathy. It’s necessary to get to the bottom of our anger, not bury it.
When you see in the newspaper that a killer running amok got out a riot gun and fired into a crowd or killed his wife and children before committing suicide, the neighbors often declare that this man was so nice, that he never said a thing, that he was such a quiet person, and so on. It isn’t hard to imagine repressed outbursts of anger suddenly exploding because the person wasn’t able to express them one by one.
In fact, if each time we have been enraged since childhood, we buried it, we masked it, and then carefully covered it over for thirty, forty years, it’s a bit as if we had buried land mines one after the other, one beside the other. On the outside, a beautiful, well-kept piece of property … on the inside, a minefield! We’re sitting on a minefield. It will explode! Often, for everything to blow up it takes only running into a minor annoyance, a normally harmless additional frustration in oneself, like a hailstone falling on the detonator of the last ill-buried mine! Forty years of repressed rage blow up in our face—the straw that breaks the camel’s back!
Why will one straw do so much damage unless it’s because we haven’t been aware of the growing load? Why do we explode in anger, often with disproportionate consequences? Is it because we haven’t taken care to regularly defuse our rage?
It isn’t another who is responsible for having broken my camel’s back. I’m responsible for not having taken care to keep a watchful eye on the camel’s load. If I were to get my anger out regularly, would that not presuppose that I am being genuine rather than nice?
How then can we truly express our anger without aggressing others? How can we be genuine without being aggressive?
Conventional wisdom regarding anger holds that the other person is largely responsible: “I’m angry because you …” In such a state of mind, we tend either to repress our anger so as not to explode, or to blow up right in front of the other person, who then becomes our scapegoat for the tension generated by the anger. Often the other person gets a good dressing-down completely disproportionate to the circumstances because several nearby mines also exploded at the same time due to the reverberations from the first one.
Expressing anger in this way—by pouring it out over another person—brings up anger in return, and the game of Ping-Pong starts, generally leading to a spiral of violence. Or, it triggers flight in which the other person leaves or shuts themselves off in silence, sulking, solitary revolt, or cold war.
Most of us have often experienced that this conventional way of expressing our anger isn’t satisfactory. The only satisfaction we can draw from it is to have exploded, to have released the overload of tension that the anger has given rise to, to have “let it out” and expressed it to the other person. It’s “funny,” isn’t it? Does one have to be angry, have the alibi of anger, in order to be genuine? Why is it so difficult to exchange our truths gently, compassionately? Are we so disabled when it comes to expressing ourselves that we must have the energy of anger in order to say what is bubbling away in us?
When we address anger in Nonviolent Communication, we’re working on our own sense of responsibility on the one hand, and we’re ensuring that the other person is listening to us on the other. To do so, we connect with ourselves and stop being “beside ourselves”!
The first step, therefore, is to keep our mouths closed, to shut up rather than blow up, not in order to repress our anger, to push it down, or to sublimate it, but precisely to give it its full and authentic voice. We know that if we explode in another’s face, instead of having someone in front of us who’s listening to us and attempting to understand our frustration, we’ll get a rebel plotting a rebellion, a victim preparing an assault, or an escape artist who has already flown the coop! Yet, what is our need if we are angry? In short, that the other person hear us, understand the extent of our frustration and our unmet needs. To be sure, in order for us to be listened to well, we know we first of all have to listen well to ourselves.
The second stage in dealing with our anger takes place within: receiving the full impact of our anger, accepting the intensity of it in Technicolor and without compromise. I observe that for many of us (and I’ve experienced this myself) there is such a stigma around anger that it’s even difficult to imagine our being angry. We’ll say we’re sad, disappointed, or preoccupied—socially and “politically” correct feelings—rather than allow ourselves to have real awareness of the anger in us.
This second stage is therefore fundamental to me: recognizing that we are angry, even enraged, and mentally noting all the visions and fantasies that come to our minds, recognizing the violent images that surge up: throwing the other person through a window, cutting them up into small pieces, running them over with our car, getting out our old gun … You get the idea!
The inner acknowledgment of images of violence has the effect of the pile of plates that people sometimes hurl to the floor—or the chair they smash to smithereens against the wall.
This inner acknowledgment of these images of violence has the effect of the pile of plates that people sometimes hurl to the floor—or the chair they smash to smithereens against the wall. Such overt actions provide relief and a safety valve for the excess energy that anger brings about that prevents us from listening to ourselves. Only after regaining some calmness, after the emotional catharsis these visions and projections evoked, will we be able to attempt the descent into our well. This stage is also difficult because it jeopardizes the good-boy or good-girl images we like to have of ourselves: “Me? Such a nice and polite boy, such a well-mannered girl, just imagine me wanting to smash someone’s head against the wall? What nonsense! Violence like that is for other people, not for me!” However, if we want to be free from our anger and its violence, we need to look both of them straight in the eye.
The third stage consists of identifying the unmet need(s). With some of the pressure released during the previous stage, we’re more open to listening to what is happening in us rather than blaming the other person. We’ll be able to name the first needs that come to mind.
The fourth stage consists of identifying the new feelings that may then surface. Indeed, if (as has been stated just now) anger is sometimes masked under more socially/politically correct feelings, we see that it also can mask other feelings in relation to which it operates much like a lid. These feelings are often fatigue with a repeated situation, along with sadness and fear. These more precise feelings will, in their turn, inform us about our needs. Then we can take stock of whatever the anger reveals. Fatigue may transpose our need for change and evolution; sadness, our need for understanding, listening, support; and fear, our need for emotional or physical security.
Finally we’re ready for the fifth stage: opening our mouths, speaking our anger to the other person. Now, because we’ve done some inner work, we have a much greater chance of being heard by them. In reality, sometimes it’s pretty hard to get into the inner listening quickly while you’re still with the other person. It might be wise to say: “I’m too angry to listen and speak to you now in any satisfactory way. I first of all need to get in touch with my anger and understand it better. I’ll talk to you later. Can you give me thirty minutes?” If the pressure has become too great and you actually blow up in the other’s face, there’s nothing to prevent you from “taking a timeout” and working on your anger in a heart-to-heart discussion with yourself. Then later you meet with the other person, saying how much you regret having expressed your rage in such terms and in such a tone (F), that you would like to find another more amicable way of communicating to them what you don’t and do want (N), and that you would like to know if they’re ready/able to listen to you (R).
Don’t allow anger to fester and ferment for days and turn sour, either in you or between you and the other person. Take the time to clean it out; otherwise sooner or later it may poison the whole relationship. Remember: If we want our relationships to be sustainable and satisfactory, we need to maintain them. Many human beings are inhabited by an anger they don’t wish to have. Often, with most of their energy being unconsciously deployed to contain the anger, they aren’t really available for intimacy and tenderness—or sustainable and satisfactory relations, inner peace, creativity. The drive of the life force is hampered, perhaps almost snuffed out. Only through working on oneself will it be possible to move ahead.
Moreover, when it’s a question of listening to another’s anger, we’re often caught up in the following reflexes: aggression or flight. Seldom do we have enough patience and inner security to be able to listen to another’s anger and be empathic with them, because we tend to think that their anger is directed against us: “He is angry right now, and therefore he doesn’t love me; therefore I’m not lovable.” And to spare ourselves this risk, our strong impulse is either to aggress or to flee. Reactions like that, however, prove unsatisfactory. At best, exploding in our turn would have provided relief from the tension within us; at worst, we’ll both be caught in the infernal spiral. As to flight, it’s superfluous to say that although we gain the impression of having extricated ourselves, flight is also unsatisfactory in the long term—and maybe in the short term as well. It merely postpones the inevitable: dealing, somehow, with the situation.
We now know that unpleasant feelings signal the presence of unmet needs. Anger in principle is an unpleasant feeling to experience. So if we observe another’s anger, we’ll be able to focus our attention not on their behaviors, words, tone of voice, and gestures, but on their unmet needs. We’ll then endeavor to name them: “Are you angry because you would have liked more respect, consideration, listening, support, trust?” It’s certainly possible that we won’t accurately guess the need of the other person. In principle, however, they will note that instead of arguing to justify ourselves, fighting back, or fleeing, we stayed there and listened. Such an attitude/approach is by no means “normal” for us, but it can, with practice, become habitual. It therefore comes as a surprise to the other.
Quite regularly, from the outset of such an exchange, the tone calms down. The other person replies: “Yes, that’s right. I would have liked you to …” or “No, that’s not what it was, I wanted you to …” Gradually, we can enter the dance of connection. It’s worth emphasizing again that recognizing another’s need does not mean we accept it or wish to meet it. But at least we can seek together to connect.
More joy is derived from attempting to resolve our conflicts than from “succeeding” in escalating them.
I’m not saying it’s easy; I am saying it’s possible. And I’m not saying it will always work; I am saying it’s worth a try! Why? Because more joy is derived from attempting to resolve our conflicts than from “succeeding” in escalating them—and because we have more joy in true connection, observing our reciprocal responsibilities, than desperately defending ourselves from being wrong (or fighting just as desperately to prove we are right). Do you realize that there are people who would rather be right whatever the price, even if it means breaking up relationships with their close family, rather than simply accepting that there are at least two sides to every story?!
I would so love it if everyone in power could call forth their strength, compassion, and insight when they speak their anger and listen to the anger of others, so that one day there would be no more mine fields for anyone to walk through. Or wars for nations to fight with one another.