How many times have you felt upset with someone, and instead of letting them know that you’re hurt, angry, sad or disappointed, you shoved your feelings down, moped around, perhaps channeled your mother’s famous silent treatment/martyr act, or in some other passive-aggressive way, made them pay?
And how enjoyable was (is) that relationship?
Correct. It’s misery for both of you. Unless your partner is an expert at ignoring bad behavior or is an ascended Zen Master. And in these cases, the gnawing resentment is yours to suffer alone. That’s no fun.
I want to offer you some basic facts and tools to help you navigate your relationships in more mature and rewarding ways. But first I want to help you understand that you’re not a bad person for trying to get your needs met in childish, indirect ways. It’s simply a function of old conditioning. When we have not had proper role models for healthy communication and/or when expressing our needs did not go well throughout our development- that impacts us. It teaches us to employ the same dysfunctional dynamics that we saw in our caregivers and sends the implicit message that expressing need is __________________ (shut down by others, shamed, ignored, dangerous, etc...)
When we were little, we required adequate mirroring and reflection of our feelings in order to develop a strong and secure sense of selfhood and boundaries. Without this, boundaries just don’t come on line. And part of what is happening for us now when we don’t just say what we need is that we are challenged by one of two basic boundary issues.
Rigid boundaries are like walls without doors: we simply shut everyone out. We don’t share thoughts or feelings with others because we assume (from actual childhood experience) that others won’t help, and it’s just easier to keep everything to ourselves.
The other possibility is that our overly-open, “diffuse”, boundaries prevent us from knowing that we are distinct individuals with a right to our own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc. This is called “differentiation”. When we are not differentiated, we are missing a sense of our own distinct individual selfhood. We feel merged with others and believe they are responsible for our feelings and/or we are responsible for theirs. Consequently, we entertain distorted thoughts like, “If they love me, they should just know what I need.”
No. They really don’t. There is no way they could. If I can avail you of just one false belief right now- this is it:
If you don’t tell people how you feel and what you need, they will not know.
In fact, I need to share a statement I heard years ago which changed my understanding of the world. Here it is:
“You will never really know what anyone else is thinking.”
Holy shit, right? I consider myself to be a sensitive, introspective, intuitive person- so hearing this was jarring. I was always fairly certain I could imagine what others were thinking. (This is a side-effect of trauma, actually. When our childhood homes are unsafe, it’s adaptive to become highly attuned to others and to the environment. This keeps the species alive.)
To suddenly realize that I didn’t really know what other people were thinking at all was a blow to my notion that I was “kind of a big deal” with in my mind-reading abilities. ;) To make matters worse, I realized that even if I asked someone a direct question- I might not get an honest answer. WHAAT? This was hard to accept. My history created a mind that is literal, logical, straight-forward- definitely not interested in the added burden and stress that obscuring reality generates. So I’ve always just spoken my mind. Except, of course, when it mattered the most, like in long-term love relationships. In those, I too went the child consciousness route- not stating needs from a calm, resourced adult place, and instead stonewalling, criticizing, or just leaving a person in one final blinding flash… Until I realized this was not actually getting me what I wanted.
So here we have it. Relationships are tough. We are all difficult. Other people are total mysteries. The only recourse we have if we want to understand and be understood by anyone else is to practice these skills:
1. Be willing to share what’s really on your heart and mind.
2. Be the kind of person with whom others feel safe and comfortable sharing their hearts and minds.
This brings me to our next challenge:
What if the people we are communicating with are not the kind of people who make that process safe and comfortable?
Here again, you have choices. Adults always have choices.
Two options:
1. Express your feelings to them anyway (respectfully and without attacking or blaming) and let go of the mistaken notion that they have to respond in a particular way. Their job is not to change to please you. Their work is not to receive your every thought and feeling with total love and equanimity so that you can be happy. Of course that would be fantastic, wouldn’t it? (If you have people like that in your life, know you are very lucky and do what you can to keep them.) But the truth is, most people simply don’t have these capacities. They have not done enough of their own work to be able to receive your feelings without becoming triggered, defensive, reactive, etc. And, I repeat, they are entitled to be who they are and have their unique responses. Your only job is to express yourself clearly, directly and with integrity. Never let your happiness be contingent on anyone responding the way you think they should. You can’t change anyone. Thinking that you could or should is evidence of a boundary issue.
(Note that I did NOT say you have to keep everyone in your life that you have ever known or been born into a family with. That is up to you. Boundaries also help you understand that if you express what you need to someone and they refuse to take your feelings into consideration or tell you straight-out that they never plan to change what doesn’t feel ok to you, that is useful information that you’d be wise to consider.)
2. Decide consciously that you won’t share your feelings with the person because you have learned through honest adult effort that doing so will only cause you more frustration. Fair enough. In this case, do what you need to process the feelings on your own, in therapy, with a friend, through journaling… whatever works. Express and move through the emotion so it doesn’t fester and begin manifesting as a physical illness, which is what happens to unacknowledged/unexpressed emotions. Then decide if you want people who don’t respect your feelings to be a part of your life.
In the beginning, stating needs directly will feel difficult. In time it will be a breeze, and you will wonder why the hell you waited so long. Be nice to yourself about it. <3