Ready for Change

A few months ago I was in a group training class with what I can only call an ornery old-school Gestalt therapist as the facilitator. Nothing got by this guy. Nothing.

He started off with a group check-in. When I said, “I’m excited about the course this weekend,” he scoffed. “Your words say you’re excited,” he said, “but nothing else does. The words are Jingle Bells, but the tune is The Old Rugged Cross.”

It was true. My words said I was excited, but my body was slumped in my chair. My eyes were half-closed. I was speaking in a mumble and so quietly I was almost inaudible. There was a complete disconnect between my words and everything else I was conveying. I might have believed what I was telling myself – “I’m excited!” – but no one else did.

Such an obvious disconnect between what someone is saying and what someone is feeling is a rich place of exploration for coaches (and for therapists). When one of my coaching clients starts talking about a goal they “should” get around to, and starts making half-hearted plans, then it’s the perfect time for me to say, “I hear you saying you want to do this, but I don’t hear any desire, drive, or excitement in your voice. Is this a goal that truly resonates with you?”

I invite you to check in this week on the messages you’re conveying in your body language, your tone of voice, your facial expressions. Do those messages match up with your words? If not, what’s up? 

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I posted last year about the Tyranny of Self-Knowledge: the more we know about ourselves, the less room we leave for possibilities and discovery. But who wants to let go of all this self-knowledge we’ve built up?

How can I hold and appreciate my self-knowledge, and leave room for discovery and growth? Here’s a switch I’m playing with: rather than describing myself using “I am…” or “I always…”, I’m starting to use the words “tend” and “tendency”.

For example, instead of saying “I take on too much” (as if it is a fixed fact), I say, “I tend to take on too much.” Now that I’ve labelled it as a tendency, I also realize that it’s something I can choose not to do. It doesn’t have to be my identity to take on too much. It’s just something I tend to do, and I could decide to tend to do something else.

Another example: “I get overwhelmed.” If I change that to “I tend to get overwhelmed”, then I can now work with a spectrum – a spectrum of tending towards overwhelm or away from overwhelm. No longer is it “overwhelmed” or “not overwhelmed” – it’s a tendency I can lean towards or away from.

I invite you to pick something you *know* about yourself, and to restate it this week as a tendency. What changes for you?

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wikimedia commons: Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions

Picking up on the previous Words Matter post here, I’m going to draw a few more lines around the words “think” and “feel”. I get called on this in my therapist training class; in turn, I tend to call my coaching clients on it.

“I feel that we’re going down the wrong road here.” “I feel that things are looking up.” Both of these examples are not feelings, but are thoughts. It’s a thought that we’re going down the wrong road. It’s a thought that things are looking up.

If I can catch myself starting a sentence with “I feel”, but then expressing a thought, then I am catching myself distancing myself from my feelings, confusing my thoughts with feelings, and generally being unclear about what my feelings are.

The impact of this is that I take actions to address my thoughts, rather than spending the time to identify and understand what might address my feelings.

If you feel like playing with this concept a little bit this week, here’s an assignment:

1) everytime you hear yourself say “I feel” this week, check to see if what comes next is a feeling or a thought.

2) if it’s a thought, then pause to ask yourself: “What is the feeling here?”

If, like mine, your emotional vocabulary could use a little expansion, you might want to browse around here to find some words to put to your feelings. 

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This message has been hitting me from all corners – in my therapist training, in my coaching, and in my personal life.

Words matter.

The way I use language is a crucial indicator of how I am relating to my feelings.

By saying this statement using an “I-statement”, I am taking ownership for my beliefs and my feelings.

The way you use language is a crucial indicator of how you are relating to your feelings.

By writing this in the second person, I am labelling you with something that is true for me. It may or may not be true for you. And I am distancing myself from owning my own beliefs and feelings.

My example above is innocuous, so let’s play with one let’s a little more spicy.

When I disagree with someone, I feel tense, anxious, and uncomfortable.

I am taking ownership of my actions (disagreeing) and my reactions (feeling tense, anxious, and uncomfortable).

When you disagree with someone, you feel tense, anxious, and uncomfortable.

I hear people speak in the second person frequently. I imagine they mean “when one disagrees with someone”, but instead they say it in the second person, “when you disagree with someone.” And I imagine that the actual truth is not about their belief about what “one” does, but the truth for themselves. The person saying this is conveying that when he/she disagrees with someone, he/she feels tense, anxious, and uncomfortable. But instead they say “you”, when a quick poll would tell you that for many “you”s, this is not the truth – other people may get excited and energized by disagreement, may feel intrigued and curious, may feel ready to fight… a myriad of reactions.

When I describe my feelings in the second person (“you”), not only am I distancing myself from my own feelings and refusing to own them, but I am also assuming that what is true for me is true for others. I’ve been trying for a long time to be more aware of how I speak about my feelings. To not say, “You know when you get tired and you feel overwhelmed?” and instead say, “When I get tired, I feel overwhelmed.” To not say, “It hurts”, or “It makes me sad”, but to say, “I hurt”, and “I feel sad.” These small changes in language are making me more aware of what I believe and feel, more aware of what I assume without questioning, and bringing me into more direct relationship with what I am experiencing.

If you’d like to read more on language, I recommend:

-Pretty much everything from The Center for Nonviolent Communication, and particularly the book Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life (I found it at my local library, and eventually bought my own copy)

-On “I-statements”: here and here and here

-Gestalt Processes and Language 

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