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Part Five: Relationships and group interactions
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Part Five: Relationships and group interactions
Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Interactions
In this section, we take up how to express your own personal feelings, and then other aspects of your interaction with someone. Up until now it was either only responding to the other person’s feelings, or your feelings and ideas about the other person’s feelings. Up to now it was all about helping the other person. Now we come to your feelings. This section is as much for you, as for helping the other person.
How
1. Move from the given interaction-event into you and say what is happening in you. (From a given moment of interaction (what happened), you can move either into him or into you. For example, he did something to upset you. Now you can go from this into exactly what he did and what he is like that explains why he probably did it. Or you can go into how it upset you, and what you are like that it upsets you. Don't do the first, leave that to the other person. Do the second:
move from the bit of interaction into you, see what and why it affected you, and share this. Say this just as straight as you can. )
(It is hard for a person to listen to you telling him what's wrong with him. It is easy for a person to listen to you saying what's wrong with you, or what is at any rate vulnerable or upsettable or shaky in you. )
It isn't very honest and straight therefore, to " share" your feeling that he is such-and-such. (Anything that goes like, " I feel that you… " is no good. You're expressing his territory, and staying covered about yours. )
Sharing what is happening in you, and why, makes the interaction more open and personal. It makes it possible, then, for the other person to say what goes on in him and why, to give you more, usually, than you could have guessed or gotten to by making him uptight.
Examples
Don't say, " I have to express my feeling, can I trust you with it? I feel that you bully me, you always have to do your thing on anything I say, and it's like you know it all. Like, before, too, when I said this you had to say…, and I think you just don’t want to let anybody in, maybe you're scared to. "
Do say, " I get angry and upset when I can't get to finish what I started to say, I lose track and I get insecure about whether I have any ideas, really. I'm not very strong I guess, I lose them right away. I'm very unsure if I'm really intelligent, objectively I know I am, but inside I'm very unsure. "
2. Specificity is essential in expressing yourself. Only the unique, specific, finely caught strands of your peculiar texture inside really share you. Generalities are everybody. It is still a rebuke to a person, and not much more, to be told he made a bad thing happen in you. It is a sharing and a closer open interaction, and gives him you, when you share not some generality but some of the specifics actually going on in you.
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3. Share only what you can stand to have ignored. The other person may not be able to meet you immediately, or even that day. He may still be in his own anger or withdrawal, and may lag behind your being open. He may have to say angry things once or twice more, or laugh derisively. (He will have heard you anyway, and the open quality of you will reach him anyway, but he may be unable to meet it and let on. ) Therefore, you want to be able to say what you say of you without having to have immediate warm receptiveness as feedback. If you feel very shaky, wait a moment or two. Get it so you can say it of you just because it's you, and true, and it can stand on its own, whatever his reaction.
4. Say how you feel directly. Even if you aren't hiding your anger but saying quite obviously angry things, it is better to say, " I'm mad, " than indirect things, because if you say it directly you share it. If you merely let it be seen, you are really hitting the other person from it, but not letting him at it. Say it directly.
5. If the first string of words you get feel like you can't say them, don’t fight it. Wait a few moments and let another string of words form. If that one, too, can't be said, wait again. Don't give up the ’what’, which needs expressing, and don't work deliberately to change anything, just wait. Still another string of words will come to you, until a sayable one comes.
What
6. Express directly what you most fear, or what you find yourself struggling with. If you feel uptight, turn around and see what you're running from, then say that. If what he says makes you uptight, see what you're afraid he’s saying, and what you're afraid that means, and then say that.
We often work desperately on top of what we feel, or how we’ve just reacted, trying to fix it or make it something else. But it is easy to let that speak directly.
Examples
" That hurts my feelings. "
" I'm sorry you're mad. "
“You’ re scaring me with that. "
" That makes me feel pushed away. "
“I feel out-maneuvered. "
''I'm stuck. "
" That makes me feel like I'm wrong. "
7. Say the covert things that go on in interaction explicitly, and say how you feel about it. Often things are happening that both of you hope aren't being noticed. You know the other person knows, but even so, you hope the other person doesn't notice that you know he knows.
For example, he might be pressuring you, and you might be trying to avoid being pushed into something, and avoiding letting on that you are resisting. Or, you might wish that he would feel some other way than you know he does, and not saying that you know how he really feels. Or, you might have just done something stupid, or wrong, and you might be trying to recoup without that error being acknowledged, trying to make it have been something else than it was. There might be a seduction possibility, which if talked about openly would let you say exactly how you do feel about it. You might want to go and the other person wants you to stay and knows you want to go. You might be trying to argue your way and know you're wrong somewhere. Or, perhaps he caught you lying, and you both know it but aren't saying so.
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When things like this are already so, saying them gets things unstuck. Not saying them keeps the interaction stuck.
Say exactly what you think is going on, which nobody’s admitting, and what you feel about it. Say exactly what seems as if it can’t possibly be said, seen, or owned up to.
8. Anything you did and wish, now, you hadn’t done, say now. It may seem too late, but to get the interaction unstuck it isn't ever too late.
Examples
" I feel stupid about getting mad and yelling. "
" Back a while ago, you said…, and I said ’yes’. I was too chicken to say ‘no’, I was afraid of fighting it out with you. "
“I let you think I could dig it, but I've been thinking about it and I can't. "
" I hate to admit it now, but that thing you said about so-and-so at the start, I didn't get it. "
" Now I wish I hadn't rushed you around like that. I get that way when I'm uptight and I wish I didn't. "
Numbers 1 – 3 together, after you do them for a while, become easy so you have a real appetite, when sticky spots come, to encounter the other person in them. What feels impossible to face down is so often a special opportunity to be much closer with someone. (The examples above don't show this, it would be assumed that you would say more of your inward goings-on, than these examples have. )
9. If nothing is happening and you wish something would - even if it seems that not much is going on in you, let your attention down to your gut. There is always a texture of many things going on there, and some of them belong with the interaction with this person. Express them.
10. When you're being pushed too far, call a halt, set a limit, some time before you utterly blow up or get mad. Protect the other person from what happens when you don't take care of yourself. Say, with specificity, what and how you need or don't want, while you yet have time and willingness to stay after that, to hear what it is and means in him.
11. If you're sitting in silence with a mute or silent person, say something like “I’ll just sit here and keep you company, " or something like that, maybe also stretch out on the floor, relax, show that you can maintain yourself on your own without needing to be dealt with. Then, in such a silence, if it is long, you will have many chains of feelings, some of which you can say (every few minutes, perhaps). When you say something, you may then have doubts about how sensible it was, and these lead you to another thing.
For example, you might say, " l do wish you'd let me know something of what you're into. " Then you probably think, why are you pressuring the person? So, later on, if the silence continues, you might say, " It's OK for you not to say anything if you don't want to. " And that might make you think, maybe he wants to but he can't. So, later on, if the silence still goes on, you could say, " Maybe it's very hard to say anything, now. " And then, maybe you think, I bet he can talk fine but doesn't want to to me. So, later on, you can say, " Maybe you wouldn't want to talk to me, you don't know me at all. " But this chain is only an example, you would have your chain of whatever you thought and felt. It's also good to say, in there somewhere, " But I don't know what you feel, you haven’t said anything yet. ” (That takes it out of guessing, and gives him his space. ) But, if it feels like pressure on him to talk, quit.
Another thing to express, is something like, " Whatever it is, I guess it's pretty heavy. " These expressions of yours let the person know what sort of a way you would take things, if he did say any. It's like giving a lot of an understanding attitude even though he doesn't say anything.
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12. Say anything relevant to his situation to a person very straight, even if he is mute or very spaced out. He may not give signs of hearing you, but he can hear you. You don't need signs from him that he is receiving, he is. He is in there, whatever he is in.
Examples
“I’ll be back tomorrow around this time. "
" We'll come back sometime and we will keep seeing you. ” (For example, if a person has to be left in a hospital or in bad condition, it is important that he know it if you are sure you will come back. If you aren't sure when, don't promise when. )
" Man, we've travelled together to here, and I'm not leaving you here in this shape. I'm gonna wait for you. " Do not tell feelings you haven’t got and only wish you had. Tell anything valuable you do have for him. " You can stay here a couple of days, then we’ll find you another crash place. "
Some ways of looking at it which make being straight easier:
Other people don't care how good or wise or beautiful you are, only you (and maybe your mother) care all that much. So, you don’t have to care that much about it either. It is not bad for the other person if you are or look stupid, crummy, or imperfect.
What is true is always already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse, and isn't what makes it be. What is true, is in a thousand ways, and affects us in many ways other than words. Anything false is only the words, in all other ways what's true is still the only way things are. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted from. Anything untrue is a dead end, it isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, because they are standing it already. Only what is true is, and therefore it's the only thing you can trust.
You may find other good ways to be straight with people, ways not written up here. To be straight is much more important, than just how you do it. You can stick with the person and help with anything that ensues.
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