Enlightening Conversations

Yep.. its hard to watch someone flirt with something you know from experience is dangerous, because there's nothing you can do to convince them sometimes. You run more of a risk of causing them to want to prove you wrong, and to want to even more aggressively pursue the thing you're warning them about.

Haha... thought of something silly, in Knocked Up... the little girl with curly hair? Her dad says to her, Don't do what they did. Of course her response is "I'm gonna do it!" Typical!

that's not what i said...

very true...

true...

help can come in the form of saying nothing...or saying everything...giving space...or giving no space. and imposing anything by force, ideas or anything else, is anathema to me.

ETA: *however*...sometimes things can take on a forceful *tone* (loud & urgent & strong in language) in the course of what can in the end be very helpful because it interrupts patterns that are looping & spinning without abate. breaking thru, when the time is right, can be a gift from those who have the fortitude not to shut down & turn away, as often happens when intensity nears a break-thru...

it sounds like we have a disconnect...no worries, P.

Yes to all, sami. There are a lot of different approaches that can all be appropriate, depending on the context. That's the hard part. Interpreting the context is the hard part.

And re: disconnects. Yep. No worries. I have to say I never worry, when I'm communicating with you (which is not to say I'm careless. I care a great deal indeed.) It's just that I know you're a WYSIWYG kinda gal. To the extent you can make it so and to the extent I've seen you so far, your communication involves no hidden agenda, no neurosis, no passive aggression, no socially acceptable facade, no heat, no judgment. You say what you feel moved to say. No more; no less. This is what I've seen whether you agree with the person you're conversing with or not. Works for me.

As a result, my responses to you involve no defensiveness, just curiosity ... most of the time. :wink: :lol:

THAT!

that is why I think NVC is so valuable; its modus operandii is about getting feedback on what the pesron has recieved from what you said, and giving you the chance to rephrase, correct misapprenhensions etc..

intersting post though my post on the shadow side seems to have not been of interest...

Yes. NVC can be a really good tool for navigating relationships, when things get intense.

Yes.

And ... this is, IMHO, where a record of authenticity and legitimacy can come in handy if one is seeking to give hard-to-receive feedback.

If two people are trying to convince me not to walk off a figurative cliff, I'm much more likely to believe a person I perceive has no agenda than someone who either doesn't know me or has a history of being inauthentic with me. This doesn't absolve me, the receiver, of the responsibility to take good feedback, but ... feedback is a lot easier to receive from some people than others.

About six weeks before I got married, I got a call from my older sister, L. She'd just received my wedding invitation and was very, very concerned. She had to call and tell me that she would not be at my wedding. The guy I was about to marry hadn't shown himself to be a good man. He wasn't even of the right faith! Did he go to church? Etc, etc and so forth.

When she finished explaining very, very nicely, how her conscience wouldn't be clean if she didn't tell me the truth, I thanked her for the feedback, got off the phone and thought, "What does she know?" And then I married the wrong guy six weeks later.

Truth is that L had gotten married and left home when I was ten years old. I got married when I was thirty. The very first phone call she ever made to me, in that entire twenty years, was the one six weeks before my wedding. Her feedback was good, as experience has shown (leaving aside, for a moment, the whole church thing.) I could not hear her, because she had no relationship with me to fall back on. She had no legitimacy to give me hard feedback, so I rejected her and her feedback.

am so glad to hear it.

i'd say you're spot-on. thanks for seeing that, P. *hug*

Random musings: How do you know what is your "authentic self," versus a role that you play or an image that you present?

To give it some background, and explain sort of what I'm asking, I'll just say that it's prompted by my realization that I have a strong tendency to mirror other people's behavior and, to a certain extent, personalities when I'm around them and want to get along. Which gets me thinking...where does the mirroring end and I begin? (Which I don't mean as wanting to discuss me, just illustrating what in blazes the original question is about...since I had a devil of a time trying to phrase it.)

I've been thinking about this since you posted it and don't have an answer. Ha! I bet you thought I was going to say something intelligent. Not today, sister! :wink:

I do think it's possible to allow different aspects of ones authentic self to come to the fore (sp?) with different people. I don't think that's inauthentic. I think it goes over the line when my behaviors reflect the other person, but not me. Hmm. That's as clear as mud.

For example, I love books and wine and sewing and anything English and a bunch of other things. I'm not even remotely interested in, for example, organized sports. I find nothing inauthentic about discussing books with book lovers and English stuff with anglophiles, etc. To me, that's just allowing conversation to naturally gravitate toward things we have in common. If I start tracking sports scores just to converse with sports fiends, now I have a problem.

Why do I have a feeling that didn't clear the mud any? Oh well. I tried.

Your authentic self? Well, in some ways, I don't believe in such a thing. If I put on an act or an image, that is as much a part of me as anything else.

However, if I was going to venture into trying to find an "authentic self", I would be minutely examining my feelings for everything. Everything I do, I would question "why am I doing this, what is the goal?". I guess how I would define an "authentic self" is first by figuring out what is really important to me. What would I do if there was no one looking? What would I say if there were no possible benefit to me, and why would I say it?

What are the things that you would do or say if no one would every know that you did them or said them?

It doesn't surprise me that you say that, tt. I can't remember exactly how you phrased it in a previous conversation, but I got the impression that you see the self as a snapshot at a point in time. Does that capture the essence of what you've said before?

Well, that's not specific to me, that is a fundamental aspect of Buddhism. Part of our suffering can come from attachment to a static notion of self.

I haven't studied Buddhism, although it's on my list, if not for in-depth study, then certainly some reading. Thanks for clarifying.

I believe that our true selves are the default behaviors that we tend to fall back on when dealing with a new situation. Think for a moment what you would do if you are stuck in the middle of nowhere or perhaps meeting a group of strangers for the first time, etc...

As time goes on and we gain new experiences, and our behaviors toward situations will change and that will become a part of us (we all change if we really want to).

As for mirroring, it is a psychological thing. If you look around in a crowded place (like a club), you will notice that people who mirror one another (hand raised in certain way, head pointed at certain direction, body leaning, etc...) are more engaged in their conversations than ones who don't mirror. Rather that mirroring is fake or not (trying to warm up to a girl in my case, etc...) is another story...

Thanks for jumping into the conversation, SS. I don't want to leave your comment hanging out there without reply. Just want you to know that I'm still thinking about it, and will reply when/if I come up with a coherent comment in response. :wink:

quite right; I'm so inauthentic and a total fraud that its untrue....

Intersting. I was dancing ( 5 rhythms) and I ground to a halt because I realised I was picking up on the way other people were dancing and I couldnt figure out what was me...