Understanding Your Child as Needed 2

MY THOUGHTS bring you inside me to hear how I think. What is my opinion about this

or that falls into this category. You are getting to know me better when I choose to

share with you my thoughts.

MY FEELINGS encompass the deepest level I can share with you. However, it is also

the most risky for several reasons. At the very least you might not like how I feel about

something and reject me. That alone is oftentimes enough for me to keep my feelings

to myself excepting those with whom I feel the safest. However, there is also the fact

that my feelings are the “crazy” part of me. My feelings change. They oftentimes don’t

match my thoughts, and they might not even make sense to me. Consequently, I

oftentimes try and hide this personal incongruence from others and sometimes even

from myself.

To successfully build this relational pyramid I must learn to communicate on the most

significant of the levels (i.e. my thoughts and my feelings), because the ultimate goal of

communication is to share enough of who I am so that you can look through my eyes,

hear through my ears, and feel like I feel. In other words the ultimate goal of

communication is to help you understand me.

Unfortunately, too often in relationships we only communicate when we are “in crisis”

and then usually only to try and change the other person. So we talk “at people” rather

than using communication to share ourselves with people.

Nevertheless, when communication is truly happening in a sharing of ourselves, we will

move to the next level in the pyramid — understanding.

Remember the lists that I would have a couple make when they first came to see me?

“For the life of me I can’t understand why s/he. . . “? Getting those lists to shrink and

then disappear is the goal. Building understanding is the key to making that happen.

Imagine coming to work on a day when you feel pretty good. So you greet the

receptionist with a very friendly “good morning” and a smile too. However, she snaps

back at you with a surly “shut up!” You’re incensed, but you say nothing. You go to

your desk, but her comments continue to bother you. While at lunch, you mention the

event to a co-worker who says something like “Oh, you didn’t hear? Her husband

asked her for a divorce last night.”

With that one piece of information, you return to the office in a much different frame of

mind. The receptionist remains as short with you as before, but it doesn’t bother you

any longer. The receptionist hasn’t changed . . . but you have. That’s power of

understanding.

You have moved to the acceptance level of the pyramid. You are able to accept the

receptionist right where she is in the light of her circumstances. And it is only in the

atmosphere of acceptance that any relationship flourishes.

I would often have people come to me with weight problems — hoping that through

counselling they could thin down. I would help them understand that until they could

accept themselves in their heavy state, they would never be able to maintain a weight

loss. Although many have tried, no one has ever hated anything out of their lives. All of

us have thought at one time or another that “if only I hate this about myself to a greater

degree, I will be able to conquer it.” However, when we fixate on something about

ourselves to the point of hatred we actually drive it deeper into our life. See the

chapters describing Secret Three and Secret Four for more about this unexpected

phenomenon.