David Teachout's Blog, page 5

25: Feelings and the Hope of Relationship

What is happening when we have “feelings” for someone? How should we respond when we have that experience? What should we expect from the other person? This episode explores those questions and more, with an eye towards what our shared humanity is trying to tell us in what we finding interesting, desirable and attractive. 

Feel free to send questions that you’d like covered either in a Podcast or blog entry. If you’d like to explore how relationships work in your life and grow your communication skills, please reach out for Coaching or Therapy.

The post 25: Feelings and the Hope of Relationship appeared first on Life Weavings.

On Being Shy

I recently received a question concerning shyness and the person was convinced that their lack of confidence had resulted in the destruction of all their relationships. As I’m sure there are more people than this person who are working through their own level of shyness and lack of confidence in making social connections, I thought to share my response in the hope that others will gain something from it.

One of the best pearls of wisdom I’ve received is from Russ Harris’s “The Confidence Gap.” In it he notes: “competence breeds confidence.” I mention this and explain it further in my response below and I highly recommend people reading the excellent book.

Now my response:

If you are not writing this while sitting in a cave in the middle of nowhere, having run power cords from a village miles away, I’m going to assume that you have some various forms of social connections, whether that be friends of some kind and/or work connections. Let’s back up from the universal statements that you’ve “tried everything” and how this shyness has “ruined my life and relationships.” I think you’ll notice that you do in fact have relationships, the issue is that they aren’t what you would like them to be.

Which is perfectly fine to be frustrated about! Here’s why it’s important to step away from the universal condemnations: you have the skills to move forward, you’re just not seeing them and that lack of sight is making it difficult to build off of them in new ways.

Begin by looking at what you already do: how do conversations usually go? Do you go out at all? How do you respond to questions/inquiries in life and at work? It doesn’t matter whether your responses to all these are the ideal of what you want them to be, the point is to see what you’re already doing.

Once you’ve taken note of what you’re doing, consider next what you’re avoiding by not expanding on those skills. What is it about social connections that has you so worried and anxious that you don’t pursue them? If the answer is some form of rejection, note immediately that you’ve already achieved this by avoiding that very thing! Seriously, avoidance is fulfilling all your fears while lying to you about being helpful. Avoidance is an emotional narcotic, setting up the pitfalls you’re afraid might happen and then pushing you in anyway.

So, what next? If you want your life to continue the way it is, then by all means don’t change your behavior. If you want something different, then you have to try something else and a quick way of doing so is building off of what you’re already doing. Even if what you’re doing is 2% of where you’d like to be, it’s amazing what doubling that effort every week or so will lead to. Confidence is a trap when we try to seek it first, it’s like fool’s gold, shiny and great, until we run smack into our doubts again and it crumbles. Focus on the doing, no matter how small, and build up from whatever level of competence you’re currently at. Eventually your confidence will rise as you do more of what you want and this time it will last.

As a last point, acknowledge to yourself that this is going to suck. Anxiety isn’t necessarily a sign that what you’re doing is wrong, it’s simply an assessment that what you’re doing is different and outside your perceived norm. You’re going to have this feeling as you grow. Say hi to it, hug it, thank it for letting you know you’re exploring life and then let it go on its way have served its purpose. If you have to be present and let it go often at first, that’s ok too, emotions have a way of becoming a habit and like all habits, they’re difficult to change.

The post On Being Shy appeared first on Life Weavings.

Episode 24: A Replication Problem

Exploring the so-called “replication problem” in psychological research, in particular focusing on “the Marshmallow Test.” Looking at issues about replication, definition and the nature of complexity in studying people.

Check out this episode!

Further Reading:

“Because of the way the Reproducibility Project was conducted, its results say little about the overall reliability of the psychology papers it tried to validate, he argues. “The number of studies that actually did fail to replicate is about the number you would expect to fail to replicate by chance alone — even if all the original studies had shown true effects.”

Psychology’s reproducibility problem is exaggerated – say psychologists

“The problem is that scholars have known for decades that affluence and poverty shape the ability to delay gratification. Writing in 1974, Mischel observed that waiting for the larger reward was not only a trait of the individual but also depended on people’s expectancies and experience. If researchers were unreliable in their promise to return with two marshmallows, anyone would soon learn to seize the moment and eat the treat. He illustrated this with an example of lower-class black residents in Trinidad who fared poorly on the test when it was administered by white people, who had a history of breaking their promises. Following this logic, multiple studies over the years have confirmed that people living in poverty or who experience chaotic futures tend to prefer the sure thing now over waiting for a larger reward that might never come. But if this has been known for years, where is the replication crisis?”

Try to Resist Misinterpreting the Marshmallow Test

The post Episode 24: A Replication Problem appeared first on Life Weavings.

Similar Difficulties in Unique Situations

There’s a sense of empowerment in describing a personal experience as unique, special or otherwise different than anybody else’s. In particular when it comes to difficulty, a unique status builds a space for dismissing the wisdom of others and provides the ground for accepting its potential insurmountable quality. How often have we heard someone, when confronted by clear objective advice, say: “yes, but my situation is different”?

Certainly each situation, difficult or easy, is different in the sense of being built out of the particular variables in your life. However, at the level of principle, at the level of usable and workable life-skills, the differences are far outweighed by the similarities of both being human and living in a generally homogenous society.

People are Unique, Relationship Skills are Not

Which brings us to how particular forms of relationship are somehow intrinsically different than other forms. As a starting place, let’s consider ‘relationship’ as any form of interaction between two or more people and/or objects. The qualities that change are the depth of the connection and the extent of the effects. Because of those changes we apply different labels and judgments as to their meaning and importance.

Let’s be clear: you have as much of a relationship, at this base level, with the chair you’re sitting on as you do with the person you’re having sex with. If you don’t believe me, imagine that chair suddenly disappearing and you having an immediate intimate connection between your backside and the hard floor beneath you. Yes there was a relationship involved and just because you took it for granted doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. In fact, that very lack of awareness is often at the heart of so many difficulties in any form of relationship.

Monogamy vs Polyamory

With this understanding of ‘relationship’ in mind, we can look at two general labels or forms of relationship: monogamy and polyamory. Broadly speaking, the difference between the two is the latter allows for, if not is always engaged with, more than one sexual partner, usually with the intention of doing so within an agreed-upon level of commitment. That latter point of commitment distinguishes polyamory from, say, swinging. Honestly, there are numerous ways of looking at this and the point isn’t to get bogged down in minutiae.

Below, you’ll see a Venn diagram of “Relationship Problems” within monogamy and polyamory. This is not supposed to be indicative of how everyone views the differences, it’s just an example, albeit one with a list that seems to be offered up quite regularly.

Relationship Problems = Being Human

Let’s get the conclusion being offered here, contrary to the diagram, out of the way: there is simply no relationship problem that is different in kind between any form of relationship. The differences are always the particular variables involved, not some issue uniquely found within a particular relationship form. Further, the skills needed to address problems are generalizable across all the forms.

All of the problems here indicated are quite possible in any relationship between two or more consenting human beings. What the form of relationship will change is the quantity of the type of problem being dealt with and differences in the, hopefully discussed, agreements made between those involved.

Take for instance ‘hierarchy,’ a problem that supposedly only exists in polyamory. The complaints that “he’s married to his job” or “I’m a gamer widow” come to mind and those are just two. The inevitability of making choices concerning the priorities of interests is not solely the purview of a particular relationship form. The type of choices available will change, but that’s true of every relationship.

Unfortunately, there are any number of people in monogamous relationships who believe they’ll never have a problem with their partner loving someone else more or having to deal with being a priority.

On the other side, take “wanting to be intimate with other people.” To say this isn’t a problem within polyamory is to offer an idealized form rather than any practical reality. One of the stereotypes often encountered by people who label themselves polyamorous is the assumption they want to have sex with any and everyone. Not only is this not true, but typically the desire, when it does arise, is not immediately acted on without concern or discussion with the others involved. In that sense, the desire (a profoundly human emotional inevitability) is a problem, it’s just being handled differently and, hopefully, with a lot less melodrama.

Unfortunately, there are any number of people in polyamorous relationships who think they’ll never have to worry about being bored, or being concerned about whether they or one of their partners is getting too close to someone else.

What a Different Form Can Help With

The issue here is one of exclusivity, a belief that a form of relational connection cuts you off from potential struggles of being human. The problem with a hyper-focus on differences in relationship forms is two-fold:

One: there is much wisdom to be found from people engaging in different forms that can be of immense use in whatever form you’re currently involved in and…

Two: believing the form of relationship you’re in excludes you from having particular problems will result in being blindsided when they do happen.

What a look at different forms can give us is an appreciation for the vast potential in human connectivity. It is truly beautiful and wisdom is found in seeing how different forms deal with problems that arise. There are undoubtedly numerous behaviors that can be used in your form of relationship without compromising the agreements you have with your partner(s). Taking a look can be part of any journey you’re on with whoever is with you.

The post Similar Difficulties in Unique Situations appeared first on Life Weavings.

Cage Match of Values

“Two may enter, but only one may leave.” The image of a cage-match is older even than the post-apocalyptic landscape that line comes from, stemming perhaps all the way back to the myth of Cain and Abel, the first murder. There’s something intrinsically seductive about a simplistic binary choice. It speaks to our need for quick answers. Unfortunately, like any siren song, the binary quality hides an ocean of possibilities. As it is in the ways we may worship a deity, so it is in relation to our Values.

How often have you felt caught between two different choices? Ever been confronted with the desire to support one Value (say ‘career success’) and feel doing so would get in the way of supporting another Value (say ‘family’)? Life is often about choices, sometimes difficult ones, but the struggle here is made all the more difficult precisely because the Values are considered with such an adversarial framework.

Multiple Ways of Support

How this happens is largely due to what I’ll call ‘the tyranny of outcome.’ Meet someone new and the first question is often “what do you do?” When judging someone, it is the immediate behavior we look at, often without concern for context or intent (unless it’s about judging our own behavior, then suddenly and often self-servingly context matters, but that’s another point altogether). That process of judgment is at the heart of our experience of being overwhelmed and/or trapped in a spiral of self-doubt, depression and anxiety. It is based on the false notion that in any given situation there was or is only one behavior possible to support what we care about. This limited vision of behavior, as if thoughts and emotions aren’t actions as well, blinds us to how often similar intent and shared Values get supported through many different ways.

How do you express yourself to ‘family,’ ‘intimate partner’ and ‘co-worker’? Is it always the same way? I certainly hope not, such would be rather dull and not support how relationships grow and change with time. Ever notice how different people in relationships of ‘family,’ ‘intimacy’ and ‘work’ show their care/concern in different ways than you? Who hasn’t heard some version of the phrase “I could never express myself that way”? Values are what we care about, but they need not be supported in exactly the same way all the time. We do this automatically anyway, it is only when we get flustered and overwhelmed with a seeming impossible social hurdle that we forget our lives are full of behavioral variations.

More than One

Once space is made to slow down and appreciate our ability to support our Values in many different ways, the metaphor of a cage-match starts to seem problematic. To finally dismiss it altogether, we have only to recognize how we care about more than one Value at any given time.

We are constantly having to make choices about what Value to support over another. We do this nearly effortlessly precisely because we intuitively know three things:

Our behavior quite often supports more than one Value at any given time, it is only our immediate awareness that makes it appear as if there’s only one in mind.
Making a choice to support one Value does not mean we no longer care about another Value.
The choice being made does not remove our ability to shift our priorities at another day and time, perhaps even in the very next moment given to us.

The metaphor of a Value cage-match supports a vision of our humanity that is unhelpful and often destructive. ‘Honor’ without ‘camaraderie’ forgets ‘team.’ ‘Truth’ without ‘humility’ leads to fundamentalism. ‘Self-care’ without ‘social awareness’ leads to pathological narcissism.

When confronted with a simple dualistic choice it is best, if possible in the moment, to pause and reflect on what else you care about in the current situation. We are simply not creatures constrained to a singular way of living our lives and our ability/struggle to do so is found in the many Values at the heart of of who we are.

The post Cage Match of Values appeared first on Life Weavings.

06: Growing through Awareness and Forgiveness

Covering the last couple chapters of “The Four Agreements,” focusing on how to identify old and unhealthy agreements to replace them with new ones. Explore how to accept the whole of our lives, including the suffering, and learn to forgive by not being trapped by the stories and agreements that are limiting our vision of a more expansive and growth-oriented life.

From The Inner Projection of Forgiveness:

“Focusing only on the pain places awareness on the wrong object, the other person. Forgiveness is not about figuring out the other person who did the wrong, though at times that can certainly help. Forgiveness is instead a re-assertion of the reality of one’s existence, a wholeness of which we at a deeper understanding are always in possession of, where the pain/shame of hurt is no longer the only voice in our mind.”

From Forgiveness: A Value to Identify Our Humanity:

“If we are able to accept and move on from the moments of action that were not the greatest example of our stated values, then surely we can learn to apply the same understanding to others.”

Listeners like you are the reason this show continues and your support is always appreciated. If you’d like to donate in any way to help this show continue free for everyone, please use the button below. Thank you.

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post 06: Growing through Awareness and Forgiveness appeared first on Life Weavings.

Stop Being Emotional About Your Emotions

Metaphors for living are numerous; a good thing as they provide the structure through which we interact within the world. Were they shallow and few, our lives would be equally as such. The multiplicity of metaphor, like the personal narratives carrying purpose and meaning, allow us to encounter variations in life without sitting down in an overwhelmed stupor. One such metaphor is the game of billiards (though ‘marbles’ could also work here): one ball at a time moves across a table (or floor), hitting one or another ball at a time and sending each in a prescribed path according to the dictates of geometry. The means of initial movement is directed by the cue (or finger). Substitute the cue for consciousness, the ball for your body and other balls for people/objects/situations, and you have a fairly full idea of how the metaphor works.

When talking about emotions using this metaphor, phrases like ‘I had my buttons pushed’ and ‘I put my feelings on him/her’ are common. These and other phrases are based on assumptions within the metaphor: ‘Emotions Move Us’ and ‘Emotions Have A Direction.’ These assumptions culminate in the quite common phrasing of ‘I was moved’ when describing a particularly emotional event/image. At the level of  immediate, self-centered awareness, this way of looking at our emotional lives seems legitimate, even obvious. Unfortunately for the continuation of this view, it isn’t that simple.

Go back to the billiards metaphor, but this time remove the cue and attach cables between the balls of varying lengths, number, tension and substance. Here is life, an interconnected whole bound by various lines vibrating with tensions as each ball moves about the table. The truly frustrating bit is how the cue has been replaced by a hovering lens with a very poor viewing area. The result is it only ever sees a part of the table and only some of the attached cables at any given moment.

Emotions are Relationships

Within the billiards metaphor, emotions and thoughts are separate objective things, moved around by conscious will. How and whether a person responds to them is then viewed as a choice by each person. The notion that ‘I can’t make you feel that’ or ‘It’s your choice to be hurt’ is based on this, as if the potential choices a person has are limitless and no longer tied to context. Once we shift to a more nuanced metaphor, how and whether a person responds to a situation is more constrained. There’s still choice, but because of the cables binding various relationships, it’s a choice with boundaries and limits.

Every relationship comes with attachments, the stories/hopes/desires/histories we bring.  The words we use are the means through which we elaborate upon and flesh out the substance of all those attachments. Emotion labels are no different. They direct our attention to the cables binding us within an interconnected life.

From Our Emotions Are Never Left Behind:

“Our minds are predictive devices, attempting to set up an accurate enough framing of our upcoming experience to guide our behavior to meet it. To do so, our past is linked with input from our current context. This combination requires constant evaluative processes, often fast and far more rarely, slow.”

Emotions are a label connecting something we care about, a Value, to the object/person/situation that said Value is perceived as embodying. Do you get angry about things you don’t care about? Do you love without someone in mind? Does frustration exist without being thwarted in pursuing a goal? Our emotions are not driving us towards anything, they are the labels we place on movement we’re already engaged in. They direct our attention to the relationships we have between our Values and the people/places/things in our lives.

Emotions Are A Means, Not the End

From Emotions of Social Interaction:

“Because objective analysis of our own demeanor and behavior in emotional exchanges is so difficult, we need to understand the function of certain emotions in our social interactions, which are likely to exert more influence on what we do than what we think we’re doing.”

Function implies a tool being used, like a knife to spread butter or a cup to hold a drink. Thinking this way puts us right back in the original billiards metaphor. However, pause for a moment and consider the rarity of encountering a tool that isn’t used in many ways, often outside the original intent of the designer. Who hasn’t used a paperclip to unscrew a flat-head screw? How about using the back end of a hard object, like a stapler, to push in a nail? Function here then is more than just the utilization of a tool, it is the recognition of a connection between the person using it and the goal to which it is used.

Now we’re back in a mindset of relationship.

Too often emotions are considered the end goals themselves, as if to feel happy, angry, or sad, is the end of a journey. This is based on emotions being objective simple things that we engage with, like a ball from a sport. Seeing them as labels for particular relationships not only removes this limiting vision, it enlarges personal perception to look at all the myriad ways Values are being put into action. For instance, rather than happiness itself being a goal, we can inquire and identify what within the situation it is that we care about (Value) and be more present with the actions we’ve taken to support it.

Emotions are like that accident on the freeway, we seem to not be able to stop looking at it even if it means not paying attention to our own driving. They’re loud and take up most of our perception, so it makes sense to believe that they’re central to who we are. Thankfully we are more than the blaring sirens, we have lives dedicated to what we care about. Stepping back from the noise we can become more aware of what is actually driving us (our Values) and spend our energy supporting our Values in the most life-affirming way possible.

 

Photo by Joshua Fuller on Unsplash

Articles:

The Emotions of Social Interaction: Psychology Today

The post Stop Being Emotional About Your Emotions appeared first on Life Weavings.

05: The Present Holds All That Is Possible

 

Exploring the fourth agreement from Don Miguel Ruiz’s book “the 4 Agreements”: Always Do Your Best. Contemplation of what it means to live in the present, to mindfully reflect on the entirety of our existence being open for exploration so long as we’re not trapped in the past or future. With some help from Carl Sagan and star stuff, we can move forward into the new habit of knowing our best is always what are doing, without judgment.

From Being Thankful for the Present:

“Without a clear sense of where we currently are, what shape our life is in, it is profoundly difficult to engage in that nourishing practice called gratitude. Rather than simply a declaration said over the dinner table or engaged in on Thanksgiving, gratitude can be a lifelong practice reminding us to not lose sight of what’s directly around us.”

Listeners like you are the reason this show exists. If you have any questions or topics you’d like covered, please don’t hesitate to ask. If you’d like to donate to help keep the show going, please use the button below. Thank you.

The post 05: The Present Holds All That Is Possible appeared first on Life Weavings.

04: We Only Know So Much

 

Reading from “The Four Agreements” and exploring the third agreement of “Don’t Make Assumptions.” I discuss the nature of communication, how so often we think we’re listening we’re merely assuming we know everything we need to know and therefore limiting our understanding of the other person and of ourselves. The difficulty of digital communication is touched on, as well as how assumptions play havoc in our personal relationships and in society through politics.

From Self-Image as Story-telling:

“Attempting to get at the “real” person is as hopeless as splitting the atom was to primitive tribes. Even the process of an attempt merely reinforces the nature of the difficulty, which is that we never get out of our own heads. To help with miscommunication and the hurt that such creates in relationships, we must endeavor to unpack the well-traveled roads of our automatic stories. It means peeling back the paint of our costume and seeing ourselves for what we are, a nest of interconnecting and overlapping narratives, often with thoughts of guilt and/or shame at the center of them, the hallmarks of primary attachments that were anything but secure.”

Listeners like you are the reason this show is done and your support is always appreciated. If you’d like to donate to help keep this going, feel free to use the button below. Thank you.

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post 04: We Only Know So Much appeared first on Life Weavings.

03: How Others See Us and We View Ourselves

Working through the second agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally, with commentary on our usage of identity to select and justify our behaviors and the struggle of confronting other perspectives about who we might be and whether what we do is the best version of ourselves.

From The I of Our Identity:

“Consider that personality, as much as certain grounds of it may be provided for us by genetics, is the means through which we interact with others and our environment. Further, as in a story-book, our personality is far from being singular, instead a multi-faceted evolving process taking in new information all the time and responding in as consistent a way as possible. Personality, rather than a thing separate from the world, is instead a way for each of us to organize our experiences into a manageable and, to us, coherent structure.”

Listeners like you are the reason this show is made. If you’d like to donate to help keep this running, please use the button below. Any contribution is deeply appreciated.

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post 03: How Others See Us and We View Ourselves appeared first on Life Weavings.