This morning I was on a train listening to a mother talking to her young son. The mother’s words were unkind and deliberately hurtful, in a way that demonstrated their damage instantaneously.  Yesterday I worked with a couple who came to see me to learn how to communicate better. For an hour, I listened to both of them using their words to criticize and humiliate each other.  Last week I said something to a friend that was not helpful for our relationship and not skillful in terms of expressing myself in a way that she could hear.  Add to all that, I just received an unsupportive email from a family member telling me all the reasons why I was wrong (and he was right) about something we had discussed.

It’s been a week of thinking about words, those spoken as well as those left unspoken. We’ve all had the experience of saying something and wishing we hadn’t.  And, we all know that once we do say something out loud to someone, we can never really take it back.  In Buddhism, there’s an important practice called “Right Speech.”  Right speech is part of the Noble Eightfold Path, the fundamental, eight-part instruction manual for  ending our suffering.  According to the Buddha, our own wellbeing is built upon the practice of not lying, not slandering, not using unkind or abusive language, and not gossiping.  In order to end our own suffering, we’re taught to speak truthfully and use words to promote harmony and understanding, reduce anger, and most of all, be helpful.

Sometimes I read the Buddha’s words on words and think about how radically different our world would be if more people practiced his version of right speech, as a path to happiness.  We’re living in a time when communication is constant and words are cheap; we throw our words around on social media and the like as if they hold no consequences and are without any real or lasting impact on those who receive them, and our world. Because we don’t have to witness or hear the impact of our words online or via text, we’ve forgotten (or are purposing ignoring) the effects of the words we choose to put into our world.

As we age, our relationship with words and speech changes.  When we’re young we tend to believe that what we have to say is extraordinary, original, and right in some overarching, universal way.  We have a strong need to be known and recognized, to establish who we are.  It feels important thus to have our words heard and to use our words to correct any wrongs we encounter.  Our words are representations of our self; without them, we don’t feel we exist.

But as we evolve and hopefully a bit of humility sets in, we often realize how little we actually know, how much less we have to say than we thought.  And, how much has already been said by those before us.  So too, we recognize how many versions of “right” actually exist—in addition to our own. If we’re lucky, we start to lose the sense of awe we have for our own words.  Furthermore, we come to understand how powerful our words actually are, how deeply the words we choose impact our relationships and our own wellbeing.  If we’re paying attention, we assume a greater sense of responsibility for the words we put into the world.

In my own life, I’ve been actively paying attention to and practicing (or doing my best to practice) right speech for some time now.  I do this in many ways but three in particular stand out.

First, I consciously try to use my words to provide support and encouragement.  Before speaking, I think about how my words can point the other person towards something positive in themselves, something they do well or that might feel helpful.  I see my words as having the potential and purpose to remind another person of their own goodness and possibility.

Second, I choose to relieve my words of the burden of having to perfectly and completely capture my actual experience.  Words are powerful and at the same time layers of experience exist that are not conveyable or formulate-able with words. And so, rather than demanding that my words be absolute representations of my experience, and furthermore that I be understood by others, completely, through my words, I now accept that some of what we live internally is simply is not language-able…and that’s okay.  It has to be okay because it is.

Finally, I used to believe that when my partner said something I disagreed with, it was my responsibility to explain why he was wrong.  I felt I had to engage with and correct the wrongs I perceived.

Right or mindful speech, blessedly, has taught me how to say less not more.  I now practice restraint of pen, tongue and thumb.  Not speaking, writing or texting when I feel bothered or perceive a wrong, has in fact been most significant in my practice because of how directly and deeply I feel its results, both in myself and in my relationships.  It turns out that silence, particularly at the times when I most want to use a lot of words, is in fact more powerful than anything I could say.  Saying nothing says a lot.

Practicing right speech, I see that when my partner says something I don’t agree with, remarkably, I don’t have to say anything at all.  I can leave anything and everything just as it is.  I don’t need to change anyone else’s ideas to own my own ideas; my truth does not depend on adjusting anyone else’s truth.  My partner and everyone else can have their experience and I can have my own, simultaneously.  If it’s something that we need to find consensus on, perhaps something about the kids, I can also choose to press the pause button when I hear something that feels very wrong.  I can say nothing in the moment and take time to think about what I want to say, if anything, and how to say it in a way that can be helpful to the situation and that the other person can hear.  I have learned, in fact, that I have all sorts of choices in how to employ the power of speech.

I have discovered that relationships run far more smoothly when I take the path of saying less not more, and even nothing at all sometimes.  And, that the peace I’m trying to create through words, the peace that is always my end goal, is paradoxically maintained through the absence of words.  It feels miraculous every time I say nothing and simply let go without a response or reaction, other than silence.  This, for me, is emotional freedom.  Many moons ago, Mahatma Ghandi beautifully used his words to say this: “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”  And I would add, before using our words, we can ask, will these words help or harm?

The post Mindful Speech: Using Your Words to Help Not Harm appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The choice to reject fear and choose love can feel like something that only applies to moments of crisis, when we’re leaving a marriage, starting a new business, preparing to climb Mount Everest. But in truth, the opportunity to choose love and reject fear presents itself in the smallest moments of life, and specifically, in relationships with those closest to us. Love over fear is a choice every time someone tells us something about ourselves or has an experience of us that we don’t want to hear.

We hurt each other in intimate relationships—intentionally and unintentionally—that’s a fact. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we discover that we have hurt the other person when they come to us and share their pain, express their experience, and verbalize what we said or did that upset them. But often we discover that we have hurt the person through a different avenue, that is, when they criticize us or tell us what (they think) is wrong with us. In these cases, we generally feel blamed or attacked, and as a result, it can be more challenging to listen, imagine the situation through their eyes, and often impossible to empathize with their pain. We have a tendency in these situations to strike back (the best defense is a good offense) or alternatively, defend ourselves and prove the other person wrong. It’s a survival instinct and indeed, it can feel as if our very survival is at stake.

What’s at stake is not our physical survival, but the survival of our version of ourselves. The person we are being characterized or experienced as is not the person we think or believe ourselves to be. And so, we try to protect the identity of the good self, the self who is innocent, not to blame for what is being accused.

It’s a healthy instinct to question accusations that feel unfair or unwarranted. It’s also important to be able to set boundaries that prevent others’ projections and deflections from landing on us. If you are being assigned intentions that don’t belong to you, it’s important to be clear about your truth. It’s also healthy and necessary to protect yourself from pain that takes the form of emotional attack.  Emotional attacks and insults, meant to harm, are not okay, and need to be stopped. This is not an article about learning to be a doormat in service of some false spiritual goal.

And yet, there is an enormous opportunity in these relational moments, when someone we care about is hurt, and when (whether we understand it or not) we seem to be a part of their pain. There is an opportunity in these situations to choose to respond from love rather than react from fear.

When we feel emotionally attacked, blamed, or criticized in some way, we experience fear, even if we are not consciously aware of it. Our ego is threatened.  Our identity is threatened. Our narrative on our self is threatened. Conflict feels dangerous to the survival of the ego organism.  As a result, we react from the place of fear, which means defending our ego or attacking back, attempting to disable the threat. Fear, as a primal emotion, can sweep over us like a tsunami and cause us to react without thinking or consulting our more evolved and loving self. Our reaction is often out of alignment with how we feel, in our heart, about this other person.

If we want to choose love over fear as a life practice, we don’t have to wait for a crisis situation. We can simply use the opportunity presented in these tiny moments that happen every day, at all different levels—when the person we imagine ourselves to be, see ourselves as, doesn’t align with how we are being seen in that moment.

To choose love in these situations is to first, pause and take a full breath before doing anything. It is to stop and get quiet, to do our best to actually hear what the other person is saying without defending our version of who we are or what we think happened. It also means refraining from attacking back with a criticism of the other, or with something that they did or said (related or unrelated) that hurt us equally. It is to just listen—without conditions.

Operating from love is to set our own ego aside long enough to listen to the experience of the other, to be courageous enough to be willing to try and understand what the other person is experiencing, no matter how radically different it is from what we intended to happen, think happened, or believe was the cause of what happened. It is to have the strength of heart to understand and open our heart to what the pain is that the other is skillfully or unskillfully trying to express. A response (not reaction) that comes from love is listening to the other’s upset as if we were just ears hearing, ears alone, not ears attached to a head, attached to an ego, attached to an identity, attached to a person intent on remaining intact and unchanged.

To live from love not fear, on a practical level, is to shift from a goal of protecting our ego, being right, winning the argument, being not to blame, and move into actually being kind, being loving—in our actions. It is to be willing to stop proving that we’re a good person and actually be that good person—to be courageous enough to open our heart and be love even when our ego is screaming in fear.

And amazingly, in the moments when we have the strength to choose love over fear, we are rewarded not only with the knowledge and confidence that we have done something incredibly challenging and beautiful, but also, with the gift of experiencing ourselves as love, and something infinitely more than just the small, fragile ego we thought we were and so desperately needed to protect.  We are rewarded with a freedom that surpasses all other freedoms.  Ultimately, it is through our willingness to stop defending our idea of ourselves that we discover our true and indestructible self.

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Or perhaps you know the experience of trying to organize a vacation (that later everyone will enjoy), and battling to get everyone’s schedules lined up so as to be able to buy tickets or make reservations that require advance planning, and then being told that you are a control freak who can’t relax.

I have lived both of these experiences (and countless similar ones) more times than I care to remember.

I travel a lot with my family in the summer months.  It’s a time filled with joy, laughter, silliness, frustration, irritation, despair and everything else in the tapestry of human experience.  As beautiful as the time is, every year a part of me is a little bit surprised that we all return home together, in the same plane or car, with no one having departed the trip early, and with everyone still speaking to each other, kindly for the most part, and all still committed to making this grand experiment we call family work.

While the examples I give in the opening here are lighthearted and meant to amuse, the truth is, families offer the most satisfying, profound, and nourishing elements of the human experience and also some of the most challenging and painful.

This summer I’ve been thinking a lot about family and specifically, about what makes a family work, what increases the experience of love and joy and decreases suffering and frustration. What is it okay to ask of each other as members of the same tribe, this small group of people with whom we are choosing to journey through life?  And perhaps most importantly, what decisions do we want to make and intentions do we want to set, as a family, about how we are going to relate to and be with one another?

And so I asked myself, What is the one practice that we could/can implement as a family that would radically improve our experience of being together?  Can we set intentions and expectations that come from the highest part of ourselves, and actually try and meet them?

Here’s what I came up with: What if, as a family, we made a deal with each other that no matter what happens (within a healthy context) we won’t throw each other under the bus? That is, regardless of the current situation or what another person is doing or saying, whether we like it or not, we will stay steadfastly on each other’s sides?  When someone is doing something we don’t like, rather than the habitual reaction of  blaming and criticizing, and succumbing to our (and the family’s) story about the other, what if we were to agree to pause and consciously insert empathy where previously there was only judgment and attack?  What if we were to try and imagine what the other’s deeper intentions were in that moment? What if we were to consider what they might be struggling with that’s coming out in this particular form? What if we agreed to not rush to judge or negatively label each other, simply because the behavior at that moment is not pleasing?  Instead of blaming those closest to us for the behaviors they’re exhibiting, what if we took a moment or two to ask ourselves what the deeper longing is under their behavior, the longing that’s trying to express itself through this moment.  And, most radically, if we can help this person we care about to receive what they actually need?

What would it look like to be on the other’s side instead of against them in this moment? 

We are conditioned and habituated to respond to another’s words and behaviors based on our opinion of those words and behaviors, whether we agree with them and they support our own ideas about the world and ourselves.  We make up all sorts of narratives and interpretations about the other based on our opinions. But our thoughts and opinions about the other are not the same thing as the other, and not the same thing as the truth of that other.

To live in an environment of empathy in a family (or any relationship) is to make a commitment to trying to understand the other person through their eyes, what they’re living inside themselves–not through our ideas or narratives about them.  In order to love another human being fully, family or otherwise, we have to get our own ego out of the way and stop defending our version of reality (and through it, ourselves).  We must be willing to try and know the world through the other’s experience, to consider their deeper intentions, fears, vulnerabilities and longings, and in so doing, to refrain from judgment and feeding our stories about them.  The challenge that we can hold ourselves accountable to in our loving relationships is to care about and for the other’s experience, no matter how different from our own.

You could say that our real job as family is to know our loved ones’ inner experience  and to hold that knowing in the most sacred of embraces inside our own heart.  That means that we assume the responsibility of  doing what we can to lessen their suffering, and to help them harvest their deepest longings.  Fundamentally, our responsibility to each other as family is to not be yet another force that our loved ones have to work against in order to get what they really need.

Our tendency as human beings is to defend our separate selves, which includes our  thoughts, our versions of reality and our personal identity, a kind of giant yet fragile “I” ball.  And yet, paradoxically, when we join another human being, in trying to know their truth, we often discover that the “I” we were defending, who had all these ideas about the other and what should be happening, the “I” we thought we needed to survive, simply drops away without much ado.  And at that moment we experience ourselves as that loving presence that welcomes all, unconditionally.  Without the “I” in the way, we get to feel the full force of love as a living entity.

Every time we respond to another’s behavior with kindness, trying to put ourselves in their shoes rather than blaming, judging, or creating more stories about them, it’s like we take a step into the divine—into bliss.  The choice to look out through another’s eyes and heart fills our own heart with love.

Setting an intention within your family or any relationship to not throw each other under the bus is a profound event in the lifespan of a family or relationship.  Try out the “Taking each other’s side” or “No throwing under the bus” challenge with those you love.  Put a sign up on your fridge or a picture of a bus with a stop sign through it.  No matter what’s happening in the moment, no matter what the contents of the situation are, take a moment to stop, pause, and interrupt the habit.  See the situation as if  looking out through the other’s heart.  Live this difficult moment through the other’s most vulnerable place, through their pain, fear or weakness, through the child in them. Know that, just like you, they are trying to create happiness, to find peace and feel okay—for themselves and possibly even for you.

One post note: this practice applies to healthy family dynamics only.  It is not to be used in abusive or dysfunctionally destructive contexts.  This practice is not an opportunity to excuse abusive behavior of any kind.  Abusive behavior should not be tolerated in any context.

The post The One Decision That Will Radically Improve Your Family Life appeared first on Nancy Colier.

For many women and men, commitment includes an emotional acknowledgment of a we, in that we are with each other and choosing to be part of the couple.

And on a practical level, the possibility then of planning for a future, even if it is just the weekend. A sense of continuity. For others, commitment is about living together or getting married and sharing a home life. And for still others, it is a child that expresses the commitment desired. But wherever we fall on the spectrum, when our partner cannot provide the commitment we want and need, we are left to live in a difficult limbo, in something we want, but that we want more of and from, and don’t know if we’ll ever get.

How do we ever know when to stay or leave?

There are no hard fast rules, ever. Each time we make the choice to stay or go it is unique, and sometimes we make it again and again within the same relationship.

At the most concrete level, we can always ask our partner if and when he will be willing to meet us at the level of commitment we desire. Sometimes the answer we get is comforting and gives us the sense that we are heading in the direction we want, but more often than not the answer is unsatisfying and we are left not knowing if what we want in the relationship will ever happen, usually because our partner doesn’t know. Living then with the uncertainty is anxious-making and painful, and can lead to insecurity and resentment.

What’s most important is that we own our own truth, which is our desire for more commitment.

We must stop judging and blaming ourselves for needing what we need. For years I have heard people condemn themselves for being too demanding or not being able to figure out how to be okay without what they fundamentally want. I have heard every rationalization in the book, why it makes sense for us to do without what we fundamentally want. In the context of relationship, there is nothing Buddhist about not being able to make plans for the future, or with someone who is not sure about us. Even if everything is impermanent in the absolute sense, we still need to create places of security in our relative lives, where the ground is solid or at least as solid as it can be.

We get certain things in relationship and give up others.

When we’re not getting the commitment we want, we must ask ourselves if the balance is workable, that is, Am I receiving enough to give up what I’m giving up?

We can only answer this question one moment at a time and the answer does change over time. We know we must leave when we can no longer tolerate or bear the situation we are living in, when the equation shifts and it’s too painful to do without what we really want. We leave when the unrealized desire for commitment sedimentizes into resentment, and we can no longer enjoy or appreciate what our partner offers.

No one can answer the question whether to stay or leave for us.

But when we stop judging ourselves for wanting what we want, and dive deep into our own truth, the answer is there.

The post How Long Should I Wait For My Partner to Commit? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Most of us, when listening, are doing one of two things and sometimes both.  First, we are scanning for danger: is there something that our partner is expressing that conflicts with what we experience or believe. If so, then we think that our own experience or belief is threatened, as is the relationship itself.  We are taught that our partner’s truth must align with our own—or else someone’s truth and thus someone must be wrong.

We listen with the word “but” (not “and”) as our guide. If our partner shares an experience or thought that is different from our own, we connect the two experiences with the word “but” which implies that the experience on one side or the other is invalid, rejected, and… (Read more https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201610/the-key-intimacy-is-radical-listening-0)

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Most of us feel insecure in relationship from time to time.

But for some, it’s a chronic condition that never subsides. Insecurity in a relationship prevents us from speaking our truth, being genuine and honest with our partner and ourselves, and expressing what we really need and want. When we don’t trust the relationship, we control and contract our heart, to protect us from what we fear. As a result, the relationship…

Read more…

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201609/how-overcome-feeling-insecure-in-your-relationship-0

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The questions I raised included:

• How do we proceed when someone that matters to us assigns us negative intentions that are not ours?
• How much energy do we put into trying to correct their ideas so as to be seen and known correctly?
• How do we stay open, non-defensive, and emotionally intact when someone uses us as a place to unload their anger, guilt, and shame, and to successfully split off from their own negative feelings?
• How can we avoid internalizing their negativity and experiencing ourselves as the bad object that they need us to be—so that their internal system can function smoothly, their identity can remain intact?

The first thing to do when someone we care about blames or criticizes us is to examine our own behavior. Is there truth in what they are telling us about ourselves? What was your intention in this situation? If we find that there is validity in what they are telling us, we can take a good look at what they are pointing to, and try to use their words as a lesson and opportunity to grow.

To honestly investigate our own behavior takes courage. To acknowledge that we could have acted with more awareness in a situation, or could have done better, is not the same as blaming or judging ourselves. We are all works in progress and all in the process of becoming more aware.

But when we are in relationship with a chronic blamer, most of us have already done this kind of self-examination. We have found that the blamer frequently accuses us of intentions and actions that do not belong to us, and often belong to themselves. Part of what makes being in a relationship with a blamer so challenging is that our intentions and behavior seem unrelated to how they view and treat us. We may show the blamer who we are, and painstakingly explain, again and again, our truth—that we are not what they have decided. But the blamer needs us to remain the bad one, and needs us to see what he or she sees. However, if we pay attention and take some distance from the accusations, we realize that we have been assigned a role in the other’s internal narrative and are playing a (negative) character for them in their storyline—all of which is about them and not us. Even when our behavior demonstrates a different reality than what the blamer claims, the blamer is likely to remain more committed to keeping his or her narrative intact than to seeing the truth.

The great danger that projection presents when it comes from those close to us is it makes us feel like the bad person that the other person is relating to. Particularly when someone projects onto and blames us from a young age, we tend to take on the core-belief that we are bad—in whatever form our blamer framed it (I am the selfish one, I am the angry one, etc.). When we are young, we experience ourselves through the eyes of those close to us. We have not yet developed a private experience of ourselves that can refute the character they need us to be. We don’t yet have the capacity to separate who we are, in our own heart and gut, from the guilty person they see. Their delight or disapproval teaches us who we are. Until we understand and heal from projection, and discover a different experience of ourselves, we believe and/or fear ourselves to be their story of us.

The most critical practice to undertake when in a relationship with a blamer is to get irrefutably clear on who we are in our own heart—which only we can know. What is my truth?: This is the question in which we must marinate. The core of protecting ourselves from a blamer is establishing and continually supporting an impenetrable boundary between what we know about ourselves and what this other person needs to believe about us. This boundary requires that we be willing to dive deeply into our own heart, to discover our real truths—without distortion—with a fierce and unwavering intention to meet ourselves as we actually are. Our practice is to create a tether into our heart, and build a place inside ourselves where the blamer’s words cannot reach—where we know (and know we know) who we are. Rather than harming us, then, the other’s blame can then be used as a red flag, to remind us to return to our heart to discover what is actually so for us—separate from the other and their story. Their blame becomes the catalyst to direct our energy away from their narrative and toward our own inarguable truth.

It is heartbreaking when someone we love sees us in a way that doesn’t feel true or positive, but just because another person (no matter how much we love them) relates to us as bad or guilty does not mean that we are those things. We can mourn this person not knowing us, or not seeing us correctly—without having to become the object of their blame. Further, we do not need to convince the other of who we are to be who we are. We need not convince them of our innocence to be innocent. We can simply choose to reject their projections, to return them to sender, if you will. Their projections belong to them; we can let them pass through us. While we feel and grieve the gap between who we are and who they see, it is not a gap that must be, or in some cases, can be bridged.

While we can’t control what another person thinks about us or how they may distort our truth, we can most definitely control what we do with their thoughts. We can’t control whether another person will listen to or be interested in our truth, but we can control for how long and with how much energy we will attempt to correct their version of our truth. We can also control how and if we want to continue in a relationship with someone who chooses not to relate to who we actually are.

In relating with a blamer, some important questions to contemplate are:

1. When I search my own heart, is my intention in line with what the blamer is accusing me of? (Am I responsible in some way for what they are claiming and can I look at that part of myself?)
2. What is my heart’s intention in this relationship?
3. Have I tried to express my experience or my truth to this person?
4. Do I experience this person as interested in or open to my truth?
5. Am I allowing myself to experience the feelings that arise as a result of being unfairly blamed and/or not heard?
6. Can I honor and grieve the gap between who they are relating to and who I am?
7. Can I know myself as who I am even in the face of their need to relate to me as someone else?
8. Can I allow their negative projections to remain with them, and not take them in as my own?
9. Can I let myself be who I am and know myself as who I am, even with this person believing that I am responsible for how they feel?
10. Can I honor myself as innocent even in the face of the guilt they are assigning me?
11. Do I want to remain in relationship with someone who sees me in a way that is out of alignment with who I know myself to be? If so, why?

A longing for others to see and know us as we know ourselves—and, of course, regard us positively—is integral to being human. And yet, we can’t always change the way another person relates to us, or who they need us to be for them. Fortunately, we can always change the way we relate to ourselves. No matter the narrative tsunami we face, we can always be that kind and curious presence—for ourselves—which wants to know what is actually true inside our heart, and thus to know us as we really are.

The post What to Do About the People Who Blame You for Everything appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Boiled down, the conflict between my friend and me is about how we define “right” and “wrong,” and our attachment to our personal “rights” and “wrongs.” We all run into this conflict, frequently. Whether it’s a friend who holds a radically different political belief than us, or one who believes in a moral choice that we consider inhuman, or even something small, when their “best book ever written” is one that we think is utterly infantile. Whatever the current contents of “right” and “wrong,” we are continually having to figure out how to navigate relationships that contain intense dissonance, disagreement, and even disrespect.

What is to be done when our intimate friend or partner holds a belief that we cannot find a place for in our head or heart?

The first thing I decided to do was to convince my friend that he was wrong and that I was right… and I was certain I could do it. After all, sense was on my side. So I gave it the college try, the graduate school try, the saintly try, or whatever try you imagine is most admirable — I gave it that. I was sure that he would come around to sanity, and then I would be able to resolve my conflict with both loving my friend and also (what I consider) his unreasonable belief. But, as is usually the case with this approach — changing the other — it failed. My friend’s belief remains intact, and if anything, strengthened by all my explaining, arguing, and proving.

My next approach was to try and change my own belief so that I could agree with my friend — close the gap between our views, and settle my anxiety about seeing “right” and “wrong” so differently. I tried on his belief from every vantage point: compassion, reason, logic, historical precedent, and everything else I could think of; I really tried to make it make sense to me. But, as is usually the case with this approach — forcing a truth in order to eliminate cognitive dissonance — it failed. I simply could not get myself to believe or even respect my friend’s belief.

For Plan C, I went with the “let it go” approach. In essence, to accept that my friend believes this to be truth, and that it makes no sense to me, and it makes me angry and hurt… and then drop all of it, drop my experience of the situation and move on. Focus on what works in the relationship and let the rest go. But, as is usually the case with this approach — to decide (intellectually) to feel differently than I feel — it failed. Every time I saw my friend (and even when I didn’t) the fact that he thought that I was wrong and he was right made me feel unfairly judged and deeply resentful. And I couldn’t find a way to love and respect him — if he believed this. No matter what I told myself to do, my body felt tight and uncomfortable in his presence, and my heart felt closed. In “letting it go,” I was trying to eradicate the conflict, to create a ‘now’ that didn’t include all of these uncomfortable parts, but that ultimately didn’t exist. Truth was, I didn’t know how to make myself let go of or will away what felt like my actual experience of the situation.

And then I stumbled on an approach that offered some genuine relief. For the first time, I found a space that felt better, and one from which our friendship might be able to continue, even with the discord that it now included. I would call this approach the “letting it be” way. While “letting it be” sounds similar to “letting it go,” it is in fact profoundly different. “Letting it go” is an attempt to change reality while “letting it be” is literally, a letting be of reality the way it is. In this case, accepting that my friend believes what he believes — that this is so, and not something that must or is going to change. When I can let it be, I stop trying to change his belief, change my belief, push his belief out of my consciousness, or push my experience out of my consciousness. I can then allow myself to be present in the relationship and stop demanding that it become something else. While all the same factors are present as before — he still believes something to be right that I think is mad, he still believes that I am doing something fundamentally wrong — and yet, I have stopped fighting the is-ness of it. While theoretically it may feel counter-intuitive to surrender the fight against a ‘now’ that we don’t want, in practice it is in fact a great relief to the body, heart and mind, to literally, let reality be.

So perhaps you are somewhere in this process with a friend or partner, of trying to change, integrate, or find a way to live with an aspect of their belief system, their idea of right and wrong, that you fundamentally reject. And it is not easy process, when we feel so at odds with another’s values — particularly another that we care about deeply. And yet, if we can truly learn to surrender to who the other is, what the other believes — not who we want them to be or what we want them to believe — meet the other as he/she is in reality, and accept the differences between us, then, with that acceptance, that surrender — something in us profoundly relaxes.

From that surrender, that relaxation, the relationship can (sometimes) grow into something more intimate, but always into something more real. And perhaps even more importantly, the practice of “letting it be,” no matter what or whom we apply it to, is really an invitation and permission slip to ourselves — to drop into and be in this very moment, with what it actually contains, and to stop having to reject ‘now’ in the hopes of a different ‘now.’ This is the true gift of “letting it be.”

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I also received a number of responses about the difficulties that arise when trying to listen in the manner we crave. Some readers reported feeling like a doormat, abused, when they listened openly and without defending themselves, as their partner or friends spoke about matters that felt damaging to their own identity, and also untrue. And the question arose: What good could come from listening (and acknowledging) another’s experience that you know is untrue or perhaps caused by something they are not acknowledging?

These are important questions, and precisely what makes true listening such a challenge.

For years I had a dear friend who always talked to me about who had abandoned and mistreated her. What she never included in the dialogue was what she had done to create or contribute to these fractured relationships, some of whom were with people I also cared about, whose “story” of my friend’s behavior I also knew. When I listened to my friend openly and acknowledged her where she was, I felt as if I was supporting an aspect of her that was damaging not just to the way I felt about her, but also to her own ability to build different and more lasting relationships going forward.

Just listening to her, without correcting her view or telling her what was “true,” made me feel as if I was supporting her belief that she was the victim, and contributing to her inability to take responsibility for what she was creating in her relationships. I believed that her refusal to take ownership for her own behavior by playing the victim was unhealthy and unlikable, and precisely what kept her so unhappy and stuck. And while I wasn’t aware at the time, some part of me also believed that it was my responsibility to change her into someone who could do relationships differently; I wanted that for her. And so for years I essentially rejected my friend’s experience, refused to listen to her empathically, and “educated” her on her responsibility in these broken relationships — why it wasn’t just about what others had done to her but also about what she was doing. And truly, I thought that by doing so I was helping her change for the better — so that she could ultimately have a different experience of life. Also, in attempting to correct her experience, I was trying to hold onto a relationship that felt authentic to me, one in which my truth was also being voiced, not just hers.

My friend has since passed away and I miss her. I also know that I never really gave her what she needed, which was someone who cared about her enough to hold a non-judgmental space for the way she experienced her life, regardless of what I thought about it or whether it was the way she “should” experience it. Interestingly, all my educating, correcting, and, to some degree, blaming, never really made a difference in how she experienced her life. Knowing that her experience of being victimized was wrong, or at least caused by her, never made her feel any less rejected. If anything, it only added to it, as I was also rejecting her through my interpretations and well-intentioned self-improvement plans.

Sometimes I wonder: Had I been able to listen compassionately and not judge my friend for feeling victimized, would she have felt supported enough, or loved enough, to look at her own behavior? I’ll never know the answer, but what I do know is that endlessly trying to correct her experience into something I considered “true” did not give her what she needed to change.

In a smaller example, I now have a friend who is always complaining that the world is a terrible place. It’s his experience. I hate that aspect of him, and hate hearing about all the terrible things that have happened and are to come. I am a fundamentally optimistic person, and I suppose have some investment in that aspect of myself, as it keeps me feeling safe. So when I really listen to him about how the world is doomed, and simply let his experience be, without trying to convince him of something different, it can feel like I am supporting an aspect of him that I don’t enjoy, and that feels threatening to my own wellbeing. Listening without changing is no small affair, even when it is about a small affair. It is excruciatingly difficult to just listen and not try to change in situations where what we are loving through our compassionate presence is threatening to our own identity and/or the relationship itself.

The three biggest obstacles to deep listening:

1. We believe that truly listening to another’s experience, letting it be without interjecting our opinion or trying to change it, is the same as acknowledging that their experience is true — and not just true for them, but in a universal sense.

2. We listen not for how the other’s experience is for them, but rather for what their experience means about who we are, and how we are perceived.

3. We believe that we need to change or control the other’s experience in order to maintain our own identity.

If you aspire to become a better listener, or to create more intimacy in your life, try the following practices:

Try on the idea that acknowledging another’s experience does not mean that you share their experience, nor that you consider their experience to be universally true. You might play with phrases like, “I hear that it’s like that for you,” or, “The experience you are having sounds…” This allows you to set boundaries between your experience and theirs, and between what’s true for everyone and what they are feeling.

Set the intention to listen to the other without you in the way. Drop the lens of what their experience means to or about you. Set aside your opinions about their experience as you listen. Intend to simply understand what the other is experiencing.

Give yourself permission to “just” listen, and not do anything with what you are hearing. Set the goal to not change the other person in any way. Approach the communication as an opportunity to simply be curious and meet that person, where they are, with the aspiration to specifically not improve their experience or make them into someone else (more like you).

Listening deeply doesn’t just benefit the one being heard; it is also profoundly nourishing to the one who’s listening. Listening creates a circle in which two separate egos can dissolve into one love. When we can truly listen, we can truly love. And we can only feel loved to the degree that we feel listened to. If you want more and deeper love in your life, aspire to listen better, and then practice.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier                                                                                                                       Photo credit: https://onlineforlove.com/

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My path to becoming an enabler started out as most do, as someone trying to help, and thinking that I could. A dear friend who is also a relative came to me in trouble, having lost her job, about to lose her health insurance and unable to pay rent. An intelligent, honest and kind woman, she was not afraid of hard work and had always demonstrated a strong moral character. She desperately wanted to work and was trying diligently to find employment. When she first asked me for financial help, a short- term loan, it was a no-brainer. She’d never had trouble paying her bills, and there was no reason to think that she wouldn’t get herself out of this recent financial pickle. And so, without much thought, I wrote her a check…

Eight years later, she was still in that pickle only that pickle had morphed itself into a malignant sub-machine gun. For eight years she came to me for money on an increasingly frequent basis, with increasingly dire potential consequences, and with an increasing sense of entitlement. For the most part she paid me back although sometimes not for a long time, and sometimes after I had already loaned her more on top of what she already owed me.

Complicating the matter, she wasn’t just a relative and friend, she was also deeply involved in my children’s lives; she loved my children…and was also someone I loved, and still love. I didn’t want her to suffer as she was suffering or be tormented by the relentless fear and desperation she felt.

Also, I was in a position where I had a good job and some money in the bank; she had neither. I could help, which in my mind meant that I should help. She was in pain and also family after all.

Year after year she continued to ask me for money. But no matter how much I “helped,” her financial situation got worse. She was also growing more despondent and angry, more aggressive in her behavior towards me. She spent money that she didn’t have, assuming that I would cover her. Despite many frank and difficult conversations, nothing changed. Finally, despite great ambivalence, I told her that I could not continue to play this role in her life. I didn’t want us to resent each other. Difficult as it was, I laid down an official “no more” declaration.

Although I sounded clear outwardly, inside I was anything but. I felt terrible about the decision to stop “helping,” selfish, un-loving, and incapable of deep compassion. In light of my longtime Buddhist practice, I felt like a spiritual fraud.

She was on her knees, begging literally, and also threatening terrible things, if I didn’t rescue her. She looked like an animal with its leg in a trap, helpless and terrified, and enraged—at me. Looking at her face, white with terror, furious with desperation and humiliation, still I held my ground. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but some part of me knew I had to do it.

The result was that she acted out her threats and I believe, punished me for attempting to stop the cycle. She stopped taking care of her life, on every front, and ended up homeless (except if I would have her) and ill, without health care, and without any community. I spoke with relatives and former friends, but no one was willing/able to help her.

As I experienced it, she was now my third child, my charge. In truth, I still loved her, and wanted her to find her way back to independence, to enjoy her life. Nonetheless, I also knew that I had been bullied into saving her, despite my decision to stop, but it would not happen again.

Two years later, back on her feet at least minimally, having never paid me back the large amount of money she now owed me, she asked again. “Just to cover her for a short time” was how she put it, as if it were a small and casual affair, with no history. The tone of the request was perhaps even more shocking than the request itself. But this time when I said “no” I was certain I would not waver. What followed however, I could never have imagined.

This friend and relative, whom I thought I had been (lovingly) taking care of for years, ferociously attacked me verbally and emotionally. She abused me with her words and anger, accused me of wanting to destroy her, of being a terrible and sadistic person, the antithesis of family. And, she blamed me, fiercely, for the impending consequences she would suffer as a result of my not fixing her life. As she saw it, I was not only to blame for what would happen to her but actually intended for her destruction. I had abandoned her, and my abandonment was the cause of the horrible pain she was enduring. Finally, she assured me that I would go down with her when she fell, that she would make sure of it.

It was nearly impossible to process—violent rage and hatred from a person that I believed I had been “helping” for nearly a decade, someone that I loved and that I believed loved me!

She continued to bully me emotionally for months, to make me know and feel her suffering. She made life extraordinarily stressful not just for me, but also for my children. Her fury was terrifying and seemingly bottomless. Occasionally, between rages, she would approach me with kindness, express deep gratitude for all that I had done for her, and acknowledge my generosity. Still, no matter her approach, wrath and hatred or gratitude and responsibility, I painstakingly continued to say “no.”

I had become an enabler. Realizing this truth was like waking up from a terrible dream. With my role named, I was suddenly able to change. What was it that allowed me to know myself as an enabler, finally, after years of co-creating this disastrous situation—all with the best of intentions?

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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