Being understood without being defensive

Empathy tells us, through the portal of another’s pain, that care is required, usually through the means of understanding, but defensiveness stifles empathy’s flow.

Years ago, the flow of the communication in our marriage around conflict had two channels; one that was good, one not-so-good. One where I would communicate my pain in a way that would leave my wife feeling attacked, and another way I would communicate my pain where she was able to empathise.

In the first situation, I did not bear my pain well, and whether me being upset was my wife’s fault or not (most often not!), she would end up wearing it. In the second situation, I bore my pain responsibly, in that I owned the fact of the ugliness of my feelings.

In the first situation of my communication, I hadn’t discerned that the one I wanted understanding from had also become the target of my displeasure. I felt horrible and needed others to feel horrible along with me. It solved nothing and only upset us both.

In the second situation of my communication, I discerned correctly, that though I was in pain emotionally, nobody else knew what I was feeling, and if you had have asked me, I could hardly tell you what I was feeling, either. From this standpoint, I simply reported how I was feeling with no defensiveness in sight. I didn’t know what I needed to fix my problem, but I knew simply being understood helped a great deal.

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When we’re in pain, we feel perplexed. When we’re in pain, our loved ones want to help us, and it’s tragic, not to mention harmful, when we cannot moderate our behaviour in such a way as to recognise that being in pain makes us vulnerable to hurting others in the process.

We are vulnerable to many assumptions, to the stresses that bring us to the point of pain, to the loss we feel, to the doubts that dominate our mind’s eye, to just feeling awry, and to so many other things that feed into a feeling state we just cannot bear.

If only we can stay the moment, and bring stillness into the core of our pain, and to be medicated by the Spirit of God, who calms us, which is a mystery.

When we go to a loved one to share our pain,
we must go with the willingness
to ‘own’ our own pain.

It’s clearly not just our fault that we’re experiencing this pain. There are reasons and there are causes beyond even our awareness. But if we take our pain to an unknowing person, one who is simply there and available to listen and to seek to understand, we must take our pain to them in a responsible way.

We cannot attack them, just as we need to be careful that we don’t go to them in such a despair that we cannot be turned around. We need to go to them with a simple preparedness to share our heart in a way that owns the state of our own heart.

No one should be condemned for feeling what they feel. Indeed, it always feels a risk to report exactly how we feel, for the judgement we feel we may receive. But if we are prepared to share what we’re feeling, without defensiveness, we make it easier for the person supporting us to empathise.

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Isn’t it beautiful in a relationship when we both seek to understand and to be understood? But if we demand to be understood, people will never understand us. We can never demand to be understood, but the desire to be understood is a human need.

With this in mind, we ought to fervently seek to understand, knowing that when people truly need understanding they will often come across as demanding to be understood, and they may not even be aware of it.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash