Lindsey Walsh completes his series of Top 10 Relationship Skills with this blog. The series has been a popular one. See the bottom to review the previous 9, if you’re interested in catching up on past entries in the series!
“ [T]aking time to focus attention on the inner experience in the moment actually also makes us more sensitive to the inner life of others”
– Dr. Daniel J. Siegel
Imagine that tuning into your own emotions is as natural to you as breathing is.
Imagine that you instantly become aware of your own rich inner experience before reacting to another person or your environment.
Imagine that you naturally and effortlessly tune into your own signal – Am I fuzzy? Too-jumbled? Too loud? inside – before trying to change the station on another person’s radio.[1]
Imagine that once you’ve taken this split-second to tune into your own self, your own feelings, values, wants, and needs, that then you respond to the person or situation before you.
I bet that when being aware of yourself is as natural as breathing, you will be a lot more curious and compassionate towards others.
What sorts of things do you say and do when you are tuned to yourself?
I bet you are more likely to be real with yourself and others. That you say, “This hurts my feelings” rather than saying, “You are always a hurting me.” In fact I bet the “always’” and “never’s” just sort of disappear from your vocabulary, because nothing always happens always never does.
You can quote me on that.
Knowing your own feelings before trying to solve a problem is exactly like the current ad campaign, “If your texting, who’s driving?” I like that campaign a lot because it’s really about mindfulness. It’s about awareness of our inner-world and our surroundings in the given moment. It’s absolutely true that if my eyes are on my phone when I’m driving, they aren’t on the road ahead of me. So I don’t text and drive.
Same goes for when my child is around: if I’m checking my phone/computer/CBC news every 5 minutes, I’m not checking in with myself and I’m certainly not checking in with him.
In other words:
If I’m texting, who’s parenting?
So I don’t text and parent.
We’ve all learned the hard way that that’s when things go sour, haven’t we? When we take our eyes off of the road and allow ourselves to be distracted by something that doesn’t really matter to the here-and-now, that’s when we miss the road signs informing us that there are beautiful vistas ahead.
Or the signs alerting us to danger.
Or the sign that shows that we’re about to drive off of a beautiful vista and into danger.
When we’ve tuned-out, we drive/parent/communicate poorly and people get hurt.
That’s not to say that we need to be 100 percent focused on the real world all the time. You only need to focus on driving when you are driving. Same for parenting: it’s fine to not focus on parenting when mini-you is at a friend’s, or school, or grandpa’s house – let them deal with the little guy for a while.
Ditto for if she’s in her room with her friend Mikala. Then you only need to focus about 10% of your attention on them. Keeping an ear open while doing the dishes or reading your book should suffice.
But when your daughter and Mikala notice that Bart-the-Guppie is floating upside-down in his tank, then you can stop, tune into yourself, and find out how you’re feeling about this. If you share my distaste for shopping, this is what you will be feeling: “I’m ANNOYED: Now I need to go back to Petland to buy another bleeping fish” and knowing you’re annoyed, you can ask yourself,
“If you’re imagining the future, who’s parenting now?” [2]
Attunement: Tuning in
And then with your annoyance in check, you can tune into the girls with more awareness of what’s going on with them. You’ll notice that your daughter thinks nothing of it and will flush him down the toilet with gusto simply because this is the 8th guppy lost this year.[3] However, you notice that Mikala has gone very quiet and that Bart-the-Guppie’s death seems to be stirring up some deep stuff for her. You will become curious about what’s going on with Mikala, and will know not to rush to the toilet singing songs about fish and death and flushing.
Simply because you’ve tuned into yourself, your kid, and her friend, you will not suck at handling this tricky situation.
The payoffs for tuning into yourself are huge.
- Firstly, you get to know yourself, your triggers, and your sweet-spots. So when you get jammed up, you can do something about it rather than reacting in a knee-jerk fashion and making it worse. It’s true: knowing your feelings actually helps you feel brave and secure rather than stuck and hooked all the time.
- Secondly, by tuning into yourself, you gain a deeper understanding of the people around you and they actually begin to feel beheld and beloved in their bones. This becomes a positive feedback loop where you and those around you become more-and-more tuned-in and loving simply because you took the brave first step to know yourself, and you took the second step to be curious about them.
- Thirdly, you get to live in reality rather than in la-la land most of the time. Living in the here-and-now of reality allows us to bask in the good times and to protect ourselves (and our loved ones) in the bad.
It might also wise you up to the fact that Bart-The-Guppie-The-Second needs his tank cleaned. And this might just save you a 10th trip to PetLand.
Be well,
Lindsey Jay Walsh, MMFT
[1] I am forever grateful to Miriam Baron for this rich metaphor.
[2] You can quote me on that.
[3] Note to you: Stop buying guppies!!!!
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