Communication: Helping a body-focused person talk about feelings

We all want to be understood. We need our emotions to be acknowledged, but sometimes no matter how much time you spend talking about your feelings, they seem to go unnoticed. However, some of us use language that comes out as an accusation rather than a report, and some understand reports of emotions as accusations. This creates a barrier that seems insurmountable, but can be very easily fixed.

My mother tells me over and over how she never hugged me enough when I was a child and she feels that has created my problems in my adulthood, although the problems I have with her have absolutely nothing to do with that in my perspective. So I reply to her: “That’s not what it is, I simply need to TALK to you. I need us to have a proper conversation for once!” “But I know I didn’t hug you enough when you were a child.” “Mum, this isn’t about my childhood, it’s about my teen years and adulthood.” “I know I was distracted with work when you went to high school. I should have been there more.” “This is not about that, mum, I UNDERSTAND you were distracted, that was fine, I had an issue with the way you spoke to me and how you still speak to me.” “But I had no time to do your homework with you.” “Mum… That is not what…” and we go around in circles about her guilt of not hugging me and being too tired to think after work when I was in high school.

What I should have said: “So you FEEL LIKE you haven’t hugged me enough when I was a kid.” “Yes.” “Mum, I don’t feel like that at all. I don’t think you were at all distant of me when I was a child.” (I will test this out later and report. :D) “But then what is it?” “I don’t think there was anything wrong with my childhood, I just feel like you had expectations of me that I couldn’t reach.” And onwards.

When she brings up the years when she was too busy, I should repeat that back to her: “So you feel like you were too tired to pay attention to me, and you feel like that has made me feel alone and ignored?” When she knows I know what she means, I can move onto what I really had a problem with. I need to repeat what she told me with as similar words as she used as possible so she knows I understood her message.

When you get stuck in an accusation cycle, repeat their message to confirm you got it

When you get stuck into an accusation loop, help them to phrase it into a “so you feel” or “so what you are saying”, because it is always factual that we feel what we feel and once we hear it repeated out loud in the form of “you feel” we acknowledge there might have been an error in interpretation of the other person’s actions.

My True Emotion Mirror used to accuse me of being interested in him only “because of the way he looks.” He always wore an Armani suit and he always looked like he had millions on his bank account although I knew he was just about as broke as I was. I should have said: “So you feel like I am after you because you look rich?” When you say it back at someone, they’ll need to reconsider it, if their statement is even remotely in the ball bark of being realistic. When they acknowledge you got it, then, you can move on to the next phase; “Why would you think that? So you think I am a gold digger?”

Once our feelings get acknowledged, we can trust that they’ve been heard, registered, and understood, and then, we can move onto the next point of discussion.

I never thought I would repeat this same advice to help people talk about feelings

I admit, this is not the first time I’ve heard someone giving similar instruction to this, but I never took that too seriously. I just felt it is STUPID to start repeating sentences that were just said, because I personally don’t need people to do that, they can jump over the parrot bit and move over to their comment: “Well I felt like you needed help at school because you were so shy” would have been an appropriate reply for my mother when I would have told her something that bothered me. She, on the other hand, would have felt we were speeding towards a full blown argument spewing accusations at each other without listening because the feelings weren’t acknowledged before another “accusation” was loaded up. Instead, she would start crying and complain how I think she’s a bad mother. No matter how many times I’ve told her I don’t think she was a bad mother or that I was not traumatized by my childhood, she hasn’t heard it. (I am traumatised by our communication problems since I got old enough to HAVE them, but not by my childhood events.)

When not to repeat people

Be careful though not to make this a habit with people who actually do handle their emotions quite well without blockages, because they will feel you are talking down at them and treating them like morons, or making a mockery of what they are saying, which is why they never do that to you, either, by default. Only use this when someone is clearly making a wild accusation or assumption about you, or they are getting stuck in the same emotion that they simply cannot handle or process properly. I must say if someone did do this to me, I would probably not feel great about it, at all. So again, this falls under the category of the Young Soul* / the Old Souls* differences to be aware of. (I can already feel my mother starting a question with “do you feel like…” going into an assumption she will not allow me to correct because she has already made up her mind on how I feel or how I should or should not feel… 😀 )

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