In Real Love groups, conference calls, and other Real Love interactions, certain phrases have crept into use that are not consistent with the principles of Real Love, or that might cause confusion by their use. Recently I began a discussion of such phrases:
Phrases That Mislead, Part 2
Phrases That Mislead, Part 1
and now weāll continue.
In this blog we will discuss one such phrase, and in subsequent blogs weāll talk about some others.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COURAGE IN SHARING . . .
When people share the truth about themselves, we might respond with:
āThank you for your courage in sharing that.ā
āIād like to honor you for telling the truth about yourself.ā
āI really admire your courage in talking about that.ā
These expressions sound so positive and affirming, and nearly everyone would enjoy hearing them, so what could possibly be āwrongā with them?
- Theyāre expressions of praise. Iāve written a lot in other places, especially the book Real Love in Parenting about the disadvantages of praise.
- Theyāre expressions of the value of the person being praised. All three quotes could be summarized by the single sentence, āYou have courage and deserve to be admired and honored for that.ā Real Love isnāt about praising peopleās qualities. Itās about loving them unconditionally.
- Theyāre actually expressions about the speaker as much as they are about the person who is being praised. Letās look at the first sentence: āThank you for your courage in sharing that.ā When we say āthank you,ā weāre expressing gratitude that someone has done something for US, so this particular expression is actually a selfish statement that the person sharing has made the praise-giver feel better in some way.
- Second sentence: āIād like to honor you for telling the truth about yourself.ā The implication would be recognized by few, but the speaker places himself in the superior position of judging the value of the truth-sharer.
- Third sentence: āI really admire your courage in talking about that.ā This is really a statement about what the speaker admires. Itās about the speaker, not the truth-teller, who needs to be the real focus.
- When we praise people for ādoing well,ā they really notice when we donāt praise them, so without meaning to, we are ālovingā them conditionally.
- If you praise someone in a group, the other people DO notice the praise, and very often they then competeāthough usually unconsciouslyāto hear similar kind words about themselves. This competition does not lead to a feeling of unconditional love.
In summary, it is not productive to praise people for telling the truth about themselves. The real reason for people to tell the truth about themselves is to create opportunities to feel unconditionally loved.
The ārewardā for sharing the truth about ourselves, therefore, is LOVE and happiness, not praise or a valuation of our worth. Truth-telling is self-rewarding. It doesnāt need praise.
So, what CAN we say when someone tells the truth about themselves?
Many responses are possible, but theyāre all united by remembering what our primary responsibility is as wise men and women: loving and teaching. Letās look at some specific examples:
- Confirmation. Most people have little to no experience with telling the truth about themselves, so sometimes they need input when they DO tell the truth. Without that confirmation, how would they know what theyāre doing? Most peopleās initial efforts at truth-telling are really complaining, victimhood, anger, and so on.
- An example of confirmation would be to say, āTHAT is an example of telling the truth. You shared what was true about YOU, not about other people or what has been done TO you, and you included some feelings and behaviors that were less than flattering, which is remarkable.ā This is an example of teaching, and if you say it with kindness, itās lovingandteaching, the primary responsibility of a wise man.
- Feedback. This is much like confirmation but involves a little more teaching. For example: āPart of that was telling the truth about yourself, which gave people an opportunity to see you and love you. Part of it was not. Can you identify the part of what you said that was not real truth-telling?ā You might need to help the speaker see what part of their content was blaming or acting like a victim, for example.
- Correction. This is the flip-side of the āConfirmationā paragraph above. Most people have never really told the truth about themselves, which means telling the truth about who they really areāthe choices they make. Why? Because in the pastāfrom childhood, in factāit was always too risky, exposing them to criticism and rejection.
- Instead they learned to tell the truth about what other people had done TO them. This is what victims do. So after a victim has spoken for only a short timeāmaybe a minute, perhaps longer if itās their first time in a Real Love settingāwe can interrupt and say,
- āYouāre telling the truth about OTHER people, not you. Youāre describing what was done TO you. If you want to create an opportunity to feel unconditionally loved, youād need to talk about the choices YOU have made in life.ā Almost invariably, we then need to give them examples of what this looks like, since they really donāt know.
- Summarize. People often gets lost in the sheer volume of their words, so by the end of their monologue, even THEY donāt know what they were trying to say. They just vent like a volcano, which accomplishes nothing. So you can summarize what somebody is saying: āYou just said that all your life youāve felt alone and afraid. Nobody has ever really understood you or cared about you.ā
- I canāt count how many people have wept when Iāve said something like this, because they finally felt understood. Until that moment they didnāt realize what they were trying to communicate. This particular example in quotes is mostly about what was done TO someoneāas described in the āCorrectionā paragraph aboveāand not a great example of truth telling, but itās a start for most people.
- Identify the effect. Truth telling is not a technique or a ritual. It is done for a PURPOSE, so that people can feel understood and loved. Most people have never had this experience, so the truth telling alone is overwhelming. They need help identifying other feelings that are associated with their truth telling.
- For example, you might say to someone who has just shared the truth about themselves, āYou just shared with us that you XX and YY, and that you feel ZZ. How do you feel now that youāve done that?ā Often they really canāt identify their feelings, sometimes because theyāve never HAD those feelings before.
- You can help by offering some examples of feelings, asking them if they recognize those feelings within themselves: safe, connected, exposed, afraid of rejection, closer to the group, understood, not rejected, not criticized, loved, and so on.
- Encouragement. If the speaker felt some of the positive feelings listed immediately above, you might consider introducing them to the idea that these feelings could be repeated. For example: āIt feels good to be understood and to feel connected to people, doesnāt it? You might consider that the next time you have an opportunity to tell the truth about yourself. If you remember the feelings youāre having right now, youāll be less afraid to be truthful next time.ā
In future blogs weāll discuss more phrases that can be misleading in our discussions of Real Love.