Hearing and Understanding

Thursday, Oct 26, 2023

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Talking with a friend about communication and the ways it can go wrong, I remembered a quote my science teacher used back in high school. I liked it so much that I memorized it.

“I know you believe you understand what I think I said,

but I’m not sure you realize what you think you heard is not what I think I said.”

I love it. It highlights that each and every step along the way can lead to a failure to understand.

• What I WANTED to say

• What I THINK I said

• What you THINK you heard

• What you THINK I said, or meant to say

• Whether you UNDERSTOOD what I said

• Whether you BELIEVE you understand

• Whether you REALIZE that you may have misunderstood

• My UNCERTAINTY about whether you grasp the possibility of a misunderstanding

I work in a call center. Each and every day I witness miscommunication. People use words differently. We have gaps in our understanding. We come from different cultures, adding layers of context to what we say. We misspeak and mishear one another. We let our emotions and preconceptions influence the exchange of words.

I make mistakes ALL. THE. TIME. I catch myself making assumptions, and start responding to things that aren’t true. When I do, I call out my misunderstanding and try to fix it. It’s hard to notice, and even harder to fix when you see it. But it’s worth it.

We usually don’t stop to look at misunderstandings. We sit in our personal perception, where no-one else can be, and refuse to see things from other perspectives. We are the blind men in the room with the elephant, arguing with each other about what the elephant is because we’re stuck in our own heads.

This is just how our brains work. Whether we want to or not, we make assumptions to save time and mental energy. The other people on the road know that green means go and red means stop. People in a shady neighborhood should be treated with caution. Food that I enjoyed in the past will continue to be delicious. My (fictitious) annoying coworker has nothing of value to say.

This isn’t fair, of course. Just like food isn’t always prepared the way you like it, and drivers make mistakes on the road, you might be surprised by that coworker. You might learn something about their perspective that turns annoyance into sympathy, or compassion. You let your prejudice influence what you hear them say, and that does justice to no one. 

Being more mindful with how you interact with people is hard. It’s time consuming. We can’t do it all the time or we would be bogged down, emotionally exhausted, and never get anything done. But when it matters, when you have time, it‘s worth taking the time to ask:

• This is what I HEARD you say. Is it what you mean to say?

• This is what I UNDERSTAND you to mean. Is that what you mean?

• What do you think you HEARD me say?

• What do you THINK I mean?

• What do you UNDERSTAND that to mean?

Even when you take this approach, the other person might not be there with you. You can’t control that. You can only do the best that you can to understand the possible pitfalls and how to avoid them. Hopefully they will sense that you’re trying to meet them halfway, but it’s still worth it if they don’t.

Something simpler powerful tool is to tell the other person when you think there's a misunderstanding.  

• I think I might have misheard you. Can you repeat what you said?
• I'm hearing you, but I'm not sure what you mean. Can you rephrase it?
• I'm having trouble understanding you. Can we take a moment to make sure we're on the same page?

This shows the other person that you're interested in actually understanding them, not just responding to what they say.  

As I’ve gotten older, my values have shifted heavily toward kindness. And now that I’ve had time to think on this twisted, knotted topic, I think understanding is a close second.

Always be kind. Always seek to understand others and, when possible, to be understood.

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Ironically, after I shared that quote I decided to look up who said it first… and discovered that I’d remembered it wrong for the past 28 years!

The original was from Robert J. McCloskey, and American Ambassador to the Netherlands and Greece. What he ACTUALLY said was:

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure that you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

I don’t know if I mis-remember what I learned back in high school, or if I memorized it wrong in the first place, or maybe even that my science teacher misquoted Mr. McClosky. Either way, I think it’s a perfect demonstration of what the quote means.

But you know, maybe it’s because I’ve lived with it for so long, but I kinda like my version better… 

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What are my qualifications? None, except for my own experience and a desire to help. Going back to Doctor Who, “I am an idiot … passing through, helping out.” I hope my own struggle with my darkness can help you with yours, or understand the struggle of someone you love.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination

Difficult Talks

Thursday, Oct 19, 2023

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Being in the right place at the right time also applies to little things.

I’ve started a habit of practicing tai chi in the park across from work during my breaks. It’s my moving meditation, which I’ve always found easier than static, sitting Zen.

The other day, a little fox came to join me. Well, they weren’t there for me - the poor city fox was checking the garbage bins in the park. I was just part of his scenery. But it was very special to me the way he looked at me, acknowledging my presence, and got within a few meters of where I was, all while I continued to go through the movements. No fuss, no startle. Just a couple of creatures doing their own thing.

It really made my day.

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This week I had a difficult conversation with my eldest, who I call the Professor. It was a struggle to find the right thing to say. I’m still working through it.

He’s 15, has what is commonly called high-functioning autism, ADHD, type 1 diabetes. He’s smart, funny, creative, and has a huge heart.

He has a difficult history with school. He’s a smart kid, but he struggles with the emotional tools, executive function, and self-regulation he needs to function in a classroom. He also has memory problems and extreme sleepiness that may be medical, or may be rooted in avoidant behavior. He should probably be on medication for his ADHD, but his medical situation is already complicated, and it’s been difficult to get him the much-needed meds he’s already taking.

He’s only really been in school for junior high. It was difficult for him to be there, to stay engaged. He now has deeply rooted school avoidance, complicated by his need for heavy nursing support and a tendency to sleep through class.

The transition to high school was a non-starter. Within the first few months he simply stopped attending. It’s not surprising. By nature, high school has less support. By this time last year he had stopped attending at all.

This school year, his mother enrolled him in a private school. She crowd funded the tuition, since neither of us can afford private school, which is incredibly generous. The school looks great, too. The staff are engaged and responsive. They understand the Professor’s struggles and do what they can to support him. I’m honestly still worried about his diabetes care, but the people involved are working together as a team to help the Professor take charge of his own medical care.

During visitation I asked him how school was. He gave a lot of vague answers, forgot a lot of details, and eventually let slip that he didn’t attend all week.

This triggered the talk.

He knows about his mother’s crowd funding for the school. He understands that he has this opportunity because of the generosity of strangers online. He was surprised to learn that his grandfather offered to pay for the school moving forward, as well, but that his mother turned down the offer.

The Professor has special needs. There is no denying that. He’s also gifted, when he’s able to get things done. I marvel at his mind sometimes.

No one expects him to abruptly become enthusiastic about school and get straight A grades. He doesn’t have the groundwork in place for that yet. All he needs to do is go to school and try. But I made it clear that I expected him to go.

He felt guilty. I don’t blame him, considering. I suspect he did before the conversation, becoming increasingly uncomfortable whenever he fails to attend school. It’s a complicated problem. On the one hand you have this expectation that you go to school, study, and learn, compounded by the fact that other people have paid for your schooling. On the other hand, you have very real, persistent problems with sleep, attention, motivation, and attendance. There is anxiety and entrenched avoidant behavior. And, in a sense, he’s never really been asked to do this before. When things get too hard, he’s been allowed to stay at home, craft, and play video games. 

He and I agreed that guilt is a terrible feeling. I didn’t want him to have to feel it, and it was too bad that talking about the facts of the situation made him feel this way. But we also talked about how guilt can be useful. It’s a warning signal telling us that we’ve done things and, if we continue the behavior, people in our community may begin to withdraw their support. It’s a wakeup call to change.

This was really tricky. I didn’t want him to think that all guilt was good. I’m not sure how well I did explaining it, or if he was ready to hear it, but I tried to help him understand that we always need to sit with an emotion and see if it’s coming from a place of truth, whether someone else is trying to force us to feel it, or its a maladaptive response to another trigger. I hope he understood that.

We sat together and he let out his discomfort. It involved crying, silence, a lot of tissue, and a bit of a break to recover. He knows that burying the guilt doesn’t help. He processed it, and then we talked about what to DO with it. 

We went back to the facts. He needs to go to school. We, his parents, need to get him to school. He understands what’s at stake if he doesn’t go. He understands that even if he has funding for this year, or next, no one is going to want to donate for him to go to a private school that he doesn’t actually attend. That would be like buying gourmet food and throwing it all away.

The thing we ended with was how proud I am of him. He has grown up a lot, and despite his significant challenges, he is doing better. He is trying. And he knows that I believe in him.

Get started. Keep going. Be okay with mistakes along the way. We can help him work on the rest when the time comes.

I don’t know where I heard it first, but what happened to us (i.e. autism, ADHD, diabetes) isn’t our fault. It IS our responsibility to recover from it and learn how to move forward, along with help from those who love us. 

I'm still thinking a lot about the talk. I don't know how well I handled it, whether I said the right thing or not, whether I said too much or too little. I know I have to trust him to pick up what I'm putting down, but it's hard when I only have him for 14% of the time. If he remembers anything, though, I hope it's that I'll be with him no matter what.

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What are my qualifications? None, except for my own experience and a desire to help. Going back to Doctor Who, “I am an idiot … passing through, helping out.” I hope my own struggle with my darkness can help you with yours, or understand the struggle of someone you love.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination

Lessons From My Ex

Thursday, Oct 11, 2023

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How much do you let the actions and words of other people disturb your peace?

I’ve had to wrestle with this question a great deal for the past few weeks.

I found out that my ex wife, who I used to hold in high regard, posts about me several times a week. She links to this blog, comments on it, and then she and her friends do deep dives into what I said. I haven’t read the posts, thankfully, but it has been described as “toxic” and “not pretty.” I also have confirmation that she routinely exaggerates the truth, twists it, or outright fabricates things that aren’t true. Someone phrased it as “embellishing” and “adding content.”

We separated at the end of 2016. It’s been almost 7 years. So my question is, why? Why bother attacking me? Why waste time attacking me on social media when I can’t even see her posts? 

I have a pretty good guess.

We have 4 kids together, so we’re going to co-parent for years to come. She needs to vent about me, and about the medical and educational professionals who dare to disagree with her. She needs to vent to people who are going to support her without question, not challenge her statements or engage in meaningful discussion. 

She also does it to control the narrative of her life. It allows her to tell the story the way she would prefer others to see it. It gives her a sense of control over her life and supports the image she prefers to cling to. It allows her to show that world that she’s never at fault. It’s always her awful ex-husband, or the teachers and principals, or the doctors who disagree with her. So maybe my not seeing her posts is part of the point. 

She has also learned that it’s lucrative. She garners sympathy from her following, which she then monetizes in the form of multiple GoFundMe campaigns. She has raised money for legal fees against me, legal fees against the school board for shutting down during COVID, for respite care, for laundry services, and most recently to raise money for our son to go to a private school. She’s gathered a minimum of $70K from supportive friends, family, and strangers online.

I suspect my ex made posts like this for years. I have avoided defending myself for seven years, because I felt like it was unnecessary. Everyone who knew us was entitled to their opinion. It wasn’t my place to force them to pick sides. I believed the facts would speak for themselves. I believed that the people who knew me would ask if the version they were being told matched the person they believed me to be. People would take both sides with a grain of salt, because we were both hurting at the end of a 14 year marriage.

For the first several years after separation I did my best not to say anything bad about her. I asked my friends to do the same. I believed she was acting similarly, and it breaks my heart that I was wrong.

Anything I did online was being used to track me or was weaponized against me. Her friends even snooped around my LinkedIn profile. I pared down my online presence until I only followed one or two people and was followed by similar numbers. I’ve greatly censored my content, afraid that if I post anything more than a cat pic it would be used against me.

To be fair, I also have a tendency to push everyone away when I’m hurt, and for the past 8 years there has been a lot of hurt. I isolated myself and I shut down several times. Struggling with that is part of what this blog is for, to break the maladaptive habit of hiding when I’ve been hurt.

Between the rules I set for myself, my ex wife’s attacks on me, and my difficulty with my depression, I came to a place where I never defended myself in public. Most of our mutual friends never heard my side of the story. I thought they would ask, but they never did. I let them go, thinking it was the right thing to do. Focus on myself, focus on the kids, and let the facts speak for themselves. Let people make up their own minds.

Well, that was a bit idealistic and naive of me. And it’s hard for others to judge whether or not her side of the story rings true if I never give them something to compare it against.

This blog, which I thought was anonymous (oops! It’s not), is pretty much the only place I’m active, and now I’ve learned that it’s being harvested for hate fuel by my ex wife. 

Meanwhile, I wonder whether my ex ever admits to her own failings. Does she mention when she violates the parenting agreement? Does she tell the world when she makes unilateral decisions, like changing doctors or canceling nursing services? Does she let her friends know when she tells medical professionals not to talk to me when our order requires us both to have access? Does she laugh it off online when family members give money to her for the kids birthday and Christmas, but when the kids ask for their money it’s “not available?”

Talking about her is hard. It’s one reason I normally don’t online. Our history is long and complicated and disagreements are going to be just as thorny. I thought keeping our conflict private was the sensible thing to do. It’s a shame that she makes them so public, and one sided. She has a strongly reinforced echo-chamber and she uses it often.

Well, what am I going to do about it? I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you what I won’t do.

I’m not going to ask her to stop. I have, and she calls trash talking someone with her friends when they can’t defend themselves “emotional support.” She wouldn’t listen. She has no incentive to.

I’m not going to try to convince her followers to see my side of things. I don’t need them to believe me. If they’ve believed her for this long without asking for my perspective, I don’t see why they would care now. If they did, they could have commented on a post, or reached out to me.

I’ve let off a little steam here. I broke one of my main rules when I complained about my ex wife. On the other hand, I had seven years of pent up frustration, watching her aggressive bid to win in the court of public opinion through disinformation. Either way, I don’t want to make a habit of it.

I’m not sure what the right thing to do here is, at least not for me. For seven years I refused to fight. That hasn’t exactly worked out. I’ll have to think about what makes the most sense for everyone, especially the kids.

My ex has taught me an important lesson. I let her bad behavior determine what I am allowed to say and do. Whether she did it intentionally or not, she used fear to draw a noose around me, controlling me. But now I see my fear reaction for the pointless waste that it is. She will always publicly criticize me. I don’t see the value in letting that control me anymore.

No more hiding. No more censoring myself - although having good social media etiquette is never a bad thing. And no more worrying what she and her friends are doing with my posts. I found out by accident, and it’s as bad as I could have imagined. It’s also beyond my control, and not worth my time.

It’s important to remember that I can only speak from my perspective, which is understandably negative because of the contentious relationship I have with my ex. I can only guess at her motivations, although I think I’m pretty close.

I don’t blame her for not liking me. There are good reasons on both sides for our marriage to have ended - reasons that I have apologized to her for after she left. I don’t hate her. That would be pointless. I don’t I don’t wish her ill. On the contrary, I want her to be happy and healthy. I want her to find a new partner and thrive. It will be better for my kids if she thrives, so it would be foolish to wish otherwise.

I don’t blame her for her feelings, but I do blame her for her actions. That is one lesson I’ve learned. Everyone is entitled to their feelings. What they choose to do in response to them is up to them.

She is responsible for her side of the story, just as I am responsible for mine. And in the end, I am only ever able to control myself.

So:

I will continue to learn how to process emotion, let go, and, if possible, forgive.

I will continue to recognize and learn from my mistakes.

I will continue to acknowledge that other people can learn from their mistakes.

I will continue to accept responsibility for where I am in life and how I got here.

That’s what this blog is for. To go on that journey, make those changes, and do my best. I just hope my ex can do the same.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination