Com101 – The Catch 22 of Communication

The bottom 3 categories are more likely to involve needs that surface as core emotions.  These are signals on our internal emotional dashboard that we described in the article, “Emotionally, Where Am I At?”  Just to name a few, these are emotions like: sad, mad, glad, scared, surprise, disgust, hungry, tired, bored, exposed, or pain.

It’s obvious that when we need something simply like food because it will create a simple emotional signal like hunger.  Unfortunately, even with simply signals like hunger, we still must navigate our mind as it tries to figure out what to do about it.  Our ego slips in and attempts to assign blame to the situation while identifying a way to resolve the unmet need.  We might have to take a moment to sort out our thoughts before we say, “I’m starving because you, you, you,” instead of, “I’m starving.  I need food.  I’m going to eat a snack.  Do you want some too?”

The interdependence category is much harder to navigate.  All of these needs involve others, so it’s much more likely that our brain will attach blame to the people around us instantly.   Odds are, we’re feeling blame-filled interpreted emotions when we have an unmet interdependence need.  We must put more effort into digging deeper, passed the interpreted emotion, to uncover the core chemical signal of the primary emotion in this category.

We naturally want to communicate our interdependence needs to get the world around us to change.  Our ego fools us into believing we’re simply communicating our needs and emotions, but we’re not.  Instead, we blame, shame, criticize, judge, and create obligation on others.  It’s a constant issue.  How do we get our interdependence needs met if we can’t talk about them?  What do we focus on?

We focus on digging down passed the interpreted emotions and to the core need and core emotions.  Like we’ve been doing with all our other needs, we only share the blame-free core needs and core emotions.  We only share these things for the sake of understanding each other, not changing, convincing, or obligating each other.  We are simply trying to get on the same page.  This is what holding space is.  This is why holding space comes first.  This is why holding space does not include problem solving or solutions.

If we are not problem solving, we are not suggesting anyone has to change.  Everyone gets to share what is going on in their world, from their point of view, and no one is asking anyone to do anything.  Asking or implying that someone needs to do something before everyone is on the same page of understanding often creates conflict.  It’s saying, “I need you to change your ways because I’m unhappy,” rather than saying, “I’m unhappy.  I need understanding.”

This is also why talking to someone outside our current situation tends to yield better results.  Since they are outside the situation, our ego is not attacking them with blame or obligating them to do anything.  We share the details of the situation with this outsider without pushing them to change in order to meet our needs.  Of course, sometimes this outside person will attempt to jump right in and try to fix things for us which may or may not lead to a healthy resolve.  Regardless, our ego is not focused on them as being part of “the problem,” so they are simply easier to talk to and they are more likely to receive us.

A focus on solutions before understanding, skips a step.  If we skip holding space, there will often be a conflict that will not be deescalated until holding space finally happens.  How many times have we found ourselves in a day long, month long, or even year long argument where we finally ended with an “ah-ha” moment of understanding.  “Oh!  Is that all?!  Why didn’t you say that in the first place?  I get it now.  This isn’t a problem at all.”  It’s like the conflict resolves itself once we’re all on the same page.

Why have the “ah-ha” moment of understanding last when we can do it first?  How?  We do it by getting on the same page first, not last.  We do it by starting with the step of holding space for each without blame.  That sounds simple and obvious, but why don’t we just do that naturally?  It’s because our brain has fooled us into thinking we are communicating for understanding the whole time were blaming and talking about our versions of a solution, but we’re not.  We are not communicating for understanding, we are giving orders and we’re not trying to understand the other person at all.  We are unconsciously communicating in an effort to try to get the other person to change.  At the same time, their ego has fooled them into thinking that they are communicating to get us to understand, but they are not.  They, too, are communicating to try to get us to change.  Everyone is pushing the reasons why the other person needs to do something for us to be happy and have our needs met, yet no one is listening.

It’s not a conversation if no one is listening.  Instead, it’s two independent monologues competing for the spotlight.  Each person has a mic and they are increasingly ramping up the volume to be heard over the other person’s mic.  We’re all so busy with our important message that no one is actually listening.  It’s the opposite of getting on the same page, it’s the opposite of understanding each other.  It’s born from our human brain’s natural tendency to invent stories on why our needs are not being met and then charging ahead to get our need met using blame rather than pausing to get everyone on the same page first.

Our survival instincts are things like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.  Notice that holding space isn’t one of our survival instincts.  Our ancestors didn’t hold space with angry bears to survive.   Interdependence with animals that could kill us wasn’t a thing.  Survival and survival responses came first.  A heavy-handed need for our children to do what they were told in order to survive those random wild animals came next.  As a species, we relied on dominance, obedience, and codependency to survive.  Humanity is maturing across the ages and our species is discovering a need for complex social structures that revolve around interdependence.  We’re no longer just banding together to survive the next bear attack or an attack from a neighboring tribe.  We’ve reached the need for a social structure that revolves around interdependence for all to thrive rather than dominance and obedience for just our own tribe to survive the next attack.  In the same way an individual human is slowly walking up Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness, so is humanity.

We, as a species, are finally smart enough to see past communicating to survive at someone else’s expense.  We are discovering how to communicate so we can all thrive together.  Creating safe spaces and holding space for each other rather than leaning on ancient instincts to dominate and push for obedience are a couple things that sets us apart from the wild animals our species once was.  However, we still have an echo of those wild ancestors inside us in the form of our ego.

Our ego doesn’t want to take a moment to listen and hold space.  Our ego is the animal inside us whose goal is to survive by reacting and overreacting.  Our ego wants to skip the “understanding each other” step.  Our ego wants to jump straight to fighting the world to keep ourselves safe and get our needs met.  Our ego wants to make others change right now for our comfort.  Our ego is shortsighted and willing to damage our relationships to do it.

To get our interdependence needs met, we need to share our needs and not our ego’s agenda.  To get our interdependence needs met, we need to listen to the other person’s needs and not their ego’s agenda.  It’s not easy, but it possible.  We must have the wisdom to strip out blame both before we speak, and as the conversation is unfolding.  We must have the courage to hold strong boundaries with our own ego and with the other person’s ego.  If we can’t do that, we will end up having our inner wild animal provoking and reacting with their inner wild animal.  Listening to understand the other person is not on the agenda for anyone’s ego.

Communicating our needs for the sake of making them known to others is very different than communicating our needs in a way that obligates the other person to change in order to meet our needs.  If we get everyone on the same page first (taking turns holding space), and then brainstorm solutions that work for everyone, that will most likely be a healthy conversation.  If we go straight to solutions and skip getting on the same page, that will most likely be an unhealthy conversation full of blame and obligation.  This unhealthy conversation pushes for a polarizing outcome of compliance or rebellion.  Either way, it will damage the relationship and might burn a bridge altogether.  However, there is another solution, we might resolve the situation by stopping the unhealthy conversation and starting to listen to understand each other.

If only we could communicate our actual needs and emotions upfront.  Unfortunately, all of the “emotions” we “think we feel” in the interdependence category of human needs are secondary emotions that involve blaming other people.  I say we “think we feel” because our ego has stepped in and starting thinking before we realized it.  Our ego is trying to interpret our core emotions, figure out what’s wrong, and figure out what to do about it.  Our ego starts with the core emotions that are creating warning lights on our internal emotional dash board and then it makes up a story full of assumptions to try to figure out those warning lights.  It interprets those core chemical signals into secondary emotions that are based on a story that is most likely a warped, exaggerated version of reality and may even be completely false.  “I think I feel” and “I feel like” are big red flags that someone is sharing an interpretation of a core emotion and not the core emotion itself.  These “feelings” are fabricated interpretations of core signals that attach our happiness to others and their behavior.  These are “feelings” with build-in blame and expectations based on a bullshit story our ego made up.  Almost all of the “feelings” in the interdependence category of human needs will be a blame-filled variation of, “you let me down.”

The human ego tries to share secondary emotions as if they were facts, rather than an interpretation of the facts based on assumptions.  When we do this, we are blaming.  If we share any secondary or interpreted emotions without calling them out as such, then our ego is in the driver’s seat, and it is doing things that will attempt to get our needs met by damaging relationships.

Part of the catch 22 of communication is that our emotions are real, valid, and not up for debate.  Even these secondary emotions are real, valid, and not up for debate.  The fact is, we feel something.  We are feeling emotions.  Even though these emotions are based on a fabricated story that may not be real, the resulting emotions are still real.  We need people to respect that our secondary emotions are real, regardless of what triggered us.  We also need to respect other people’s emotions, regardless of what triggered them.  A great way to do that is by stripping out the story from the emotions to uncover the core signals behind it all, then sharing that instead.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we do.  Our ego jumps straight to pushing our secondary emotions, pushing blame, and pushing for obedience not understanding.  It’s very hard to validate someone’s emotions when they are combine with a bunch of blame and obligation.  An attempt to validate their emotions might accidently come across as validating their fabricated story, their blaming attacks, and their unhealthy communication style.  This is why people such down or go toe to toe with each other.  No one wants to submit to having a made-up story about how terrible they are simply dropped on them, and if they do, that means they’ve given up or been beaten into compliance.  That’s not understanding, that dominance and submission.

Our ego is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that will guarantee the other person will not understand our needs, will stop listening to us, will resist what we are saying, and will resist helping us get our needs met.  Our ego just wants to be right, and it doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process.  Our ego is damaging the relationship in an effort to make it’s bullshit story right.  After our ego has provoked the other person’s ego into reacting, we get the results we are looking for.  We get to fool ourselves into believing that the other person is the problem.   Whether they cave and become obedient to our demands or they resist us, our ego gets the “confirmation” we were looking for.  They were the problem all along and we were “right” in blaming them.  They “let us down.”

Instead of letting our ego sit in the driver’s seat, we must share all our true core chemical emotions before sharing any secondary emotions and the secondary emotions must be clearly called out as such.  The other person did not let us down.  We set our expectations wrong.  We let ourselves down. 

The core chemical signals behind most unmet interdependence needs are sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise.  We likely feel disappointed for not getting what we expected.  Our brain wants to blame the disappointment on the other person rather than recognizing we disappointed ourselves by holding onto expectations that did not come to light.  Rather than blaming and saying, “you let me down.  You didn’t meet my needs,” we could be saying, “I’m disappointed and upset.  I’m sad and angry.   I had expectations that were not met.  I got my own hopes up and set myself up for disappointment.  I’m disappointed and upset with myself for doing that.  I’m sad and angry with myself for putting myself in this position.  My brain and my ego are trying to blame everyone else for this disappointment.  However, managing my expectations is my responsibility.  Managing my emotions is my responsibility.”

This is a huge distinction that is very important when we are talking about any “emotions” that seem to be coming up because of any need in the interdependence category of Burbol’s Hierarchy of Happiness.  We are responsible for managing our expectations, managing our assumptions, managing our made-up stories, managing our emotions, managing our reactions, and managing our ego.  The other person didn’t let us down, we let ourselves down with the wrong expectations.  Then we let ourselves down a second time when we let our ego take the wheel and try to blame everyone else for the expectations that we mismanaged.

I call this The Catch 22 of Communication, humans need interdependence and interdependence requires communication of needs, however we humans don’t tend to communicate our needs by default.  We tend to communicate the results of our ego’s bullshit story based on assumptions and unmet expectations.  We tend to communicate all this in the form of blame, shame, criticism, judgement, and obligation.  Doing so hinders healthy interdependence and instead pushes for the unhealthy alternatives of compliance and codependency.

The very nature of communication is to interact with other people.  Communication is a necessity for happily integrating with others for the sake of interdependence.  Interdependence is a wonderful way for all of us to get our needs met and thrive.  However, sharing secondary emotions will destroy relationships and our chances at interdependence.  Furthermore, it will give our ego a bunch of self-fulfilling prophecies about how the person we just attacked was the problem all along.  Our ego provokes them, damages the relationships and then concludes, “see, I was right.  It’s their fault.”  Either we get the obedience we wanted through blame, shame, criticism, judgment, and obligation, or we get resistance and a fight.  Either way, we get validation that the other person was the problem.  Either way, we damage the relationship.  Either way, our ego gets to “be right.”

There is a saying, “would you rather be right or be in relationships?”  That is a direct challenge that we can ask our ego.

Our ego will use big emotions to manipulation us and others in an attempt to always be right.  It will use manipulation on others to get them to comply or drive them away.  This often has an underlining thread of blame, shame, criticism, judgement, and obligation.  These attempts to manipulate with big emotions can look and feel like: weaponized anxiety (using their fears to control us), loudly playing the victim (using sadness, anger, shock, outrage, shame), temper tantrums (using anger, shock, being offended, our sense of embarrassment), bullying and harassment (using anger, fear, shame), showering us with guilt and shame (attacking our honor, our word, or our character), spotlighting their pitiful circumstances (using sadness, crying, pitifulness) or even being overly sexual and loving (using love or desire against us). 

Our ego attempts to manipulate them, but it also is manipulating us.  Our ego tricks us into believing we need to get our interdependence needs met and this one person is the only person who can do that for us.  Our ego is trying to trick us with a scarcity point of view of the world.  It gets us to believe that if this one person doesn’t do what we want, then we won’t get what we want at all, and they must be the problem.  They must be a bad person and we are better off without them.  Our ego tricks us with scarcity and blame.  Our ego manipulates us into thinking we are justified when we blame, attacked, and destroy a relationship with someone now that our brain has labeled them as “bad” and “the problem.”  Our ego manipulates us into thinking we are right, we were always right, nothing is our fault, we don’t have to change our behavior, and we are better off without them.

The other person was never our enemy, our ego is our enemy.  Our expectations, our assumptions, our interpreted emotions, and the very words that fall out of our mouth are all our ego destroying our chances at true interdependence.  At the same time, we are not the other person’s enemy, their ego is their enemy.  (For a wonderful dive into this topic, I highly recommend Ryan Holiday’s book, “Ego Is the Enemy.”)

To combat our ego, we can remind ourselves that we live in abundance, not scarcity.  We can remember that we live in a world full of billions of humans who can help us fulfill our interdependence needs.  For example, when we feel “abandoned,” our ego wants to run away with that secondary emotion and project blame on the one person who it wants to believe has abandoned us.  Our ego wants us to believe this one person (or group) has left us and is denying us the attention we crave.  Our ego wants us to believe only that one person can fix this feeling of abandonment for us so they must comply.  However, when we begin to separate the core emotions from the blame by asking ourselves, “does this emotion describe just me or does it include other people or events,” we can uncover the core emotions of sadness, fear, and surprise.  We can realize some of our interdependence needs that are not being met are our need for attention, consideration, praise, conversation, safety, and love.  We can get those needs met from many sources.  We can let our need be known and then simply ask for volunteers rather than place demands on specific people.

Letting our ego hold on to a secondary emotion like “abandoned,” gives our power away and places our happiness in someone else’s hands –a very specific person’s hands.  Pausing to realize we are in need of attention, consideration, praise, conversations, safety, and love, means we can pick up the phone and call anyone in our network to get those needs met.  It takes our power back without obligating that one person that our ego is focusing on to do anything.

When we hold space without blame, we are simply announcing our needs, announcing how we are taking responsibility for our needs, and we are not creating obligation for the people we’re talking to.  “My need for attention, consideration, praise, conversations, safety, and love are not being met.  It’s my responsibility to get my needs met, not yours.”

Our ego does silly things like deciding our partner must go to a concert with us so we can be happy.  However, digging down we might find out that we want to go to the concert because we have a need for connection, and we invented the concert as a way to get that need met.  We might also discover, our connection with our partner is feeling a little distant lately.  We invented the need for a concert outing to reconnect and we obligated our partner to go when we could just turn to them and say, “hey, I’m feeling disconnect.  I’m feeling a need to connect.  Would you be interest in creating some time for us to connect?  If not, I’ll call around and maybe have coffee with a friend or something.”  We create no obligation, and we state how we can get our own interdependence needs met because we live in a world of abundance.

This is how we defeat our own ego.  We recognize that an unmet interdependence need does not obligate any specific person to meet that need for us.  Instead, we remember that we live in a world of abundance and there are many volunteers out there who would happily be a part of fulfilling our interdependence needs.  That is how we drop our expectations and the blame that comes with it.  That is how we take back our power from our ego.  It’s not a “pretend the blame doesn’t exist” step, it’s a shift in thinking.  We shift from ego-driven scarcity to a point of view that is centered in abundance.

With all this said, I’d like to bring us back to a couple of our previous Safe Conversation Boundaries and Safe Conversation Agreements, from the previous articles, “Creating A Safe Space To Talk,” and “Safe Conversation Agreement”.  I’m going to list all of these boundaries and agreements and highlight the ones that exist to attempt to combat the human ego, both our ego and their ego.

Summary of Safe Conversation Boundaries:

• If it’s not a good time for everyone to talk, I will reschedule. (Addresses big ego-driven interpreted emotions and how everyone’s ego might be expecting to be right before the conversation begins.)
• I only have difficult conversations if everyone is ready and willing. (Addresses everyone’s ego might be expecting to be right before the conversation begins.)
• I don’t tolerate or participate in yelling, etc. (Addresses how everyone will feeling big ego-driven interpreted emotions and we will not let anyone’s ego be in the driver’s seat.)
• I am responsible for me, regardless of you. I will let you be responsible for you, regardless of me.  (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to blame and obligate others for fulfilling one’s happiness.)
• I am responsible for myself and my own happiness. (Addresses our own ego’s attempts to blame and obligate others for fulfilling our happiness.)
• I will keep myself safe at all times and I will call a timeout to do so. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to fight and bully to get what it wants.)
• I don’t compromise or sacrifice. “Everyone wins” or no deal; I don’t allow anyone to lose.  (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to survive and win, even at other people’s expense.)
• I use The Golden Rule. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to make itself more important than other people and pushes to survive and win, even at other people’s expense.)
• The boundaries I declare will be about my own behavior and don’t obligate other people to do anything. (Addresses our own ego’s attempts to blame and obligate others for fulfilling our happiness.)
• I don’t tolerate or participate in disrespect. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to make itself more important than other people be discrediting them and pushes blame to win.)
• I respect privacy and I will only have private conversations with people who have proven to me they know how to respect privacy. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to discredit people in front of other groups to win.)
• I only participate in calm, blame-free emotions. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to us blame to win.)
• My feelings are never up for debate, nor are anyone else’s. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to be discrediting others to win, as well as makes a declaration the ego’s interpreted emotions are still real emotions that must be identified and validated independently of the story everyone’s ego will make-up.)
• I will not tolerate or participate in criticism, etc. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to blame and discredit others to win.)

Summary of Safe Conversation Agreement:

• One person is on the mic at a time, everyone else holds space. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to not listen so it can’t discover it was wrong.)
• We take turns with the mic, and everyone is guaranteed a turn. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to silence and talk over others so it can’t discover it was wrong.)
• We will declare and clarify the type of communication we are seeking, preferably, before sharing anything. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to skip ahead to making demands or assumes other people are making  demand that must be resisted.)
• Invitations only; no expectations, obligations, or demands. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to blame and making demands and how our ego will assume a position of scarcity and how other must do things for us.)
• No trying to fix anything or anyone. (Addresses how everyone’s ego attempts to skip past holding space and assumes it is already right.)

Can you see now?  Our struggles to communicate has nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with the human ego.

The Catch 22 of Communication is that we must communicate to get our needs met, but we all have an ego that will directly sabotage us every step of the way.  Our ego doesn’t want interdependence, it wants to make demands and received compliance.  It doesn’t want understanding, it just wants to be right, and it doesn’t want to be questioned.  We have a natural human need for interdependence, but our human ego is so busy trying to keep us safe in the name of “survival” that it actively attempts to destroy our chances at interdependence.