Ripples of Understanding

Kent Beck is a computer scientist and author. In his post, he takes a more personal turn. His "code book" for emotions is insightful.

This list reminds me of the importance of listening to our own emotions--complex signals of inner state (inner facts) that carry great significance if we're to gain deeper insight into our motivations, and then go on to improve our world and the world in general.

Identifying our feelings can sometimes be a challenge in itself, but interpreting them is also a skill and depends on wisdom and knowledge. I'm not sure there is a perfect interpretation of each emotion, but I appreciate and learn from others (like Kent Beck) who attempt to simplify these feelings into clearer meanings:

• Fear—a call to focus. I need to increase a priority & let go of other things.
• Anger—a call to establish & enforce my boundaries.
• Anxiety—a call to pay attention to something I am ignoring.
• Flashbacks—a call to deal with my past trauma.
• Confusion—a call to step back & re-establish my intentions. For me this often takes the form of asking what I would do if I was serving my mission to help geeks feel safe in the world.
• Envy—a call to safeguard my social standing.
• Jealousy—a call to safeguard (or let go of) an important relationship.
• Hatred—a call to accept something about myself I don’t like.
• Boredom—a call to do something I am avoiding.
• Apathy—a call to accept that I am stuck.
• Guilt—a call to change.
• Shame—a call to accept myself & then change.
• Terror—a call to freeze in the face of fear (rather than run or attack).
• Sadness—a call to release something I’m attached to.
• Despair—a stronger form of sadness. I really need to release something I’m attached to.
• Grief—a call to honor loss.
• Depression—a call to understand deeply.
• Suicidal thoughts—a call to change. (I hesitated to include this. If this is you, get help. I’ve read too many “logical” geek suicide notes. My suicidal thoughts diminished when I learned to interpret them as saying, “I really don’t want to be in this situation.”)

It’s really hard to build relationships that last for a long time. If you haven’t discovered this, you will discover this sooner or later. And it's hard both for personal relationships and for business relationships. And to me, it's pretty amazing that two people can stay married for 25 years without killing each other.

But honestly, most professional relationships don't last anywhere near that long. The best bands always seem to break up after 2 or 3 years. And business partnerships fall apart, and there's all these problems in these relationships that just don't last. So, why is that? Well, in my view, it’s relationships don't fail because there some single catastrophic event to destroy them, although often there is a single catastrophic event around the the end of the relationship, but that’s typically a symptom rather than a cause. What typically happens is it accumulates in the little things that just build up over time, and I call those scar tissues. And the reason I use the phrase "scar tissues" is because scar tissue is when you have a wound that doesn't heal quite properly and you get this other tissue that just sort of fills the gap, which is called scar tissue, and that tissue is not as strong as the original tissue that was there. So, scar tissue is weak. So, what happens in relationships is that sooner or later, there's a conflict. It happens in all relationships and not all of them get resolved perfectly. So, now somebody's left feeling just a little bit unhappy about the result, mostly okay but just a little bit unhappy. But then it happens again... and it happens again in a different situation and no one of these is enough to kill the relationship, but over time that annoyance just builds up more and more and more and more, and then people start seeing patterns in behavior. You know if you ever hear the phrase "You always X": scar tissue.

So people start becoming sensitive and then they expect the bad behavior and there's nothing more guaranteed to create bad behavior than expectation. You will find it if you see it. And so eventually it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse, and then somebody decides they just don't care anymore and typically that's the point where something spectacular happens and the relationship collapses. And people often think it was the spectacular thing that wrecked the relationship, but really it was all those little bits of scar tissue building up over months or years. And my opinion is that in most of these situations the people aren't fundamentally bad, though they often appear bad, typically at the spectacular end phase of the relationship. It's just that the relationship wore off. Just wore off: too much scar tissue.

So, I'll give you an example of a relationship of mine that wore off. So, we had our house remodeled a couple years ago. Major remodeling of our kitchen and family room, and the foreman for the contractor, Jim, was in our house for every day for about 4 months during the work on the job. And it started off and things were fine, but then there were just little things that started happening. Like he wouldn't seal up the plastic around the kitchen, and so, dust would get in to the rest of the house. And most of the work he did was really great, but if he ever made a mistake he wouldn't want to admit it; he would kinda make excuses to try to avoid fixing his mistake, and this just got more and more annoying for me. And I'm sure I did my share in return because I'm sort of a perfectionist, and I probably noticed every little thing he did that wasn't absolutely perfect, and it probably drove him crazy that every morning when he came in, I was there standing in the kitchen ready to tell him about all the mistakes he made yesterday [Laughter], and so it just got worse and worse and worse to the point where we were barely on speaking terms at the end of the project, and one day our daughter came in, and she was like, “Dad I think your relationship with Jim is wearing out,” [Laughter] which was when I realized I shouldn't be telling her my theories about relationships.

Now, I could have sat down with Jim to try to work it out, but I decided since it was only a 4 month contracting job, I'll just put up with it, and you know, it'll be done in a while. He would have been pretty worried if we sat down and I was like, “Jim, can we talk [Laughter] about my feelings? I mean you left the plastic open and dust got into the house, and sometimes I feel like you don't respect me as a person.”

Now maybe if I tried that he would instantly change his behavior just to make sure we never, ever had to have a conversation again. [Laughter] So, the solution is if you want a relationship to last a long time, somehow you have to keep the scar tissue from building up. And that's really hard. So, when there's an issue, you somehow have to resolve it where there is zero lingering animosity. Nobody is even a little bit upset. Because even a little upset, that scar tissue that accumulates, that never goes away. And that's really hard to do; I don't have any perfect answers for that; it's communication and compromise. Both people need to be willing to listen to understand the other person's view and then you have to find some compromise where everybody agrees that's a fair trade off so nobody’s upset. So, that's really hard, and if either person can't listen or can't compromise, the odds are not good long term for that relationship. But there are classic mistakes people make. Like, some people are just too nice, and they wreck the relationships. They think, “Oh, it's not a big deal, it's just one little thing, not worth having a big argument about it. I'll just give in.” Well, that seems generous, but it's a really bad idea. You have to ask yourself, "Are you really, completely, 100% over this? You're giving in? No animosity? You're not secretly hoping that maybe they'll do something for you in return or a little behavior change here or there?"

Because if there's anything at all when you're giving in that you can feel bad about later, you're nuking the relationship - you're creating scar tissue with yourself, and that will build up to the point where you wreck the relationship. And the flipside is also bad. You may think, “I'm such a good arguer, I can just argue this person to death, and whatever they want I can just outargue them: I'll yell louder with more words, and I'll get my way. Whew! That was a great, great resolution, I got my way.” Well, you're nuking the relationship, sorry. So, somehow both people have to be completely satisfied with the outcome. So, the irony of this is, I think it's not the big things that nuke relationships it's all those little things. Even if there's a big thing, the relationship was going to die really soon anyway. So, just think about your relationship experience and the people around you. How many of you have either had a relationship that wore out like this or you've seen somebody around you and you could see their relationship wearing out?

[90% of a 300+ class raises their hands]

Yeah, it happens to everybody and we've all been there. And the trick is, again, you just have to avoid the creation of scar tissue. Not easy, but it's the only solution. Okay, that's my thought for the weekend

I enjoy writing in a journal. I don't do it every day like I used to, but I do it frequently when going through emotionally intense periods of life. This seems to be a healthy balance for me--use the skill when it is most useful.

This started me thinking--is journaling also beneficial for those near us? For example, does listing out or even working through feelings in a journal also help us to take things less personally, perhaps? Or to be able to hear someone out without needing to interject our story?

(Ostensibly, because we've already had a chance to "write our story down" somewhere, almost like we are hearing ourselves out?)

The Family Institute at Northwestern University has a "tip of the month" newsletter for couples that I receive in my email inbox. I liked this one:

Trying to fix emotions, example 1:

• Partner One: “I feel really discouraged today…”
• Partner Two: “Come take a walk with me, it’s a really beautiful day out.”

Trying to fix emotions, example 2:

• Partner One: “I’m so frustrated with the people at work, they spend all day complaining.”
• Partner Two: “You should just quit, we can get by on my salary for a while.”

Trying to fix emotions, example 3:

• Partner One: “We never hear from the kids. It bothers me that they don’t call once in a while to see how we are.”
• Partner Two: “They’re busy with their own lives. You shouldn’t let it bother you, it’s not that big a deal.”

See the pattern? These are examples of the three most common ways we try to change — or fix — our partner’s negative emotions. In the first example, Partner Two suggests looking on the bright side as a way of lifting one’s spirits. In the second example, Partner Two becomes Mister or Miss Fixit, offering unsolicited advice that they hope will provide relief. In the third example, Partner Two admonishes his partner for feeling the way she does. Each response invalidates what Partners One are feeling; each fails, in its own way, to acknowledge through empathic listening the negative emotion that’s being expressed. That failure leaves Partners One feeling alone and without a sense of being seen and heard by the one person they most wish would understand them (see Empathy Advantage).

Why is emotion-fixing so common? In part, we never learned that empathic listening is the far superior way to respond to a partner’s distress. The skill of empathic listening doesn’t come to us naturally; it’s something that’s learned either through formal instruction (view the short videos below) or by watching it modeled by the people around us. On a deeper level, emotion-fixing is something we do because emotional pain tends to be contagious and we ourselves don’t want to feel badly. Our brains are wired, through mirror neurons, to feel what others are feeling, whether positive or negative. Without realizing it, we protect ourselves from slipping into a negative place by trying to help — to “fix”— our partner’s painful emotions.

The skill of empathic listening strengthens all our relationships, whether it’s with our primary partner, our children, or our friends. Few experiences promote a stronger bond between people than feeling seen and heard in our emotions. The skill applies across all age groups (although we may choose different words depending on whom we’re talking to). Watch how empathic listening is used by the parents in the short videos below and try it with your partner the next time you hear even the smallest expression of negative emotion.

Additional discussion at https://www.reddit.com/r/listening/comments/11urtp8/i_say_dog_you_say_chicken_new_study_explores_why/

My father-in-law told us both when we were married: "Remember that sometimes you will be a friend to one another, and other times you will be a parent. Everyone needs to cry like a child sometimes."

Do you have any advice that you've been given that helped you be a better partner?

This short presentation by Paul Chappell changed me. He outlines how unmet human needs can translate into the social disorders that we face today--things like school shootings, and depression. His personal story is one of "nearly becoming the bad guy" in a school shooting, followed by years serving in the military, and then finding his calling as a peace advocate.

One of the most influential books in my life is Nonviolent Communication. I'd like to summarize why its concepts are so powerful to me.

At the core of it is a beautiful understanding of the human spirit and condition--and a reassuring observation that we as human beings are very similar on the inside, even if culturally or historically unique in our traumas.

Rosenberg identifies that our cross-cultural, shared humanity is linked through feelings. These basic feelings are universal and can be understood universally--feelings like embarrassment, joy, fear, anger, etc. He emphasizes that he is talking about the most basic of feelings, not the higher level judgment-laden feelings that may be difficult to hear or understand ("I feel like you lied to me" is not a basic feeling, but something like "I feel angry" probably is).

He also identifies that feelings arise when we have unmet needs. There are shared human needs--he offers many examples, such as the need for security, the need for stability, the need for dignity, etc. These shared human needs can also act as a kind of "translation map" to understand people different from ourselves.

This is the essence of nonviolent communication: If we are willing, we can offer to describe the reality of our feelings to others--and the needs we perceive--and others will often (but not always) respond by trying to fulfill our needs.

The practice of communicating nonviolently allows us to exist with dignity in the world and respond to each others needs. This offers an alternative to coercion & violence, and their cumulative ill effects on individuals and society at large.