I had a dream that I was having a conflict with my dad. He was treating me poorly at a family event and I was so hurt and so defended that when someone told me something that should have been exactly what I needed to hear to feel better, I couldn’t accept it. It just wouldn’t sink in. What I started to do was to treat my dad the same way he was treating me, tit for tat. The thought was to make him feel the way I did to both punish him and make him see how badly he was acting. Needless to say, it wasn’t working well. Then I started thinking about it and what I really wanted out of the situation. I wanted him to stop acting in a way that hurt me. I wanted to be able to get the good out of the event and him and not have to deal with the bad. And the best way to do that is to talk with him openly.

I am writing this out because I think it really illustrates the way I think healthy communication works. It just had an opportunity to be seen all together in a coherent form in a dream. Since trying to figure out a way to convert everything into normal speak is more than I can handle before eating breakfast, I am writing it as a tightened version of my monologue to my dad explaining things.

In the dream, I explained that certain actions and attitudes on my dad’s part has hurt me and that instead of playing the tit for tat game like I had started to, I felt it would be better to be vulnerable and talk it out. He complains that I am just trying to lay blame and judgment on him. This is my response to that.

“I am not blaming you. I am not judging you. I am providing you information on how your actions and attitudes are affecting me. I am opening up and being vulnerable to give you this information instead of going with my initial instinct of retaliation.

If you feel like I am blaming you or judging you, that is your reaction that you are projecting onto me.

There are a number of different ways to deal with this information I am giving you. You get to choose which one you will go with.

A) That your actions and attitudes are completely appropriate and that no changes are needed. It is up to me to change to protect myself. This would result in not being vulnerable and open around you, reducing the times I am around you and the affects you can have on me. This will mean that the amount of good will be reduced along with the amount of bad but if this is the actions and attitudes are what I have to deal with, then it is more than worth it because the affect they are having on me is much worse than any benefit I am getting. The benefit here is that you will understand why I am behaving the way I am instead of thinking it is because I hate you.

B) That your actions and attitudes are correct but my interpretations of them are wrong. You could provide me more background information to I can see what you are really doing instead of what my impressions are. If you can explain yourself well enough and I agree with you this would be enough to change my reactions and you would need to make no changes. If there is a problem with my understanding of the explanation or if I don’t agree with your motives and ideas, then my reactions would be the same and you would have to choose one of the other option in how to deal with the issue.

C) That your actions and attitudes are correct for the circumstances but I am having a bad reaction to them. Like an antibiotic is the correct treatment for a disease but if the patient is allergic to the antibiotic it is not the correct treatment for the patient.

From here, you can choose to continue with your actions and attitudes in hopes that exposure would get me to change my reactions. This is done a lot with children. They need to learn how to behave like humans and it is a training process in a lot of cases. It doesn’t work so well with adults because they already have most of their beliefs set. The end result of this choice would probably be the same as choice A.

The other option would be to change your actions and attitudes to ones that would be more appropriate for the reactions I have. It would be changing to take care of me. This would probably result in me putting aside my defenses and being willing to continue to be open around you and showing up for events where I would be exposed to you. I would put aside the bad experiences and be open for the good.

D) That your actions and attitudes may not have been the most appropriate for the circumstances. That you could choose better now that you are aware of the problem they were causing.

In all the possibilities listed so far, there is no blame or judgment. There is only open sharing of information about cause and effect.

E) That your actions and attitudes were actually wrong. That they came from defenses that felt the need to get the reactions from me that they did.

From here we can discuss what you are feeling like you really need and why. Then we can work on finding different ways to take care of that need in better ways, ways that don’t cause bad reactions in others.

If we get to the point where you don’t think there are other ways of taking care of those needs, that this is what you need to do at this time, we can agree that is ok. There are times where this is appropriate. It is usually when things are going wrong in other areas of your life and you need the protection here and use the extra resources elsewhere. My reaction to this could be to be around to support you and understand that you don’t mean anything personally, or if that is too hard for me to do, we would come to an understanding that I will be making myself scarce because I can’t take the heat not because I don’t care. Then you can get a hold of me later to let me know it is safe to start showing up again.

This final one actually has some judgment involved but still no real blame. Just more understanding and conscious choice instead of instinctual choice.”

I woke up during this monologue and went over it in my head and finished it before getting up. I felt this was important to write out as soon as I could because I think it beautifully explains my concepts of healthy communication. Of what I want to be able to do with the people close to me. With the people that can affect me a great deal.

The only safe way to do have this communication is with someone else who understands this and is willing to work at this level. Opening yourself up and being vulnerable to someone that isn’t willing to do this leads to them thinking you are blaming them and sometimes them attacking you in retaliation to protect themselves. Those attacks do double damage when you are being vulnerable and are usually why we are pretty unwilling to be vulnerable. In real life, my dad and I can talk like this. I am very grateful for this between us. It has made it possible to have a good relationship with him after about 30 years of conflict when I always needed to be defended around him and if I ever said he was doing something that hurt me, he would get defensive because he felt I was telling him he was bad.

I could be wrong but currently I believe that when I am talking with someone trying to understand a conflict, I don’t blame. It may feel like blame but that is more an affect of projection from the other party than anything from me. I want to understand, explain and maybe point out where things don’t match up. To get to the reality of the situation. I think blame may come into play when I am talking about someone’s actions to other people. Even then, when it is something that is really affecting me like close friends or my boss, I try to actually understand and explain all sides of the situation. People noticed that about me when I would talk about my boss at BGI. I would say that x behavior was poor but it might be coming from this point of view or this one or this one. The problem I had with him is that he couldn’t see that he was doing to add to the problem. It was all my fault. Therefore, we had to go with option A and get me out of that situation. The sad part is that others are having the same reactions as I did and he isn’t learning anything.

I am not saying I am a saint and I don’t blame, just that when I am willing to honestly be there, I don’t blame. I don’t think it serves a purpose in solving problems. Having said that, I will find out in hindsight if it is true. Ah the joys of living the examined life.