“How Does That Make You Feel?”

I once interned with a clinical therapist (when I was a college student) – her specialty was working with adolescents and families who were facing a variety of problems. Some of those problems could be behavioral issues, communication issues, improper parenting techniques, drug abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse.

Her goal was generally to help resolve some of the problems they presented but also to help bring families closer together so they could communicate better and solve their own problems.

In seeing this therapist in action, I realized that she had a catchphrase that worked quite well for her. After someone presented a problem or issue in their lives, she would ask:

“How does that make you feel?”

People naturally wanted to discuss the problem, which usually involved other people being wrong, and them being right. But the therapist always brought the conversation back to feelings. It was important to figure out the feelings that had made people so upset and led them to take certain actions in their lives. It was important to look more closely at which feelings may have led to growing conflicts and problems rather than resolutions. The feelings by not having been properly processed, acknowledge, and directed, had led people into toxicity, maladaptive states, and chronic troubles in their lives.

By not processing or understanding our own feelings, we can get stuck at one station in life.

I must note that she had a compassionate, delicate way to ask this question. It wasn’t just the question itself but how she asked it that helped people open up to her. She was truly empathic and cared deeply, and surely this helped her to open up communication channels with her clients.

Understand that when we communicate, many of us are mostly paying attention to our own feelings. We tend to get absorbed in this and forget that the people we communicate with also have their own feelings. We have to be open to communicating with our true feelings to open up someone else’s feelings and then come to a meaningful understanding. When someone’s feelings are not heard or acknowledged, they tend to become aggressive, or they may want to avoid you, or they may ignore you. None of these provides a proper path toward fruitful communication.

Of course, opening up our true feelings is not always easy, but we must learn to do it if we wish to communicate openly, rather than set up walls that shut down communication.

This simple question, “How does that make you feel?” has made me realize over and over that many of us have a lot of room to grow when it comes to our communication skills. We have gotten used to only surrounding ourselves with people who we agree with. Being around people we agree with makes us feel good, but unfortunately, it can stunt our personal growth. In this age, we also surround ourselves with social media or news feeds that only provide us with the viewpoint we already agree with. Again, this makes us feel good but does not necessarily help us to grow as a person.

What happens when people agree with us? This may make us feel smart, liked, or special in some way. And when they disagree with us, we may feel dumb, disliked, and useless. So when people disagree with us, rather than allowing ourselves to have those negative feelings, we may jump into rationalizations and justifications and bitterly defend our positions. Even if, at times, our position is not actually reasonable.

Feelings are important to how we communicate, but at the same time, it should be obvious that just because I feel good about an idea does not make it true.

Why are feelings important to communication, then? Feelings are about finding a pathway toward understanding and resonating with people. Feelings get at the core of who we are. We own our feelings as a part of ourselves more than we own our facts or rationalizations. Facts and rationalizations are available to all. But we see our feelings as uniquely something that we are experiencing. Even if I am sad and you are sad, we are still sad in different ways, so we always know our own experience to be a unique marker of who we are at a point in time. To deny my feelings is to deny me and to say that I do not matter. When someone debates rationally while completely ignoring how I feel, I feel as if I do not matter.

“Well, our budget is smaller this year than last year, and we needed to cut something somewhere. There’s no other way. Sorry, we’re letting you go. I need you to pack your stuff up and be out by the end of the day.”

Anyone faced with hearing the above would probably feel completely denied as a human being. There is no interest in hearing how you feel. The decision is made about your life without actually factoring in your life, feelings, purpose, and will.

Of course, this denial of who we are makes us angry, depressed, anxious and provides us with a full spectrum of negative emotions. The denial of our feelings makes the situation seem worse than it had to be, somehow.

Here is another scenario to consider. For whatever reason, you may find yourself seated next to someone who holds opposing viewpoints on big life issues. Well, what if instead of bitter debates, personal attacks, and building up our anger and hatred for each other, we instead focused on our feelings?

What if the conversation went something like this:

Robert: “I hate how liberals are always trying to control us.”

Martin: “Well, how do you feel when that happens? (Notice that rather than fueling the fire or resisting this potentially antagonizing idea, we ask a neutral question.)

Robert: “It feels aggravating and like we always have to fight just to keep our basic rights.”

Martin: “I’m a liberal, and I feel aggravated too like we always have to fight to make any basic progress toward something better. It sounds like we feel the same, doesn’t it?”

From there, perhaps the conversation could grow in a direction where both people realized that they both feel aggravated, they both feel misunderstood unheard, disregarded, treated unfairly, etc. Both sides are probably experiencing the same feelings, but they are processing them differently, and they have formed different belief systems or worldviews.

We could choose to focus on the common human factor here, which is our feelings, rather than what splits us apart. When we argue, even with facts, all either side truly hears is:

“He disagrees with a plainly obvious truth that anyone with basic intelligence and human decency should be able to see – so he is obviously ignorant at best or a wretched person at worst. I should give him a piece of my mind so he knows how ignorant and wretched he truly is.”

And, of course, such thoughts cannot possibly go anywhere productive.

The way we tend to behave isn’t as a person who is calmly evaluating facts and weighing them against each other. Rather, we are more concerned with our feelings. We tend to react to the way things make us feel.

In our real conversations, of course, it will be a challenge to have a calm, reasonable conversation with someone from an opposing group or belief system. This is a great challenge because we must connect to our emotions while not letting them rule us. Connecting to our feelings will help us see that we share something that unites us with even people from opposing groups.

While we can reason logically through the facts, the reality is that most people do not think in this way. Most people have a feeling or emotion about something, and then they pick the facts or arguments that support their position. There is a confirmation bias – meaning that we only pay attention to evidence that confirms what we already believe. After you believe something, it becomes quite a challenge to change someone’s mind.

So instead of trying to change minds, why don’t we aim to respect our differences and build connections with people? Ask how people feel and encourage them to tell a story about what got them to that point. If you open your mind and listen to people’s pains, you will see that we can’t argue with feelings. We can argue by using logic, but implementing logic successfully is an overwhelming challenge when we live in a world with more and more misinformation, misinterpretations, and biased information. Also, new research is constantly identifying that what we thought was true becomes false overnight, as new “truths” replace the old ones. And of course, when you argue with logic, people tend to get quite emotional about their “facts,” which defies the point of using logic in the first place.

Understand that when we argue from the point of needing to be right, we can’t convince anyone.

The more you feel the need to be right, the more that the other person will feel the need to be right. And the situation we end up creating is of locking horns (such as with bison, antelope, or moose). And sometimes, in nature, both animals lock horns so tightly in a gruesome battle that both sides end up losing their lives. If that is not the future we want to create for ourselves, then we should reconsider our need to be right and instead look for ways to open ourselves up to others and get them to open up to us.

Debating the people we disagree with in an angry, hate-filled way is not the path forward.

Ignoring that the people we disagree with exist is not the path forward.

Treating the people we disagree with as less than human is not the path forward.

Instead of closing down, we must open up and invite people into our hearts, minds, and souls.

If we open up and explore people’s feelings, we create an open window of communication—a channel between souls where true understanding may develop.

Build Up Your Mental Fortress

We all have a mental fortress that we are in charge of and operates to help us in times of difficulties and duress. I am not speaking of the mind itself, but rather the mechanisms which protect the mind from harm and falseness.

Just as a computer has a firewall to protect it from viruses and invaders, you have a mental firewall, or what I will call the mental fortress. Many of us have not given any thought to this, and so the mechanism runs on autopilot. We resort to old habits that have seemed to work for us in the past. Sometimes those old habits work in a way, but they may not always work well, or sometimes they cause us extra problems rather than truly helping us.

Your mental fortress kicks in any time someone offends you, you feel embarrassed, someone lies to you, you lie to yourself, you are going through a traumatic period, and if you are afraid, anxious, or sad or hurt emotionally in some way.

The mental fortress may tell you to get away from people who cause you emotional suffering. Or it may tell you to respond angrily or possibly even with physical force or to argue with whoever is hurting you. It may tell you that your goal is to harm them more deeply, whoever it was that tried to hurt you.

You may begin to see that there are productive and counterproductive parts of this mental fortress. Many of us go all our lives without thinking of any of this. Something happens, and we react. But it is important to proact – to have a set of actions or steps that you can take in advance, to avoid inviting problems and suffering into your life.

A computer anti-virus system may find vulnerable ports that are liable to be hacked and used maliciously and protect them or seal them so that they cannot be so easily infiltrated. Just the same, you should consider your greatest vulnerabilities and look for ways to mentally protect yourself from being hacked or controlled or falling into emotional turmoil every time one of these vulnerabilities is accessed. What we mean when we say people are “pushing our buttons” is just this – we mean that they have discovered our weak points and purposely probed them to get us to malfunction, to get us to react childishly and yell and scream, or to get us to feel scared and become easily manipulated.

Just as your immune system has many working parts to help protect you against infection, your mental fortress has many working parts to protect your mind against becoming contaminated.

Some of these components may involve our self-talk (how we talk to ourselves in our own minds). It may be our support network – feeling that we have people who can help us in times of need can make us mentally stronger. Other features may be our mental toolkit for approaching or solving problems – feeling that you can handle difficult problems can make you feel more mentally at ease. One type of problem-solving that is especially useful will be knowing how to think creatively, to generate possible solutions for difficult scenarios that we find ourselves in. For many people, a component of the mental fortress may be physical exercise to help get your mind clear and in balance. For others, it may involve religious beliefs or spiritual practices to help you feel that you are connected to something greater and that you are not so vulnerable and weak. Just the feeling that we are protected can help to shield us from harm and keep our mental fortress strong.

One of the greatest tools of the mental fortress will be our self-talk, as we can have some control over this. A young child needs a parent or some outside stimulus to help manage his feelings if he is scared or worried. However, as adults, we begin to learn to manage our own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Nonetheless, adults still struggle greatly with preventing their emotions from running out of control.

Many individuals now suffer from depressive thinking, which can involve depressing loops of negative self-talk. Similarly, many individuals suffer from anxiety, which can involve anxious loops of self-talk.

One basic mental tool to combat this will be to have positive, calm, reasonable self-talk scripts that we have planned for difficult situations. Such positive or neutral scripts can help cancel out the mental loops that keep us stuck in anxious or depressive or other harmful thought loops.

It is important to keep these written, as, during a stressful period, such positive scripts may be difficult to recall.

Here are examples of some of the scripts we may create and have ready to use when needed:

• I am happy with everything and everyone I have in my life at this moment. I should not dwell on what is wrong but instead, think of what is going right.

• I am in pain, but I have the power to think of something else to make myself feel better (e.g., my cat, my spouse’s smile, or a favorite memory).

• I do not need to listen to my own mind – sometimes, it lies to me, and I can choose to observe the beauty in nature, talk to supportive family and friends, or engage in physical exercise to help calm my stressed mind.

• I am at peace at this moment – nothing can hurt me or take my peace from me.

• Love is all around me. I feel the love of everyone who has ever loved me, and I love them back.

• I should stop assuming things will go badly and instead assume they will go well. This will help me to find ways to improve my life.

• I am in control of what I think. I can take my mind to a better place.

• Whatever this experience is that I’m going through, it is only temporary.

• I love my mind and body in full. Even if sometimes my mind or body works against me, I love that every moment I am alive is a true miracle.

• God is watching over me. Even in moments when I feel lost, troubled, and hopeless, God is always there for me.

These are just some examples. We all need to take some time to find positive scripts that we can use in times of great worry, anxiety, depression, or whenever it is that we feel we are losing control of our own minds.

Of course, feel free to use the ones I have proposed for yourself or adapt them in any way you find useful.

The idea is not to brainwash ourselves with false positivity. I aim to be truthful in everything I do, as I do not think lying to ourselves or others is beneficial. The idea, rather, is to counteract the negative forces of the mind with something positive so that for a moment, we can see that our negative train of thought is often incorrect. Often, there is something positive we can focus on to make ourselves feel better and more in control.

Keep in mind that I am not a mental health professional. My background is in psychology, with an emphasis in industrial-organizational and cognitive domains, but not specifically in the clinical or therapeutic domains. To any individuals with mental health concerns, I recommend seeking professional help.

My general point here is that even if you are usually mentally healthy and free from mental disorders, you should take some time to build up your mental fortress.

A large problem of modern society is that we wait for severe illness to take hold of us before becoming interested in our mental stability. Our mental health and general health experts usually know how to deal with specific illnesses, but we should take care of ourselves and build up our mental fortresses to help avoid falling into mental illness or severe mental turmoil.

The core function of your mental fortress will be to stop negative and harmful forces from coming into and affecting your life, yet being open and adaptable to receiving positive and beneficial influences into your life. A mental fortress that allows everything into your life, all the good and bad, is not functioning well. Likewise, a mental fortress that allows nothing into your life, neither the good nor the bad, is not functioning well either.

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If you have a deeper interest in building up your mental strength and resilience for dealing with life and hardships, I recommend a couple of books:

365 Quotes to Live Your Life By

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By

The Forces that Pull Us Apart and Make Us Who We Are

In the modern-day, we are pulled apart in many different directions. Religion tells us that a God is looking out for us, with a larger purpose in mind for humanity. Science cannot give us a reason for being here. It can just examine our parts and the nature of matter. Philosophy has shown us many perspectives on thinking and being but has not led us toward a particular direction for the future. History has told us how we got here, but not what we need to change to get where we need or want to be.

The other guiding forces are from our parents, peers, and society. Some people listen more to their parents, and some more to their peers, who could be friends, colleagues, or just the people one happens to be surrounded by for most of the day. Most of us listen somewhat to society, and those who stray too far often end up imprisoned or forgotten.

Often, neither our parents nor our peers quite have things figured out. They are just filling out their roles, as prescribed to them by their parents, peers, or society, informed by their religion, science, philosophies, and histories.

People do not know themselves well. We are told who we are or need to be by our parents, our education system, our society, but we are not led to investigate who we are properly. We are told who we are (or guided into being who others think we should be), and then we become who we were told we were. This may be a false self, created to appease the people around us or society.

As individuals, we are whole universes unto ourselves, as the universe at large does not exist on its own. The universe at large exists as an interplay between the mind and the universe, making the universe what we experience it to be. Another mind of a different sort would fabricate an entirely different universe – for instance, different colors, emotions, intuitions, beliefs, and visual perceptions would completely alter one’s personal universe. I am in my own self-created universe, and you are in your own universe – but of course, they do overlap.

We must ask ourselves how we can move forward as societies when we are pulled apart by different personal universes, beliefs, and messages that do not coalesce on any particular point? Religion pulls us in one direction, science in the other, our peers in another, and our true selves likely in yet another direction. Many of us are being pulled apart from our core. And not only from ourselves but by the people around us too.

It is no wonder that mental illness is so common. Perhaps individuals are not mentally ill, but society, which is pulling us in all directions, has made us this way.

Then we have an ongoing debate in the world about whether we should be led by reason or intuition, our analytical side, or our emotional side. This provides us with another split in the psyche.

Are you man enough or woman enough (or masculine or feminine enough)? People who do not naturally fit their expected roles may be made to feel that something is wrong with them, which of course, harms the psyche.

Then we have ideas of sexuality, in that you are either gay or straight – sure, we acknowledge more types now, but many people still see this as mostly two types of sexuality. So you are one thing or another, which splits the psyche of many people as well. If you are part of both or have different sides, you may not be accepted or understood.

We have race – are you white or not? Are you white enough? Black enough? You are artificially split based on skin tone, or possibly ancestry, even if that skin tone or ancestry may not represent who you are on the inside. Society tells us that to be white, you have to be pure (white from both your parents). Otherwise, you are treated as no longer truly white. A white and black person, for example, is treated as black, as was former President Barack Obama (who has a white mother). Often enough, other races or groups (e.g., Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Native American) are neglected from the general conversation, which could make them feel as if they are not relevant enough.

If you occupy two conflicting groups (as viewed by society) at once, society often decides what you are for you.

We are pressed to be in one of these poles, as the middle ground is often ignored. Are you rational or intuitive? Gay or straight? Black or white? Liberal or conservative? Religious or atheist? These are some examples of the categories of our lives. For every category you are in, there increases the chance that you will hate or be hated by individuals in the other group. We are all in multiple categories, so we all belong in groups that hate or are hated, and we tend to inherit that hate that our groups carry with them. We inherit this hate and are expected to carry it along, or we are treated as if we are not proper members of our group, and our own group will hate us. If that happens, we will be treated as “other” and destined to be forever lost and abandoned.

We grow up with this hatred all around us, and in the hearts of the people closest to us, so it seems normal. In fact, we often end up carrying the hatred (or anger, fear, disgust, etc.) of our ancestors. We inherit this hate and then pass it on to our families, and they pass it on to the next generation. At some point, we must realize that every individual is a member of various groups, and those groups may have longstanding problems with other groups. But there is no reason for us as individuals to absorb so much hatred and then pass it on.

How do we rise above the hatred? We pursue meaningful connections with more people. We pursue open-mindedness, empathy, deep listening, understanding, and we begin to acknowledge the role that our groups or we have played in causing problems. We consider deeply that some of the thoughts or beliefs of people in groups outside our own may be legitimate. At some point, our biases may have led us to believe that they were 100% wrong on everything, even when this is not reflected in reality. Likewise, they may have come to think that we were 100% wrong on everything, even when that was not the case.

One way to rise above all this is to see that we are not our categories. The categories are aspects of us, but they are not us. A book can be hardcover or softcover. It can have a red, blue, or yellow cover. It can have a catchy title or a boring one. There are all kinds of books, but ultimately, what should matter is whether the content inside is true and useful, entertaining, or whatever the objective may be with reading it. Just as with humans, we tend to forget that our personal content, or who we are at our core, is what actually matters, not all the superficial qualities that we happen to exhibit.

We must stop being blinded by the categories that people wear for us to see, often not even by choice. Instead, open your mind and look deeper into their true core of being.