The liberation report
Thoughts on balancing between what to say and how to embrace it
While discussing about last week NL (The Dating Issue) with my friend P, he quoted his therapist saying, “The relationships will work when finally actor1 will be free to say how she/he feels and actor2 will be able to accept it”.
But hey, what we say might hurt, disappoint, create confusion or an irreversible damage, are we ready to deal with a potential bomb and with what could come next? Or would it better to say what they want to hear, not to say or not to know?
Firmly convinced that, in any type of relation (work, love, friendship, family), we should have the liberty to share how we feel, to admit we did something wrong or to simply be honest about what we might not like, being on the side of the addressee might be equally tough.
We all have experienced being on both factions and I have been trying to explore the 2 points of view, realizing I have always struggled more being the one who has to deliver a message, rather than being the receiver, now knowing it is partly related to a people pleasing behavior learned in my childhood (like at least 30% of my friends).
People pleasing is actually a systematic problem, especially common in girls and women, who grew up looking for acceptance, affirmation and approval externally, rather than looking inside oneself (I don’t really want to dig too much into the patriarchal environment issue now, but it’s obviously a key player of my generation and background).
This comes from media, friends, colleagues and our family of course. I love my family with all my heart and I have accepted the fact they did the best they could raising a girl in their 20s/30s with the tools they had, their own knowledge and habits (we sometimes forget they were kids too, with their package of - often - unresolved issues). At the same time, becoming aware of it and realizing to want to break the generational trauma, takes a lot of work and brings a considerable amount of troubles.
Let’s try to make it simple.
When we seek out external sources for validation, we often end up replying YES to anything we have been asked to, or saying what we believe the interlocutor want to hear, at the expenses of ourselves, undermining our own power and integrity.
Simultaneously, we believe that replying NO or with anything that the other party does not want to be told is difficult because we feel that we are not going to be loved or accepted.
When we start to say NO after saying YES for long time, blowback is literally what we get.
I found interesting the linguistic perspective about silence/no/yes/ and any other communication form explained by Marasco, a conversation analyst.
People are used to you saying YES and they assume that it will be the reply they always get (sometimes taking advantage of it), a NO might cause frictions, internal pain and a change in the relationship (but for the best, in my humbly opinion).
It is exactly what could happen when 1)we say to a friend that we are tired to be the ones who always make oneselves available for the other 2)we tell to a family member that they cannot speak to us in a certain way 3)we communicate to our love partner that the relationship responsibilities have to be equally shared. Blowback.
This can also be translated in working on the (in)famous boundaries. To identify what we want/like/need (and the contrary, consequently), is the first step to better picture the way to communicate to others how we feel, to finally create the long-awaited space where to be ourselves in the purest way.
Going to my hometown for Christmas holidays is the perfect exercise. My parents still see me like a little (good)girl, despite the fact I move out 18 years ago, and they genuinely do not always get my needs and feelings. So, I recently started to say it (and they do not often like it, eh), and affirming it, trying to choose the right words with care and love as much as I can, is giving me the possibility to be finally the real me with them too, something I do not recall to have experienced in a very long time. So, in order to create this space, my practices for 2024 Christmas festivity are going to be 1)not sleeping at my parents’ home every night 2)having planned dinners, gatherings, whatever with other persons I love 3)trying to detach from their own issues, I cannot fix them. (It might seem obviousness, but trust me, it is a big objective for a lot of us.) It is not easy, especially when I see their disappointment or when we end up fighting, but thinking I can be happier when I will spend time with them too and that it is for the best of us all, is what makes me deal with the frictions too (pouring some Campari and wine here and there is helpful tho).
From the opposite perspective, what the person in front of us is saying might not be what we are used to, or it could question our own behavior or we may discover painful truths. What to do with all this? Way easier to say it, but intentionally listening and, especially, accepting it, seem to be my way to proceed (the only way out is through, they say, and I endorse it 100%). I would like to know and then to deal with the next steps to be taken (and the potential consequent ache), rather than having a relationship with someone who hides something from me or who does not feel at ease in being honest. Viceversa, I want to be true, I can’t not follow what I feel to be my mission doing things that do not fit with my own responsibilities.
I mean, do we want to have dinner with a friend who decided to meet us even if he/she frankly just wanted to go home and didn’t want to let us down? Do we prefer our sexual partner does not tell us he/she desires something we do not usually do in bed, because too scared to offend us?
A month ago I was having drinks with Gemma in the neighborhood and we started talking with a guy seating next to us. Honest, brilliant 3 hours chats, one of the smartest and funniest encounters of this year, conversation went through 1)biology 2)gossip girl 3)expats life 4)fashion 5)cooking, hey here is my number, he said to us, let’s meet next week in the hood. Then he texted us, thanks for tonight, it was a pleasure. Then we reached out and he disappeared, he simply never replied to both of us. We genuinely didn’t see that coming.
They say not all knowledge is worth having, but why choosing not to say or to lie or ultimately to pretend to be someone else? At the end, a person is not allowing another person the consciousness, deliberately deciding on someone else’s behalf how to (re)act, kind of a deprivation, isn’t it?
I have been thinking it is utterly about vulnerability, which is intertwined in all this. We sometimes are terrified to expose us out there, implicitly influenced by someone else’s judgment, we do not entirely show who we are.
I think I want to stay true to myself, in my wholeness, how could I compromise it? It is really the work of a lifetime.
Happy Sunday.
Love,
e.