Do you want to be Right or have meaningful Relationships? 
You can't have both! 

     “Asshole!!!”She says like a champion dart thrower, throwing a bullseye and then all in one motion, turns on her heal and storms out of the room. Suddenly I felt like a hit and run victim. Shock waves of shame shot through me as the mushroom cloud of my worthlessness rose inside of me.

    My female friend had just previously announced to me in a voluminous and highly irritated tone "I want to talk to you right now!!" And I answered "You know, that tone triggers a lot of fear for me so I want to just continue to lay here looking at the ceiling". How could my sweet childlike honesty trigger such a verbally vile response. I was still laying down on my bed looking up so I decided to project the "inner critic show" going on in my head onto the ceiling. The first character on stage is my original coping mechanism, my Neurotic, who blames himself whenever there is conflict. "Look at you, you are pathetic. Can not even be there for your friend in her hour of need. And you call yourself a teacher of Compassionate Communication."

As I started to put the shattered pieces of my ego back together the roar of righteous indignation rose in my belly. Enter the character of my Character Disorder, who has graduated to blaming others whenever there is conflict. "Who the hell does she think she is?! I’m not putting up with this rude, verbally abusive, boundary invading perpetrator behavior!" It was of some relief to have my inner critic focus on someone else for a moment. Then my education pays off as my Therapist (they’re pissed) Complex offers the final analysis, "She is obviously suffering from a pseudo narcissistic personality disorder with paranoid borderline tendencies".

As I lay there relishing in the safety of my righteous rage it occurs to me that I am totally caught up in defensiveness. What am I defending myself from? What is so scary? What is scary is the idea that "I may be in the wrong!" And my Belief System (BS for short) says that if I am wrong, I am a worthless piece of shirt and therefore deserve to feel the excruciating pain of shame that comes with this thought. My BS also tells me I deserve to be shunned and isolated from the rest of humanity including my loved ones.

No wonder people fight so fiercely to appear "right". I believe that the bankrupt strategy of always being "right" is a way to try to create a sense of safety, socially and psychologically. You might say this obsession with being right is a fear based drive to protect from appearing to be "wrong." In a culture based on "punishments and rewards" it is scary to ever be wrong for fear of various forms of punishment, like shunning, withdrawal of love, physical attack (i.e. corporal punishment), other kinds of sanctions, or withholding of rewards. Every being wrong becomes psychologically associated with all the pains of punishments past. Most people in a "right/wrong" culture like ours are ever vigilant to protect from being cast as one of the wrong bad people who are to be avoided, attacked, excluded, punished, blamed, and generally made into the scape goats for the culture. This atmosphere of fear snowballs as people learn to quickly "find someone to blame", rather than take responsibility for their actions and learn from it. In other cultures making mistakes or "being wrong" about something is seen as an opportunity for growing closer through forgiveness and for learning something more.

Every situation, every relationship and every group we associate ourselves with is an opportunity to create the cultural climate that we want. We can create a climate of compassion or one of fear depending on what we do with our mistakes and our judgements of ourselves and others.

Because I wanted to create a climate of compassion in the microcosm of my couplehood, I remembered what Dr. Marshall Rosenberg said, "All judgments are the tragic expressions of pain and unmet needs." I think this even applies to my oh so right, sophisticated, clinical judgments. So I started to look for the pain in my body. Oh there it is - OUTRAGE. And what is the universal human need underneath the outrage? Respect , gentleness and safety. What else is in there, because I know anger never comes alone. There is always hurt or fear or something under it. Now I can feel it - devastating hurt and a need for reassurance that I am valued.

As I lay there giving myself empathy, (i.e. paying attention to, and feeling into what my reaction was all about) I start to feel a relieving shift in my body. I begin to wonder if my friend is possibly experiencing the same thing - hurt and needing reassurance that she is valued. I know that if I had tried to play lifeguard earlier and save her from drowning in her distress it would have been a double drowning. I know that the undertow of my own unconscious reactions from my unhealed past would have prevented me from really being present. I had been drowning and needed to get myself to shore first before trying to throw her a line. Or as a wise man from the Middle East once said, "Get the dirt out of your eye first, so you can see clearly to help someone else do the same." After giving myself empathy I was moved by compassion to go to my friend and see if I could offer her the understanding that would restore our connection. I am glad I waited until my desire to connect with her came from my need to understand and reconnect instead of out of fear of abandonment or guilt about abandoning her. I am glad I remembered the first commandment of nurturing relationships: 1. Me first and only. I want to wait until my giving comes only from my heart without any fear shame or guilt. The energy I want to give from is the same joy and innocence a child has when it feeds bread to a hungry duck.

"When I heard you call me an asshole a while ago, were you feeling angry and hurt because you were

really needing reassurance that your need to be heard really mattered?" Her eyes started to fill with tears and a faint outline of a smile started to creep across her lips as she said "It’s about time asshole".

"Yes, I’m guessing that was painful for you and you would have like this quality of listening earlier." I said. "Yes" she said the tears now flowing freely "but I am also relieved that you waited till you were really in a position to do so instead of trying to give me empathy from Hell and then resenting me."

How beautiful to finally see the truth behind "asshole". How beautiful to finally hear that my dear friend is in pain and wanting some reassurance from me that she mattered. This allows me to actually enjoy my partner’s pain. I do not mean this in the sadistic sense. I mean that there is a distinct joy in the intimacy of feeling the same feeling with another even if it is some type of pain. There is also a sense of relief in the awareness that as I am present to my partner’s pain she is being assisted in going deeper into and therefore through her pain. As John Bradshaw says - "The quickest way out of pain is through it." I am glad I gave her my honesty, (that the tone had triggered fear and that I wanted to lay there a while) because it ultimately led to a deeper level of intimacy.

Intimacy - Into Me You See

Through my honesty.

(Stan Dale’sphrase)

When a wound gets triggered by what someone says, I did not hear them. What I heard was my own inner character disorder voice making them wrong or my neurotic making me wrong or responsible for their pain. How sad that we take so much responsibility for our loved ones’ pain. When we do we are completely blocked from being responsive to the feelings or needs of the other. Oh sure we can be reactive to the pain in the other and give them something out of fear, shame or guilt but we cannot be empathetic to the other because we should or because we feel we have to. Also it is not a very joyful giving unless we are being responsive to the need of the other, instead of responsible for them. When I think I am responsible for the hurt of another I am not really present, I off Siberia in my head on a guilt trip.

Here are some helpful little tips,

to avoid fear, shame and guilt trips.

1.Pack a QTIP - Quit Taking It Personally. (Stan Dale told me about QTIP)Below are some ways I have learned to QTIP.

a. When I am listening to the other I want to listen with an awareness that their pain is coming from their unmet need -- not from my behavior. People are never angry or upset with us, they are distressed about an unfulfilled need of their own. I want to remember that I may be the detonator but I am never the dynamite. In other words I may be the trigger for their psychological pain but I am never the cause. One way of training my consciousness to stay focused on that, is to say either in my mind or out loud to my partner - Are you feeling upset because You were needing reassurance that you matter and want me to agree to call you earlier next time? This prevents me from thinking - Are you feeling hurt because I did not call you? It is this thinking that punches my ticket to the Hell inside myself. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 kisses.

b. Make sure you are understanding the universal human need being expressed by your partner instead of jumping to thoughts about solutions. Example: Your girlfriend tells you she is dissatisfied with the sex. Before reading this you might have jumped to solution and told her "Well maybe you need to just find somebody new." No, no, try to feel, sense, look into what her need might be. Maybe she is needing some empathy for how scary it is to ask for what she wants in the bedroom.

c. Remove your grandiose self from your partner’s need. She never needs you to take the trash out. Her need is support, her request is that you take the trash out. She does not need you to go to the movie with her, she needs companionship and requests you to fill that need. Or perhaps if she were more honest she might say "I am needing some financial support, would you be willing to take me to the movie?" If I do not keep this straight I start to see my partner’s needs as nooses around the neck of my autonomy/freedom. Or I see her needs as burdens I have to fill or suffer the consequences of guilt. One way I keep this in focus is by thinking or saying "Are you feeling overwhelmed because you are needing some help right now?" Instead of getting caught in the trap of taking on responsibility for the other’s need by thinking "Are you feeling overwhelmed because you need me to help you?"

2. Call a time out. Just say I’m …. and then the truth about your present emotion. Like "I’m scared right now about the tension between us and I want to be alone for a while."

Remember that you have unlimited time outs. (Unlike most games like basketball game where you have a set number of time outs.) Be sure you have a private place you can go to just be with your self. Bring your journal to write out what is going on inside you. Also bring your cell phone and your list of phone numbers for your support team.

It gives me an incredible sense of security to have this rich resource of a team of "empathy exchange" partners. We take turns listening to each other when our stuff is up after being triggered. It is also one of the things that most helps me grow and keeps stability in my relationships

3. Create and use a Password. (just like on the internet) Dr. Rosenberg told me about a couple who uses the word lawnchair. This couple was once making love in a lawnchair when suddenly it collapsed under them. They laughed so hard and felt so connected with each other that the experience stuck in their memory. So now when they are getting really lost in an unfun argument one of them just needs remember to say lawnchair to remind them of the perspective they really want to have on their relationship. For another couple it was the phrase "Does that mean you are staying?" He once said to her "Any self respecting man would leave you." To which she answered "Does that mean you are staying?" They laughed till they cried.

Relationships based on being ‘right’ are really not relationships at all. They are relationdinghies. (Stan Dale’s word) That is because they are based on the fear of being wrong, which is an attitude and an energy that contracts and constricts life and relationships. But please do not make your self wrong for being caught up in the fear of being wrong. After all you most like grew up in a culture which is constantly asking "Who is right, and who is wrong?", "Who shall we reward, and who shall we punish?", "Who shall we include and who shall we exclude?" But just because we grew up in that kind of a culture does not mean we need to keep creating it in our present relationships. I recommend we as different questions like "How could I make your life more wonderful?" and "Would you like to know how you could make my life more wonderful?" and "What are your needs right now?" and "Would you like to know what I need right now?" Now if none of this appeals to you because you prefer a relationdinghy instead of a relationship, here are some suggestion to help you get what you want from life.

1. Keep your attention focused at all times on who is right or wrong in a discussion, fair or unfair in a negotiation, selfish or unselfish in their giving (it helps to keep a list of who has done what for whom), kind or cruel in their tone of voice, rude or polite in their mannerisms, sloppy or neat in their dress, etc. etc. etc. Be careful not to realize that your attempt to be right is really an attempt to protect yourself from thinking you are wrong and then feeling shame.

2. If you need some support for this I recommend certain self-help groups who can give you the latest scoops on the most powerful politically correct labels with which to overpower and confuse you partner.

Members of these groups will collude with you in validating that your partner really is a commitment phobic, emotionally unavailable, a counterdependant, typical female or male, overly dependent, needy, spiritually unevolved, codependent, dysfunctional, emotionally immature, judgmental, bi-polar, OCD, clinically depressed, Adult onset ADD, etc. It is important to keep your consciousness filled with such terminology to prevent any fondness from developing. This also helps in keeping you caught in the "paralysis of analysis" and clueless about what you or your partner are needing from each other. (Please do not misunderstand, I am deeply grateful for the profound awareness raising work of the 12 step movement and many other groups, especially in my own life.)

3. Adopt this test for love: If your partner really loves you he/she will always know what you want even before you know and then give it to you without your having to ask. And they do this regardless of the sacrifice to themselves it takes. If they do not give you what you want it means they do not love you.

4. Ask for what you do not want instead of what you do want. Dr. Rosenberg told me about a woman who told her husband she did not want him spending so much time working. The next day he signed up for a golf tournament.

5. In case your relationdinghy starts to grow here are a few torpedo phrases to sink it again:

a. It hurts me when you say that.

b. I feel sad because you ......(won’t say ‘I love you’, won’t have sex, etc.)

c. I’m sorry.

d. I need you.

If you really want to choke the life out of any relationship meditate on d. I need you. Then you will know how I felt for about thirty five years of my life. I felt like a drowning swimmer and I would grab hold of anyone who came near me and try to use them like a life raft. Now I want relationships to be flowers for my table instead of air for my lungs.

As I confessed in the chapter "Confessions from a Cling-on" I have had trouble in

my relationships allowing the people I care about the distance they need to keep our

togetherness alive and healthy. It is easy to get down on myself, judge myself as too

‘clingy’ or codependent and start to feel hopelessly depressed. What I prefer doing is to

take a Patch Adams approach to all my mental illnesses. By this I mean enjoying all my

neurosis by looking for the humor in them. The following piece is some fun I had one

morning with my "Codependency."

The Codependency of Microzoophobia

It is my invariable custom to put out birdseed each morning and then sit back in my reading chair and watch them eat. My chair is fairly close to the feeder and I am aware that any quick movement on my part will scare the birds away. After five or ten minutes the first bird comes and I notice myself take a small gulp of air and gently hold it in with slightly pursed lips. It was my attempt to control any bodily movement, even the rise and fall of my breathing chest, so as to not scare away the tiny creature.

Another bird lands and I feel more pressure to control any movement, any sign of life in me that might frighten away my new flighty friends. I want to scratch an itch on my nose but I dare not.

Then it hit me, "These birds are controlling me. They will not let me breath or move. They have taken over my will." My over active imagination transforms the sparrow into the image of a giant Pterodactyl pinning me to the ground with its huge talons wrapped around my chest preventing me from breathing as it decides whether to carry me back to it’s lair (Did Pterodactyls have lairs?) or to eat me right there. Finally in one last desperate heroic lunge I leap to my feet and discharge my lungs with a roar of power as I throw off the sparrow demons. The two birds at the feeder quickly fly back to safe refuge in a nearby tree as I relish in my reclaimed freedom. I imagine that one of the birds says to the other "Wow! Does this guy have autonomy issues or what?"

Do I do this with all my relationships? Lure them in with some kind of nurturing, project onto them a monstrous need to control my very life energies, and then chase them away in a fear filled fit of rebellion?

I am particularly helpless if a cute kitten falls asleep on my chest. It might as well be a thousand pound adult lion. I can lay there for hours debating the relative importance of our respective needs.

Voice one. "You have things to do that are much more important than this kitten’s need to sleep."

Voice two. "Oh, so now you are more important than the kitten. Remember what Gandhi said about how you can tell a man’s character by how he treats least of creatures around him."

Voice one. "You are just procrastinating".

Voice two. "But it’s so cute I hate to wake it up". That one always gets me. So I lay there until the developing cramps trigger muscle spasms which jar the kitten awake. And this is only one of the painful symptoms of my disease - microzoophobia. That’s the fear that small animals are controlling you.

Now seriously, what hope do I have for a real relationship with an adult homo sapien when I can not even iron out my autonomy issues with kittens and birds?

  
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