Three Ways We Can Cause Difficulties for Others and Ourselves and What We Can Do to Prevent These Difficulties
By Robin G. Jordan
I often watch Psych-2-Go videos on the internet. These videos are posted on YouTube primarily for educational and informational purposes but occasionally for light-hearted entertainment. The video, “5 Ways to Unintentionally Ruin Your Relationships” started me thinking.
Among the 5 ways to unintentionally ruin relationships mentioned in the video were “making assumptions;” “unspoken understandings,” and “blaming and not looking at your part in things.” These three ways can also harm others and us in a variety of ways.
𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. One of the reasons that we draw the wrong conclusions about other people is that we make assumptions about them and are unwilling to change these assumptions once we have made them. Instead, we try to come up with reasons for believing that our assumptions are correct. We are not willing to admit that we might be wrong and that we have adopted an unnecessarily negative view of someone that we are unwilling to let go of. When others reject our assumptions on the grounds that they are lacking in validity, we are unwilling to reconsider them but insist that they are not incorrect. This may lead us to treat the person about whom we have made assumption in an unjust, unfair manner and cause them unnecessary harm.
When we make negative assumptions about people, we need to ask ourselves if the human proclivity to assume the worst about people is influencing us. Psychologists call this proclivity the “negativity bias” or the “negativity affect” and it is a very common human bias, one which all human beings may share. It is the proclivity to quickly form negative opinions of other people, to give more credence to negative things said about them than positive ones, to dismiss anything that does not fit with our negative opinion of someone, and to invent reasons for maintaining that opinion, which are products of our imagination.
We find examples of people making negative assumptions about others in the Bible. In 1 Samuel 9-18 Eli watches Hannah as she is praying to God. Seeing Hannah’s lips moving but hearing no sound, Eli assumes that she is drunk. Hannah quickly sets him straight. In Matthew 12: 22-24 Jesus heals a demon-possessed man who is blind and unable to speak. The Pharisees assume that Jesus gets his power not from God but from Satan. Like Eli, they choose to think the worst. We can find more examples throughout the Bible. They show that the proclivity to assume the worst about people is not something new.
We also need to ask ourselves if anger or some other feeling is influencing our judgment. For example, we may have shared a particular conclusion with the person about whom we have formed a negative opinion and that person does not agree with us. If we are heavily invested in that conclusion, we may experience frustration and anger.
The frustration and anger, however, may only be secondary feelings. They may overlie the fear that we may be wrong in the opinion that we have formed and if we are wrong, we may have to reconsider our opinion of someone else. Our presuppositions about ourselves, other people, and the world may be wrong. They may be simplistic and see everything in black-and-white terms. They may not make room for the complexities of human behavior.
Negative assumptions, if they are not checked against reality, tend to multiply and grow. We will make new assumptions on top of the old ones. While the assumptions we make may appear believable and convincing to us and even to others, this does not mean that they are true. They are after all assumptions, something that we are choosing to accept as true without question or proof.
We may influence others with our negative assumptions due to the widespread prevalence of the negativity bias or negativity affect. People are more willing to believe negative things they hear about someone than they are positive things. This is one of the ways that we can harm someone with our negative assumptions about them. People are apt to pass on to others what they hear from us. While they may not intentionally want to harm that person, they are likely to harm them with their gossiping. They will damage the person’s reputation, the opinion that people in general have about that person.
We also need to be aware that some individuals will on purpose spread the negative things that they hear about someone in a way that is intended to cause harm, upset, and damage. They may be angry or displeased with that person or have taken a dislike to the person for some reason. When we share our negative assumptions with them, we are giving them ammunition that they can use to attack the person.
Gossiping is one of the ways that people express anger indirectly: they can show unfriendliness or dislike toward someone without expressing their anger openly.
The term that psychologists use for this way of expressing anger is “passive aggression.” Individuals who express their anger in this way may go as far as manipulating others to express their anger at a particular person for them. The people whom they are manipulating may not realize that the individual who is manipulating them is taking advantage of them and is influencing them in an unfair or dishonest way.
For the foregoing reasons it is not a good idea to share our negative assumptions with anyone other than the person about whom we are making these assumptions and then for the purpose of checking whether they are true. We should give full attention to what they are saying, using active listening techniques. We should also be willing and prepared to let go of our negative assumptions about them. If we are unable to let go of these assumptions, we may need to talk with a counselor about what is keeping us from letting go of them. We may need to explore why we choose to think negatively about someone when there is no credible evidence to support our assumptions. What do we gain from thinking negatively about them?
Jesus in his teaching about judging others is talking about the negative assumptions that we make about other people and the opinions of them that we form on the basis of these assumptions.
Making negative assumptions about other people can also cause anxiety and other forms of emotional distress to ourselves. Based upon our childhood experiences, past trauma, transference—the transferring of thoughts and feelings that we have about one person onto someone else—we may form a distorted impression of a particular person and make a series of negative assumptions about them. We may then behave toward them in a way that reinforces our distorted impression of them and the accompanying negative assumptions.
We may share this impression and its companion assumptions with others who may for a variety of reasons reinforce them. They may be influenced by sympathy, their own negative perceptions of people and the world, and the very common tendency to think negatively about others—the negativity bias or negativity affect. They may have ulterior motives. They may want to ingratiate themselves with us, take advantage of us, reinforce their own negative view of people and the world, see themselves as superior to other people, and so on. They may simply not know how to deal with the situation in which they find themselves and may be doing what they mistakenly believe in the best thing to do under the circumstances. All of these factors may be operative at some point.
As long as we hang on to our distorted impression of that particular individual and the accompanying negative assumptions, and we ourselves and people in our environment—family, relatives, friends, coworkers, fellow students, and the like—reinforce them, we are going to experience emotional distress. The individual in question is not causing this distress. Their words and actions are just triggers. They are not the cause of the distress. The cause is our negative perceptions of that individual and what we have chosen to assume about them. If the person is removed from our environment, the way that we think and feel and relate to other people underlying our misperceptions of that person and the negative assumptions we made about them are not going to go away. They will remain a part of us until we deal with them in counseling.
One of the reasons that people hang on to the distorted impressions of other people that they have and the negative assumptions they make about other people is what psychologists call “primary and secondary gains.” These are personal advantages that we may gain from holding on to these misperceptions and negative assumptions. We may avoid feelings with which we are not comfortable, or to which are not accustomed; feelings that we have little or no experience in expressing; conflict and direct expressions of anger; vulnerability; loss of control of the situation, and rejection. It is not unknown for people to avoid rejection by finding fault with an individual whom they fear will reject them and rejecting them first. In that way they avoid the pain of rejection themselves. We may get plenty of attention and concern or protection from others. We may get others to do what we want them to do.
𝐔𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬. In the video the presenter clarified that what is meant by “unspoken understandings” is unstated expectations of others that we have and unstated expectations of us that they have. We expect others to act in a certain way or to do certain things, but we do not share our expectations with them. They do the same with us.
For example, a couple may have a quarrel and one partner or spouse may lower the boom. They may read off a laundry list of unmet expectations and harshly criticizes the other partner or spouse for not meeting them. The problem is that they did not share these expectations with the other partner or spouse. Human beings cannot read each other’s minds. It is unreasonable and unfair to take someone to task for failing to meet expectations that were not shared with them and to which they did not agree.
Early in a relationship the partners or spouses should share their mutual expectations of each other and agreed to who meets what expectation. They should periodically revisit these expectations and evaluate how well each other is meeting the agreed upon expectations. They may need to alter their expectations.
Expectations should be clear, reasonable, and doable. These ground rules apply to all kinds of interpersonal relationships—friendships, working relationships, team relationships, group project relationships, and so on. Everyone should know ahead of time what is expected from them and should agree with the stated expectations. If the expectations prove difficult to meet, those involved in the agreement need to renegotiate them.
When we set expectations for someone else, do not involve them In setting the expectations, do not share the expectations with them, or secure their agreement to the expectations, we are setting them up for failure. From a Christian perspective, we are not only being unreasonable and unfair, but also we as disciples of Jesus are not treating them as Jesus would have us treat them. Jesus taught his followers to love even those who had little or no love for them and to do good to them. There is no good reason for doing that sort of thing. While we may not like having it drawn to our attention, when we do that sort of thing, we are acting in an extremely unkind and unpleasant way and causing pain to others intentionally. We may be letting our anger get the better of us.
In my own experience our own anger can cause us to make serious mistakes in judgment, especially when we do not realize how much our anger is influencing us. Later on, we may come to the realization that we used poor judgment but by then we may have done harm that may prove difficult to undo if it can be undone at all.
In marital and partnered relationships repeatedly failing to share expectations with a spouse or partner and criticizing and denigrating them for not anticipating the other spouse or partner’s unshared expectations is a form of emotionally abuse.
𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬. When people experience interpersonal difficulties, it is very tempting to blame one person for these difficulties. Finger-pointing is something that we learn at a very early age. We learn to blame someone else for something that goes wrong to deflect blame from ourselves or some other person—a sibling, a friend, or a classmate.
But anyone who has done yard duty as a teacher or a substitute teacher knows, things are not that simple. Sally provoked Jimmy, a scuffle occurred, Sally got in a few kicks, and Jimmy punched her back. Sally runs to the teacher, “Jimmy, hit me!!” She assumes the facial expression of the aggrieved party, which turns to delight when the teacher takes Jimmy to task for his treatment of girls.
The inexperienced teacher will rush to the rescue of the Sallies not realizing that they are often the instigators of playground scuffles. Yard duty, in my experience, requires the wisdom of Solomon. It is too often six of one and a half a dozen of the other.
Fortunate is the new teacher whom an older, more experienced teacher takes aside and offers them these words of advice. “Sally is a real brat!. I’d watch out for her!”
Sally has cultivated a “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” look that fools those who don’t know her. She may appear innocent or sincere, but she is really not.
The school psychologist nods his head in agreement. Sally’s parents are very strict, he tells us. Sally is a very angry little girl who cannot express any anger at home, so she takes out her anger on her school mates on the playground.
For some children avoiding blame means their very survival. They become adept at it as well as at concealing feelings that one or both parents find unacceptable in them. An angry parent may turn violent or ignore them completely. Any display of anger on their part may elicit a strong reaction of parental disapproval.
As well as having trained as an educator and worked as a substitute teacher, I was involved in child welfare work for a large part of my career, first working with children in foster care and their parents, and other caregivers, and then with children in their own homes and their parents and other caregivers. This is a field in which I acquired some expertise, enough to have confidence that I know what I am talking about.
How we learned to relate to other people in our childhood, we carry over to how we relate to them as adults. It affects our relationships in our teen and adult years. This includes acquaintanceships, relationships between two people who have met but do not know each other well.
As we become more mature, we may develop some insight into our attitudes, feelings, and behavior. Some individuals acquire a great deal of insight into themselves; others have no interest in such knowledge of themselves. They may go through life without caring anything about how they affect others. Getting their needs met is the only thing that matters to them.
As a consequence, we will see a difference in the way that people take responsibility for their words and actions. Some individuals will recognize the part that they played in interpersonal difficulties; others will seek to shift any blame for these difficulties to the other people. They will not acknowledge that they played any part in the difficulties. They may recognize that they did but they are not going to admit it. They are too fearful of the consequences, particularly the damage that it might do to the image that they have created for themselves with other people. They fear the disapproval and rejection of others. They may think about the worst things that could happen to them in the particular situation, or they may consider that situation much worse or much more serious than it really is.
While reluctance on the part of one or both parties involved in interpersonal difficulties to recognize and acknowledge their part in these difficulties can interfere with resolving the difficulties, a greater barrier to their resolution is to misdiagnose the problem. This typically happens when one of the parties is identified as “the” problem and the part that the other party played in the difficulties is minimized or ignored. This can lead to attempting to solve the problem in an inappropriate manner and making the situation worse.
A school social worker, when a child is acting out seriously in school may have a conference with the child’s parents and urge them to go for counseling. In the initial interview with the counselor the parents will present the child as “the” problem. However, as the counselor explores with the parents the dynamics of the family, the counselor may discover that the family itself is dysfunctional. The relationships between the parents are not working normally, nor are the parents’ relationships with the child and the child’s siblings. The parents want the counselor to “fix” the child’s behavior, but the counselor knows that the behavior is the tip of the iceberg. Unless the parents change the way that they relate to each other and to the children, the child will keep acting out in school.
Where interpersonal difficulties are involved, it is typically the relationship that is “the” problem, not a particular individual. When two individuals interact with each other over a period of time, they form a relationship. A relationship is the way in which two or more people feel and behave toward each other.
It is much better to facilitate communication between the two people involved than it is to shut down communication, which often is a part of the problem, a lack of open, honest communication between the parties concerned. Shutting down communication is a way of avoiding a problem, not resolving it.
Direct communication can clear up misunderstandings that may be an underlying cause of the interpersonal difficulties. It can result in closure for both parties and an improved relationship. It can lead to the kind of reconciliation that Jesus urged his disciples to seek even at the expense of temporarily abandoning their religious obligations to accomplish it.
If Christians are to enjoy the unity for which Jesus prayed for his disciples so that the world would believe God had sent him, we must learn healthy ways to resolve any interpersonal difficulties which may cause a rift between us in the local expression of the Body of Christ of which we are a part. Only then will we be able to effectively collaborate together to show and share the love of Jesus to others and make a difference in their lives and the life of our community, and to achieve our full potential as Jesus’ followers and witnesses in the world.
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