appendix 10: communicating feelings (spicy) (draft)

Verbally expressing feelings is sometimes vague communication, but it is also very high bandwidth communication; because, a feeling is a summary of a huge amount of embodied information. (A feeling could be said to be a part of a view, position, perspective, or stance, which could all be said to sort of be the same thing.)

(Verbal expression can include "paralinguistic markers such as prosody, tone, or pitch, as well as nonverbal cues like hand gesture, facial expression and eye gaze.")

Sometimes when you express your feelings to someone, that other person might feel like you're being presuming, accusatory, or demanding (or they themselves might somehow feel unheard), which can sometimes cause them to become angry or defensive; it might cause them to be "triggered."

Maybe of course, we are all responsible for our own feelings and behavior, and of course you probably or usually don't mean to be presuming, accusatory, or demanding, and they might be reading things into what you said that aren't there—maybe you weren't being presuming, accusatory, or demanding at all, of course—and in any case, you really want to feel understood or you really want them to change their behavior (depending on what you're expressing feelings about).

In any case, when people are triggered (and you might be triggered, too!), it makes it harder to communicate, and sometimes we say things that we regret, and results of communication are sometimes worse or even net negative.

If we can speak in a way that doesn't trigger the other person, then maybe we can get better results from communicating. But, of course, not only do we not want to trigger the other person, we want to be understood and we want something to be different. Usually, if we feel heard, we're willing to listen to the other person and to examine our own behavior, too.

Sometimes communication "methods" can be helpful guides to expressing something, because they can sometimes help to avoid communication pitfalls, as long as we can actually say everything that's important to us from "within" the method or at least alongside it.

Stick with me, here—I used to think that communication methods were too rigid and didn't allow me to express what I actually wanted to say. I wanted to say what I wanted to say how I wanted to say it, and anything less was inauthentic and damaging both to myself and even to the relationship.

But sometimes what seems to be rigidity is not knowing how to use the method properly. And, sometimes a method ultimately makes it easier to get exactly what you want. (And, often in an intimate relationship part of getting exactly what you want is your intimate partner getting exactly what they want, too, or both of you working towards getting what you mutually exactly want, together, is even better than what either of you could come up with individually.)

So, anyway, consider the "I-message" or "I-statement." Apparently in the 1960's Thomas Gordon coined this term. The idea, I think, without doing a deep dive into his material, is sort of that if you the reader focus on yourself when making a statement, the other person is less likely to be triggered, because it's about you and not them. But/​and, nevertheless, for a lot of reasons, there's enough information in an I-message to further facilitate communication.

From there, I think, we sort of get to the modern "I feel" statements, which understandably come with a lot of eye-rolling and frustration, at times.

Consider this generic and sort of humorous but heartfelt sentiment, "I feel like you’re wrong and bad, and you should feel bad, and you should stop doing the thing you’re doing" [or start doing something, depending]

--> factoring out "you"

  • Try but don’t actually say: I feel like you [[did or] are [doing]] X [to me], and that makes or is making me feel Y
  • Or try: “[I don’t know exactly (or at all) how or why but] you’re somehow making me feel Y…
  • And then say: I feel Y…
  • Y =
  • adjectives and -ed past participles
  • And adjective phrases and etc.
  • Is that everything? What’s left out? What’s missing? Will I still feel unheard?
  • You probably won’t want to say all of it for reasons, at least not at first or etc., and that’s OK. It might feel or be unsafe or otherwise not get you what you want.
  • [here we mean “anything grammatical” as it were
  • troubleshooting, refinements, objections and concerns and so on in a bit.

templates:

  • I feel X
  • I feel X-ed
  • I feel like I’ve been X-ed
  • I feel as if I’d been X-ed
  • I feel like I’m being X-ed
  • A part of me feels X
  • A part of me feels like it’s been X-ed
  • A part of me feels as if it has/​had been X-ed
  • A part of me feels like I’ve been X-ed
  • A part of me feels as if I’ve/​I’d been X-ed
  • I feel like [anything but without using you/​he/​she/​they/​ey/​etc.]

I feel like I’m being ... I feel like I have been ... I feel like I will be ... I feel like I’m going to ... I feel as if I had been ... I feel as if I will be ... I feel as if I were ... I feel as if I were being ...

I felt ... I felt like I was being ... ...

I would feel ... ...

I would have felt ... ...

By then / but, I would have been feeling...

I’m e.g. worried, concerned, afraid… [that] I’m going to feel… ... < I’m e.g. almost sure [that] I’m going to feel… ...

[I used to feel…]

I would have been going to feel X if it were not the case that Y were to have been going to Z (future imperfect conditional(???) from joke meme)

  • I feel X full stop.

partial bibliography:

"I-message" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-message "paralinguistic markers such as prosody, tone, or pitch, as well as nonverbal cues like hand gesture, facial expression and eye gaze" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony [Last accessed: 2023-11-01] "prosodic stress" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(linguistics)#Prosodic_stress [Last accessed: 2023-11-01] "do-support" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-support [Last accessed: 2023-11-01] "implicature" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature [Last accessed: 2023-11-01] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication#Criticisms [Last accessed: 2023-11-01]

when vulnerability is structurally unsafe or at least locally temporarily fixably unsafe

when to not be vulnerable or forthcoming cf. nvc stuff, could dig up those articles/critiques

tone:

Implicitly:

  • “And you’re bad” wrong, dumb, etc.”
  • “And you should do something about it”
  • Guarding against accusatory/​judgmental/​demanding implicature as best you can
  • cf. "paralinguistic markers such as prosody, tone, or pitch, as well as nonverbal cues like hand gesture, facial expression and eye gaze"
  • and diction/​word choice. some adjectives are more you-y or us-y/​we-y and therefore more accuse-y than others. but can put prosodic emphasis on feel and so on, at the very least.
  • [cf. confusion or questions as a weapon and when sincere]

Neutral reference:

Right now

Yesterday when we were interacting

examples:

Frustrated, morally outraged, dubious, wronged, impotent, injured, violenced,

little, small, hurt-able, judged, aimless, confused, no-idea-what’s-going-on

See also: https://integrationbyparts.substack.com/p/i-feel-like-youre-an-asshole

Factoring out “you” and “judgmental labels”; zooming out to whole they-system:

“I feel like you’re being a moron.”

Becomes:

I feel upset, frustrated, boundary-violated, irritated, incredulous [by what’s happening right now]

Neutral reference/​non-judgmental labeling:

Specific:

What’s happening right now; better: all this that’s happening now

What happened earlier; even better: when we were interacting earlier, I felt

General:

Situations like yesterday; situations like earlier

Vulnerable or intimate or honest or etc.:

Flat, hard, wounded, forlorn,

weak, shy, powerless, caught off-guard, small, disgusting, vulnerable

(Epistemic: confused, etc.)

Tone accusations, implicature, weaponizing: (lying?!) [add to other section]

“I’m confused” = you’re an idiot or otherwise bad or a poor communicator, etc. disgusted

Epistemic:

Confused, flabbergasted, incredulous, surprised, dumbfounded, dubious

Recursion:

“Further upset by how all this is going”

Conceding, admitting, meta, shadow :

haughty, arrogant, self-righteous, self-satisfied, smug, vindicated, vindictive, aggressive, condescending

more e.g. vulnerabilities

cf. xxxxx xxxxxxx in xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx for example feelx: [cf. xxxxxxxx xxx] unattractive, unfavorably comparable, uncomfortable, intimidated, ugly, unworthy, lesser, gross, squirmy, smelly, forever worse, unattaining-able. Cf. xxx xxxx xxxxx

Frustrated, morally outraged, dubious, wronged, impotent, injured, violenced,

little, small, hurt-able, judged, aimless, confused, no-idea-what’s-going-on, impotently sexual or like too-young-but-sexual,

too tall, too wide, too short, too ugly, etc.

error checking, inquiry, reflection:

I (maybe; non-exclusively/​among-other-things) feel…
It seems like you perhaps among other things, maybe feel…
I hear you say that you feel…

from feelings to details and explanations and revelations and mutual understanding:

  • / levels of perspective taking / getting down to the bottom of things:
  • [attitudinal or echoic propositions? clint fuhs thing? yeah sure probably, etc. also integral spirituality and religion of tomorrow, perhaps]
  • I/​you/​he/​she/​ey knows/​knew, thinks, feels, believes, remembers, intends/​intended DOES/​DID that I/​you/​he/​she/​ey knows, thinks, feels, believes, remembers that I/​you/​he/​she/​ey knows, thinks, feels, believes, remembers that...

=========

after-ish feelings and explanations and error corrections: requesting, apologizing, thanking, offering sympathy, critiquing

  • requesting, apologizing, thanking, [gifting??/​helping??]: [after checking if heard, after admitting fault, after reflecting cost, after if checking if anything else, after inquiring --- re-check all burns stuff for full list of burns stuff.]
  • also: last one so far: empathy/​sympathy/​I'm sorry you feel that way /​ lo siento /​ offering sympathy/​condolences
  • a/​lrlmnf

more bibliography:

relationship to long-run meditation:

effective "arbitrariness" vs "rigid ego"

cf. like total flexibility sort of in dissolution etc.

Frame ontology what happened, what’s happening here, why is it happening

non-committal respect and engagement:

  • "I hear you." cf. "ah so". non-commital etc.
  • "I have heard you."
  • "I see you."
  • "I feel you."/​"I feel it."

noncommittal

  • english interjection to show neither agreement nor disagreement

further relationship to long-run meditation:

Finest-grain agreement/​disagreement, compliance/​non-compliance, commitment/​non-commitment. “No momentum /​ non-coercible, non-self-shoulding.” Neither hardened nor buffeted.

1707 words · appendix