One curious thing I’m learning about Connecting Skills is that I’m acutely aware of when I could have used them. Just the other night, I allowed a healthy mixture of the Protective Patterns Attacking, Defending, and Distrusting to get the best of me, and my son ended up in tears.
In my mind, I asked him to get off his computer three times. After some debriefing from the event, it turns out we hadn’t appropriately used the Collaborating Skill: Seeking Agreements. That is one of my learnings moving forward.
The other learning that I am most embarrassed about was NOT practicing Heartfelt Listening. Because I was off-center, I wasn’t able to access the skill of Heartfelt Listening in real time to hear the information my son was trying to share. According to my wife, son, AND two daughters, I wasn’t listening. Period. I literally was unable to hear, process, and let in his perspective. I literally used a phrase that my dad used to say and that I thought I’d never utter, “Because I said so!”
It is hard enough to be non self-judgmental when being self-reflective. When you catch yourself saying something that as a child you swore you’d never say . . . it feels like an epic failure.
When I really sit with it and remember what I hated so much about that phrase, it was not truly feeling seen or heard as a person, even a young one. It was hard to feel like my perspective didn’t matter at all, like I didn’t exist. Fast forward a few decades, and now I was being that insensitive adult. I had identified one of my Cultural Patterns that was not serving me well.
By sorting through a bit of discomfort and even shame, I found a new way to coach myself when things are going sideways with my kids. I listen to my inner child yelling, “Don’t be one of them!” I actually attend to some inner healing and calm my “child-self” by using the Connecting Skill: Heartfelt Listening.
I do find this multi-dimensional effect sort of crazy–that I am building Relational Resilience both with the other person and myself when I use the Connecting Skill: Heartfelt Listening. Truly moving on from my Cultural Pattern about not being heard will take some work, but I at least I understand it better. Heartfelt Listening will serve both my current relationships with my children and my inner child as I look to understand my own Cultural Patterns that I want to change.
Wishing you the best,
Bryan