It turned into an argument one day, and I just said "I hear what you're saying, but can't really change my behavior, because I just don't have anything to say to you and/or am thinking about something else." The absurd thing was that I wasn't doing anything noteworthy. Just in my head trying to map out what I wanted to do.
If you're the person who 'throws the first stone', then it's pretty easy to make it look like the other person is at fault. Maybe they were uncomfortable for reasons that have nothing to do with my behavior? Maybe they don't have any reason to try and force me to be on the defensive? That makes me uncomfortable, and surely if I were more engaged I could have found some way to blame them for being in my way all the time rather than just spending time in my own thoughts. But who really wants to turn something boring and innocent into an outright conflict?
People are fookn weird.
Having you stand there waiting probably made them self-conscious about what they were doing. They were feeling judged despite you likely didn't care what they were doing. And that made them uncomfortable.
But that's not your fault technically.
Someone being able to articulate something is not really related to whether or not they're being disrespected. In some situations, often the only thing the person has to go on is that things feel wrong. Unless that person is also very educated in the areas of how psychological wrongs can be done, they may very well be unable to articulate it, and your attitude makes the perpetrator very defended in society.
We see this play out in abuse situations where a lot of gaslighting is going on. People who abuse are often very experienced in abuse, so they're going to be much better at articulating how they are not doing what you're doing.
In a lot of these threads I see people trying to insist one way or the other (disrespect or perception of slight).
While I agree with you that people who abuse often are more skilled in avoiding blame than the victim, I would like you to consider the likelihood that there is abuse going on to begin with (i.e. what is the base rate of abuse?). I don't have hard data, but my experience is that it much more likely that the one claiming disrespect is misreading signals.
What I think your parent is trying to say is: Consider the scenario where the parents meant no disrespect. And suddenly get a negative response from their adult son/daughter. The only person in this scenario who can provide clarity to the situation is the son/daughter.
>In some situations, often the only thing the person has to go on is that things feel wrong.
This is very true. In the communications resources/books I have encountered, however, the burden is still on this person to articulate it (and they have advice and templates on how to go about it). And the advice is somewhat in line with your parent commenter. Accusing someone of disrespecting them is totally unhelpful. Instead:
1. Point out the actual, specific example/fact. Phrase it in a way that is not disputable. By "not disputable", consider the criterion: If 5-6 people who are not involved were witnesses to that act, would there be consensus? Whether someone's actions constitute "respect" is very disputable. I've seen this at work where one person kept insisting another coworker was arrogant and putting others down. But whenever he gave an example, half his audience would say "I don't see anything in that which is putting others down". This person had a narrative in his head where he was inserting a whole story to connect the dots - but was not considering that simple, alternative explanations exist for those dots.
2. Once you state the fact, describe how you felt. What impact did that action have on you? Some books add the extra catch: A feeling has to be all about yourself. Saying "I felt disrespected" or "I felt cheated" or "I felt ignored" are simply stating your hypothesis - none of these are feelings. Suitable feelings might be "sad", "confused", "annoyed", "embarrassed", "depressed". The key thing to remember is "Feelings are always legitimate". No one can reasonably dispute it and say "No, you did not feel embarrassed".
3. State what needs of yours are being impacted. People have all kinds of needs. Autonomy, peace, companionship, harmony, etc. If anything upsets you, some of your needs are not being met. Learn to identify the needs that are not being met and state them.
4. Now that you've stated the facts, state the story you have going on in your head. Connect all the dots together.
5. Ask for, and be open to hear alternative narratives to those dots.
6. Make an explicit request: Specify how you would like the other person to behave. Again, no vague words like "Speak with respect" or "Speak politely". Make it specific and explicit.
As you said, most people just feel something is wrong. They can't say quite what. The mistake is many then either construct a whole story where they are the victim and the other person is the aggressor, or they just have a vague dislike for the other that tends to grow with time.
Going from feeling wrong to being able to:
1. Identify and separate out the facts from the perceptions.
2. Put non-judgemental words to your feelings.
3. Identify needs that are not being met.
4. Identify the story your brain is telling you (and realizing it is an unvalidated story).
5. Finally, discussing the issue with the other person without triggering defensive responses.
To do all this takes a lot of practice. Now a lot of these resources do acknowledge that you can't expect the whole world to learn to speak this way. So they do spend as much time on how others (the perceived aggressors or third party folks) can communicate to extract all these elements from the person feeling victimized.
After reading up on this for over a year, when you see people arguing or in conflict, all of this suddenly becomes clear. Most failures start from step 1 - instead of stating the facts, they state their narrative (which is often flawed) and insist the narrative is the fact. Some people never talk about the impact on them. Instead, they resort to generalities ("When people do x, ..." or "When X happens to people"). This rarely works as almost all general statements will be false - too many counterexamples. Others are good talking about the impact, but fail to mention what needs are affected. This prevents others from finding (alternative) solutions to take care of their needs.
Long comment, but I'll end with an example. A school with a lot of students from a disadvantaged ethnicity was having lots of problems. A mediator was brought in, and the students kept complaining that the principal was racist and didn't respect them. When asked what they wanted, they kept saying "We need respect!" etc. When asked what the problem was, they kept saying "He speaks to us as if we're nothing - we want respect!" Of course, the principal denied any of this.
The mediator worked them through these steps. The students had to give specific examples that bothered them. They had to give specific requests - not "we want you to respect me" but "when you talk to us, do not use phrase X", etc. The principal agreed to everything. And things got a lot better.
No one will ever know if the principal was a racist. And eventually the students didn't care. At the end of the day, there was some behavior they disliked, and they did not know how to explain it. Once they were taught how to discuss it, the undesired behavior went away and everyone was happy. Pondering over whether the principal really had or did not have respect for the student provides no gain.
So I'm not really sure how your post got directed at mine to begin with...
> While I agree with you that people who abuse often are more skilled in avoiding blame than the victim, I would like you to consider the likelihood that there is abuse going on to begin with (i.e. what is the base rate of abuse?). I don't have hard data, but my experience is that it much more likely that the one claiming disrespect is misreading signals.
There's quite a lot of data on the subject, though. For example, on domestic abuse[0], which is a major problem in some countries. Uncommon is not what I would call it, depending on demographic. I'm not sure why personal experience would at all be helpful with assessing the commonality of abuse, since it's something that's likely to cluster (i.e., people who were abused get abused repeatedly). And, of course, abusers wouldn't want anyone to think it's common.
> In the communications resources/books I have encountered, however, the burden is still on this person to articulate it (and they have advice and templates on how to go about it).
In the resources/books I've encountered, such as Why does he do that, if you are in an abusive situation, it's often a bad idea to try to articulate anything to your abuser because the abuser is already very aware as to what it is they're doing and your best option is actually to get out. The same is basically true for, say, narcissistic parents.
It's basically a question of how severe the case is. If you are dealing with a simple miscommunication, then your methods may work. But that's very different from what I'm talking about. If you're dealing with targeted abuse, your best preparation is knowing how to tell apart abuse, and disbelieving your own feelings is not really a good path. These are very different situations and they cannot be addressed with one approach.
A given situation with no context is an either or. But the point is, the person in that situation being able to articulate something is not relevant, and focusing on that too much may lead you to the opposite of a correct conclusion, if you are interested in being accurate at all. I.e., if you see a calm and collected husband and a wife who seems hysterical, things may not be as simple as they look, and generally judging domestic situations from the outside is thorny. The book I mentioned above goes into things like this in great detail with many examples.
> Saying "I felt disrespected" or "I felt cheated" or "I felt ignored" are simply stating your hypothesis - none of these are feelings.
I'm not sure since when these are not feelings? I think what you were going for is "you disrespected me", which is the hypothesis, but a person can absolutely feel disrespected.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_domestic_viole...
I believe the commenter was merely being dramatic. In context, it's clear to me he was saying that merely saying "you're disrespecting me!" isn't going to get you anywhere unless you can articulate what makes you think that.
>There's quite a lot of data on the subject, though. For example, on domestic abuse[0]
In the context of what the parent was talking about, domestic abuse really is in the minority. We're not talking (merely) about serious abuse. We're talking about a broader category of abuse. The parent didn't use the word abuse. He said "disrespect". Most disrespect is not domestic abuse.
>In the resources/books I've encountered, such as Why does he do that, if you are in an abusive situation, it's often a bad idea to try to articulate anything to your abuser because the abuser is already very aware as to what it is they're doing and your best option is actually to get out. The same is basically true for, say, narcissistic parents.
1. I did not say that one must articulate it to the abuser, and nor did the parent commenter. If they cannot articulate it to any third party, the sentiment still applies.
2. Frankly, yes, I do think that to start off, the person should articulate it to the accused abuser first. If that fails, then seek other help. As I said, considering the base rate, it is more likely the "victim" is misreading things than actual abuse taking place.
>It's basically a question of how severe the case is. If you are dealing with a simple miscommunication, then your methods may work. But that's very different from what I'm talking about.
Then you are going off topic from this thread.
>your best preparation is knowing how to tell apart abuse, and disbelieving your own feelings is not really a good path.
"Disbelieving your own feelings" is literally the very opposite of what I said, which was:
The key thing to remember is "Feelings are *always* legitimate".
>I'm not sure since when these are not feelings? I think what you were going for is "you disrespected me", which is the hypothesis, but a person can absolutely feel disrespected.
My comment was long and so I didn't want to go into too much detail. From a pure English standpoint, sure, you could lump them into the category of feelings. The point of the books, though, is to describe the impact on you. If you say "I felt ignored", you are not talking about the impact on you - you are simply telling a story about the other person. When you say that, it is easy for someone to ask: "What is the problem with being ignored?" - and I've seen counselors actually ask this to get the victim to finally state the impact.
A simple heuristic: We often use the word "feel" when we mean "think". "I feel cheated" is really saying "I think I was cheated". "I feel disrespected" is really saying "I think he is disrespecting me". These are not feelings. These are the (often unvalidated) stories in your mind.
>and your best option is actually to get out.
None of the books is saying this is a bad idea, and it is fairly orthogonal to the discussion. If you think you are in a very bad spot and it is important for you to get out (if only to have clarity of thought), by all means do it! The books are communication books, and they focus on how to talk about the issues. Talking is not going to solve all problems, and they usually have a section/chapter about it. If the first thing someone does is get away from the perceived abuser, that may be the right thing in that situation. However, the relevance of the advice in the book doesn't go away. This person will probably still talk about it to others as life goes on, and all that I said would still apply, and perhaps more so. Unless you want to file charges and get the abuser punished (or warn others not to have a relationship with him/her), there does not serve any purpose in telling people how abusive he/she is. However, there is great benefit to being able to talk about how miserable you were. Just like with the school, at this point (after leaving), whether the person intended abuse is irrelevant. What matters is the behavior change (which it trivially did by leaving - setting aside stalking estranged spouses), and the negative impact on you stop. The story behind what happened is not the important thing.
BTW, both I and the original parent comment may have adopted a somewhat harsh/unsympathetic tone, but the purpose of the advice in the books is quite the opposite. The suggested template is designed to maximize the chances that you get empathy for your situation:
1. Your perspective is shared.
2. Your perspective is received by the listener without triggering defenses
I guarantee that if the focus is on the other person, a third to a half of third party listeners are going to think "Hmm... These are strong accusations. I wonder what the other party's version of what happened is." When you focus on the impact on you, most listeners will focus on how to make your situation better.
I'm still a beginner at it, but most of the times I've successfully followed the template, we've had a fruitful discussion (and BTW, most of the times you learn you didn't have all the dots, and when the other party relates their dots, you often amend your story).
Finally, you've focused a lot on serious abuse - particularly domestic abuse or abuse by very clever people. While these books may not be the best resources for people facing such abuse, I'm pretty sure the converse is more true: I would not recommend people take advice from books about domestic violence and apply them to day-to-day perceived slights.
I notice some people just naturally gravitate towards one or the other. Some are more people-centric and some more action-centric.
I would like to think I'm one of the more action-centric ones. But that's because it seems like the "better" one. The one that leads to less hypocrisy. I can't imagine electing to be the kind of person who bases their opinion of an action on the person who did it. So I imagine everyone thinks they're criticizing actions rather than people. It does worry me and I try to watch out for when I may be excusing an action because I like the person.
You also have to be wary of people who know this as well. People are often able to hide equally shitty behaviors in the language of compromise and help.
I've been told by someone that it was rude that I was texting them because they were out with someone catching up. Not that I knew that, but whatever.
On the flipside, they felt free to text people the next time we were together and catching up and hanging out.
And they said how rude it was for someone to tell them to not check their messages when they were hanging out. That it was controlling.
It basically came down to always having the proper response to someone in order to do what they felt like doing at the time. It kind of goes with the article. It's all vaguely surface, "Let me do what I want" and then they concoct the reasoning that gets them there.
The thing is that sometimes people are just flat out wrong and that person is just looking for a reason and the only real solution is for them to realize that they're being irrational. That there is no halfway point. Reminds me of a bit that happens in Fear of a Black Hat. The band is arguing with the label about the album cover. The label is complaining because it promotes violence against law enforcement as it shows a picture of the band on top of a pile of 15 dead cops. They want a different cover. The band wants the cover as is. The manager looks up from his phone and attempts to mediate the situation. He asks the band "How many cops do you want? 15?" then the label, "How many do you want? 0? Let's meet in the middle, 7 cops. Good?"
The joke is that it's not the number that's the problem. There's no real compromise that can be reached here. Even one dead cop is basically giving in to the band.
So it's possible the parents just asked with absolutely no disrespect in word or tone. But the adult child is simply railing against perceived slights. And them saying they "want to be treated with respect" is just being weaselly. What does that respect mean? How are you being disrespected? If you can't articulate that, then you aren't being disrespected. The problem is you, not the world.