Why Do We Hurt The Ones We Love?

Giving my time, talent, and treasure in service often returns disproportionate blessings, such that I feel a bit guilty for receiving such wealth when my intention is to give. This happy version of the maxim "what goes around comes around" recently bestowed this grace upon me in the form of a timid little four-year-old boy. After hearing a fellow preschooler blurt some pretty standard age-4 "potty mouth" words, this pint-size Wise One said to me, "Those are porcupine words, right?"

In further dialog, I learned that porcupine words are words that poke: hurt, frighten, disturb, or make sad or mad. Their alternative, according to my young friend, is "teddy bear words:" words that comfort, support, affirm, or express love or connection. Nice. Elegant, simple, and clear names to help a young mind grasp the reality that our words have an impact on those to whom we speak them. At this age when the Childhood Treasure that is the capacity for Negotiation is being developed, this porcupine/teddy bear tool is just what the Development Doctor ordered!

I've been thinking about porcupine words and teddy bear words from the framework of adult communication. By the time we reach adulthood, many of us learn that we create impact not just with our spoken words; our nonverbal communications have as great, and sometimes greater, effects. So, from which category do you draw most of your words, facial expressions, tones of voice, and gestures when you are in a state of conflict with someone you love? Are you a user of mostly porcupine words (PWs) or mostly teddy bear words (TBWs) ?

Adult PWs are much more sophisticated than those of a four-year-old. In a few decades of life, most of us have managed to learn an impressive array of ways to hurt our loved ones, knock them off their emotional centers, and deflect attention away from our roles in the conflict. Here are a few PW categories you may know about:

• Listening to Argue -- listening to the other person just long enough to hear the statement you can pounce on and argue with (most common examples: "that's not what I said" or "I didn't say/do that").
• Verbal Bombs -- lobbing inflammatory words (includes name-calling) that work like heat-seeking missiles, aiming for the hot spots of our vulnerabilities, so as to invoke defensiveness, which eliminates the possibility of calm and rational conversation.
• Dramatic Martyrdom -- declaring over-the-top, even outrageous, self-damaging intentions that are designed to create shame and caretaking, so as to deflect attention from the real issue.
• Sand Bagging -- blindsiding with blast-from-the-past grievances or supposedly-forgiven hurts, as a sort of dog-pile that overwhelms the other and invokes defensiveness.
• Disengage and Distance -- dismissive gestures and words (a teenage classic is a disdainfully drawn-out "What-ehhhhhhh-ver!"), that communicates the highest possible level of disinterest or lack of caring; a literal or verbal wave of the hand that says "Your feelings don't matter."

As you read the description of each category, are you feeling again how much it hurt the last time someone used it on you? Now, can you let yourself remember the last time you used each one on someone you love? Can you feel that you have inflicted that same pain on another? Be honest. Of course you have. I have. We all have, at some time, hurt a loved one using one of these categories of PWs or something very like them. Why do we do that? Why do we hurt the ones we love?

The answer is simple, yet complex. Simply put, we hurt the ones we love because we have no alternatives. We didn't learn to negotiate when we were four years old and so we now have no win-win-oriented tools for responding in a situation that feels like conflict. Conflict, no matter how small, feels like an attack upon our very lives, which justifies pulling out the big defensive PW guns described above.

To be a consistent user of those Teddy Bear Words, those TBWs, I need three abilities: 1) to know and gently but confidently name what I want, 2) to calmly listen to others do the same, and 3) to fearlessly assume that both of us can get what we want. If we support them in learning it, four-year-old girls and boys can learn to say "yes" to what they want, without pejorative labels like "selfish" attached. At the same time, we can help them learn to affirm, as equally valuable, the rightness of others getting what they want, too. (Later, when they are six or so, they will be ready to learn that Negotiation doesn't work 100% of the time; that compromise is often required...maybe next blog post!)

The chapter on the Childhood Treasure of Negotiation in my upcoming book offers the notion that one of the supports children need as they develop this Treasure is consistent affirmation that "wanting" and "needing" are acceptable and normal human conditions. Here's why kids need this affirmation: if I know without a single doubt that it's fine for me to feel that I want or need something, I don't have any need to defend that birthright. I simply assume it to be fact. (Please note that wanting and needing are the birthright, here, not getting what I want.) 

Perhaps the surprise is that such self-confidence opens my empathy and allows me to see that wanting and needing are others' birthright, too. My wanting and needing for me does not have to conflict with what you want and need for you, if only we can calmly talk about it.

To that philosophic angle, I add this concrete start-up list of adult TBWs:

• Listening for Understanding -- Listen carefully, knowing everything that's being said is a window into the mind, heart, and soul of the speaker.
• Verbal "Pets" -- Calm and gentle tone of voice, affirmations of hearing and understanding.
• Generosity of Spirit -- Be more invested in being kind than in being right or righteous. "What do you need?" "I love you." "I care about our relationship."
• Connect and Open -- Stay in communication, keep saying yes to striving for healing, never close the door.
• Refuse to be "Hooked" -- Avoid the triggers embedded in those PWs, those Porcupine Words, that trap you into responding in kind, with more PWs of your own, trigger more PWs in the other, and on and on....
• And what else...?

Feel free to add comments with your TBW suggstions!

Another concrete resource: For more skills in this vein, I highly recommend, as the best personal transformation books I ever read, How to Be an Adult and How to Be an Adult in Relationships, both by David Ricoh. Enjoy!