- Go to therapy.
- Seeking assistance should be a fundamental part of everyone’s life even if we aren’t aware of how we’ve been affected by trauma. There are licensed individuals of different capacities that can help in our everyday stressors. Many times, our greatest critic and enemy is our inner thought processes, which have been programmed through years and years of psychological trauma within an emotionally-incompetent society. Very few people truly know how to manage their emotions in a healthy way, and we should not wait until we are ill or having significant dysfunction in our personal and/or professional relationships because we access the benefit of having an objective and trained person to help us identify where our beliefs about something are hindering our success in an area. You cannot know what you don’t know, so having a therapist can help you become more aware of how you think, feel and behavior, beyond your own narrow perspective.
- “Seeing the perspective of the ‘other.’”
- This was mentioned above, but what does this actually mean. We haven’t learned these skills so it sounds strange, it’s quite simple. When we begin to understand and healthily inquire the reasons for a person’s choices, and what physical and psychological motivations they had for their actions, it gives us a fuller picture to consider than where we started. And most of the time, we find many errors in our understanding of one another, simply because we want others to see the world the way we see it. Many disagreements, arguments, fights, and wars, begin because of assumptions and misinformation, fueled by lack of empathy for why a person would think, feel and believe the way they do. Our natural state is to interpret things from our own narrow observations. It is critical to make one’s self step back from those judgments, and recognize the common struggles that we all have in wrestling our biological urges and impulses.
- Validate the differing perspectives.
- The next crucial step in “seeing the other” is validating their perspective. Beliefs are operative, meaning what you believe is true because reality, as you apply your belief to that situation. However, the beauty of the diversity of the human race is that all of us believe that our personal belief systems are just as true as the next person. It is important to begin to operate in a way that recognizes that every human Creator is only privy to the version that their brain and body can produce. This doesn’t make what we believe to be FACTUALLY true, something each person in a shared reality that anyone can observe, yet for eons, we have been slow to recognize that every person’s experience is strongly believed, and those beliefs create thoughts, feelings and reactions in accordance to those beliefs. In this way, human beings are capable of putting action to what we believe, eventually manifesting the consequences of it.
- Apply a Corrective Lens
- Being willing to suspend your own thought process long enough to use empathy to inform your perspective will allow you to address any conflict more effectively. When we allow ourselves to see past what we believe is “right” or “wrong” – because all parties to the situation come in believing they are “right”, we will certainly eventually identify effective words and actions that would create emotional safety, validation, and space for healing and corrective behaviors.
Validation is a salve that decreases defensiveness and opens up the channels of communication. Acknowledging that you hear AND UNDERSTAND the other person’s perspective, even if you don’t agree with it. You can only understand another person’s perspective when you SLOW DOWN enough to engage with curiosity, ask questions, find out their stance, and THEN and only THEN, respond skillfully to what has been presented. The bottom line is, in a world where trauma is ever-present, you can improve outcomes for your self and people within your circle by choosing to use empathy as a skill, promoting love-in-action!
L- Listen and Look with suspended judgment
O- Observe the emotions in Your Self and Others
V- Validate the differing perspectives
E- Express Your Self skillfully, Creator!
