We constantly get the message that everybody is different, and that we're all unique. Yet almost all of us are guilty of attributing thoughts and feelings to others based solely on how we'd react ourselves in their particular situation. This fallacy--as unrecognized as it is prevalent--apparently derives from the common assumption that our individual biology and biography are somehow universal.
Unconsciously, we seem to infer that despite all our differences we still represent, or exemplify, all of humanity; and that we can appreciate another's actions simply by reflecting on our own. Our basic priorities, standards, motives, and biases must, we assume, be the same as others. Minimizing, or ignoring, the enormous number of variables that can influence a person's behavior, we entertain the belief that we can adequately understand such behavior simply by likening it to our own. Or--to put it somewhat differently--we project our personal reality onto others as though, finally, everyone can be understood in terms of their essential similarity to us.
No doubt there are many affinities among us that more or less dictate how--in most instances, at least--we'll respond. For example, almost all of us can be expected to experience gratification or pleasure when we're complimented--and, on the contrary, to feel disappointed, angry or hurt when we're criticized. But even here we need to consider that many people who have poor self-esteem experience embarrassment, awkwardness, or even freshly awakened shame, when they receive acknowledgment or recognition. For deep down they regard themselves as not good enough; or even as frauds--not deserving any praise whatsoever. Additionally--as regards reacting to criticism--people who are unusually confident or self-accepting are able to handle negative evaluation with far less distress than most of us. Capable of self-validating, and experiencing themselves as fundamentally competent even when they've made a mistake, their "feathers" simply don't get ruffled as a result of unfavorable judgment.
Generally speaking, it's much more difficult to characterize faithfully someone else's thoughts and emotions than most of us might suppose. As a species, we're sufficiently complicated and diverse that even if a particular individual is a lot like us we can still err in assessing that person's feelings or behavioral motivations. And, of course, it's far trickier to correctly interpret the thoughts, feelings, needs or desires of others whose nature--or nurture--differs markedly from our own.
Take, for instance, someone whose early history was so filled with family violence or trauma that by the time they became adults, they were already "gun-shy"--predisposed toward anxiety and afraid to trust or become intimately involved with others. Or consider a person genetically prone toward anger who, as a result of severe parental abuse, entered adulthood with a pronounced chip on his shoulder. In both instances (based on the psychological wounds that left each of them scarred and "sensitized"), neither individual could help but over-react (or under-react) to us. Their world--and how they perceive themselves in it--diverges sharply from ours. And so their reactions, however distorted or deviant they may appear to us, may well have been adaptive or appropriate for them earlier, at a time when they were desperate to discover how best to cope with an environment experienced as deeply threatening.
If we are, then, to accurately discern, and effectively deal with, their problematic or "illogical" behavior, we must first accept its subjective legitimacy, realizing that we have little right to judge them for what we ourselves might have done--or become--were we subject to a negative environment similar to theirs. When our initial assumptions about such individuals prove false, rather than invalidate them we need to search for the cause(s) in their past that could help us make better sense of their behavior--enable us, that is, to understand its relative "reasonableness," even validity.
Again, their "normal" may be nothing like ours because what they had to endure in growing up may have been vastly dissimilar to our own, more typical--or traditional--upbringing. If we attempt to understand their behavior strictly in accordance with ours, we're likely to be far off the mark. What might seem to us "universal" (given our historically-based stimulus-response connections) may not at all describe their quite disparate reactions, governed by a whole different set of rules and assumptions. What might impress us as odd, idiosyncratic or plainly unjustified could in fact be what--quite understandably--became strongly programmed into them.
Admittedly, their words and deeds might not at all represent the norm. But if we could only grasp just where their behavior is "coming from," we could comprehend--and be more compassionate toward--its normalcy for them. And if we could get beyond our self-centered (and mostly unconscious) suppositions about how others should think, feel and behave, we might be far more successful in our relationships with people who don't fit our more "normal" expectations.
To reiterate, without knowing a substantial amount about a person's history, it can be extremely difficult to appreciate their internal experience. That said, I should add "vice versa," inasmuch as it may have been our upbringing that negatively differed from the national or community norm--whether our family was the poorest on the block, were unaccepted in the neighborhood, were substance-abusers; or whether we grew up in an environment that prompted us to feel alone, inferior, inadequate, anxious, enraged, or depressed.
Let me provide an example from my private practice that--on the surface, at least--would strike most people as highly irrational behavior. In working with a severely conflicted couple, I once made the point to the wife, who was demanding that her husband be totally--even brutally--honest with her about everything, that sometimes simple kindness and caring require a certain constraint--that being empathic might occasionally necessitate a certain lack of candor. I offered as a "for instance" the possibility of a woman's having a bad hair day. Taking both me and her husband by surprise, her reaction was one of instant rage, aggressively inquiring whether I was accusing her of having a bad hair day. When I explained that, no, I really wasn't alluding to her at all, that I was just looking for an example of when a white lie (or withheld communication) might better serve a relationship, I was rebuked for choosing an example that obviously betrayed my chauvinism.
At the moment my suddenly disgruntled client turned on me, her husband looked at me knowingly. Now could I appreciate how incredibly hard it was for him to stay in the relationship?--which he had left earlier but agreed (though reluctantly) to consider returning to, if couples counseling were able to successfully address their constant verbal battles. Although I could certainly appreciate--and sympathize with--the magnitude of his frustrations, I endeavored to restore some emotional stability to the situation by explaining how easy it must have been for his wife to misread my intentions. Since I had already begun to work with her individually and knew a good deal about her childhood abuse, I emphasized to him how in growing up she'd been neglected and mercilessly criticized by both her parents; and how, consequently, it must genuinely have felt as though the two of us were ganging up on her. Because she still harbored so much defensive anger from her childhood experiences (leading her to become acutely sensitive to the possibility of being criticized in the present), I explained how I must inadvertently have opened up this enormous reservoir of anger and resentment in her.
I said all of this in a way that validated, rather than shamed, the wife's exaggerated response toward me--both to neutralize her tendencies toward defensiveness and so that she could better grasp the present-day inappropriateness of her outburst. We discussed how my words had set off in her a transference reaction, a reaction meant not so much for me as her parents. Insofar as I had "triggered" something very deep (and as yet unresolved) within her, she couldn't help but reactively attack me (as she herself had so frequently been attacked in growing up).
Helping her husband to better understand his wife's unprovoked rage--and her problems in regulating her emotions generally--proved invaluable. As a result of his far more sympathetic understanding of his wife's self-protective "anger buttons"--as well as his newfound resolve to be a healing influence in her life--he eventually decided to return to the marriage. In the course of my work with them, the husband learned not to react so personally to his wife's flare-ups (which in the past had only led her to become more upset). And in being better able to understand just what his wife's wrath was in reaction to--namely, her primal fears of abandonment--he became increasingly adept at soothing both her and himself; and by so doing, helped her to re-connect with her more balanced and rational, adult self.
His wife, too, in gradually being able to comprehend how her emotions could abruptly take hold of her, began to develop skills to perceive present-day situations more accurately, and thus more comfortably begin to reveal to her husband her vulnerable side--rather than her knee-jerk angry reactions, which, though they helped safeguard her from distressing feelings of danger, kept pushing him away (to the point that he had originally decided, though he still cared for her, to leave the relationship). On her part, the wife was better able to understand and accept why, over the course of their marriage, her husband had determined to tell her no more than absolutely necessary. His way of protecting himself--to feel less vulnerable and stressed in the face of her rage--was by telling more and more white lies (even at times when they really weren't required).
In short, each partner's behavior was controlled by a subjective reality of which the other had little (or no) awareness. The only way either could attempt to understand the other was through using themselves as a reference point. And, as I've already suggested, because none of our actions--or reactions--can be assumed to be representative of the rest of humanity, it's dangerous to project what we might think or feel in a particular situation onto another, whose experiential framework may differ acutely from our own.
I can hardly over-emphasize that in this difficult case it was only through my recalling what I had already learned about this woman's emotionally unstable childhood that I could adequately comprehend--and sympathetically appreciate--her quasi-paranoid habit of circumventing anticipated attacks by counter-attacking at the first hint of perceived criticism. Recognizing the abusive origins of her exaggerated reaction to my "bad hair day" analogy, and realizing that her personal history had virtually taught her that "the best defense was a good offense," I could avoid becoming defensive with her in turn. I could empathize with her, at the same time I suggested that her immediate reactions to me might be grounded far more in her past experiences than in the present-day analogy that had so provoked her.
This post can offer no easy solutions to the human dilemma of accurately understanding another who might operate on an entirely different set of assumptions, beliefs, rules, and values. Empathy--the mostly learned ability to identify with the feelings and perceptions of another--is an emotional-intellectual capacity that most children can demonstrate only in its most embryonic form. If our own empathy is to become more "educated," if we are to broaden and refine it over time, we need to learn more about others. We need to appreciate how their early environment, and particular temperament and sensibility, determine their particular orientation toward reality.
We can become increasingly adept at recognizing the thoughts and feelings of others (however unlike our own they may be), only if we realize that--finally--none of us is "generic." So if we're to better comprehend others' behavior, we must first endeavor to know them better. Only then--when we can put ourselves in their different-sized, different-fitting shoes--can we begin to create within ourselves their own "unique" experience.
