Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings- Living Your Own Truth

by Clinton Callahan

It may have come to pass that the decisions which once protected you from a complex and hazardous world have now become your prison. Escaping the childhood prison (or the federal prison) commences with recognizing who built the prison around you in the first place. It wasn’t your parents. It wasn’t the teachers at school. It wasn’t the kids in the neighborhood. It wasn’t the television. It wasn’t the government. It wasn’t God. It was you who made each of the decisions that put you in prison.

  Once you return to the point of origin and take full responsibility for having made a decision in the first place, you gain the power to re-make that decision in any way you want.

  The following is a true example of a person facing one of the many possible imprisoning decisions. (The questions are being asked by a trained Possibility Manager during a possibility session, and the answers have been condensed for clarity.)

  Q: “What can I do for you?”

  A: “I feel so lonely.”

  Q: “Are you lonely because you share about your feelings and no one will listen to you? Or are you lonely because you do not share?”

  A: “I am lonely because I do not share.”

  Q: “Could you share more?”

  A: “Only if I make a new decision about not being harmed for sharing.”

  Q: “Which feeling warns you that you might be harmed for sharing?”

  A: “Fear. I feel scared of being harmed if I am vulnerable.”

  Q: “Is that a feeling of fear or an emotion of fear?”

  A: “It’s emotional fear. It was not safe for me to reveal myself as a child.”

  Q: “Is that childhood decision still influencing your life today?”

  A: “Yes. I often freeze up when I am faced with opportunities to share about myself.”

  Q: “Would you like to make a new adult decision?”

  A: “Yes. I am so tired of being lonely.”

  Q: “What could your new decision be?”

  A: “I trust myself to take care of myself while sharing about my feelings.”

  Q: “What do you feel now?”

  A: “I feel sad that I have been lonely for so long. I feel glad to share about my feelings now.”

  Q: “Did you take care of yourself while sharing about your feelings just now?”

  A: “Yes.”

  Q: “Do you look forward to not being lonely anymore?”

  A: “Yes.”

  EIGHTH DISTINCTION: FEELINGS SERVE PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

  Sometimes the action step attached to your feeling will simply be to communicate the feeling. As clarified in the seventh distinction, learning to experience your feelings is only the first phase of feelings work. Phase 2 involves learning to use your feelings for adult responsible communications.

  The eighth of the Ten Distinctions for Consciously Feeling says that as an adult you can consciously integrate feelings into responsible speaking and listening so that feelings serve you relationally and professionally.

  To integrate feelings into your communications it will be useful to have in mind a simple communications model. The model I propose is based on the communications principle that a communication persists until it is received.

  Have you ever noticed that you repeatedly hear the same whining from people around you? The same complaints? Repeated accusations? Have you ever noticed that communications tend to get stuck at a certain level of intimacy and can proceed no further? These and other communication breakdowns are symptoms of communications not being received.

  There are two main causes for communications not being received.

  1. You use an incomplete thoughtmap of what a communication is.

  2. You block the completion loop to avoid feeling what you might feel if you truly received the communication.

  The incomplete communication concept looks like this:

  MAP OF COMMUNICATION: INCOMPLETE

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  A communication persists until it is received.

  You encode your original urge into words to transmit the message. The listener decodes your words into their impression. It seems that this is how communication works. However, half of the communication process is missing! Without including the other half, your communications fail because they are not completed . Your job is to receive communications. Receiving a communication completes it forever.

  Receiving a communication includes delivering a completion loop, a further step in the process, during which you as the listener repeat back to the speaker what you heard them say. This allows the speaker to verify whether or not their original message was heard.

  If the correct impression was not received the speaker has a chance to resend. Without using a completion loop there is only guessing about what another person hears, so the message is not complete.

  Communication succeeds in the head of the listener, not in the head of the speaker. If the message received by the listener is not validated by the speaker, the speaker does not know what the listener heard, so the speaker is only talking to himself.

  Incomplete communications are easy enough to correct. Simply make it a practice to use a completion loop in your communications. A completion loop is the other half of the communication process, when the listener says, “What I heard you say is . . . ,” and then you repeat back what you heard them say. The communication thoughtmap is simple, but using it in everyday life turns out to be not so simple.

  MESSAGES CONTAIN ENERGY AND INFORMATION

  Messages are made up of two basic ingredients:

  1. The information of the message: concept, request, boundary, clarification, need, etc.

  2. The energy of the message: feelings, conscious purpose, hidden purpose, etc.

  If you ignore either of these ingredients, the communication fails. For example, if the original message is “I feel angry that you did not keep your promise to fix the leaky faucet this morning,” a completion loop would include both components.

  1. It would include the information of the message: I did not keep my promise to fix the leaky faucet this morning.

  2. And it would also include the energy of the message, the “carrier wave”: You feel angry about that.

  If either part of the message is not received and confirmed through a completion loop from the listener, then the entire message is not received. Receiving a partial message does not equate to success in the art of communication.

  Here is where things seem to hang up. If you actually hear a person’s feeling of anger, sadness, fear or joy, then you will be touched by that feeling.

  If it is not okay for you to feel what the speaker is feeling then you will automatically and unconsciously block the completion loop so you do not have to feel it, no matter how much you might wish to be in communication with that person.

  You are already an expert at blocking communications. You are an expert because that is what was done to you. Communications are not completed in modern society. Parents don’t do it with each other or with their children. Teachers don’t do it with other teachers or with their students. Bosses don’t do it with employees or colleagues. Politicians don’t do it with constituents or other politicians. The television doesn’t do it. Where should you ever learn to do it?

  If it is not okay for you to feel then you will reflexively block communications with unconscious habits. Instead of using a completion loop you will offer solutions, give your opinions, deliver advice, criticize the other’s thinking, dismiss their feelings, threaten them with terrible consequences, make jokes to distract them, and so on. No matter how appropriate or useful these responses might seem to you, none of them confirms the original communication, so the speaker is unsatisfied. The speaker has the experience of not being fully heard. This is one of the most painful experiences a human being can have.

  MAP OF COMMUNICATION: BLOCKED

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  A communication persists until it is received.

  THIS COMPLETION LOOP WAS KILLED BY A ROADBLOCK.

  This completion loop has been destroyed by a communication roadblock so that the listener does not have to feel what they would feel if they actually heard the communication. The listener blocks conscious adult communications with advice, opinions, solutions, judgments, criticisms, positive aphorisms, and humorous distractions, none of which completes the communication. Since the communication is not confirmed by the listener, the speaker is unsatisfied, and the communication must be repeated. The ultimate consequence of incomplete communications is war.

  Dissatisfaction is one of the most common outcomes of modern communication. The ultimate result of unsatisfactory communication is war.

  It does not have to be this way. A world without war begins with you completing both the information and the energy of communications, even if you have feelings in the process. A world without war begins with you learning to consciously feel.

  MAP OF COMMUNICATION: COMPLETED

  World Copyright © 2010 owner Clinton Callahan grants permission to use. www.nextculture.org

  A communication persists until it is received. An adult completes communications through receiving them. A communication is received when both the energy and the information is heard and confirmed. By completing a communication, you end the doing of communication and take a step closer to the original intent of being in love together.

  COMPLETION LOOP

  You as the listener repeat back in your own words what you heard the speaker say. If the speaker confirms the accuracy of what you repeated by saying Yes, it signals that this communication has been completed. Then you can both go to the next deeper level of intimacy together.

  THE MAGIC OF CHOOSING RESPONSIBILITY

  In the adult ego state you have the ability to responsibly decode an irresponsibly encoded message. This is nothing less than miraculous.

  PRACTICE COMPLETING COMMUNICATIONS

  Now it is time to practice. It is astonishing to experience the effectiveness of communicating with feelings. Yesterday, for example, our five-year-old Merlin came stomping up the stairs in tears, sobbing, “David hit me in the head with a pillow!” David is Merlin’s eleven-year-old brother.

  Rather than jumping into the fray and stomping back downstairs with Merlin to scold David, as used to be her pattern, Marion, Merlin’s mother, squats down, looks Merlin straight in the eyes, and with an even voice repeats back, “David hit you in the head with a pillow.” (It is not a question. It is a simple statement, repeating back what Merlin said.)

  What is Merlin’s response? He says, “Yes!”

  That Yes is like the successful Bing! tone in a video game. The Bing! signifies that Merlin’s message was received by his mom, and now that particular message is gone forever! Merlin is now free to go to his next deeper level of intimacy.

  Merlin says, “I knocked down David’s castle because it was too high!”

  Marion’s previous tendencies would have produced an outburst like, “It is not okay to knock down someone else’s castle just because it is too high! It took David a lot of time to build that castle. You can knock down your own castles, but not David’s!” or some such communication roadblock (See Thomas Gordon’s marvelous book Parent Effectiveness Training for a complete list of the Twelve Roadblocks to Communication). Instead, Marion uses a completion loop: “You knocked down David’s castle because it was too high.”

  What does Merlin say? “Yes!” (Bing!) Again Marion completes Merlin’s message. Again Merlin has been heard and he can go to the next deeper level.

  “David put my Teddy on top of the castle so I couldn’t reach it!”

  Marion’s scolding would have been completely inappropriate if she had followed her first impulse rather than completing Merlin’s communication. Luckily, she didn’t fall into that trap as she had done hundreds of times before learning to use completion loops. Marion continues using completion loops, “David put your Teddy on the top of the castle so you couldn’t reach it.”

  “Yes!” (Bing!) “I will never play with David again!”

  “You will never again play with David.”

  It is unbelievable but at this point, no Yes! comes from Merlin because Marion completed all of his urgent communications and he is already headed back down the stairs to continue playing with his beloved brother. Marion did not waste her energy, Merlin’s energy or David’s energy, and love is happening. This is the value of using completion loops.

  Now you practice.

  The times to most effectively use completion loops are when a person comes to you with a problem or with something to share, which could be far more often than you might realize. If you use completion loops appropriately, they are invisible. If you use completion loops inappropriately people might comment, “Is there an echo in here? I just said that. Have you become a parrot?” Listen to your feedback. Competence comes through practice.

  MAP OF COMMUNICATION LAYERS

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  What is the central message within every communication? You can approach it through completing successive communications at the level they are given to you. When a communication is completed, a person cannot help but say, Yes, meaning, Yes, you have understood me! This is a Bing! You have succeeded! With each Bing! you drop to the next deeper level of intimacy.

  What if the core message within every communication is I love you ?

  How often have you blocked communications at a superficial level

  and missed out on the deeper message?

  FOUR BODY COMMUNICATION

  Each of your four bodies has its own communication mode. You can recognize this in yourself quite easily.

  Your physical body has physical needs and communicates actions and sensations: I’m hungry. Let’s eat. I’m tired. I want to go home. You’re stepping on my foot!

  Your intellectual body has intellectual needs and communicates information from the mind. There are two kinds of information to communicate.

  • Objective information, such as facts, rules, and precisions: What time is it? This is the wrong way. It costs sixteen dollars and starts at 7 P.M. I already read that book. This is not mine.

  • Subjective information, such as opinions, beliefs, compliments and complaints: I can’t do this. He’s a real angel. They are so rude. You are a fabulous cook. That is too loud. This is beautiful.

  Your emotional body has emotional needs and communicates feelings from the heart: I feel glad to have so much clarity about feelings and communications. I feel scared that I might make mistakes. I feel angry that I had no classes about feelings in school. I feel sad that my father does not know about his feelings.

  Your energetic body has energetic needs and communicates inspiration, vision, commitment and will: There must be a better way. Human beings have access to more intelligence than this. Is it hopeless or not? I want to connect with teams. I want to create and implement sustainable culture. I know it is possible. Let’s go!

  Once you distinguish the four kinds of communications coming from your own four bodies, distinguishing the four kinds of communications coming from someone else’s four bodies becomes simple. Significant miscommunications result from thinking that a person is expressing from their emotional body when in fact they are expressing from their intellectual body, and so on. Such confusions are so common as to be normal.

  Take a breath before speaking—a few second’s pause to identify which of your four bodies wants to speak, or which of the other person’s four bodies is talking to you. This simple but profound practice permits you to clarify your own needs and to more appropriately respond to another person’s needs. Waking up to the four kinds of messages takes you a long way toward successful and satisfying adult communications.

  MAP OF DETECTING MESSAGES

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permission to use. www.nextculture.org

  Which body is talking to you? Physical? Intellectual? Emotional? Or energetic? After you discern which it is, then you know which language to respond in – the language of actions, ideas, feelings, or aspirations. You can detect which body is addressing you with your internal Message Scanner. It seeks to detect: Why are they talking to me? What do they need? The answer is simple. There are only four choices:

  1. Do they want me to do something? This is the body speaking.

  2. Do they seek or offer information? This is the mind speaking.

  3. Do they want to share a feeling? This is the heart speaking.

  4. Do they have a vision? A wish? This is the soul speaking.

  MAP OF FOUR KINDS OF MESSAGES

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  THE URGE TO COMMUNICATE COMES FROM AN EXCESS OR LACK.

  Communicating with feelings does not in general mean stomping through your house shouting, “I feel angry because this place is such a mess!” Then again, it may. It does not usually include confronting your boss, colleagues, customers or suppliers with your needs and boundaries, although occasionally it might. It is not normally about trying to change your parents, your neighbors, or even your city council, although it could be.

  Some people fear turning on their feelings because they imagine themselves morphing into an emotional storm trooper. But quite the opposite is true. Lowering your numbness bar and communicating with conscious feelings permits you to make boundaries or ask for what you need when your fear, sadness or anger rises to only 3 or 5 percent intensity. It is when your numbness bar is set to 80 percent numb that by the time you finally notice you are feeling something you explode out of control.

  Communicating with feelings has a lot to do with distinguishing between present feelings and past or foreign emotions, and then trusting and using your feelings to create a world that works for everybody. Aligning yourself with the energy and information of your adult responsible feelings moves you along the path of unfolding and fulfilling your destiny. And that path might not always look or feel like you thought it would, particularly when it comes to reenlivening intimacy through clearing your resentments.