Gefilter Fish

I’ve been waiting almost a year to write this blog.  With the Passover holiday just around the corner, I thought it would be funny.  [For those of you who aren’t Jewish, there is a typical holiday food we eat, like it or not, called Gefilte Fish.]  While the title is meant to amuse, the content is meant to contribute. 

We humans have filters --think colored glasses, that truly control what it is we see and what we don’t see in life --and our relationships.  Typically, these filters are not 100% transparent to us, and we believe that what we see is all there is to see.  We believe that we aren’t missing anything.  Which is not true at all.  We miss a good deal, especially when we aren’t aware that we are looking through the lenses.  Use this analogy to help you understand how they might work.  Say you are wearing sunglasses on a bright, sunny day.  You head inside for a nice brunch, and you are having trouble reading the menu, or seeing the person across the table from you.  When you remember that your sunglasses are still on and remove them, what you see will be different.  The more attention to this you can bring to remembering to take your glasses off, the easier it is to navigate in real time what is happening.  Rather than the elusory reasons behind the automatic reactions that arise when you are relating to life. 

One of the simple ways to do this is to shift your language.  Instead of saying ‘It is dark in here”, what’s more accurate to say is, “I’m having trouble seeing clearly.” The restaurant isn’t that dark, your glasses impact what you can see.  It is an exact metaphor with the filters you see the world through.  [Read these posts: What is Static Language and Why is it a Problem? and Communication Basics ~ Static Language for more information about how this language shift will help.  I wrote two so it must be important, at least to me.]

What do you filter for?

Our personal filters are unique to us, which isn’t particularly helpful when relating to others.  Words mean slightly to wildly different things to each of us.  The meaning we make of what we see and hear might seem the same, yet often is quite different given our filters and contributes to disagreement and conflict --that needn’t be painful, yet often is.  [Read more about this using this information sheet - Internal Map of Reality.]  Our filters developed when we were young, basically in response to the messages our caregivers and family gave us, along with the cultural narrative (think television and commercials and the like), and often very close friendships and what you saw in your neighborhood.  They can deepen throughout our lives as well. Some of you have grown up with and are at the mercy of social media, which is something that didn’t exist in my own childhood --which I am grateful for.

An example from my own life might help you understand.  I was told since I can remember, that I was too sensitive.  The words used to describe me were ‘hypersensitive’.  Basically, the way I saw it, is I cried when I was unhappy.  To my mom (and family, I suppose) it was received as funny, or distressing depending on what was up for them.  In my mind I was being mocked and/or punished for feeling, or for simply being me.  As a young adult, and into full adulthood, I developed a strategy or two specifically to not show what I was feeling.  I would hold it in, yet I couldn’t just not feel.  I thought those who didn’t express sadness were strong and accepted into groups more easily.  My filter --everywhere I went, had me looking for where that was true.  It became easier at times to choose to not participate, rather than bear the burden of the shame I ‘experienced’, whether it was happening or not.

Our filters can be even more subtle.
I grew up with St. Bernard dogs in my house.  When someone says dog, I see St. Bernard puppies, I think safe as the grown dogs were truly our guardians. 
I grew up with a bunch of Weeping Willow trees on our property.  When someone says tree, often this is the image that would come to mind first.
~When someone is leading a workshop, and they suggest feeling safe or nurtured in the arms of their mother, my experience of my mom, had/has me mostly feeling other things,

This is with everything. 

What something meant when we were young comes with us into adulthood and we see life through these filters.
Garden = work, vs. garden = fun
Family = safety, vs. family = distress
Play = don’t get caught, vs. Play = connection and fun
Sports = getting celebrated, vs. sports = being made fun of
Skinny = unhealthy vs. skinny = healthy
Authority = caring vs. authority = danger

This list is unending.  The work is not to not have filters.  The work we have is to know what we filter for.  I hear the words, let’s go out into the garden and I am ready to go.  My partner might hear the same words, and have an internal experience of dread.  Our job then is to slow everything down so we can fully experience our feelings, which will give us strong hints about what we hear (filter in) when someone says something.  Then make choices, responses on what’s happening now, rather than what happened to us when we were growing up.

Sharing your understanding of your filters with your important people is one way to build intimacy in your relationships.  And, being curious about your friends/family/partner’s filters will help you to find compassion about the challenges they face in their relationships.  I fully encourage the sharing of what your filters are.  How you struggle sometimes to be present to what is.  The sharing occurs as a revealing, being more authentic about who you are and what you might regret (or celebrate) about what you have brought into your relationship.

I find that is it not, however, the best strategy to resolve a conflict in real time.  Stay with the structure of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) when you find yourself disagreeing and upset with someone.  Note the observation (what happened or what you heard), how you feel, what’s important to you (needs), and what you might want to ask for or offer.  This process, if you are committed, will help you uncover your filters.  And when you are in a connected space, you might ask if your person wants to hear something you discovered about yourself.  Building the muscle of changing --or at least no longer living at the mercy of your filters that you were previously blind to (hidden in the shadows).  I invite you to be curious to hear what others are learning about themselves as well.  This practice builds intimacy and compassion.  Connection Requests are a perfect tool, designed to help you do just this.  As with all other aspects of weaving the NVC consciousness and models into your life, I encourage you to practice, practice, practice.  This is truly the way to changing what you filter for.