Understanding is the Key

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Open Gate Communication

People have been trying to relate to each other through some form of communication since the first humans walked the planet. We all want to connect in meaningful ways, but we often feel lost as to how to do that. The divorce and suicide rate prove that something is desperately wrong with the way we are interacting.

Problems arise between people because of misunderstandings and this leads to feeling disconnected. To bring understanding back into our interactions we need to become aware of our feelings and the needs behind the feelings.

When we misunderstand each other we go into a fight or flight mode. If we are in the fight mode we will attack and blame someone else for our feelings, if we feel attacked we will often fight by defending ourselves. If we are in the flight mode we will withdraw, denying our feelings by hiding them from others and even ourselves. We also withdraw in the flight mode if we feel attacked. Both fight and flight responses to our feelings are a result of fear.

Where does this fear come from? It comes from our insecurities, which exist because at some point in our developing years we came to believe that the significant people in our lives did not accept who we were and we began to feel we were not good enough. Thus a fear of abandonment developed.

Over time we have created an Outer Self to present to the world, hoping it will quell our insecurities and give us a sense that we are good enough.
Our negative responses and those of others happen anytime we feel a threat to the Outer Self, the person we have come to identify with.
Beyond the Outer Self is our original nature, our Inner Self. This is who we are at birth, it is unchanging. The Inner Self consists of the life force and this is what gives us our intrinsic value. We are not anything we do, feel, think or believe. We are much larger than any of these things.
Seeing the true nature of people allows us to change how

we feel about ourselves and others. With this new knowledge our insecurities are no longer controlling us and wreaking havoc on our relationships.
Giving up blame and our usual ways of relating through attacking and withdrawing can be extremely uncomfortable and it can suck not to blame someone else for our problems. It takes courage to see ourselves and others in a new way. But the truth is we gain personal control and regain the power to change our lives by taking responsibility for our problems.

Communication is an ongoing process we will be involved in the rest of our lives. When misunderstandings occur there is a place we can move to, where love casts out fear, and we enter this new land through The Open Gate of understanding.

Next month we will look at how to face our feelings and communicate them so we can gain the connection we all want.