The moment before you light that flame...

Interestingly many of us in the field working with people and social dynamics are finding ways to package these skills in user-friendly ways that invite people to slow down and notice-and make different choices.

So Daniel Goleman says about flaming:

"When you’re tempted to hit send when angry or frustrated, try this instead:

- Save the message as a draft.
- Take three deep breaths.
- Return to your email.
- Envision yourself as the recipient of the message.
- Would they think the message has a positive or negative tone?
- Revise as you see fit.

Taking an extra few minutes to reflect on your intention and message in an email could save you a couple of hours, days, or even weeks of headache and trouble."

This particularly appeals to me because it applies to communication in the relational space and the intentionality of noticing the body-brain at work!

Flaming...how not to get burned!

Although I didn’t know the word ‘flaming’ I certainly came across this with the couples and individuals I work with!

Very often in face-to-face interaction you get an impulse to do something or say something and your social brain says, “Uh-uh-uh! That’s not going to be effective.” But that message never comes back to you when you’re sitting writing an email, because there’s no feedback loop.

The result is what’s called flaming. Flaming has been known since the earliest days of email. It’s when you’re worked up about something, and you sit down and you furiously type up a message and hit send. For a split second you have a feeling of satisfaction, and then this morbid sense of, “Oh no, why did I do that? Why did I say that?” comes over you. That’s a flame. It’s a disaster. And it’s a disaster that would not have occurred face to face, most likely.

For me there is something here about a wider issue and that’s impulse control in a time where we have increasingly high expectations of both technology and how life ‘should’ go. More and more part of my work with clients has been to invite them into learning and using self-soothing skills to slow and calm their bodies and minds. For me this skill has gone from being a desirable skill for clients (and myself!) to have, to being an essential one in the face of stimulation bombardment!

E-mail and the Negativity Bias

Not only are we missing huge amounts of vital information while e-mailing, but Daniel Goleman tells us:

‘And there is an actual negativity bias in email where senders think that a message was positive, but that’s because they assume all the other cues were clearly received. It’s an unconscious assumption. Receivers think that positive email was more neutral. When the sender thinks it’s neutral, receivers tend to think it’s more negative. In other words, there is a general negativity skew to email.’

Ok…so that’s interesting! It invites me to begin to think about my own use of texting etc. with more consciousness and I think I might just call more and leave texting for concrete information like an expected time of arrival – or to invite a chat time….

E-mails and Relationships

E-mails shape our relationships!

 

We all know this and have stories to tell but now, as Daniel Goleman and others are researching this phenomenon, we're beginning to understand why.

The social part of our brain that tunes into micro-expressions and emotions is crippled when we are using e-mails /texts/ Twitter/ Facebook etc....we just don’t have the wealth of background information to make sense of the words.

And yet these ways of communicating are so very useful and now embedded in the fabric of our daily lives. So the question is...how to enhance relationships using this technology and protect ourselves from the relational fallout?

Any ideas out there?!?

Weaving an Encounter

We all know on some level that when we sit with a client it is vital that we know how to be in our higher self - in our higher cortex where we can think, plan, integrate and observe relationally. We also know that at any given moment we can find ourselves triggered or drifting off in our attention and that the client picks this up on some level whether they speak about it or not.

Daniel Goleman talks about this:

'You have to put aside whatever else you're doing, and pay full attention to the person who’s with you. And that opens the way to rapport, where emotional flow is in tandem. When your physiology is in synchrony with someone else you feel connected, close and warm. You can read this human moment in terms of physiology – but you can also read it experientially, because during those moments of chemistry we feel good about being with the other person. And that person is feeling good about being with us.'

 

And that is exactly, I believe, the encounter where true transformation takes place!