Preface.
I’ve written about communicating with general authorities and others in a hierarchy, and about understanding people who have spent most of their lives spending most of their time deferring gratification and caring for others. The last significant post in that series was “On Being Heard.”
This post takes up where that left off, years ago, when I hit a writers block in trying to address the various things that will cause the people to tune you out when you try to talk to them.
This is a summary, in bullet points, of what to avoid (I’ll explain each at length later).
- Leading with a litany or a check list. Litanies are generally used to self-identify a speaker as superior. E.g. “I’m an xyz, and I’m concerned with — check list of things that identify you as a member of a group — and [at this point you’ve been tuned out.]”
- Sounding privileged or petulant. Leading off with the language of entitlement is a powerful negative.
- Sounding mentally ill.
- Borderline, unusually intense sensitivity in relationships with others.
- Obsessive, unable not to obsess over a particular point or problem.
- Narcissism, or self focus.
- Histrionic, or attention seeking.
- Coming across as critical rather than caring.
- Seeming not to care how anyone else is affected.
Introduction.
When there is a large amount of emotion or pain, or a real feeling of a need to communicate, one of the greatest risks is that the speaker will gaslight themselves. While “gaslighting” was originally referred to as a process others do to someone to make the victim feel that the victim is mentally ill, the term has evolved.
Gaslighting now is often used to refer to a process by which a speaker is made to look defective, either from imputed mental illness or other incompetence. “Gaslighting yourself” occurs when the way you present a point causes others to conclude that you are incompetent, either from mental illness or some other reason.
This essay is about how to avoid doing that when you are trying to communicate and addresses ways people do that without realizing it.
There are two different ways to “Gaslight” yourself.
One is to come across as entitled, the other is to come across as incompetent or meaningless. Those are the various mannerisms or approaches that are in the bullet points.
Litanies
- “I’m a dittohead and concerned about the way feminazis seem not to be challenged …” or
- “I’m so concerned about social justice and the way that …”
As Nate Oman has written, a litany serves as a social and status marker. You will often see people lead off with a litany before they get to the point. In general, anyone who leads off with a litany has identified themselves as both entitled and incompetent, and signaled that whatever they say will be meaningless background noise. Starting with a litany is a good way to cause the listener to decide to move on to the next person or speaker with their attention.
Agendas and litanies are so close to each other that it is hard to distinguish between them without taking significant time.
Privilege and petulance
A number of writers have noted that there are two child rearing strategies in America today. One is cultivation, the other is natural growth. While cultivation leads to improved outcomes as measured by wealth or social status, part of it involves creating a sense of entitlement. This sense of entitlement becomes important in institutional settings because American middle class children question adults and consider them relative equals. However, it also creates a sense of entitlement without any basis for it being earned.
It results in behavior that some may consider courageous, but that looks more like the petulance of the privileged. Acting or being perceived as petulant or privileged will get you noted rather than engaged (regardless of what you are really doing, if you create a perception of petulance or privilege it will block communication).
Mental illness
Mental illness often does several things.
- It drives people into behavior outside the social norms.
- It drives behavior and belief not tied to reality.
- It drives people to attempt to communicate directly with “celebrities” (including social group celebrities or leaders). President Obama gets a flood of crank letters. So did every president before him.
If you communicate in a manner that fits one of the patterns above, you will be drowned out by the chorus of mentally ill people who communicate in those patterns. You will not be able to easily distinguish yourself from the background noise.
Critical Cattiness
Harshness and critical communication, especially constant critical communication, is the specialty of gadflies — people who seem to exist to criticize. The difference between a critical lover and a constant critic is that one starts as someone you know and whom you know loves you. The other is just hostile noise.
It is easy to frame things in a critical fashion. For example. Children who are subjected to severe discipline are much more likely to lie. In a very real way, harsh and strict disciplinarian upbringings train children to lie, first and foremost. What you do with that fact, that reality, in communicating with those who are responsible for disciplining children can cover a huge variety of styles.
But if you are caustic or catty, you are likely to be perceived as a source of attack rather than a source of help or advice that should be followed.
Narrow pictures
I had a friend, FreTag, whom I blogged with. I still miss him, though he died some time ago. One thing we discussed was the issues his church (Community of Christ) had due to having a large African membership plus a very liberal American membership.
In Africa, belonging to a church that supports gay marriage means, in some areas, that you are not entitled to be considered one of the peoples “of the Book.” [If you check wiki, you will not see 12 apostles listed. He assured me that they have twelve apostles, but that for reasons of the personal safety of some of them, they are not publicly listed.] Such a determination means that you are subject to slavetaking (there is a steady slave economy in Africa), and not entitled to having a number of your civil rights respected by very significant portions of the population.
There are many other “narrow picture” vs. “wider picture” issues like that where a change in one location can affect the lives and safety of those in other locations.
Even something simple like paying bribes, and what kind of bribes you pay, in order to implement charitable projects can have huge effects.
Engaging from a frame of a narrow picture will often cause you to be noted, but not listened to.
Conclusion
Communication is difficult. It becomes more difficult when you are trying to communicate with people who are very busy and who have a flood of people trying to contact them. If the Church had only three million members, and only one in thirty tried to say something once a year directly to a leader, that would be about a hundred thousand messages to filter through.
If you are seriously trying to communicate, it doesn’t hurt to avoid gaslighting yourself.
Wheat & Tares 
Hope this one is useful.
This is great advice. I think this is really important for would-be reformers in the church. I would add that in talking with leadership, it’s best if our main goal is to not simply be heard and understood, but also to understand, to be part of the solution. Like the prayer of St. Francis:
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
If we can have the spirit of love while we ask for change and reform in the church, then we will be able to say things that are bold. We’ll speak from a position of quiet strength and will less likely to fall into these pitfalls you mention.
I like that thought Ryan.
Ryan, setting by John Rutter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqXd5R-2s_k
Interesting post, though I was left wondering in part, how it is possible to avoid all of those things in online interactions. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of several from time to time.
Also, I was reminded of interactions with those different classes. Is that a British thing? There’s a certain self-confidence and entitlement observed in some of those of the upper middle class here that seems to breed success. The rest of us try to instill that confidence in our kids, I guess, whilst feeling somewhat inferior (maybe this ties into hawkgrrrl’s post too?) in our own interactions. I do recall over 20 years ago, as a student returning to London by train. There had been delays and a cancelled train, so by the time I got onto the train it was very crowded. There was one very loud lady with a braying voice, travelling with her teenage son already seated who took it upon herself to indirectly criticise one poor young father to her son, whilst he was walking through the carriage carrying an occupied baby seat of the kind used for very young babies, and with carry handle. She stated very loudly that parents travelling with young children would be best served to reserve seats in advance. Like a reserved seat on a cancelled train was going to help anyone. All those of us in the carriage were treated to her loudly and clearly expressed views on various subjects right up until we reached London.
And you still remember and despise her.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Not really despise, Stephen. More resigned, but also interested/intrigued as to how and why. Still feeling defensive for the poor father though.
Understand.
I think this post is really critical in understanding not only how to communicate, but how to communicate (like Ryan said) to understand others. If we want understanding we must seek to understand. A frequent fault of everyone, I think.
Kristine A. – I totally agree, my problem is, I don’t know how to do that anymore. I thought I used to be able to do it, but I am not sure I ever was. Today, in and out of church, I don’t feel like I have the tools to accomplish the skill of understanding the other person. And I am even less skilled at sharing my points, because most everyone has made up their minds and they really don’t plan on changing.
It makes me sad, I sense we (people) are going to be long divided against ourselves and come out very splintered.
it sure seems that way; I hope you’re wrong. I hope we can be more conciliatory. I have more hope based on the reaction on my ward to my testimony. Very few reacted negatively, and everyone just seems glad that people are showing up.
I think it helps if we start out being kind to each other.
I feel like this sets up a lose-lose sort of situation.
So, part of what causes people to tune out is a sense of privilege or entitlement…but a lot of times when people are protesting their treatment (or whatever), it’s on issues that yes, people should be entitled too.
A more humble, slow-going, “wider” focus allows the harms that are occurring to still occur.
Thanks Andrew, I think you just put your finger on that vague discomfort I felt re how is it possible to avoid this.
I’m using the word: “the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment. As in “no wonder your kids have a sense of entitlement””
Vs.
“That to which you have a fundamental right”
as in “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”
A position of privilege often leads to the one type of feeling of entitlement.
Being oppressed by privilege leads to the other.
Yes Andrew #12 I agree that it’s possible to be too humble and nice, so that change never happens. But in my situation at church the local leaders are pretty nice and pretty tolerant of people who are different. The local injustices that have occurred were the result of policies, teachings and practices originating from SLC. I’d love to talk to general church leaders about those, but I don’t think I’ll ever have the opportunity to do so. In fact my local leaders probably won’t either. So the local leaders and I are kind of in the same boat together; struggling to figure out how to respond to SLC.
I know I’m probably different from many church members in this respect. Many members have more to fear from their church leaders, they fear losing their callings, or their respect, or temple recommends, etc. I’ve struggled with those types of fears for several years myself. But after awhile the fear abates. Then you start to see that local church leaders can fear you as much as you feared them. They can be vulnerable too. I have a relative who was a bishop. Somebody came to him with historical concerns and he investigated, lost his testimony, left the church after awhile and ended up divorced and bitter and worse off. To many church members and even leaders, a faith crisis seems like falling off a cliff into the darkness, into something unpredictable and dangerous. So we should be sensitive to their fears. It would be great if instead of fearing each other we could just fear the real enemies, like depression, fear, anger, despair, sin, loss of hope, injustice, ignorance, etc.
I often imagine that the general authorities have been deified. They have floated away beyond our reach where we can’t talk to them directly and ask them questions and get answers very easily. Yet here we are imagining what the would say and what they would think, forming our religion in response to a few words that drop down from them and what we imagine they might say if they could actually communicated more with us. It’s kind of ridiculous for us to do this too much. Better to spend the mental energy thinking about what God would do, and praying to God; he’s more likely to respond anyways, right?