What a great and timely thread!
I can definitely recognize this black and white thinking in myself. Once when I was really deep it in and viewed another person in a totally unfair negative light (and myself as the 'savior'), it was only the network that showed me that my thinking and behavior was inconsiderate. Even though I didn't understand the feedback at first, but seeing how so many saw me as a different person than I thought I was, and knowing that more eyes see more than just my own (mine being of course pretty biased!), I trusted the feedback I got, followed their directions and only slowly started to understand better and better of how my behavior was inappropriate and very hurtful to others, and myself. I cannot emphasize enough, the value of a network and the need to share and learn within it. Having had this episode, it has made me stay more careful with how I behave with and view other people. I think my main motivation is not wanting to hurt others anymore, atleast to such an extent as I am capable of doing this. It's definitely not easy, and will probably have to work on this for a long time.
One of the most difficult environments for me, is my home environment. Reading this thread for a couple of days now, I can recount some episodes with my parents, some conflicts we had, and the thoughts I had and the feelings I felt. I very often would fall into the: poor me, they don't acknowledge me etc. I would see things, and especially them, in a very dim light. And being in such a thinking and feeling mode, I would become very depressed. But I realized that me feeling this way won't be helpful to anybody or the situation, I was being very inconsiderate: it was all about what I wanted and what I needed. I totally discounted all the good things they have done for me and still do for me. My actions reminded me of Salzmann's quote:
You will see that in life you receive exactly what you give. Your life is the mirror of what you are. It is in your image. You are passive, blind, demanding. You take all, you accept all, without feeling any obligation. Your attitude toward the world and toward life is the attitude of one who has the right to make demands and to take, who has no need to pay or to earn. You believe that all things are your due, simply because it is you! All your blindness is there! None of this strikes your attention. And yet this is what keeps one world separate from another world.
I wanted my parents to treat me as I would think normal parents should, but this is a totally unfair request of me when I take a look at objective reality: they have their own kind of programs, their own upbringing that shaped them in a way they are. Constantly trying to come back to the poisoned well and somehow thinking that this time they might say or do things differently is not only hurtful to myself, but to them as well. I would constantly fall back into black and white thinking (me good, them bad) then get a little bit hopeful again, try to make them understand in a way, see it doesn't work, then go back into black and white thinking etc etc. It's a really tiring and very internally considerate loop.
So I thought to myself, so how do I react when they say something hurtful? Would it be better to become a cold-hearted machine when they say something hurtful to me? Not to feel anything? How can I not feel sad when they say something that is so mean?
Atleast I would think part of the answer may be is to atleast try to be objective, to not put so much weight on the hurtful things they might say (humorize it?). To understand that from their position their words probably make a lot of sense. Like Muxel wrote as well. At the same time of course they may say something to me that I won't like, but could be true and might be something for me to work on. In any case, I guess the most difficult aspect, as I've written elsewhere, is accepting the reality of the situation and letting go of all the false hopes and assumptions. To really see them for who they are. Very difficult to do, but there's a lot I've read in this thread that helped me with looking at my situation a bit more clearly. I guess once I can fully see them for who they are, and stop projecting a certain expected image on them, I can have a better idea of how to engage with them, maybe. Much food for thought!
There is one example that I would like to share. I shared with my mom that I won't be able to attend my nephew's wedding, because I had to redo an exam around that time (which I was noted of just some weeks before the exam by the study advisor), and so I wanted to use those days to study. Well, she got really upset, and she thought that maybe someone told me not to go to the wedding, or that someone from the university is doing this on purpose, etc. And I'm just standing there being frustrated and got upset too, and couldn't believe she would go that far. So I walked my way upstairs and went to my room.
And as I sat down on my chair, I was thinking about this some more, and I realized that my way of behaving was just really not nice. I started to put myself in her shoes. She is living in a foreign country, and she doesn't know much of the way the school system works here. So what I did was taking the letter from the university, with autograph and all, went downstairs and explained to her calmly that it's really real. That nobody tried to sabotage this or anything, it's just how it is. Then she joked that somebody probably faked that autograph and we had a bit of a laugh there. But in the end she said she believed me, and thanked me for showing that letter.
So in a way, I guess, by considering her and looking at the situation as critically as I could, I could atleast at that moment correct myself.
