~Strenghtening the Marital Bond~
Ok, this sounds like an odd title for a topic on the subject of marital relationships. But the book upon which these notes are based can refer to any type of relationship: work, family, parenting, friendships...and yes, marriage. The book is called "Leadership and Self Deception" and is written by C. Terry Warner, who is a member of the Church and BYU Faculty member. Keep your spiritual eyes open and glean whatever wisdom you need. At the end of the notes, I will ask a few discussion questions. Feel free to comment even before then, but realize that each of the discussions will build on the previous one. (It may seem confusing at first....but keep reading over these few days. It WILL begin to make sense!)
Here we go: (NOTE: Items in quotes refer to direct passages of the book. Otherwise, it is my own summarization and commentary)
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The concept of self-deception refers to our own experience of reality versus the ACTUAL reality. "Self deception is like this. It blinds us to the true cause of problems, and once blind, all "solutions" we can think of will actually make things worse. Identify someone with a problem and you'll be identifying someone who resists the suggestion that he has a problem. That's self-deception - the inability to see that one has a problem." Self deception is also described as "being in the box".
"We can tell how other people feel about us, and it is to THAT that we respond." People respond to our body language and other cues more readily than the words we say: the tone of voice, our gaze (or lack thereof), our posture, level of interest in the other person's comments/needs.... Communication is 10% based on the language we use and 90% based on everything else (body language, expression, etc).
"We can always sense how others are feeling toward us. Given a little time, we can always tell when we're being coped with, manipulated or outsmarted. We can always detect hypocrisy. We can feel the blame concealed beneath veneers of niceness. And we typically resent it....What we'll know and respond to is how that person is regarding us when doing those things."
PEOPLE SKILLS ARE NEVER PRIMARY. "Whether people skills are effective or not depends on something deeper." People respond to feelings, not words.
"At any given moment, we're either in or out of the box towards others. We can apparently do almost any outward behavior either in or out of the box, but whether we are in or out of the box makes a huge difference in the influence we have on others."
KEY POINT HERE: "Success in any organization is a function of whether we're in the box or not and that our influence as leaders depends on the same thing." Change the word "organization" to family OR marriage. Change the word "leaders" to parents or spouses. Now re-read that sentence.
We want to be OUT OF THE BOX, not in it.
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"Whatever I might be 'doing' on the surface -- whether it be, for example, sitting, observing others, reading the paper, whatever -- I am being one of two fundamental ways when i'm doing it. Either I am seeing others straightforwardly as they are -- as people like me who have needs and desires as legitimate as my own -- or I'm not. One way, I experience myself as a person among people. The other way, I experience myself as THE person among objects. One way, I'm out of the box. The other way, I'm in the box."
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"When we are out of the box and seeing others as people, we have a very
basic sense about others --- namely, that like me, they too have hopes,
needs, cares and fears. And on occasion, as a result of this sense, we
have impressions of things to do for others -- things we think might help
them, things we can do for them, things we WANT to do for them."
BUT.... "In acting contrary to my sense of what [is] appropriate, I
betray my own sense of how I should be towards another person. So we call
such an act 'self betrayal'."
The author uses the example of a man who wakes up in the middle of the night to hear his baby crying. His first thought (ie, initial impression)is to go take care of the baby. His second thought, which occurs almost immediately after the first one, is that maybe his wife should do it. He then begins to rationalize all the reasons why she should do it (he works, she is a stay-at-home mom, etc) and then begins to assume that she is lying awake having heard the baby, but is ignoring the baby because she is waiting for her husband to handle it. The general idea is that the wife might really be asleep and not aware, but because the man ignores the initial impulse to help, he then rationalizes WHY he isn't helping and then makes her out to be bad to help justify why he didn't act on his original instinct.
In any situation, we have a choice: honor our initial positive thought or
betray it.Once we have betrayed ourselves, we begin to see the world in a
way that will justify our self betrayal. It isn't that the world has
changed, but that our view of it has.
Before the man in the above example betrayed himself, he didn't see her
"faults" (ignoring the baby, being lazy and other self-justifying
adjectives) as a reason not to get up and tend to the baby. Only when he
betrayed himself did he see those "faults" and use them to justify his
self-betrayal.
Interesting point: Christ never betrayed himself. He acted on every noble
thought.
The man in the above example states: "Her faults seemed relevant to whether I should help her only after I failed to help her. I focused on and inflated her faults when I needed to feel justified for mine. Having betrayed myself, the truth was just the opposite of what I thought it was." Before the husband betrayed himself, he saw his wife as being worthy to be helped by his getting up and getting the baby. AFTER he betrayed himself, she seemed different and he felt she didn't deserve his help. But she was not different before or after his choice -- HE was different.
"When I see a self-justifying world, my view of reality becomes distorted. So when I betray myself, I enter the box."
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"Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me." Think of this from a gospel perspective: the atonement paves the way for us to remove those self-issued boxes from our lives...IF WE CHOOSE TO LET THEM GO. The ultimate reason for any sin is pride: thinking we are above our Heavenly Father.
"Over time, as we betray ourselves, we come to see ourselves in certain
self-justifying ways. We end up carrying these self-justifying images
with us into new situations, and to the extent we do, we enter new
situations ALREADY in te box. We don't see people straightforwardly as
people. Rather, we see them in terms of the self-justifying images we've
created. If people act in ways that challenge the claim made by a
self-justifying image, we see them as threats. If they reinforce the
claims made by a self-justifyng image, we see them as unimportant.
Whichever way we see them, they're just objects to us. We're already in
the box."
"If you seem to be in the box in a given situation, but can't identify a
feeling that you betrayed in that moment, that's a clue that you might
already BE in the box. And you may find it useful to wonder whether
you're carrying around some self-justifying images."
"The most self-justifying images are in-the-box perversions of what would
be great out of the box. But these are the very things we're not being
when we have self-justifying images about them. Certianly it's good to
think of others, but who am I thinking of when I am thinking of myself as
the sort of person who thinks of others?"
Spiritual perspective: Jesus never made Himself more important than His
message.
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"Most of us have self-justifying images we're carrying around with us, most people are already in a defensive posture, always ready to defend their self-justifying images against attack. So if I'm in the box, blaming others, my blame invites them to be in the box, too." So, by being in the box, we provoke OTHERS to be in the box, too. Hence, "we provoke each other to do more of what we say we don't like about the other."
"When I am in the box, I am self-deceived so I don't see clearly. In the box, I am blind to the truth about myself and others. I'm even blind to my own motivations." This can also refer to spiritual blindness.
Using the example of incorrect parental disciplining (ie, "being in the box"), the author says, "The problem with my disciplining, and so on, has been that I've been in the box when I've been doing it. I haven't been seeing my own son as a person to help but as an object to blame And that's what he's felt and responded to."
WHAT WE NEED MOST WHEN WE ARE IN THE BOX IS TO FEEL JUSTIFIED. "When I'm in the box, I need people to cause trouble for me -- I need problems....In the box, I get what I most need when I'm run over: I get my justification. I get my proof that the person running over me is just as bad as I've been accusing him or her of being."
"We're not saying that in the box we enjoy problems. Dar from it. We hate them. In the box, it seems like there's nothing we would want more than to be out from under them. But remember, when we're in the box, we are self-deceived -- we're blind to the truth about others and ourselves. And one of the things we're blind to is how the box itself undercuts our every effort to obtain the outcomes we want."
COLLUSION:
"You can't focus on results because in the box, you're focused on yourself!"
UNDERSTANDING HOW NOT TO GET OUT OF THE BOX
"In the moment when I feel the keen desire to be out of the box for someone, I am already out of the box towards him/her. To feel that desire is to be out of the box." Again, INTENTION is the key as is having a correct vision.
"Coping has the same deficiency as trying to change the other person. It's just another way to continue blaming."
"In the box, whether I'm a skilled communicator or not, I end up communicating my box...and that's the problem. No matter what skill I am taught, I can be either in the box or out of the box when I implement it. And that raises the question: will using a skill in the box be a way to get out of the box? No. Helpful skills and techniques aren't helpful if they're done in the box. They just provide people with more sophisticated ways to blame."
"In the box, every change I can think of is just a change in my style of being in the box."
WHAT DOESN'T WORK IN THE BOX
"Since the box itself is deeper than behavior, the way out of the box has to be deeper than behavior, too. Almost any behavior can be done either in or out of the box, so no mere behavior can get you out."
THE WAY OUT OF THE BOX
"In the box, my self-betrayal isn't passive. I am actively resisting what the humanity of others calls me to do for them. We change in the moment we cease resisting what is outside our box - others. At that moment, we are liberated from self-justifying thoughts and feelings. This is why the way out of the box is always right before our eyes -- because the people we're resisting are right before our eyes. We can stop betraying ourselves toward them - we can stop resisting them."
"Being out of the box and seeing others as people doesn't mean that I'm suddenly bombarded with burdensome obligations. That's because the basic obligation I have as a person - which is to see others as they are, as people - is satisified, in many cases, by the fundamental change in my way of BEING with others that happens when I get out of the box."
"In order to stay out of the box, it's critical that we honor what our out-of-the-box sensibilities tell us." (ie, our spiritual promptings as well as our basic humanity)
"We live insecurely when we're in the box, desperate to show that we're justified - that we're thoughtful, for example, or worthy or noble. It can feel pretty overwhelming always having to demonstrate our virtue. In fact, when we're feeling overwhelmed, it generally isn't our obligation to others but our in-the-box desperation to prove something about outselves that we find overwhelming."
"When we blame, we blame because of ourselves, not because of others."
"Isn't it far better to be able to recognize others' boxes without blaming them for being in the box? Out of the box, I understand what it's like to be in the box. And since when I'm out of the box, I neither need nor provoke others, I can actually ease, rather than exacerbate, tough situations." RECOGNITION is NOT the same thing as BLAME. The focus is on trying to help rather than trying to blame.
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"Self Betrayal"
1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of "self betrayal"
"Merely knowing the material doesn't get you out of the box. LIVING it does. We're living it when we use this information to learn how to be more helpful to others."
Knowing the material:
* Self betrayal leads to self deception and being "in the box"
* Don't try to be perfect. Do try to be better.
GO TO PART 2 OF THIS DISCUSSION
This site updated 23 DECEMBER 2002
INTRO TO DEFINITION OF SELF-DECEPTION
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TWO DEEP CHOICES THAT DETERMINE INFLUENCE
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HOW WE GET IN THE BOX
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Choice = honor noble though or betray it
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When I betray myself:
I enter the box
I become self-deceived
I inflated others' faults
I inflate my own virtue
I inflate the value of things that justify my self-betrayal
I begin to blame, which only occurs AFTER self-betrayal.
COLLUSION IN THE BOX
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"When two or more people are in their boxes toward each other, mutually betraying themselves, we often call it collusion. And when we're in collusion, we actually collude in condemining ouselves to ongoing mutual mistreatment." OUCH! We are giving each other reasons to stay in the box.
What is my countenance? How do my eyes and demeanor betray me?
* Trying to change others
* Doing my best to "cope" with others
* Leaving
* Communicating
* Implementing new skills or techniques
* Changing my behavior.
FINAL POINTS
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2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self betrayal.
3. When I see a self-justifying world, my view of reality becomes distorted.
4. So - when I betray myself, I enter "the box".
5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me.
6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box.
7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.
* When you're in the box, you cannot focus on results
* Your influence and success will depend on being out of the box.
* You get out of the box as you cease resisting other people.
Living the material:
* Don't use the vocabulary ("the box") with people who don't already know it.
* Don't look for others' boxes. Do look for your own.
* Don't accuse others of being in the box. Try to stay out of the box yourself.
* Don't give up on yourself when you discover you're in the box.
* Don't deny you've been in the box when you have been. Do apologize, then just keep marching forward, trying to be more helpful to others in the future.
* Don't focus on what others are doing wrong. Do focus on what you can do right to help.
* Don't worry whether others are helping you. Do worry whether you are helping others.