R.E.S.P.E.C.T

I Found Out What It Means To Me

So where does respect fit into our relationships with ourselves and others?

Respect is different than intimidation  

Real respect has to do with how you speak to and relate to ourselves and to others. It involves the tone and manner of delivery. In contrast to respect is not intimidation. The attitude of intimidation is that you had better treat me well or else there will be hell to pay. This attitude of intimidation imposes the idea that no matter how badly I treat you you better treat me well. Respect especially if it is mutual brings about a basic level of kindness and consideration.

Expressing ourselves tone and manner; repetitive and redundant

Part of respect involves the tone and manner that you address one another. Are you speaking too loudly, to coarsely, to gruffly? Are you repeating yourself too much? Are you attacking with an unwelcome critique of the other person. Are each of you able to understand and accept that you see the world differently at least in certain domains? Even if you have different localized world views, is the conversation helpful to each of you in refining your worldviews and/or in accepting your similarities and differences? Does another person have to see the world identically as you do in order for you to respect them (conditional respect)

Sensitivities and Feelings

Do you prefer not to feel your negative feelings? Are you habituated to certain types of negative and/or positive feelings? I invite you to open yourself to the range feelings that you do have. Whether you like your feelings or not, you feel what you feel. You can choose to acclimate to your emotional sensitivities. While acclimating can be very emotionally uncomfortable, I hope that you can recognize that having these sensitivities is part of the gift of being human. You are not being punished. This gift of sensory awareness involves pleasures and discomforts.

Processing Feelings

What type of events leave you riddled with uncomfortable negative feelings. Do you choose to process your feelings rather than reacting to them? There is so much that you can learn from your feelings. Do you allow yourself to feel what you feel and the textures of discomfort? Since your thought process can involve association, do these types of feelings remind you of other events. You may feel criticized, blamed, shamed, or even punished. As you ride the waves of uncomfortable feelings and as the amplitude of discomfort begins to wane, Do you choose to ask yourself “.. how do I know what the other person meant?” Of course, the only way that you can know what the other person meant is if you ask them. There is an old native American saying, that you don’t know another person until you’ve walked a mile in their moccasins. Is there anything that you need to say to the other person about the event? Do you need/want to ask them if they could help you to understand what they meant by what they said? Whatever they say, in response to this question, can you give it credibility? If you think that you know what they mean and they aren’t telling the truth, then do you need to work through your resentments about the issue and the associated memories that were triggered within you, that you haven’t yet fully processed. Do you need to more thoroughly process your feeling?

Emotional push away?

Why was it done? Did it really have anything to do with you? Anger is one form of an emotional push away. The easiest way of understanding the emotional push away is to notice what happens that leads up to an episode when your anger becomes the vehicle used to push others away. Do you run out of emotional spaciousness for social behavior? And, because you weren’t paying attention to your sensitivities and needs, someone said or did something and you reacted in an ill-tempered manner (the push away). Are you aware of feeling that you are running out of energy for social engagement as it begins to percolate and bubble up, do you give yourself a time out, preventing the episode before it occurs? The fruit of mindfulness practice is to alleviate needless suffering by not creating the causes that foment the event.

The Buddha said that a human lifetime is uncomfortable (suffering). These discomforts take place in all four quadrants of our lives (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual).

These discomforts are not personal; everyone has their discomforts. These discomforts are part of incarnational existence. We are corporeal beings that have innate sensitivity including but not limited to our emotional sensitivities.

Content

Is the content appropriate and necessary for which dialogue? This is so subjective. With whom and when is what content, context, and dialogue are appropriate? This is subjective regarding each individual and also subjective regarding the time and place. Respecting someone involves being considerate of the timing and content that they are able and are willing to speak about in this particular moment.

Considerations

Respect also requires various considerations. These considerations include but are not limited to: not pushing your agenda onto others; being aware of someone's level of fatigue and their receptivity; If they are not presently available for the conversation, will they ever be; is there a cultural component to be sensitive to, whether racial or otherwise; does the other person have any interest in this topic; what is your end goal in this conversation? Is your agenda to be right or to connect?. If you have a need for a particular outcome, with whom can you nurture that need and when?

Trust

The process of developing trust, especially emotional trust takes time. An analogy is to consider what a bank or lending institution requires from anyone in order to qualify them for a loan. And consider how long you worked at crafting/developing all of the necessary components for this financial loan. Emotional trust requires the development of layer by layer and deeper and deeper levels of trustworthiness. The skipping of a layer can have dire consequences. Here we are looking at trust as the ability to accept and to relate to the feelings and experiences that are being expressed. This also involves holding this content in confidence when asked to. This is in contrast to the inability or unwillingness to accept or to relate. This disparity can be expressed as the desire to shut down these emotional expressions for whatever reason. When a person shows repeatedly that they just aren’t able to go there, at some point that message is made and received. When a person shows that they have the depth and understanding to hold emotional content without reacting, that message is accepted and received. It can be very surprising to see who has the capacity to be trustworthy and capable to connect with you.

Understanding and reasoning

Of course, you know what happened from your experience. You know what you experienced from what was said. You know what you felt throughout the process. If you’ve processed your feelings, then it is time to bring thought to your feelings and feelings to your thoughts. Reasoning is an understanding of your thoughts and feelings. Part of reasoning involves understanding what you don’t know. How can you find answers for what you don’t know? Can you ask the other people involved?

Responding with whom and when

It is not always a good time to talk with another person on any particular subject. It is always a respectful approach to ask if the other person has time and space to talk about a particular subject. And dance on light feet (being nimble)  into the conversation in order to determine to what depth the other person is able and capable to interact. Can you grant them credibility? To what extent?

Discipline vs punishment

Discipline is for the purpose of education. Punishment is for the purpose of harming.  How do we educate based on individualized learning determined by performance? If someone is having difficulty with one aspect of a problem, are you able to drill down into that person's learning capabilities in order to provide a method of learning that yields understanding? Does punishing really provide education? Is punishing necessary? If punishment is necessary, then how and/or when are they deployed? Did punishment work? What does respecting your growing edges and the growing edges of others look like?

Believing others

How do you grant credibility? Is credibility only given to someone that agrees with you? Or, can you accept that not all of the world agrees with your view? And everyone has the same entitlement as you. Everyone is entitled to see the world as they do. No matter how you felt when someone said something. They know what they meant no matter what you thought that they meant. Can you grant them credibility that they know what they meant?

So how do we build a respectful relationship with ourselves?

Doing inner work can be extremely helpful in order to work through any of your reactivity issues. In this process, you learn that all of your inner work is an act of self-love; you earn your own emotional trust as you come back again and again to exhaust the bubbles of unprocessed emotions. As reactivity wanes, you can learn that your inner voices are not there to punish you but they are there to draw your attention to your emotional needs. This is more about respecting your needs rather than reacting to them.

Respecting your need

I perceive the greatest need to be the need for a meaningful sense of connection. Each of these bubbles is only there to inform you as to which part of you needs your loving connection in that moment. Even though you might not be able to provide for this need in the exact moment that it surfaces, as long as you agree to nurture this part of yourself and you follow through on this promise, trust grows stronger. And little by little you become less dependent on others to provide the emotional connection that you need. When you give this to yourself, it is more sustainable. You then can be more present with your friends for the people that they are rather than seeing them as resources for gratifying you need(s).

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