One of the first things I learned about during my spiritual healing training was this concept of pictures and interpretations. I’ll discuss interpretations here. Both are powerful, powerful tools that I’m grateful I was taught.
The year prior to learning this training program existed, I was learning about my various defense mechanisms. I was told the things I made up about various situations might not be true, when I wasn’t even aware I was making anything up.
For example, while in medical school, my partner and I rented and shared one car. Sometimes my school day ran longer than his and he’d have to return to pick me up. There was no pick up station so I’d wait for him at the outer security gate. It was the Caribbean, it could be quite uncomfortable waiting outside in the sun with all my books and materials for the day. Cell phones were pre-paid so texting was kept to a minimum.
When he was late, understandably, I would feel angry and disrespected. Some of the things I’d think about the situation might be:
Self dismissive thought = Enabling:
He didn’t mean to
It won’t happen again
Isn’t it enough that he picked me up? I should feel grateful
He must have been busy
See, he came and got me, that must prove he cares
Blaming, accusing, Judgmental thoughts:
Why was he late?! He gets made at me if I’m one minute late but he gets to be this late!? That’s not fair! That’s not right! He’s a hypocrite! He has no integrity.
See! Here’s proof. He doesn’t respect me. He must not love me. He can’t even come up with a good reason why he’s late.
He doesn’t care. I’m hot, dehydrated, had a long day. He didn’t even apologize. Even the security guard is getting to know me. He just doesn’t care. He’s uncaring.
He’s a terrible partner. How could he not care? How can he not see how much I have to do? He’s an insensitive jerk.
Underlying fears: He doesn’t love me. I chose a bad man. I’m a bad person for feeling angry and disappointmented.
There were two sets of thoughts, one desperately trying to justify his behavior and normalize it. I thought this made me a caring, patient and understanding person. The second set of thoughts were blaming thoughts, to distract me from seeing my own responsibilities.
The problem with the justifying thoughts was that if I quietly accepted being treated poorly, I taught him by my own actions that it’s okay to treat me poorly. We teach others how to treat us. That’s not cool.
We teach others how to treat us
The problem with blaming behaviors is I’m energetically judging and criticizing my partner. That always leaks out into interactions by word choice, body language, tone and various other ways. It doesn’t matter how good at acting or lying you are, eventually the other person will put together enough clues and figure it out. Especially in a long term committed relationship.
So we’ve established in the example given that my thought patterns weren’t ideal for many reasons, even if we can understand they came from authentic fear. When we have insecurities, are we doomed to behave outside our value system? No!
First I had to learn to discern where was the point I was making stuff up. What were the facts?
We had a plan that we both discussed and committed to. He didn’t raise any concerns or objections.
I was at the agreed upon location at the agreed upon time.
He was not at the agreed upon location at the agreed upon time.
He did eventually show up and pick me up as agreed on.
I felt hurt, fear, anger, disrespect, disappointment, embarrassed, unimportant, unvalued, unseen, unheard and misunderstood. I felt frustrated and fear about my evening plans.
I felt hot, sticky, sweaty, uncomfortable in my clothes, gross, unattractive, exhausted, burnt, hungry and thirsty. I felt pain in my shoulders, neck and lower back.
It was a pattern that he was not honoring his time commitments to me.
I chose to wait for him in the humidity and the sun instead of walking home.
That’s it. Those were the facts. I can hear his words but the only fact from his words was that the words were spoken. The words themselves aren’t facts. They are important and convey important information, but they don’t convey facts about this repeating behavioral pattern.
Notice there are no stories about his thoughts, feelings, character or beliefs. All those thoughts I had in my first list was me making stuff up based on his behavior. It doesn’t mean I was wrong. It’s equally true that just because I felt the thoughts were true doesn’t mean I was right either.
Get it? I used to treat those thoughts in that first list as if they were facts. I call those thoughts “interpretations” because they are thoughts, ideas or stories that are built out of the facts or built out of interpreting the facts. Interpretations are more often false than we realize, but we treat interpretations like they’re facts when they aren’t even facts to begin with.
Once I have a set of interpretations, I can find myself drift away from the facts by holding onto the interpretations tighter than I hold on to the real facts. Interpretations themselves are stories. As I collect more stories from interacting with people (same or others) then more stories are built and I can fall into the trap of collecting these stories together as a “proof” I’m right about something. Proofs got built on top of other stories or interpretations, until I was convinced my partner was a man that didn’t exist anywhere except in my head. That’s how projection starts and then get built on or develop. The problem with projections is they feel like reality, truth and clever insight but really, projections and interpretations are pure fantasies, created from my fears based on my history.
Interpretations are stories
Once I have a set of interpretations, I can find myself drift away from the facts by holding onto the interpretations tighter than I hold on to the real facts.
Interpretations and projections are a normal part of life. When we’re ready to live in reality, how do we battle them?
By taking a step back and looking at the facts first. In science, facts are what you can observe. In the example I’ve given, I shared I could observe only his behavior and my thoughts, feelings and actions. I can’t observe his feelings, only guess at them. This is really important.
In a given situation I can’t know from my own knowledge and observations what someone else is thinking or feeling. I can only observe their behaviors, their physical actions. If I can’t know for sure what the other person is thinking or feeling, I certainly can’t know their motivations. (i.e. He loves me or he doesn’t love me).
Creating the space between facts and interpretations is crucial. Without this gap it becomes difficult to know when you’ve crossed over into fantasy. Interpretations are fantasy. Interpretations can be right as often as they can be wrong, but assuming your interpretations are always right removes the space between reality and fantasy and once that gap is removed it becomes difficult to be in a relationship with someone real, or to discern where reality and fantasy split. We start interacting with other people or the environment in front of us as if they are the fantasy version of them in our heads.
Interpretations are fantasy.
Creating the space between facts and interpretations is crucial.
Have you ever wondered why someone was treating you with suspicion when you know you didn’t deserve it and it was completely unwarranted? You can feel misunderstood and unseen. It can even feel like the other person is talking to someone else entirely. Because it might be true. The other person may be talking to the fantasy version of you they’ve created in their head. This is one of the ways this comes about, when we assume and treat our interpretations as fact and real.
I don’t like when people project onto me, even though I accept it’s normal. I also don’t wish to live in fantasy any longer. So I commit to identifying facts and the Reality of the situation. Once I have that, I know everything else is an interpretation. Then I can consciously choose to act or to not act on my interpretations. The key for me was creating that space between facts and interpretations. I’m much more confident about my ability to discern reality now that I have and use this tool.
May Allah grant us each strength and success in discerning our interpretations from the reality and truth of a situation. May we each make choices that are aligned with our value systems.
Peace and Light,
Mariam-Saba
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