Have you ever had friction in your relationship? Cat Morgan and I sometime have bouts of sadness, anger or depression come between us, and I now realize a lot of the “friction” in our relationships is nothing more than an instance of where her version of reality was not the same as mine.
I assume we would all agree we are each living in the realities we create for ourselves. If this concept is something new to you, let it sink in before reading on. The point I am making is, we each live in our own reality.
As we go through life, we are constantly told what to think or believe from others. This is not to say others are trying to control us (at least no consciously), it is simply the way we use words and actions to describe our experiences to others.
It is when those experiences differ in the same situation that friction can occur. What one person sees as an honest gesture of kindness, the other views an overt gesture of another kind. Often when I get angry with Cat, it is not Cat I am angry with, but a part of me that wishes things were different, so that I didn’t need to have these feelings of anger. It sounds circular, but it really isn’t. It is about looking inside yourself instead of outside (projecting on others) when you do not feel right. Whatever right is to you, of course.
So now, when I do not feel right, I try to see what is different between what I think I want, what I perceive current reality to be, and then explicitly ask Cat (or whomever the projection is towards) “how do you perceive this”, and we generally find a common reality somewhere in there that satisfies all parties.
I bring this up mostly for guys, so that we can know that it is alright to feel anger (it is there to tell us something is not right). The problem is what you do with the anger. If you project it toward others, that is not good. If you listen to it ,and see what it is telling you, then you know what to change.
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