When two realities collide … part 2

In yesterday’s blog I explained that despite all appearances to the contrary, we really don’t share a common Reality. Reality, despite the realness of its name, is a social construct. The fact that we share enough of this experience to work together and connect is good enough for us as human animals, but as human beings, we often suffer when something we thought was real and substantial crumbles before our eyes. Just remember some of those broken hearts and false promises that we have all suffered from.

If I can go back to yesterday’s model of how we experience events through a series of filters such as our beliefs, our values, our histories, our social norms etc, I think you can begin to understand that, by the time the tiny electronic packet of information actually reaches its destination neuron in our brain, it has been much tweaked, tailored and edited (just so that we can process and comprehend it.) The thing is that we are concurrently processing millions of bits of data so we don’t have time to ponder each and every one of them, so they are sieved and sorted and responded to, largely on auto-pilot. And that, as they say, is where the problem begins!

Someone else responds on auto-pilot and suddenly we feel like we have been torpedoed; it might be a relationship bust up, it might be a warning from the boss. The thing is that at this stage we normally just experience ‘being attacked’, so we naturally go into Flight / Fight. From that point on we have either ‘left the building’ (at a metaphorical level) or are joining in all guns blazing (which then reverses the experience for the other person, because now they are sure they are being attacked, so their mechanism is triggered too!)

So how on earth can you cope with all this? Well the first thing to do is realise that these mechanisms exist and understand the crucial impact they play in our lives. The next is to try, whenever possible, to try to synchronise understandings and expectations, to make sure that what you are saying is what they have heard and understood. Realise that we have different preferences and needs for how information is imparted (more on this another day) and that just because you have ‘told’ me, doesn’t mean I have actually processed it (especially if I need to see it!)

I hope this little explanation will help keep you all safe today, and help waltz, rather than clog dance through Life’s minefield!

“The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.” George Harkness

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 12:28 and is filed under Flight / Fight, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Mini-Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.