Have you heard of Lin Youjia's "Lying"? It's an old song full of metaphors about a couple who broke up and the boy was told the girl was getting married.
This song turns a thousand times, and the words are all the inner drama of the boy's forced smile. As he also sang in another song, "We were in love, and the thought of it made me sad."
Image source network
According to the statistics of talented netizens, the whole song has 42 lyrics, but there are only 4 truths. The classic "People Are Hard to Tear Down" comes from this song.
The image originates from the internet
Lying is indeed one of the hardcore skills that modern people must have. But if we have been living in a world of lies, consuming and overdrawing ourselves, then we need psychology to heal ourselves, to loosen our shackles, to breathe in the self that is constantly compromising.
There is a good medicine, a book called "The Methodology of the Good Life". As its title suggests, it is committed to improving our lives with the mission of pursuing a better life.
What it teaches us is not the smoothness of the world, not the brainwashing technique of persuasion, but the basis of Satya, teaching us how to face our own hearts, while at the same time taking into account others and various different situations, and looking at the important proposition of "relationship" with a holistic perspective.
What exactly is Satya?
Satya is actually a psychologist, and she is the first family therapist in the United States, Ms. Virginia Satir. The Satya theory system she created is based on the family, society and other systems, with the intention of solving the psychological problems of individuals.
"The Methodology of a Better Life" is written by Qiu Liwa and Xu Yibo, two psychological counselors, who have absorbed the essence of the Satya model, and have summarized a set of methodologies in more than ten years of psychological counseling practice, using the form of simple textbooks to implement such grand topics as improving intimate relationships, family and interpersonal relationships, step by step to teach you to improve relationships, tear off the false mask of lies, and live a new self.
1. Lying is tiring, consistent communication to save you
We often blame ourselves for lying with a bad conscience. We teach children not to lie, but to be honest, if he can't learn the "skill" of lying, he will suffer a lot of losses when he grows up.
Therefore, we often fall into this strange circle: I don't want to lie, but this society forces me to lie.
If we do not perceive the true feelings in our hearts in time, we can only be trapped in the vortex of lying and unable to extricate ourselves.
There are several deep reasons why we are forced to learn the skill of lying, and we cannot "speak my heart with my mouth.".
From the cultural level and the trade-offs of pros and cons, in Asian culture, as Chinese, we are taught to be "smooth" and "clumsy", such as "the friendship of gentlemen is as light as water", or to say everything in our hearts and fully expose our true selves, and others will treat you as a fool.
From the perspective of human nature, people are always accustomed to maintaining the status quo, grasping a familiar old road to the end, and accepting everything given by the original family.
Although the road is not smooth, we are too lazy to open up new roads, and we are afraid of taking risks.
3. From the perspective of expectation, people always have a sense of loneliness in their hearts and always want to be understood by others, and this "other" seems to have to be a ta in an intimate relationship. But practice has proved that the guessing game only consumes intimate relationships, and does not create the romance we expect.
Living in the world of lying for a long time will make people habitually ignore the real emotions inside, and it will also invisibly consume our energy, which is also harmful to creating long-term benign interpersonal relationships.
The consistent communication proposed in the "Methodology for the Good Life" gives us a little idea.
Consistent communication means being true to one's own heart, being aware of the true inner being, and having the right to choose, rather than lying in order to cater to others. That is, I can choose not to lie, and I don't have to put an ugly mask of flattery on myself.
There are three steps to consistent communication:
Contact and acknowledgement: A simple step, describe your feelings in as much detail as possible by asking yourself and answering yourself.
Acceptance: If there are negative emotions, admit them bluntly. Negative emotions are not monsters, they contain the reasons why we are not happy, and it is possible to solve the problem further by looking at it directly.
Expression: This step is the most difficult and the most critical. It is not just a matter of pouring out ideas for others to see, but to integrate their true feelings in the wording through reasonable wording, which not only soothes their hearts, but also does not hurt others.
2. Understand the four bad ways of communication to help you better understand interpersonal relationships
Some people will ask, this consistent expression is easy to say, it is difficult to do, ah, I still can't accept to be a "true expression" person in this true and false world. The rivers and lakes are sinister and unpredictable, and I really can't afford to take this risk.
At this point, it is necessary to learn the four poor communication postures proposed by Satya.
Everyone will learn a variety of survival patterns in different environments and encounters. Even if we can't truly empathize with others, through these four communication postures, we can better see ourselves and be more flexible in dealing with difficult interpersonal issues.
These four poor communication gestures are flattery, accusation, super-senseibility, and chapacking.
Some people will ask: these communication postures are very common, why do they say that they are bad? Here the author uses a reverse logic, a good communication posture should take into account the three elements of the situation, himself and others, while the above four bad postures are more or less ignored these three elements.
My girlfriend's birthday is coming, and Xiao Yan's salary this month has not yet arrived. But in order to please his girlfriend, Xiao Huan gritted his teeth and used his credit card to buy a dead and expensive lipstick to send, which is a flattering gesture.
Often communicating with others in a flattering manner, although we can empathize with others, we are too repressive of the self and ignore the element of "ourselves".
The fork is that when communicating, he is concerned about him, and does not face up to the requirements of himself and others.
The girlfriend was fascinated by a very good-looking bag and couldn't open her legs. Xiao Tao found all kinds of excuses to prevaricate her and try to shift the target, which was a gesture of hitting the fork.
In fact, the fork is a kind of "escape" posture, rushing to change the mood for the environment, the situation, yourself and others three elements are properly single, none of them are taken into account.
3. How to deal with poor communication posture
So the question is, how should we deal with poor communication posture? The first thing to be clear is that poor communication posture is an instinctive reaction of our body and mind, which is automatically triggered when we feel stress.
So, we need to first know what the source of stress is.
For example, the pressure of the flatterer may be that the person we care about has a negative emotion, and we instinctively want to quickly appease the person. At this time, our hearts have been completely occupied by the other party, and the part of the self has been left behind.
Let's first look at the "flattery" case just mentioned. Xiao Huan beat his swollen face and bought lipstick, which was both wronged by his own heart and his wallet. Does he have to do that? In fact, he can also have many ways to express his love, not necessarily kidnapped by a lipstick.
If you want to jump out of the posture of the pleaser, Xiao Huan should understand that what the pleaser lacks most is the attention to the self.
What he needs to do is focus more on self-exploration and think about what he has done for his girlfriend. How does he feel about himself? How to make yourself more comfortable inside to reduce the sense of self-blame.
In fact, this also exposes a problem of the flatterer: the ability to empathize. Empathy is a popular word that means that a person is empathetic and can put themselves in the shoes of others.
But everything must have a degree, excessive empathy will make the territory of the self smaller, and the attitude toward the self will be humble.
Let's look at Xiao Tao's "forked" posture, the girlfriend wants to buy a bag, and he makes up various reasons to divert her attention. The scene in front of him, the eagerness of his girlfriend made him feel restless inside, eager to flee quickly. What he lacks most is the ability to patiently pay attention to the present moment, and what he needs to explore is a plan to quickly deal with the matter in front of him.
In addition to the above dry goods, the "Methodology of the Good Life" also mentions deeper psychological theories, such as cognitive filters that cause misunderstanding, iceberg systems that reproduce the whole process of perception distortion, and transform entrenched house rules into channels for self-change.....
These are the secrets to making our lives beautiful and better. The author tells the obscure psychology with a simple and easy-to-understand story, and integrates the deep exploration of human nature into the words.
Teach you a better life without holding back and being more comfortable, starting with understanding the "Methodology of a Good Life".