EI for Young Adults: Discussion 38

Please don't turn on the lights!

I come to school early and I want to sit in a dark room. But my classmate comes early too and he turns on all the lights. I asked him to turn them off but it didn't work

Our requests may not be heard or addressed if we don't express our feelings and needs. If you say something like

I am disoriented in the morning and I need to stay in a dark place for some time. Would you please not turn on the lights?

It is important to remember that our requests is just one of the strategies to get what we need, and we are giving the other person a choice. If they refuse (maybe they need a bright room to wake up) it's up to you to find a different way to meet your needs.

Let's just be friends

I like my friend but I think he is interested in me romantically. I want to communicate to him that I just want to be friends.

If we don't want to lose someone as a friend, it's scary to tell them that they have no chance in terms of romantic relationships. We can avoid or lie, but honesty is important in friendship. 

It is important to understand feelings and needs - yours and the other person, by trying a role play and seeing how it will make you feel

Me: feels: caring, worrying (to lose a friend), needs: friendship, understanding

They: feels: disappointed, needs: validation, care

Here is an example of a communication:

I was thinking about you taking me to dinner, but before going I want to talk about the nature of our relationship, I care for you and don't want to give you the wrong impression. Taking someone to dinner is usually relationship-type date, and I don't want to give you the wrong idea. I care for you and I enjoy spending time with you, but right now I am not ready to be romantically involved with you but I still care for you. If this is fine with you, I don't mind going to the dinner with you.

Two parts. You may think that if we leave the other person disappointed they will not want to be our friend, but remember there are many parts, one part wants friendship, another part wants more. The part that wants more may be disappointed, but if the friendship part is there, it will understand.

Stop hitting on me!

My "friend" keeps making advances on me, even though I don't want it. I keep avoiding her or inviting other people when she is around.

While your strategy works for you, consider clear communication. Show respect, to her and to yourself and say something like this:

I want to feel comfortable around you, and I don't want to send you the wrong impression. I don't want to avoid you or invite other people. I ask you to respect my space and treat me as a friend, not as someone you are romantically involved with. 

Disrespectful bus driver

I ran to a bus that was waiting on a red light. I ran to the front door. The driver saw me, and moved the bus away with the doors closed, even though the light was still red and it had nowhere to go. I am really mad at the driver and I can't get over it.

It is normal to feel rage or extreme anger when we are not treated with respect. Respect is one of our basic needs and when it's not met it makes us really upset. 

Also this is not normal in our society for a driver to do such a thing. So there is an unmet expectation of how the driver should behave which adds to the frustration. In another society when all drivers are jerks and you expect them to behave like jerks you would probably be less distrubed by what happened.

Our negative emotions are powerful and they make us feel alive. Don't try to get rid of them as soon as you feel them. Allow them to be there, allow yourself to experience the rage, notice where in your body it's located. Feel its vibration in your body.

The more you allow yourself to experience the emotion, the faster it will subside. On the other hand, if you push it away, and if you make yourself wrong for feeling so mad, you are not only feeling mad, but also invalidating yourself for feeling mad, which doesn't help.

Being ghosted

Some of us may get ghosted by what we thought were our friends. This is a very painful experience. Here is why

1. Lack of closure. The fact of being ghosted means we can't just reach out to them to clear things up, we have no more access to them. We feel incomplete and confused by what happened.

2. We make it personal. We wonder what we did wrong that they ghosted us. We feel flawed and unworthy. It's a really big hit on our self esteem. While all we know is that the person may not be intersted in talking to us, and it may have nothing to do with our self worth

3. Need to make sense. We can't deal with the world when it doesn't make sense. If we are not clear why we were ghosted we keep wondering, coming up with explanations, and not sure if they are the right explanations. And the worst thing happens when we can't come up with any rational why this thing happened. It just doesn't make any sense to us.

The lesson here: before you ghost somebody else, think about these implications on them, go through the discomfort of facing them and expressing yourself, even though it may be painful for you and the other person, but you'll leave them in a much better place than when you ghost them.