13: The Nuances of Emotion vs. Perception in Communication

 Hello  and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal what's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve. Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs, and boundaries without having it blow up in your face?

Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths, and honest conversations. Now let's dive in.  Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest.  On today's episode, I wanted to dive in a little more into the difference between emotions and perceptions.

The reason why I think this is so important is because so many times when I am coaching clients, I hear them say, Oh, if I try to say that to him, he's just going to dismiss me. He never listens to what I say. And he just says the opposite of what I say. But this can happen because oftentimes we're not getting vulnerable enough to share our emotions and our feelings.

And instead, we are covertly blaming our partners for what's happening. So this idea out there right now is to use feeling statements. To communicate to your partners. And this is really great. It's in non violent communications. I feel this way, so could you please stop doing that? Or I feel this when you do this, so I need this instead.

Those are really great structures to work with. But if we're not fully following through with what a feeling statement is, then none of this is even going to work. Because if you say, I feel like you're an asshole, that's not going to help anything, is it? Now I know that that's a bit of a silly example, but you'd be surprised how often this actually happens, especially when I'm talking with people.

They'll say things like, well, I felt like he just didn't want to do that, or I felt like he wasn't listening to me, or I felt like he just constantly misunderstands me. I feel like he's intent on misunderstanding me.  Those are some very big statements. Do you hear the blame behind all of them? Now, those are pretty obvious blame statements.

Now, I say obvious. They're not that obvious because obviously people are still doing them. But, um, They are a little bit more clear on how they are blaming someone versus not blaming someone. Because if you're saying, I feel like he's not listening to me, you are essentially saying he's not listening to me.

But now, let's try the covert way that this often comes out. I feel unheard. Ugh.  So many people I've talked to have told me, but my therapist told me to say that, so this is a good thing to say.  And I'm not here to say yes or no to a therapist, but what I mean is listen to that statement. I feel unheard.

What is it saying? It is saying You are not hearing me. That is a blame right there. Now, is it your perception of what's happening? Sure. Is it actually what's happening? Absolutely. It could be.  But if we come into a conversation stating that our reality is the only reality that exists and no one else's does, what do you think is going to happen?

It's going to make the other person defensive. But if we can come at it from a place of our feelings and our emotions, and if we can get really granular on how we're feeling, then we have the potential to really open up that conversation. So instead of saying, I feel unheard, you could try. Hey, I feel really sad right now because I, the story I'm telling myself is you're not listening to me and you're misunderstanding the words that I'm saying.

I, I, I'm not saying that you're doing this on purpose, but wow, it's, it's really hard for me right now. Do you think you can help me with this? Do you think we can get to a place where we're hearing each other?  And that's how we can start to actually have these conversations. So let's try another one.

Another one that I often hear about is, well, I just feel like he doesn't care for me. But again, that's pretty obvious. You can hear that it says he doesn't care for me. But what if we just said something like, well, I felt uncared for, or I felt unimportant. Oh, that's such a, let's go there. Let's go unimportant. 

I. Felt unimportant when he didn't text me back. Oh, I used to deal with this all the time. When I was first doing this work, I had an ex and his texting would trigger the living shit out of me. It was ridiculous. And I would constantly sit in this state of, well, I must just not be important to him and I feel unimportant.

And here I was thinking I was doing this amazing work with. Being true to myself and sharing how I felt so I said to him, I feel unimportant when you don't ever text me. Ugh. I mean, you can't see me right now, but I'm literally holding my head in my hands. Because can you hear what's coming out? What I'm saying is, first off, you never text me.

And secondly, you don't think I'm important. Now of course he got defensive when I said that to him, and I didn't understand why he got defensive, because here I am thinking I am doing the best work I've ever done in terms of communicating to someone, and he's still getting defensive. What the fuck is going on?

Right? But that's what happens when we don't understand the nuances between perceptions and feelings. Something else I could have said at the time was, Hey, I am feeling really uncomfortable right now because I just, I haven't gotten a text from you in a couple days and I'm really uncertain about where we stand. 

And then if he comes back and he's like, Oh, wow, I'm so sorry. Like, I wasn't even thinking, you know, that happens a lot. It's like, Oh, thank you so much. Or maybe he comes back. He's like, it's only been two days. What's the big deal. I mean, we have to pay attention to those types of communications because if I'm sitting here sharing my feelings.

And he dismisses them, then I need to ask myself, is this what I want? But that's the difference right there. That's how we tell the difference between something like gaslighting and something like dismissiveness.  Because often times people sit there and say, well he's just gaslighting me all the time.

But they can't gaslight your feelings because only you know how you feel. So if you feel hurt, you are hurt. If you feel sad, you are sad, but you can't feel unheard. You can't feel unlovable. You can't feel alone. Those are not feelings. And even though they're getting shared around like they are, I'm just here to explain again that they are not feelings. 

So let's talk again about how important it is to understand our perceptions. Why are we talking about perceptions so much? Because our perceptions stem from our beliefs. We have the B T E A formula, where our beliefs influence our thoughts, or our perceptions, which influence our emotions, or our feelings, which influences our actions.

Or our behaviors. Do you see how this is working? B T E A. I learned about this in Neurolinguistic Programming. It's a really wonderful way to understand how the things that we believe are influencing our behaviors.  And so, if we have a deep belief inside of us that we are unheard, or we are unlovable, or we are unimportant, Then that is going to influence our thoughts and our perceptions.

If we believe that we are unimportant, then our thoughts are going to be, Oh my goodness, I can't believe he didn't text me back. I'm never important to him. He doesn't care about me. He's never going to text me. This is never going to work. Our brain starts to spiral. And then what happens? If those are the thoughts that we are having,  then of course our feelings and our emotions are going to be sad, despair, maybe anger, frustration, confusion.

And then how do we act out? What are we doing? Because our belief over here, our perception over here said, Hey, you are this. You are not enough. You are unimportant. So we lash out or we avoid. Or we text 20 times, or we say, why aren't you texting me so much? I miss it. You know, that's what's happening when our deep seated beliefs are so ingrained into our bodies that they are creating perceptions that influence our action. 

Now let's look at this in real life. I have a question here, so let's break this down into perceptions and feelings and how this plays into this question. So the question states, can an unhealed person with disorganized attachment get it wrong in terms of their intuition? I'm trying to figure out if my perception of things are wrong or not right because of my mind is looking at things from my perspective. 

And because of this, besides doing the work to become secure, how will I ever know to trust my intuition if I'm always told my perceptions are wrong and I'm overthinking things, which causes me to constantly doubt what's really happening? Oh, such a great question. Now I really want to dive into this one here a little bit around the perception and then a little bit around the intuition.

So first and foremost, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Perceptions are not reality. They're just not. What you perceive is something is not what someone else perceives something. In fact, there's a really cute cartoon out there, and maybe I'll try to put it up in the show notes, where two people are looking at a number, a six and a nine, but they're looking at it from two different directions, and they're yelling at each other, and they're saying, that's a six.

And the other one's saying, no, that's a nine. They're both right. No one is wrong here. And that's what this person is asking because this person has been sharing their perceptions with someone and they're constantly being told that they're wrong. And so of course they're starting to doubt themselves. 

But if this person could see that their perceptions are just their own, then they would understand that when someone else is telling them that, Hey, that's not how I feel. They're not being told that they're wrong per se. They're just being told that someone else has a different perception. Now let me make sure this is making sense because I'm using a lot of words here, but let's say, and this is just an example, I have no idea what this person is actually going through, but let's say they're saying to someone is, Hey, I'm perceiving you not wanting to text me.

And the person's like, no, of course you're wrong. Of course I want to text you.  That person now just felt invalidated, didn't they? Because they're like, well, wait a second. I felt this way. This is my perception. He's not texting me. So this must be what it is.  But no, that person is just telling themselves a story.

The story they're telling themselves is that their partner doesn't want to text them. But what's actually happening, the reality of the situation is, Their partner is not texting them for a reason, and we don't know what that reason is, but it's not necessarily because they don't want to.  Okay, let's think of a different one.

Let me think of something else here, because if this person is also asking about their intuition, then what this means is they're probably coming to their partner with these ideas that they have. Like, oh, you're cheating on me, or you don't want me, or why were you out, or hey, are you upset right now? And all of these are the stories she's telling herself.

And so when it comes to this, she's obviously going to start doubting her perception because he's going to be like, no, it's fine. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it. So now she's trying to figure out, well, how can she trust her intuition if her perception is always off? It's because they're two totally different things.

Our intuition is an inner knowing. It's a soft feeling, kind of like inside of our heart or our solar plexus, our gut area. It's something that we can sit on for a while. True intuition is something that we can kind of just lean back and explore and see where it takes us.  Anxiety  is that I need to figure this out right now, I'm going to go through his phone. 

If you go through his phone, that's anxiety, that's not intuition. Intuition is saying, hey, maybe something's off. He hasn't been looking at me lately. He's on his phone a lot more. He seems to be smiling and giggling when he's texting on his phone a lot. What's going on? That is when your mind is noticing something going on.

And your intuition is starting to pick up. Now I want us to follow that intuition, but true intuition would be able to go towards that and have a conversation with their partner, because if you truly think that your partner is cheating to the point where you have to go to their phone, then that relationship has already hit a huge problem before you even touched that man's phone.

We do not want to get to that part. And instead, we go to our partner and we talk to them about what's going on. Or, we can even just sit back. We can sit back and observe. We think he's cheating on us? Great! Let's sit back and see what happens. Because if we are not perceiving anything, such as, he doesn't love me, or I'm not good enough, or she's prettier than I am, or I'm never gonna get another man, I have to hold on to him.

Those beliefs,  Those are what are causing the insecure actions of yelling, looking through his phone, following him, asking his friends about what's going on. Those are all insecure actions. And what we want to get is to a place of being able to just lean back and be like, I wonder what's going on here. I wonder what's happening.

Maybe we can ask him. Maybe we can see what happens.  This is where I want to get us to this really beautiful, secure place that says, I don't care what happens to me. Cause I know. I know. I know. I will be fine no matter what. 

Now, if you want to talk to me more about the difference between perceptions and emotions, and you have some nuanced questions, or you're not quite sure what I'm talking about here, you can absolutely join our free Facebook group. You can find that information in the show notes. It's a great place to get your questions answered.

I'm in there all the time and I answer your questions. It's also kind of slow right now in there, so it's a great time to get one on one help. I'm also offering more podcast calls. So there is a link on my website that you can go straight to, to schedule in a podcast call with me. If you want to jump on a call, help yourself help others.

I'm looking for more clients to do that with, and I would love to have you on the podcast. If you want to keep your coaching a little bit more private, I am offering up a Patreon membership right now, where I'm offering. One coaching call a month or four coaching calls a month for different tiers. And also at the time of recording, I still have some discounts going on.

If they're still available, when you check it out, I would love to coach you. I think it would be an honor until next time. Take care. 

As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination, and it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we covered today. Be sure to head over to our show notes where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode, right there.

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