Affirmation, Disconfirmation and Communication

"Don’t be silly. There is nothing to be frightened of.”
“Why do you make such a big deal of it? There are worse things in life than ____ .”
“I really don’t see why it bothers you so much.”
“Don’t worry. Things will get better.”
“There is no need to cry. Be brave. Dry your eyes and go play nicely.”

Haven’t we all heard phrases and expressions like that? If not from our parents, then maybe from grandparents. Perhaps we’ve used them on our own kids. They are as common as backyard dirt. Probably because we live in a society that frowns upon negative thinking. And because when other people are sad, angry, needy or broken, we feel uncomfortable. Time and again, these are the phrase we pull out when we’re trying to try to turn the situation around.

I caught myself the other day responding to a friend’s email with one of these phrases, (“Don’t worry. Things will get better”) and it was only after I hit the “send” button that I realized I had done a disservice to my dear friend. While writing the email, I was trying to find the silver lining in her situation. But my upbeat words, while making me feel better, probably did little to help her. Responding this way, I had both dismissed and disconfirmed my friend’s emotions about her experience. It was an example of impervious communication -- by which a person denies another person’s self-experience, or suggests that the other person is not entitled to feel as they do.

Another term for this is “disconfirmation.”

I’ve worked hard to avoid sending disconfirming messages and I hate it when I catch myself doing it. In fact, I’ve worked really hard as a mom not to do this with my sons.

When they were little, I began to read books by Alice Miller, the psychologist who is perhaps best known for writing Al Gore’s favorite book The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. Miller points out that emotionally insecure parents often depend for their equilibrium on their children acting a certain way. When kids express sadness, anger, frustration, fear, or other emotional needs, the insecure parent shuts them down with disconfirming messages. In time, the child begins not to trust their own experiences or feelings. These “good soldiers,” highly attuned to their parent’s emotional states, become disconnected from their own emotional needs and have a hard time building up their own sense of emotional security.

Disconfirmation affected me and my siblings; I was determined not to repeat the same with my own kids.

It was a challenge. I had to learn a different way of responding. Books like Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization and Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence helped enormously. I picked up terms and techniques like “other-oriented communication,” “emotional mastery,” and “empathetic listening.”

But unlearning what your parents taught you is tough. Without my library of books, I probably would not have known what to do, except to repeat what I’d learned at home.

I recently spent some time with someone who learned disconfirmation from her parents but who never had the opportunity, as I did, to learn a different way of communicating. She is a disconfirmation pro. If you express a thought or feeling, she is sure to counter with the opposite. If you say “This is good,” she will say “Oh no. This is bad.” And vice versa. And yet, she is desperate for confirmation. She needs constant understanding, support and agreement for her feelings and her point of view. It’s difficult to have a true conversation with a person who communicates this way, and after a while I was just doing whatever was necessary to appease her.

My sense of self was slipping away. After several days constantly soothing this person while being driven crazy by her aggressive form of communication, I was exhausted. I sent email to a friend about how difficult the situation was for me. In response, my friend gave me one of the best gifts imaginable. A priceless gift. She responded with empathy. Her response, in essence, said “Yes, I know how hard this must be.” It was as if she had been walking in my shoes for the past week. It was one of those miracles of friendship that keep you going when you think you might break. It bolstered my self-esteem, and has enabled me to tap a source of internal strength. Whatever discomforts my friend might have been feeling when reading my sorrow-filled email, it did not keep her from crafting a response that effectively affirmed my difficult experience – and, perhaps more importantly, moved me forward. I had been “seen.” I could move on.

Communication is a learned skill. There is much we pick up from our parents in terms of how we express our thoughts, feelings and needs, and how we respond to others.

Thank heavens for friends who provide the gift of affirmation, who stand as solid witness to our experiences, who inspire us to communicate with more grace, more intelligence and more emotional maturity. It helps us be better people, and, in turn, better parents, since the gift of good communication is one that transcends generations.