I love animals and always have. Since I don't have children....I spend more time observing them more than most people I think. I don't see animals as a replacement for children, but I really think they are a gift to have around me because of what I learn from them. They are always present, aware of their surroundings and even prescient if you understand this about them. I own two cats and two dogs currently which is such a great mix at times and can be very entertaining to watch. I've also come to learn a great deal in the way they communicate with each other especially the differences in the two species in the way the miscommunications between the two. This has been really telling for me since I know both of their languages which are primarily...non verbal even though I know the sounds that they make and what those sounds mean to them. Intuitively speaking is where all the trouble begins.....and I mean this literally!
It occurred to me the other day that many of the miscommunications between my wife and I could be seen the same way, both gender and ADHD. I thought it might be useful to share some of these correlations here because I think there is really something to learn from this. I've mentioned before that I swear I was a dog in a previous life since other people have nicked named me "Dog Whisperer" as a joke because dogs do respond to me seemingly....more than most. I thought about this because for me....dogs are simple to understand. Cats on the other hand are more mysterious to me since their behavior itself is curious more than predictable? I thought about this one too.....I'm very curious myself and it's one of my strongest (and at times weakest) qualities. Cat's see something that interests them and they go from place to place with no particular pattern and are more random in their behavior. A just kind of prowl around and see what new and don't like to be couped up too long. Always exploring, always looking for whatever. It does appear this way as I watch my Cats thinking..... this sound like me! The Chuck Berry song.... "No Particular Place to Go" is playing in my ears right now." Life is an adventure!
Dogs on the other hand are pretty darn predictable and easy to read. They are not so random and you can pretty much tell what they are thinking at all times......"Food, Peeing, Food, Sleeping. Food, Pooping, Food, Playing, Food, Affection, Food, Head Out Car Window, Food, Eating Grass, Food, Throwing up Grass, and more Food.....in that order. That pretty much covers it. If you can understand this, you can understand how dogs think. I can see a lot of myself in Dogs behavior too (aside from eating grass and throwing it back up... *water goes along with food of course:)
But here's the point to this. The non verbal communication between dogs and cats are extreme opposites to one another.....
If dogs ears are back....they are submitting too you either for affection or capitulation in a fight. When cats ears are back.....trouble is about to happen and a fight is immanent out of fear or retaliation. A miscommunication between the two.
When dogs gets down on their front fore arms.....they initiating play. When a cat does this, they are either hunting, stalking or about to fight. A clear miscommunication!
Staring directly into a dogs eyes while walking towards them is a challenge and put them into a defensive posture with their ears up and ready for attack. Cats on the other hand have their ears up and walk directly up to you and stare straight at you if they are just curious? An even worse miscommunication!
Dogs sniff butts to tell what gender another dog is when they first meet. Cats are just not down with butt sniffing period!....this is a guaranteed fight reaction and offense for a Cat!
Dogs love Kitty- Rocca (cat litter encrusted cat poop). Cats .....(only with there young) would ever eat poop and certainly not Dog poop!
Cats are stingy and bury their poop and leave no trace so no one can find it. Dogs are much more generous with their poop and leave it in your next door neighbors yard as a gift as much as possible.
Interestingly.....when either one sees something running away it means....time to chase after it? This indicates intuitively that it is possibly something to eat? (food) This seems to be the only thing that they both respond to in the same way.
and back to the point of doing this here? Because men and women neglect to interpret cues in the opposite sex that are different than themselves usually as a negative the same as dogs and cats. I think this is primitive thinking.....actually, primitive non-thinking or more just reacting intuitively instead of learning to understand what these difference mean?
The same goes with ADHD symptoms. If you can't or won't learn to interpret the actual meaning of the symptoms and their behaviors and take offense or personalize these differences as a negative to you. These difference will always be viewed as something to "Tolerate" instead of just "Accepting" them for what they are. The same as dogs and cats. It's not difficult to see these difference and even understand them if you are a third party watching them....but if it's you directly involved in the behavior itself which causes you to flinch or react.....it will always have to be tolerated as a means to be around it.
Another way to word this would be.....things that you have to tolerate are things that you do not like.
Intuitively speaking for myself.....I can read when people are tolerating me even if they don't say it by their non verbal communication....even when I'm not cognizant of this in the fore front of my thinking. I can feel it non the less. I have pretty highly tuned senses and feel people energy believe this or not. It comes through like a bull horn announcing......"I DON"T LIKE YOU!" Even if the person I am with clearly does for the most part. At the same time.....I can't stop the feeling but in this case....it is happening in the moment.
I have no delay in processing in my senses to the point of being almost prescient at times......getting a bad feeling that senses negatively almost before it happens. An ominous sense of forbidding is the only way to describe it? Maybe that's why I can read animals so well since.....I definitely can feel there energy that goes along with reading their physical reactions.
I'd say I do this without thinking.....but have to make sure I look at peoples faces to read their facial expression which I don't do all the time when I speak to people. Many times, I avert my gaze from people's faces because it distracts me and makes it more difficult to process what they are saying which takes more effort the more information ( visual ones ) I have to process.
More than anything .... I sense more than look for visual cues but, I have learned to focus on people eyes and faces more so I can pick up these cues which are easy for me to read if I make the effort just to do it. This is one difference that I see in the way I connect with people than others I have experienced....more by their energy and less by other non verbal cues. I have also begun to really notice how much my wife's energy is really at the source for many of our misunderstandings. Because she tends to personalize everything first it seems.....all I feel is the energy she is emitting and it's very difficult to focus on the words she is saying.
At times, it's like being hosed from a high pressure fire hydrant blasting into my face with a stream of negative energy. Where I will talk about my feelings and share with her of my experience and what caused the feelings ( relating the details and facts with her) She wants to give her's to me! I don't want hers or anyone else feelings (I have my own thank you) but I want to hear about them and talk about them with her? I have my feelings and she has hers. Two separate people each with their own. On top of this.....I don't want to give my feelings to anyone else either. They're mine and belong to me. I use them to navigate my emotions and can't do without them? If she is upset, I want to hear about it and I can connect with that and be empathetic, sympathetic...whatever, as needed. I do not want to share her bad mojo . If I'm feeling good, the last thing I want is to feel bad and take on someone else bad feelings which feels like being used as a toilet......used is the perfect word. If that makes her feel good when she does this, it is at my expense. She feels good afterwards.....I feel bad. Thanks a lot! If I were ready to do something that she wants before she approaches me by being hosed in the face with sticky negative ju ju......I'm unlikely to want to do that after this happens. More likely.......to go take a shower instead! The more voo doo that gets on me....the more I want to get it off and for her to stop hosing me down. Eventually I start to drown in the stuff and suffocate....this is closer to reality in feeling than just a metaphor. Panic sets in and with that..... the feeling of impending doom switches to my survival response anger as if being attacked and killed. My response and anger at this point is the same as if I was being attacked by an assailment with a rope around my neck who is trying to strangle me. At this point.....you will do anything and everything you can to stay alive just like anyone else would in this situation. What I'm saying is real....this is not a description of what it feels like but describing the actual experience when this happens to me. It is the same panic experience as if you are actually drowning and dying. No joke! That's how bad it can get in the worst moments of this experience. And you wonder why we are avoidant? Wouldn't you be? Who wants to risk that again! At the end of this exchange....she just gave me her emotions which only caused this effect in me.....and I just gave them back to her in the form in which I received them. If this is sharing....it's not a pleasant exchange! These are the moments when I turn and walk away to prevent the kind of anger that I came to this forum to try and figure out. As you can see......mission accomplished.
In my mind.....this is the same difference.... as it is between Cats and Dogs.
I can't read minds of course....but I can sense these primitive feelings in other people and interpret them intuitively even if there words are telling me something different. Tolerating says.....I don't like you to me and it's hard to separate this message when I'm feeling this from them.
Who would ever feel good about being tolerated? Things are tolerated not people. Tolerance is not to be confused here with being tolerated. those are two entirely different things.
J
Cat's and Dog's....
Submitted by c ur self on
The question maybe Why? There is usually a reason behind why I'm being tolerated....It may not be because I'm not liked or loved....It maybe that I'm overwhelming another person based on what they desire in communication vs what I'm dishing out...so they just tolerate me...Instead of being honest enough to just tell me....Or, maybe they have tried to let me know....but it hasn't helped....LOL....So they just continue to tolerate me vs. washing their hands of me....
You are So Right C (edited version)
Submitted by kellyj on
There is always a reason for people emotions, and everyone is entitled to them. Emotions are not "wrong" or "right", "good" or "bad" even though that is what we think at times. The problem is thinking. We add those extra "add ons" to them if you know what I mean? That's where it can get confusing sometimes. Both...when we say them and when we hear them.
When we hear them we take offense and feel judged. When we say them....other people take offense and feel judged. It was really and eye opener to go back and read my posts to see what I said compared to what I felt. It can be a down right humbling experience. I liked the dog and cat analogy because animals pretty much say what they feel instinctively all the time, and most of the time it's pretty straight up and easy to read....except for cats ( joking here of course...they are actually hunting and defining their territory) but it just looks random to us. Is there a corollary here? never mind:)
And for the record...this post was part of making this discovery for myself. What's being tolerated are what's behind the emotions themselves, not the other person. In my wife's case for example....her tolerance to certain things are low because they cause her to have a intense anxiety reactions that doesn't feel good putting it mildly....sometimes it's painful for her. I'm not what she's having to tolerate....it's the anxiety itself.
This can even happen for her for example, when things in her world are out of place, or even things that get moved inside the house ......Yes, I moved them, but her anxiety is about the things getting moved. I'm not the "thing that gets moved".....I'm just a guy doing my own thing (pun intended).
But, her emotions are different than her anxiety, and she has trouble seeing this when her anxiety gets too intense for her to cope and manage these intense painful feelings. When this happens, her reaction to these feelings combined with the words coming out her mouth in that moment change and become about me instead of about either her anxiety, or what she is feeling. Her emotions, gets expressed to me as anger, and get directed at me instead of telling me how she feels. That's how the emotions gets translated to her inside her thoughts of this painful experience by this entire process inside her head, and end up in her conscious thoughts as me, somehow showing her disrespect and reacts as if I did this to her. As if I did this on purpose just to cause this painful anxiety reaction in her and now her feelings are hurt even more.
Once this "negative generator" starts to cycling inside her head, it can take on a life of it's own and begin to build up steam. If nothing can interrupt this cycling on it's own, eventually....it can grow in intensity and the end result for my wife is to feel out or control with no way to stop it on her own. There are several steps in this process before it gets to her thinking, but the feedback she is getting from this "negative generator" inside her head, and the last link in this "chain reaction", comes out as "feeling disrespect" even though it starts out as if something is "wrong". Yes, there is something wrong and it's her heightened anxiety level and her inability to stop this chain reaction, but for her.....
The cause of this phenomenon if you can imagine, comes out of fear. which she originally experienced repeatedly throughout an unstable childhood where her family was constantly moving and changing with and unpredictable pattern filled with abuse, alcoholism and sometimes violence outbursts between her mother, her father and her mother's consequent many boyfriends and husbands over the years after her parents divorced when she was quite young. This includes sexual abuse in one case her own father who she was sent to live with years after her parents divorced by her mother who chose to send her to live with him knowing what kind of man he was despite her own experience with him....in order to free up her life putting her own priorities first and deferring this decision to believing that these men would be her own salvation and rationalized this decision by blaming my wife as being and out of control child and the reason that she could not keep a man in her life. If you can imagine this scenario I just walked you through....you can understand why my wife has these fears and the damage that this has created in her ability to trust.
As I just told you this story.....I myself had to piece this together over time myself as it is not something she like to talk about. Understandably. And also understanding that the facts within it were not be reported to me in precisely this detail out of out my wife's own psychic defense even though....in her heart, she knows this is true.
But despite this story which is not an unusual one in itself..... what I find as the remarkable quality that I find so completely admirable in my wife, and testament to my wife's courage and strength is the most important reason that I chose to be with her and fell in love with is her.....and that is her amazing capacity for compassion she has for other people and her ability to love. She truly is a hero in my eyes every time I see her wonderful smile. If I could only be this brave and I feel humbled by this each time I see it. My wife's smile is the thing that I love most of all and I'd do almost anything to ensure that I see it as much as possible.
I realized this yesterday as I sat and watched her tell me the story of her day and is why I came back here to include this in this thread. My wife, like most people...would rather not discuss work everyday since it is a source of stress for her and wants to take the needed time to relax and recover from her day....the same as anyone else. So these stories are many times few and far between even though I myself love to hear about them. Real life is many times much more inspiring and enlightening than the stories that people make up on television, books and in movies....more often than not.
In her work as a social worker and a resource provider for IDD (intellectual and developmentally challenged adults)....part of her job is to refer these adults to various case workers depending on each ones individual needs and make an assessment in their file that would indicate each ones potential ability for living on their own and becoming a self sufficient individual by holding a job and taking care of themselves. In the case of this one particular individual as she was telling me this story.....she had been passed his case, which had been handed her by the previous resource provider as his potential being written off as a loss. His file had been passed to him by two other resource managers who had made the same determination....written off with no hope that the client could ever live on his own and lead a productive life without being part of the system.(including the financial burden it puts on society as a whole) As I sat and just listened to her story.....I watched my wife's smile emerge at times while she was telling me of her visit to this gentleman's new apartment that he had recently moved into after securing a job. The discussion that they had together was about..... how to meet women and dating...... which my wife helped him by offering him some options for him to look into. At the end of this brief visit ( as she was telling it to me)...this young man politely was excusing her by saying he really needed to do some house work and cleaning which was his way of saying he needed some time to relax and be alone....by himself.
After the conclusion of recounting this visit she told me that the only thing she did differently with this young man, that no one else did in order to get him to this place in his life (one he had never been in before).....was to simply make the extra effort to take an interest him and take him out to lunch over the past year on a number of occasions (on her own dime ) outside of her regular scheduled duties and sit a listen to him talk about his dreams and wishes. She said she could see something immediately after fist meeting him that was not reflected in his file and she knew it right away. It seemed....all he needed was someone to believe in him and as I heard her tell me this story and the smile on her face....I knew immediately what my wife needed from me as well.
She is my hero and I realized in this way....I might be able to be hers too. Not her knight in shining Armour to take her away into never land but a hero to admire for inspiration. The capacity for love that my wife has in my eyes is truly amazing and I have always seen this in her.....but this love and inspiration go mainly unsung in my wife's own heart and I was this more than ever yesterday and I told her what an amazing thing that I thought she had done for this young man. Her reply to me was saying that this was just part of doing her job and could not take the credit that I was trying to give to her.
What I have to give to my wife is something that I have always seemed to manage to find no matter how difficult things in my life become and that is a belief in myself. I don't need to ask anyone opinion to know that is true because I own it. If there is anyway, as I said...to see this beautiful smile appear on my wife's face I would do it in a hear beat and yesterday.....I think I just found the answer I was looking for.
And as I more recently discovered....along with her irritation from anxiety, comes and opinion in these moments almost every time. It's amazing to hear once you start noticing how when she is expressing any emotions to nearly anything but especially things that cause this negative response in her....... an opinion almost always get tacked on to each and everyone. If you think about what judges do....they render "opinions." That's what's happening inside her head by the time....something "feels wrong" to "you're dismissing and disrespecting me."......
And all I hear is "self righteous indignation" and "judgment" when I forget to put the scissors' back in the drawer many times after using them...instead of "please be mindful about putting the scissors' back in the drawer." You could even drop the "please" and that would be Okay too. I know I do it and I know the reasons why. And to the point of saying this....so does she.
Does this get irritating for her to keep reminding me? Yes....but that just thrown onto the original source of her feeling out of control and anxiety already. All I need is the reminder and the more times that happens....the quicker I will get in the habit of remembering each time....which eventually, I can get it down to almost every time with her help. I'm saying...for me here.
But now that I understand this, and now I can understand her when she does this. Even if she never reminds me or I forget to do it. I accept it, understand it and don't take it personally even when it comes out as a judgment and I care for her enough to not want her to feel anxiety because....I know that feels like myself. Not good! Even she can see this in herself.....I can see it too now and can have compassion for her. It gives me renewed motivation each time it happens for the right reasons. To help my wife and do my best to be sensitive and take care of this sensitively she has. How could I possible not understand this!!! You betcha. Acceptance..... It tells the other person that you love them without saying it every time.
You are absolutely right.....there IS always a reason for everything. The hard part is just figuring out wha that is? But in this specific case with my wife just told you what it was. It took this long to figure it out but the big problem for me was....I had to figure this out because she could not do this for herself. That's what I came her for.....to figure this out. But that's what people do when they love each other right?
Dogs and cats are much simpler in that way than humans....and I do love my wife more than them but...... I also love them too. There's plenty to go around for everyone:)
The bold face type is the edited addition to this original post. I left the rest as is because it serves to remind me that these the the feeling I truly have for my wife and really never lose site of yet.....they are the ones that do not get expressed nearly enough when I say things to her but they are the most important ones to the entire balanced story. I too often make the wrong assumption that just because my wife is my hero...that she herself is not her own hero in the story of herself. Balance is what is missing for both us in our relationship together. I just illustrated exactly where the balance is missing but as of yesterday.....I also figured this one out as well.
The spirit of the heart needs balance to survive and thrive in life. It is the fire of life and the fuel for survival.....in a Asian philosophy, it is called chi (kee, key)....the connection to the universe that one draws from and gives you the power within. You can say this many ways, but when it all comes down to is just saying the same thing. A belief in yourself. If I can be this inspiration to my wife....I can be my own hero and hers at the same time. This is the balance that's needed for us together as a couple and for ourselves as individuals. This is now what I believe very strongly that is true and real and will be something that I need to refer back to as a reminder so I don't forget.
J