Desperate Housewives Destroy Community

I watched my first episode of “Desperate Housewives” recently. It came up on a Netflix search and I was curious. Such a famous, popular show – let’s see why. Well, after watching it, I still don’t know. I do know this, however, anyone watching the show week after week would build a picture of human beings as selfish, hardhearted, money-absorbed, and shallow. Yikes!

That reminds me of an interaction I had with someone in a group a little while ago. We were taking turns reflecting a story and when my turn came, I said that I didn’t know anything new to say. To my great consternation and surprise, one of the group members became teary and suggested that I didn’t care enough about her to reflect.

At the time, we talked and worked it out.

But later, as I thought about it, a few things came up for me. For one - she had immediately gone for the worst possible interpretation of my behavior. Now if she watches shows like “Desperate Housewives”, I sure can understand it. That show trains you to jump to the worst possible interpretations. If she had gone with the best interpretation – that is that I wanted to do my best and that I didn’t want to repeat what had just been said – she might have said, “Go ahead. Reflect away. I love repetition!” I would have felt understood and accepted.

So anyway, she went with the worst interpretation of my behavior and now I felt ashamed for something I didn’t do. As I’ve mentioned before, the feeling of shame is so intense that it essentially feels like a crisis to our brain. Not to the intellectual rational part of the brain. No, that part has been shut down to deal with the emergency. No the older, emotional, ready to fight or flee part of the brain. I’m a fleeing type. So I began to emotionally flee from the room with my body soon to follow. Fortunately, I have trained myself to ask a question during a communication crisis like this one, “What is the best possible interpretation of her behavior?” That one question suggests that there might be other ways to look at what is being said. It stops me and I begin to tune in to the other person and try to learn more.

I love that question for helping me to reintegrate with the rational part of my brain and for allowing me to think about the feelings and needs of the other person. Sure enough, the person is having a crisis herself, brought on by past traumas bleeding into a present interpretation. 

Take Home Point: The best interpretation of someone’s behavior goes a long way towards healing conflict and is often more true than the worst interpretation.