I have just become aware of how fear shuts down our ability to listen and hear someone’s else’s thought.
In the past (and maybe still today) I interrupted people because an idea would pop into my head and I wanted to share it. That was my ego wanting to be seen and prove how smart I was so I could gain your recognition and approval. Basically I wanted your love.
Yesterday I had the opportunity of having someone interrupt me from sharing a thought because they were concerned about what I was going to say. It sounded like “this is not the appropriate time.” How would they know if it was the appropriate time or not, unless they knew exactly what I was going to say? We never know what someone is going to say, because we are not them and we can’t know their thoughts. We need to be vulnerable in the face of our fear and have the courage and patience to listen.
Being told not to speak created an emotional reaction in me such that I no longer wanted to be part of the conversation or share my ideas. On the way home I realized an Emotional Hot Button had been pushed. My father would interrupt my mother on a regular basis and tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I have emotional baggage around this. It doesn’t feel safe to express myself. Synchronistically, I was working with a client yesterday who was holding old emotional energy in her mouth and throat. She said “I feel like I want to scream.” She felt like there were people both at home and at work who did’t want to hear what she had to say. Her ability to self-express had been shut down.
We can have a profound impact when our fears or ego shut down another person’s communication. We are telling them it is not OK to speak. Now I know why I’ve observed so many people sitting in class rooms or around the boardroom table who never wanted to speak. They had been conditioned to believe it wasn’t safe, and no one wanted to hear them anyway.
