When we use insidious language
And why we shouldn’t have to
'Ti, ti, ti, ti… pa… pa’ is about all we hear throughout the house these days.
My daughter is eleven months old and she’s currently working on her T’s, B’s, and P’s.
Cute, heartwarming, and a most necessary step in her ‘language education’.
It’s an education without textbooks, tutors, or homework though. Humans are natural learners, we observe, copy, try, fail… and try again.
We learn to walk and talk like that. Just some adults to mirror, a few attempts, and some time. Maybe a scraped knee here, and a mumbled, misspoken word there, but we get there.
Learning how to walk again
I don’t practice Tai Chi as often as I used to, but I had a few years where I trained regularly and intensely. Both at home, in the park (yes I’m one of those guys) and with my teacher.
In Tai Chi, we spend an incredible amount of attention on every (slow) movement. Improving and refining every move over and over. Taking time, energy, and focus to really zoom in on what we’re doing with our bodies in detail.
My Tai Chi teacher shared the following observation with me during one of our sessions.
After we’ve grown up and have learned to walk by ourselves, we never go back and train to become better at it later in life. Why don’t we?
How we walk is usually fine. It’s good enough. We don’t generally improve the way we move unless we decide to become a serious athlete or encounter a physical problem.
When we’ve just started a running practice and our knees begin to hurt, only then we might speak with a running coach, physical therapist, or some other professional to improve our running form. But rarely do we go back, without a specific purpose, and take a good look at our gait. How we step, how our balance is. If we lean forward or backwards.
In Tai Chi, we do exactly this. We go back and look at how precisely we put down our foot or how our hips turn or how the weight is divided between our two legs. We practice, slowly, with a teacher.
Movement isn’t the only area where this insight can be applied. There are other ‘unconscious actions’ we learn automatically and that deserve a closer look.
Breathing for example. We don’t have to train to breathe, right? But we do have to train to breathe right. Our breath impacts our nervous system directly so having a conscious breathing practice is very helpful for our health. Let alone preventing bad breathing patterns from developing, like mouth breathing vs. nose breathing. This can require training (or even devices) to correct.
And so it is with language.
Language can be insidious
We effortlessly learn the language we are exposed to when we’re young. Apart from being a native speaker, we also pick up other things. Non-verbal communication, accent, tone, and even how loud we speak are copied.
When we’re adults, how we use language is rarely scrutinized. Language is a means to an end. When we feel we’ve gotten our message across and the other person behaves in an expected or desired manner, it’s deemed a success. Or at least, successful enough.
But leaving it there is a shame. And this becomes painfully apparent when we get into arguments, heated debates, or situations of conflict. Our apparent success fades quickly and quietly. When we use language unconsciously we can even accidentally cause conflict (or make it worse) without knowing it.
One of the underlying reasons is that we tend to use language to reject responsibility, by using words and expressions that are baked into our language and feel normal, and harmless.
Linguistic responsibility
“Our language obscures awareness of personal responsibility.” — Marshall Rosenberg
‘Have to’ and ‘should’
When we say ‘I have to’ we are not taking responsibility for what comes after.
‘I have to go to work.’
Well, you really don’t. Sure, there will be consequences you might not like if you don’t, but it’s still your choice. Saying ‘I have to’ puts the responsibility on some outside force that is making you do something you don’t want. In reality though, you choose.
‘I should work on my todo list tomorrow’
Again, you really shouldn’t. You might want to, need to, or think it might be a good idea to. No doubt you have many reasons for wanting to be productive just as having reasons for wanting to avoid doing the work altogether. All of these reasons are valid, and being aware of them makes you able to own your choice. Even if you end up procrastinating, no external force has put this on you.
By saying things like ‘I should’ and ‘I have to’, we reinforce the idea that it’s not up to us, and doing so disempowers us.
Fortunately we can replace language that implies lack of choice with language that acknowledges choice. Like this example from a teacher in one of Rosenberg’s workshops:
First the teacher said this: “I hate giving grades. I don’t think they are helpful and they create a lot of anxiety on the part of students. But I have to give grades: it’s the district policy.”
Using the language of choice this turned into this: “I choose to give grades because I want to keep my job.”
Faux feelings
Another great example of this is the distinction Rosenberg makes between ‘feelings’ and what he calls ‘faux feelings’.
True feelings are things like sadness, joy, anger, fear etc. So expressing a feeling would be: ‘I feel sad’ or ‘I feel frustrated’.
There’s another way in which we use the verb ‘to feel’ (this is called a ‘helping verb’). For example: ‘I feel attacked’ or ‘I feel manipulated’.
Notice that these don’t express our own feelings, they are actually saying something about other people and acting as if they are somehow responsible for what we feel. The simple truth is that other people can’t ever be responsible for how we feel. They might attack or manipulate us, but how we feel is up to us.
It’s so easy for these phrases to slip into our daily speech and they don’t serve us. Using the verb ‘to feel’ in this way does the same thing as using ‘should’ and ‘have to’. They trick us into saying things that reject responsibility and they take away our power.
And the more we say these things, the more we start believing that they are true.
Learning to talk again
What we repeatedly say (to ourselves and others), we start to believe. This means that our language, if left unchecked, changes us in a direction we might not want to be going. So we better check.
This is what Rosenberg did very well, making us aware of those sneaky, ultimately destructive patterns of talking, that end up being patterns of thinking, and acting. Without our explicit consent.
Just like Tai Chi reminds me to improve how I stand and walk, Rosenberg’s observations have created an awareness of how I talk. Since becoming aware of these ways of speaking I often catch myself saying ‘should’ of ‘have to’. I step back and think: ‘No, I don’t have to do this, I choose to’ (even though it’s hard work, not ideal, or whatever), instantly reframing my state of mind.
We learn how to use language from observing others (like my daughter is doing now) but I’m glad there are teachers, like Marshall Rosenberg, to go back to later in life and practice my language with.