Living life with grace & harmony

 

Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
—-
Christian Counselor

Naturopathic Physician

Political Philosopher & Author

 

—
Marriage & Personal Counseling

Medical Consultations

—

1414 NE 109th Ave.

Portland, Oregon

(503) 255-9500
naturedox@qwest.net
–

Seminars, Books, Articles
Audio & Video

 

Assuming Offense

By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND

 

Avoid assuming offense: When comments, gestures, tone, words, and actions produce hurt feelings, avoid absolute and sure judgment about the meaning and intention behind these various forms of communication.  Intention and meaning are the two aspects of the communication that the speaker has control of, and the listener may misinterpret both.  

 

a) Meaning is meant to direct change or give information.  Direction can be done with various postures.

b) Postures include:

i) The parent, employer, or superior in rank or social standing.  In this posture the superior commands, demands, and directs the inferior in his TSAs.  

ii) The child, inferior, or slave.  The inferior is subject to the superior, and should follow, learn, and adopt as much of the posture of the leader as possible.

iii) The peer, friend, companion, partner, or spouse.  This posture is the one that all marriage relationships should use at all times.  Exceptions include emergencies when someone who is an expert or has special knowledge or ability must take command.  And when one mate is weakened or mentally disabled, he may have to take the role of the inferior and accept the direction of the other.

c) Intention is a factor in determining the posture of the communication.

d) Interpretation: When our emotions have been triggered, we tend to assume that the remark or action was intended to hurt.  We may be right or wrong in our judgment of intent.  There are three major types of offense, 1) innocent or ignorant offence, 2) purposeful hurt with intent to restore fairness and stop pain, and 3) malicious intentional hurt with negative intent.  The person offended should not assume positively that any one of these is true, but instead say, “I felt hurt by that word or deed, what was your intent?”  This question allows the other person to realize that his TSAs have caused pain.  And, because of the commitment to not cause pain in the partner, begin to pursue understanding specifically what caused the pain.  Upon the method by which the pain was caused, he can then determine a new, better response.

   

Innocent or Ignorant Offense: I can be hurt simply because the other person’s style reminds me of previously hurtful communications.  You may have had no intent of stimulating hurt within me by what was for you an automatic and habitual tone, phrasing, timing, or gesture.  But, just because it was unintentional or innocent does not mean that nothing should be done, and it should be forgiven and forgotten.  If one person in the relationship is hurt, then the relational entity, “us” has been weakened.  

i) Solution: Apologize for an unintended offense.  For example say, “I’m sorry I hurt you, I didn’t’ mean to.  Let me say that again (or do it differently) in a way that does not cause you pain.”  

ii) Repairing the Damage: Whenever anyone in a relationship is hurt, the pain must first be acknowledged.  A commitment to non-violent, pain-free communication and action should be the foundation of a loving relationship.  If anyone feels pain, it should be a clear signal that harm has been done, and the damage should be stopped as quickly as possible.  (Stop digging a hole is the first command.)  

iii) Inappropriate reactivity: The reaction may be entirely irrational, in which case the offended party has work to do in clearing up his inappropriate reactivity to various stimuli of life.  Various tools such as, 1) collapsing anchors by associating distasteful stimuli with pleasurable stimuli, 2) Galvanic Skin Response Training to detect the flattening of autonomic responses while talking about the facts of related unpleasant stimuli, and 3) desensitization training by repetitive exposure to the unpleasant stimuli.  

 

Purposeful Hurt with Positive Intent: This offense is a message to stop hurting me.  I have accurately perceived your words, gestures, etc as intentionally hurtful.  The purpose of the hurt was to communicate that I had hurt you, and to stop doing that.  You wanted me to feel the same pain that I caused you, and you wanted me to stop hurting you.  This type of hurt is a call for help, fairness, and right relationship, but it may or may not be effective, and it certainly should not be used as a first response, nor used frequently.  Since it contains pain within it, the most likely response is a similar retaliatory message of “you hurt me, here is some pain in return, stop hurting me, and you deserve this pain for hurting me.”  Thus, even though this communication has as its purpose the improvement of relationship, it will normally produce an escalation of retaliatory pain.  Each party wants the other person to admit causing pain, and to commit to never doing it again.  There is a place for demonstrating pain, but it should probably be seldom used, as it will usually produce more problems than solutions.  This type of communication is the implicit force behind the request for fairness.  

i) Solution: And if it was a purposeful hurt with positive intent, then say, “Yes, I did mean to hurt you to communicate that I had been hurt.  I felt hurt when you did/said X.  I would like you to not do that, change your attitude, meet my needs, and not do that particular thing that causes me pain.”

 

Malicious Hurt: This offense takes the form of intentionally inflicting pain, for no other purpose than producing pain.  This is bad intent, evil, and criminal and should never be done.  This is torture in its most malignant form.  Malicious hurt is not about creating deeper relationship, but about creating hurt for the benefit of the perpetrator.  Malicious hurt may be driven by a desire to feel the Godlike power of taking full control over another person’s life, or driven by a taste for pain itself.  Such desires are satanic and should be resisted.  Evil spirits want to capture the hearts of men to serve their dark purposes.  Evil spirits seduce men with temptations of power, superiority, and pleasure in evil in return for serving their purposes.  Evil Spirits can exert miraculous power on the nervous system by stimulating feelings, thoughts, and desires.  They cannot make a person act, but they can tempt them with forbidden pleasures.  Acting on these temptations creates neural paths that make future action easier and reduces the resistance to the next temptation.  The intense feelings of causing pain can be associated with the brain centers that produce pleasure, thus creating the desire to repeat these behaviors.  The taste for pleasure associated with inflicting pain is the basis for the sociopathic personality disorder.  This pathology can be reversed, but the person must activate against it on the level of the “will”.  He must choose to resist the temptations of the spirits and act Right out of a commitment to Right and Godly thought, speech, and action (TSA).  And given the strong spiritual component of this illness, the person should include the intentional command, “Spirit of malicious hurt, I cast you out into the outer darkness, in Jesus Name.”  The combination of right TSA, and taking authority over the spirits will produce mental health if applied consistently over a long period of time, usually months.

i) Solution: If it is purposeful hurt with negative intent, then new TSAs and deep spiritual healing are needed.

 

Avoid Misunderstanding: Avoid getting bitter, blaming, retaliating, or giving up if you are misunderstood.  Serving the needs of another is more important than being understood for what we intended.  Apologize for any offense, try to understand what was missed or misinterpreted.  Ask what they heard or understood, and then try repeating the communication with the necessary modifications transmit the intended meaning.  

 

Same Level Links