Excerpted from the Thinking Allowed Television Series with Jeffrey Mishlove 

SATIR: See, a lot of people -- I think it's even been true of psychologists -- when people give what we call double-level messages, which is where my body and voice say one thing, different from my words, they think that this is deliberately done. It isn't. The words come from the left brain -- what you should do. The other part comes from the right brain. Now, suppose that I have a rule that says that I should never complain to you. Let's suppose I'm in terrible pain and you ask me how I am, and I say, "Fine." What am I doing? This says I've got a rule that I should never complain. And it says I have pain. But I'm giving the message of what I should do, which is I should never complain. 

MISHLOVE: Then it's as if underneath any conversation, no matter I suppose how abstract or intellectual, there's always a human being under there with emotions, often needing to be validated. 

SATIR: That's of course one of the things I try to teach people. I have to tell you something. I go to lectures, people presenting things. I listen, and all of a sudden, they be talking about all this erudition, and underneath I hear: "I'm hurting. I feel disapppointed. I would love for you to help me." And it comes out in these very erudite terms. Now, if I were to go to one of those people and say, "I'd like to help you," the chances are that they would say, "How did you know I needed help? What makes you think I need help?" 

MISHLOVE: They might even deny it. 

SATIR: Sure, because usually people like that have rules they shouldn't ask for help -- not that they don't need it. And this is the kind of stuff that goes on with people all the time. See, I can always hear and see better in you than you can hear and see in yourself, simply because I'm outside of you. And then when I share with you what I'm seeing and hearing -- if, for instance, it happens to meet one of your rules, which is, "I should never ask for anything; I should always be right," etc., then you have to deny what's going on. And then if I am not careful, I have to prove my point, and pretty soon we've estranged ourselves. 

MISHLOVE: And in our culture, I suppose one of the very common rules is never to reveal what you really feel, especially the vulnerable parts. 

SATIR: Yes, that's absolutely true. If you think about it, people's feeling about what's vulnerable is their deep feelings. But most people give themselves "credit" for only having bad things inside, not good things. You know, I've even found people who felt that they couldn't talk about love feelings because somebody else will be jealous. So as a result, we don't communicate the thing that is really what human beings are about. You can put people on a computer, and they can talk back to each other, but they have no arms, nothing else, you know. But we are behaving a lot of times as though that's what human communication is, and I know better than that. 

To obtain more information about the Thinking Allowed video tape series, visit www.intuition.org. 

Janelle Barlow, President TMI USA 
 

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