July 2023 Newsletter | Understanding Others

June 27, 2023

Every person on this planet is unique with their own history of experiences, thoughts, and feelings. But, because we only experience what it is like to be one person—ourself—we can forget about these innate differences. This can lead to struggles and frustrations when we interact with others. 

For example: you’re working on a project with a colleague and often butt heads about the best course of action, even for seemingly simple tasks. You find yourself getting angrier with each disagreement: Why doesn’t So-and-so understand that they’re thinking about this all wrong? We can forget that, to our colleague, our thinking may seem all wrong. Even when we share a goal, we can approach things very differently. 

Understanding others doesn’t always come naturally but it is a skill that we can learn and cultivate, becoming better at it over time. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help us to develop skills to approach interpersonal situations in a more open and empathetic way.

It is worth noting that working with a therapist on the following steps is helpful because a therapist is not you, which means that they can call your attention to the parts of your cognitive processing that may not be readily apparent to you because you are so accustomed to thinking that way. 

Becoming aware of your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs

We take for granted the acts of thinking and feeling and that our beliefs about the world are founded on our specific experiences. Our reactive thoughts and emotions can be so instantaneous that we fail to see them as merely our interpretation of the world and instead perceive them as facts. This is true about how we interpret the world with respect to ourselves and but also true in how we perceive others. In attempting to become more understanding of others, we need to become aware of how we see them. 

Identifying negative or inaccurate thinking patterns

Once we have gained awareness of our thoughts and feelings, we can become attuned to where our perceptions are overly negative or possibly inaccurate. There are some common types of negative or inaccurate thinking patterns, referred to as Cognitive Distortions (we have a helpful guide on those here). We often think of Cognitive Distortions in relation to things like anxiety and depression and explore how those thinking tendencies about ourselves lead to us feeling bad. But Cognitive Distortions can be helpful to explore in relation to how we see others, as well. For example, the Cognitive Distortion of ‘Jumping to Conclusions’ is You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. In identifying our thinking patterns, we may become aware of a tendency to jump to negative conclusions about others without having the facts to support that determination. Once we know that we habitually do this, we can work on changing our behavior. 

Changing negative or inaccurate thinking patterns

Challenging thoughts is a major component of CBT and can be difficult because it can feel uncomfortable, even unmooring, to counter our most deeply held beliefs. Techniques such as self-monitoring, questioning assumptions, gathering evidence, and considering alternatives are excellent tools to develop when it comes to approaching interactions with others with more understanding. In a way, they are inherently empathic (and empathy is our ultimate goal here). When we question our assumptions, for example, we invite in the possibility of alternative views because assumptions are essentially guesses: once we understand that we don’t know everything, that we are guessing, other’s guesses can then also be valid. We’re all guessing together. The technique of gathering evidence has built-in empathy because it forces us to open ourselves up to more than just our own viewpoint. 

When we interact with others, we should always lead with empathy. If your colleague wants to do things differently, explore their rationale with them. This is different from attacking them with questions of legitimacy—assume their perspective is legitimate from the start and inquire about their ideas with genuine curiosity. 

Because we can only experience one life we are fortunate to be able to learn about the experiences of others—it broadens our world and makes it richer. Different perspectives mean different thoughts and ideas that could potentially make our lives better. By becoming aware of how we process the world and by cultivating the techniques to challenge our own thinking, we make it easier to understand others.