Put-Downs: The Whole Story
|
|
 |
Email to Friend |
 |
Print |
|
By Dr. Debby Hirschhorn, Ph.D.
What put-downs really are
Let me begin by saying what they are not. Put-downs are not "harmless
jokes." The test of the difference between a put-down and a joke is this:
Would the jokester be happy if someone he respected used that very same
so-called joke on him?
Put-downs are not "constructive criticism." At a construction site,
people are building something. To construct is to build. To give the kind of
criticism that is constructive, you must see evidence of it helping the receiver
to grow. For instance, when my children were little, they took music lessons.
When they hit a wrong note after having practiced long and hard, the teacher
would say, "I can tell you have been practicing well." She would then
recite, very specifically, five or so things they did well. Then-and only
then-she would say, "Now play that [name of note] again for me." If it
was right this time, she would say, "Do you hear the difference from
before?" This helped the child feel good about what was done right and
turned the mistake into an opportunity to train the ear.
In contrast, "You played the wrong note!" is just plain criticism,
not constructive and, "You played the wrong note again. I don't know what's
the matter with you" is a put-down guaranteed for the child to hate music
and ruin your relationship.
Put-downs are not the best way to express exasperation with those you love.
What is heard and received is rejection and the response is to reciprocate that
rejection, to feel depressed over that kind of treatment, or to get out.
Put-downs are anything that attacks the other person or what that person
holds dear. They can be as subtle as eyeball-rolling or a cold tone of voice.
They can be as obvious as cursing. They can be things in between such as
referring to your son's friends as "oh, those people," and your
husband's skill at softball as "it was great 30 years ago." The best
way to know if you have put someone down is ask your heart what your feelings
really are about the person it was directed to. The best way to know if you have
been put down is to ask your heart if it feels proud after hearing that remark.
The heart knows.
The damage they do to the soul
Unfortunately, unlike a courtroom in which the judge can instruct the jury to
"please disregard that," once said, a put-down enters the soul in much
the same way a virus enters a cell: destructively. Each and every time a
put-down is leveled at someone, the soul is injured badly. You can actually see
this on the outside: the smile is not so bright; grades drop; work suffers; car
accidents occur.
People who hear put-downs long enough begin to doubt themselves. They begin
to think there must indeed be something wrong with them or those they love
wouldn't hurt them so. They go beyond thinking there is something-some aspect of
themselves-that is wrong; rather, they think their whole selves are wrong. God,
somehow mis-made them; the essence of their being is wrong.
No matter how angry you are with someone, you don't want to do this. You may
think you do, but when you act out of anger, the damage boomerangs: Doing it
injures your soul too. And you can easily tell that it has: You somehow don't
feel happy afterward; you are not relieved or unburdoned. Rather, you feel as
miserable and perhaps as angry as you did before. Look in your heart; you will
see you are angry with yourself now in addition to being angry with your loved
one.
How they escalate
Let's look at this further: Joan is furious with Tim and tells him off. She
sees the dagger enter his heart. She sees the look on his face. He is quiet and
there is a moment of peace. But in that moment, Joan does not feel relief. How
can she? Whatever it was that Tim did that hurt her did not change. Nor did she
give him a chance to apologize or make it good. Nothing was corrected. Joan
thought she got even but what her heart craves is love, attention, and
acceptance, and she sure didn't set up the situation for that. Tim meanwhile has
only the foggiest idea of what he did wrong in the first place, if he has any
idea at all. But he is really mad, now and who knows where that will lead?
| 
