Across 50 years of being a psychotherapist and in my personal life, I’ve found there is a very human pattern that robs us of intimacy and clear communication. It is quite crucial that we all — as virtually all of us want intimacy and communication — ask ourselves the question, “With who am I inclined to exaggerate with or receive exaggeration from?”
By first answering this question and then finding ways to be more accurate in what is being said, we can open this link to depth connection with ourselves and those we most care about. As always, you are encouraged to look for clear examples where this most applies in your life.
This tendency to unwittingly exaggerate or do it in reverse by downplaying is an all too common pattern for almost all of us in varying degrees — unwittingly exaggerating or downplaying how we perceive others, ourselves, and relationships.
For example, if we are in an intimate relationship and struggle, we almost instinctively exaggerate the other’s anger and downplay our own.
When we think of our political situations, we intensify what is being said about opposing political groups and people to make them appear more dangerous or less intelligent. We (mostly unconsciously) believe it will make our view more certain and valid.
This can be seen daily on the news or in our lives if we look closely. This is usually not conscious. That’s why the purpose of this article is to help you not only see this more clearly but also help you gain motivation to lessen or come as close as possible to eliminate this tendency. We’ll look at how profoundly harmful this is because of the inevitable limited capacity it creates of being able to be more honest and precise when it comes to seeing ourselves and each significant other as we are.
One of the greatest responsibilities of a good therapist is to look for and point out when one person is speaking about another using exaggeration or downplaying. So I almost invariably intervene very quickly and ask:
“Do you believe you had no part at all in reinforcing or even catalyzing the situation by specifically pointing out the words that are used and seeing if they agree that they contain exaggeration or downplaying?”
The words may be “You always…” or “You never…” or “I’ve asked you repeatedly” (when you’ve only asked once or twice).
As you read this, can you see when you have been on the receiving end or expressing yourself in this way? If you can see yourself being on the end of being judged unfairly, is it clear to you that it is a key to understanding the role it plays in creating more anger and less trust?
Can you see how this almost invariably leads to one of you reacting angrily or with annoyance because of feeling misjudged? If you can’t, I would suggest that you give it more contemplation because, for many of us, this way of talking is a blind spot either in how others have injured us or how we have wounded or created anger in ways that are not conscious.
What are the underlying needs that you have that aren’t being addressed when you are not having a conversation that represents the truth fairly?
I think you’ll see that we all want to be treated fairly, and speaking the truth in an accurate way is a core need that we share in being human. I haven’t met anyone that enjoys being misrepresented in this way. This is a much bigger factor, especially in intimate relationships, so it is vital for us all to do a review to see in which ways it applies to our lives the most.
Something else that can support your intimate life is to speak up when you are on the receiving end of this.
Have you reacted more strongly when you have been accused of creating any kind of violation more often than it has occurred? If you have, what was your tone of voice when you reacted?
I add ‘tone of voice’ because it is also one of the great ways to exaggerate without words. The two patterns, especially when they happen together, can move a relationship into a serious fight over even minor things.
The tone can multiply the degree of intensity of what has just happened. As an early teacher had said to a large group I was attending, “You have to be careful that your reaction (your tone) to a transgression doesn’t make the issue worse than what was originally being addressed.”
In the abstract, this is easy to understand. However, if we look closely, there are probably none of us that haven’t fallen prey to reacting more significantly to a violation than the violation itself or received the same from significant others.
Hopefully, seeing this in ourselves leads to a “Good, I’m glad I can now recognize this more deeply inside myself.” Then, it can be seen more clearly by being accepted, and there’s a better chance of your acceptance that it will lead to reconciliation and deeper trust.
But, on the other hand, if you are upset with yourself for your transgression instead of accepting it, it makes it much harder to make progress and stay more constructive in making the change needed in the present and the future.
Take a moment and hopefully a lot more later to ask yourself — “Who am I most prone to exaggerate with in how I speak think or perceive about another?”
This might not be obvious, and I would encourage all of you to continue to inquire this way. It is one of the great questions we can use to develop our ability to be caring and accurate, especially when talking about things that affect our hearts.
As a counselor, I frequently see a couple and both individuals alone to get a fuller picture of this all-important tendency from different angles. This is not viable for a lot of counselors to do. Sometimes this is because their training doesn’t believe it is therapeutic or even ethical to see couples individually.
From my vantage point, this allows for experiencing a perspective of both partners’ distorted views, oftentimes more so than just seeing them alone. The classic stereotypical example of this occurs when the woman in a couple would say that her partner doesn’t communicate feelings, and the partner would go, “She is so emotional that it really is a challenge.”
This is such a common source of suffering: in fact, the most common occurrence is when two people both believe that the “other” is the source of conveying an increased negative attitude that was perceived to be aggressive enough to justify their own.
What isn’t seen most commonly is that the distortion in words or tone is the source of suffering and healing. It is essential for all of us to look into this and learn how to make these adjustments to be proportional to how we speak to each other, both in words and tone.
The prognosis for this improves greatly by supporting yourself with healthy self-doubt that would lead you to question whenever you are in a struggle that you look to see regularly if this is a possibility in the current interaction.
One of the keys to breaking this pattern is to say to the other, “I’m not sure if it’s me or you that is expressing more irritation or frustration, but let’s both try again to speak what we believe in as kind and even tempered a way as possible.”
Another common way to support healing is when you look for and find a part of you that is even-tempered and can then see that your anger or emotions are leading you to perceive your partner as aggressive. You then feel superior as you are the one with the even temperament. This superiority kept underground can be as much of an exaggeration as the first example.
The healing for this can occur when you recognize that even if you don’t express something out loud, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t exaggerating. We can exaggerate just in our distorted perceptions of others. This, for many of us is a daily occurrence.
I have encouraged the partner that is less inclined to be emotional to have the courage and humility to say:
“I usually don’t react in situations like this, because it seems useless, ineffective and just creates more suffering. But I now see that I feel a bit of superiority that might be my ego and a false assumption. So I am going to do my best to express my view directly to you with softness or at least without an edge and ask you to do the same. I also want you to ask me to fully express my emotions that I’m aware of until we do our best to reach a sincere, respectful communication. If we can’t get there then as soon as possible we (as gently as possible) agree to disagree unless we can see it the same way.”
Exaggeration happens as much in the mind as it does in our emotions. Partner one thinks to themselves, ‘They are so emotional it’s a good thing I’m here to balance us out.’ Partner two thinks, ‘It’s good that one of us knows how to feel and express our feelings or else we’d both lack heart.’
Of course, there are degrees where this is true, but much of the time, it has a component that is exaggerated both ways. So as you read this, be careful not to disqualify yourself if either end of this is the thought you have.
My experience is that this occurs in well over half the relationships I have seen through the years. Seeing this clearly and then giving best efforts to be more relative and precise is a gift to all relationships.
A healing direction for this is to express yourself with statements like, “You know, I sometimes think that I am the one that keeps the balance by staying even and I want to be open about it to see if you think I actually suppress my emotions. If so, what do you think I might be suppressing, even if it’s small?” This frequently leads to a sharing of at least some feeling that increases through time. This honesty lessens the silent exaggerating, and it creates a bridge.
It’s important to be careful and be soft/even in your tone when saying this.
You can also be moving toward healing and intimacy by admitting, “Sometimes I think that I am the only one that really feels and also expresses myself with emotions, and I want to be open to see if you think my expression of feelings are balanced or overly emotional. If you think that I am overly dramatizing, what emotions do you think that I am being unnecessarily demonstrative about? How would it be easier for you to hear?”
If and when it is discovered that you both or one of you feels that way, it is important to first congratulate and appreciate yourselves for being open in an area where very few people really have made this intimacy practice a new life pattern.
It is helpful to jointly find a good time to describe in more detail what both of you think is the most balanced way to express yourselves and to help each other. This is a very vulnerable area for most of us. If you aren’t able to have a constructive conversation about it, it would be worthwhile to bring in a very trusted friend or therapist, as it is key to developing greater intimacy.
It is clear that we will hurt ourselves and others when we generalize or exaggerate. For example, we can freeze ourselves into ideas like being extra smart, slow, attractive, unattractive, inadequate, successful, unsuccessful, and so on.
Exaggeration is one of the ways we create a distorted picture/ego of ourselves and those close to us. This distortion makes it very difficult because we miss shades of gray in ourselves and others. This creates aloneness and separation. Being very interested in shades of gray with ourselves and each other allows for common similarities to arise more naturally and effortlessly. I often encourage others to use percentages or put things on a 1-10 scale to support precise communication.
Otherwise, this naturally creates a feeling of being seen stereotypically in the extreme. Of course, we pretty well universally do that as a species. We can see this when we think of politics or religion, as we typically will see our country or religion as being the one that is better, almost without question. This is the same understanding we’re talking about in relationships.
This relative increased awareness and communication in how much we exaggerate and minimize, and being more precise, is one of the good measurements of becoming aware, intimate and a sensitive communicator. It is a very healthy aspiration to see and express things more clearly and see more and more in shades of gray.
This is also a garden variety of how the world generally thinks. However, the more we can bring this into a relative view personally, the more we have an increased chance of seeing the sameness, increasing our capacity to communicate, and moving toward much-needed peaceful resolutions in our country and the world.
When you think of whichever end of an argument, I would suggest that you break it down to several concrete issues or steps to allow for precision in words and tone, which creates stepping stones to the communication of substance and caring.
A big part of the solution is to stay with what you believe and need rather than judge what you are against and then add these distortions to make the issues appear more black and white and, therefore, unbridgeable.
I wish for all of us to stay with concrete deeper views, feelings, and needs and increase our ability to communicate in shades of gray.
This is a central key to intimacy and also to supporting peace in the world. The stakes are quite high, and it is worth all of us taking a close look at our development of thinking and expressing ourselves in this more clear, mutually considerate way.