The temptation to play amateur psychologist

There is a temptation to play amateur psychologist

To diagnose their behaviour.

We want to reduce them to cause and effect.

“Something happened to them in childhood.”

“They had this or that type of relationship with their mother or father.”

And it’s all a con.

There is no cause and effect situation that explains their behaviour in this moment with you.

And even if there was it would still be a con.

It’s a detective rabbit hole

An assumption,
followed by another assumption,
followed by another assumption,
all leading to declaration.

A false assumption leading to a false declaration.

A (false) statement of who they are.

It’s took me YEARS to realise this and I still fall into its trap.

It is our brain trying to protect our own self image.

We do it so that we can make them into an object a label.

A safe little package.

So that we don’t need to change who we are.

Or what we believe about the world.

Or so that we can work out how we need to be with them.

And it is this exact approach that keeps us stuck.

Circling the same relationships problems over and over again.

Being triggered by the same TYPE of person.

All the while failing to see ourselves in them and using that understanding to grow and strengthen our relationships at the same time.

A better question is, who will I be?

Who am I going to be in relationship to others?

Your job isn’t to figure them out.

It’s to figure yourself out.