The tricky thing about I-messages

I-messages are supposed to make your own feelings and needs transparent for another person. They are a helpful tool to avoid or solve conflicts. But be aware: Even a sentence that starts with “I” can fuel the fire – if you don’t pay attention to the most important requirement.

Isn’t it actually a mystery how we in our society manage to communicate at all, and a miracle that we haven’t all killed each other already?

Because most people express their painful feelings and their needs by attacking others.

Instead of saying: “I am tired and need help, would you set the table?” we fire a: “You lazy bastard in front of the TV, you never do anything!”
“I am sad, could you give me a hug?” turns into “You are never there for me!” and “When you didn’t come over yesterday, I felt lonely and thought you didn’t care about me.” is distorted to “You are irresponsible and thoughtless!”

In short, we have learnt so speak in so-called “you-messages”, especially when something has triggered us and we feel sad or upset. We don’t speak about what is going on inside of us, we don’t show our inner pain and we don’t say what we would like. Instead we lay guilt trips on the people around us – as if on an autopilot which starts searching for a scapegoat to blame as soon as the slightest unpleasant feeling arises.

You-messages are supposed to protect us

Actually this thwarted way of communicating has a “good” intention. It is meant to protect us from getting hurt. The logic is: If I hide my vulnerable inside, then nobody can hurt me.
Well, the tragic thing about dealing with our feelings and needs like this is that it distances us from others and leads to fights and conflicts. We all know the typical spiral of escalation, don’t we? “It’s your fault!” – “No, yours!” Even small children are already experts at this blame game.
But the blaming backfires: What is supposed to protect us, leads ever more to getting hurt!

We could also say, you-messages work perfectly if we want conflicts to escalate and to ruin our relationships. And this is why communication experts recommend to substitute them with “I-messages” and to speak about ourselves instead of blaming others.

I-messages have several beneficial aspects:
1. They are less likely to cause a feeling of being reproached and attacked in the receiver of the message. This increases the possibility of being heard and of the other one being open to our request.
2. They help the speaker to become clearer himself about what he feels and needs. This enables him to ask more precisely for what he would like, which again increases his chances to be heard and for his request to be answered.

I have found different models of I-messages, but they share the following elements:
1. a description of what has happened and triggered the feeling (the so-called “observation”)
2. a description of what you feel
3. the reason for the feeling:

The feeling may be triggered by an outside event, but the event is not the underlying cause for the feeling. Thomas Gordon, the psychologist who first came up with the I-messages, would say that the cause of the feeling is a certain unpleasant consequence of the event.

An example would be: “When you go to the cinema without me, I don’t know what to do tonight and I feel alone.” Here the reason for the feeling of being alone would not be the fact that the other person goes to the cinema by himself, but that the speaker doesn’t know what else to do with the evening.

Marshall Rosenberg, the developer of Nonviolent Communication, would say that the cause for the feeling is an unmet need. In his framework, the same example might be phrased as following:
“When you go to the cinema without me, I feel alone, because I have a need for company.”

What matters is the innocence

Both examples have their intention in common, which is to take the focus off the other person as the guilty one and to redirect it at what is happening inside the speaker.

To not see the other person as guilty for one’s own misery is the key factor that gives I-messages their positive effect.

Here it is easy to fall.
Before thinking about restructuring our sentences and starting them with an “I” instead of a “you”, we have to reach some willingness inside of us to see the other person as guiltless.

It happens so fast to send out a well formulated I-message and still have the hidden belief that the annoying feeling is only there because of the other person’s behavior.

The other is responsible for my feeling of loneliless, isn’t he? Because he went to the cinema without me. If I hadn’t been alone at home, I wouldn’t have felt so shitty. Right?

Another example: A totally correct I-message like “When I see that the garbage is still in the kitchen, I am frustrated, because I have a need for support!” can still easily be used as a weapon.

Are you up to an experiment? Then imagine that you are the one who this sentence is being said to. Can you hear it without the impression of being blamed? How do you feel? Do you think you have done something wrong? Or not?

Do I want to see the innocence?

In case you prefer to leave the gun in its place, I recommend to ask yourself the following questions and answer them as honestly as you can:
“Do I still secretly believe that the behavior of the other person is responsible for my miserable feeling?
Am I trying to make him feel guilty?
Is my hidden agenda to admit his “crime”, to change his behavior and/ or to make him apologize?”

If you are able to answer one or even all three of these questions with “yes”, then that is a very good sign. It shows that you are already pretty good at seeing through your old, destructive conditioning (for many people it is still pretty much hidden in the subconscious mind). This gives you a good basis to free yourself from it.
Just among us: These three questions reveal how we all work.
The describe the normal mode of a perfectly functioning member of our society. No need to feel embarrassed :-).

In the moment in which you notice that you find blaming a very appealing choice, it can help you to become aware of where this is going to lead you:
The other person will most likely feel attacked and become defensive. He will strike back. We will both blame each other and the whole conversation is going to take a nasty turn. Maybe we will be upset with each other for hours or even days, and suffer under the bad atmosphere between us.

The next question you can ask yourself is:
Is this what I want?

What is the goal?

I am fairly sure that deep down in your heart you will find that, of course, you do not want a fight or any distance (this is the true human nature, believe it or not!). Even if you feel awfully hurt and the urge to lay a guilt trip onto the other one seems overwhelming, you can cling to the realization that deep down you want a happy relationship and a pleasant exchange.
You can have both if you manage to stay away from assigning guilt.
And for that it is enough to be a little bit open for the possibility of the other person’s guiltlessness. You don’t need to be fully convinced yet at the beginning of the conversation, just open.

Now you have the inner attitude that can bring about a solution.

I personally would express this inner attitude even more explicitly in my words than in the I-messages I used as example above. I would try and put the focus as much as possible onto me and not onto what the other person did or didn’t do.
Entirely against our conditioning to hide our vulnerable inside to protect it from getting hurt, we have to make it transparent. This (nearly) always leads to the other person feeling touched instead of attacked, and willing to support us.

So I ask myself: What do I feel, and what do I think?
It is not so much the behavior of another person that makes us feel hurt, but rather the way we interpret this behavior.
If my partner went to the cinema without me, my typical inner voice would assume that he doesn’t appreciate my company and doesn’t want to spend time with me, which is the same as he doesn’t love me. At least not tonight!

To put the focus entirely on myself could look like this:
“When I was alone at home without you last night, I didn’t feel well. I was kind of desperate. I had a story in my head that you don’t want to spend time with me, and that scared me. I am also afraid of telling you this right now, I am afraid you will think I might have serious issued because I feel this way. Can you love a such a crazy person like me?”

And here are some phrases that might help with the garbage:
“Would you have a moment, I need your help… When I see that the garbage is still in the kitchen, I think that you don’t help me and don’t care about my wellbeing.
I feel alone with all the things to do around here, totally exhausted, and then I start thinking these ugly things about you. I am sorry.
Can you remind me once more that you are a wonderful, caring person and my thoughts are just a bunch of garbage? Thank you!”

If you would like to try out expressing yourself this way and feel afraid that the other one will label you nuts (because he or she is not used to you talking that way), maybe you want to add:
“It might sound funny how I am saying things, but I am practising a new way to express myself, because I want to stop blaming you.”

How would it feel like if someone said this to you …? 🙂

I would be happy if there was something helpful for you in this article. If you have a question or a comment, please leave a message below.

Thank you and all the best for your attempts to see the people around you as guiltless! <3 Kendra Gettel