The best way to analyze how you communicate in real time is:
Get an honest partner who cares about you.
Together and separately observe the small units of your thoughts and communication.
Use only units of communication small enough to be held in your short-term memory(s). This means the five to seven things you are able to hold in your short-term memory.
Discuss what you find in yourself with your partner.
Then discuss these units as they arise during communication with your partner.
If both partners understand what comprises a small unit (the 5-7 things in short-term memory), you are ready to share this information in real-time (that is, very close in time to when the small unit arose).
This small unit could be a gesture, a word, an expression, a tone of voice. Anything small enough that communicates to you and that seems to be coming from your partner.
The unit should be small and agreed upon by both partners.
Then analyze it as it functioned during the moment(s) it arose.
Example: the small unit might be a fleeting gesture—your partner drops their hand. You feel something and juust start to think maybe it is a dismissive gesture.
Stop the flow of communication immediately at that point (as you first perceive a reaction arising in yourself).
Then ask your partner what was in their mind when their hand dropped (or what was in their mind “just a moment before,” without identifying the hand drop).
(Your partner must previously have agreed to welcome this sort of intervention.)
Listen to what they say and compare that to what you were beginning to think.
If it was dismissive, find out why.
If it was not, examine yourself and how your psychology was actually functioning in real-time.
You can also do this with units based on positive emotions or unemotional states of mind.
It’s good to practice this technique on neutral states of mind.
What you will find.
You will find that a significant number of your real-time impressions of your partner are mistaken, either slightly or very much.
If both partners keep correcting these mistakes, you will come to have fewer and fewer of them (though they will always continue to arise due to inherent ambiguities in communication).
As both partners clear up communications between them, both will also clear up many cloudy parts of their own psychologies.
This is because our psychologies are based on communication. (Bad data in = bad conclusions both inside you and what you do with them outside you.)
I have used the above technique for many years and guarantee it works wonders.
The hardest parts of this are getting a good partner, getting them to agree to do it, then doing it your first few times.
It is hard at first because it goes against basic cultural instincts.
To overcome this, remember the units are very small and you agreed to do it.
This technique doesn’t hurt at all but will make you feel wonderful.
It doesn’t hurt because the units are so small.
It makes you feel wonderful because each mistaken unit you remove clears up mental space for something better.
When you observe and remove more and more small (micro) units of the same type, you will tend to eliminate the meso and macro (mistaken) psychological frames that support them.
Some frames can be eliminated after 1-5 micro units have been observed. Some take longer.
first posted MARCH 29, 2017
When first posed, I used their and them in the antiquated sense of a gender not identified, which is how I mean it today as well. This essay describes how to do FIML and briefly explains the value of doing it. ABN
American Buddhist Net 