- Historically, all languages and communication strategies developed/evolved without FIML. Thus communication all but everywhere and with all but everyone relies entirely on non-FIML strategies. As languages evolved/developed, non-FIML strategies proliferated, in many ways making it more difficult for FIML strategies to arise. People became accustomed to non-FIML communication strategies, learned to enjoy them, and wanted to perpetuate them. This is still the case today. People are so used to non-FIML strategies, they cannot imagine anything else.
- In many ways, it is because people understand only non-FIML strategies that they communicate to their loved ones by using public semiotics rather than clear interpersonal speech. They buy things, go on trips, go out to dinner, achieve status, and so on as substitutes for real interpersonal communication. Lack of FIML is also an important reason why many people enjoy their professional or public lives more than their private ones. Many people do like to bowl, but many of those same people also join bowling leagues because their private lives are unsatisfying.
- If you do not do FIML practice with your primary interlocutor, you will be neurotic. Sounds bold to say that, but how could it be otherwise? Without FIML, you will not have clear communication with your primary interlocutor (spouse, SO, best friend, etc.); and without clear communication you will be forced to imagine what they mean and you will make mistakes and the mistakes will compound. In a short time, you will have a mistake-riddled, self-centered understanding of your primary interlocutor rather than a clear understanding of them. And the same will be true for them. This is why so many very loving, very compatible couples have problems within a few years.
- Do you want to have clear communication with your SO? Do they want to have it with you? If you don’t do FIML, how can you get it? I don’t think you can. Do you think you can rely on feelings? On love? On good will between you? How will you prevent misunderstandings from developing if you have no way of knowing with great clarity what you are saying to each other? What is your strategy? Do you have one?
- Make an arbitrary list of, say, ten words. Ask your SO to free-associate on each word; just have them say what first pops into their mind when you read each of the words. Have them do the same for you. Is it not clear that your associations are not the same? Maybe a few of them are, but most will be different. Now what happens when you speak sentences to each other? Can you see that you are always going to be making assumptions about what your SO is saying based on your own self-generated associations? How can you be sure you know what is in their mind when a certain tone of voice issues forth? Can you be certain you know why they chose that word or that phrasing? Of course you cannot be sure.
- You can only know with clarity what your SO is saying if you ask them. But if you are only accustomed to non-FIML strategies, you will find that hard to do. As mentioned, communication all but everywhere and with all but everyone relies entirely on non-FIML strategies.
- A wonderful result of FIML practice is it removes the need to wonder whether your partner has been bothered by something you did or said. This result occurs because you will gradually become confident that your partner will say something if they feel bothered.
- Best of all, they will say something right away before whatever it is grows into something large and unmanageable. For example, if you use a way of saying good-bye that makes them feel lonely, they will bring it up right away and you can figure out what the cause was and/or how to do things differently if need be. This is a much better way to deal with something like that than for them to wait months or years before telling you, if they ever do. Imagine how just that one bad (also wrong) feeling might grow in them over time and lead to negative thoughts and actions that could have been avoided.
- The best way to learn FIML is to break the practice down into small skills. Try the word list described above with your partner. Or start by just pointing to things. After you have had some practice, ask how some phrases make them feel or what they associate with them. Doing that will be fun and it will help you develop the skills needed for FIML practice. Stop, ask, hold your emotions in abeyance, listen, think. It gradually will become second-nature.
Tag: Communication Errors
How the Science of Memory Reconsolidation Advances the Effectiveness and Unification of Psychotherapy
Abstract
Memory reconsolidation research by neuroscientists has demonstrated the erasure of emotional learnings.
This article reviews these historic findings and how they translate directly into therapeutic application to provide the clinical field with an empirically confirmed process of transformational change. Psychotherapists’ early use of this new, transtheoretical knowledge indicates a strong potential for significant advances in both the effectiveness of psychotherapy and the unification of its many diverse systems.
The erasure process consists of the creation of certain critical experiences required by the brain, and it neither dictates nor limits the experiential methods that therapists can use to facilitate the needed experiences. This article explains memory reconsolidation, delineates the empirically confirmed process, illustrates it in a case example of long-term depression, indicates the evidence supporting the hypothesis that this process is responsible for transformational change in any therapy sessions, describes the differing mechanisms underlying transformational change versus incremental change, and reports extensive clinical evidence that the basis and cause of most of the problems and symptoms presented by therapy clients are emotional learnings, that is, emotionally laden mental models, or schemas, in semantic memory.
link
FIML practice works most of all because it focuses directly on memory formation and reconsolidation, thus allowing beneficial changes to be made quickly in real-time. Discussions of how this is done can be found here: Memory reconsolidation as key to psychological transformation and here: Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice.
Below is an excerpt that explains how memory reconsolidation works. FIML does precisely what is described below in real-time, real-world situations as they arise between partners, or when they are together and something else arises. ABN
The Erasure of an Emotional Learning
MR research by neuroscientists has demonstrated that an emotional learning is nullified by the following set of three experiences, which have therefore been termed the empirically confirmed process of erasure (ECPE) (Ecker 2018). Hundreds of MR research studies have used a vast range of different procedures and protocols to produce these experiences (reviewed by Ecker 2015, 2018), which means that what the brain requires for erasure of an emotional learning is not any particular external procedure, but rather the internal occurrence of these three subjective experiences, whatever may be the external procedures that create them. Therefore the ECPE does not dictate or favor the use of any particular therapeutic techniques, and psychotherapists are free to facilitate these critical experiences using any of the therapy field’s vast array of experiential methods.
ibid
- 1.Reactivated, Symptom-Generating Target Learning Experienced in Awareness This is the deliberate use of salient cues or contexts that reactivate the target emotional learning or schema underlying the client’s presenting symptom or problem. For example, a woman in therapy for depression and absence of motivation was cued into reactivation of her lifelong schema that had newly come into awareness and was verbalized as, “Mom sees and knows everything I ever care about or do, and then takes over and takes away everything I ever care about or do, which feels devastating for me, and my only way to be safe from her pillaging is for me to care about nothing and do nothing.” To assure that the schema is being directly accessed at its roots in the emotional learning and memory system and is not merely a cognitive insight, it is critically important that the emotions accompanying the reactivated schema are fully felt affectively and somatically while the schema also is cognized verbally and conceptually. Note that the schema is at core a mental model, from which are generated particular emotions, which in the example above would include helplessness, hopelessness, fear, desperation, despair, aloneness, and the deep pain of feeling used, pillaged and eclipsed in this way by her own mother. How that schema was found, brought into awareness, and then disconfirmed and unlearned is described in the case vignette in the next section.
- 2.Experience of Mismatch/Prediction Error Destabilizes the Target Learning’s Neural Encoding While the target schema is reactivated in awareness as described above, this is an additional, concurrent experience or knowing that contradicts what the client knows and expects according to the schema. This is termed a memory mismatch or prediction error experience by memory researchers. In response to this experience of the world differing from the target learning’s expectations, the client’s brain rapidly transforms the neural encoding of the target learning from its stable, consolidated state in long-term memory into a destabilized, de-consolidated, labile state, which is susceptible to being updated and re-encoded by any relevant new learning that may occur next. This destabilization, which requires and is triggered by the mismatch/prediction error experience, begins the reconsolidation process.Footnote2 The labile, destabilized condition persists for about 5 h, widely termed the reconsolidation window, after which the neural encoding automatically reconsolidates, that is, it returns to a stable state in long-term memory. The case vignette below describes how a contradictory knowing was found for the schema of the depressed woman, creating the needed mismatch experience.
- 3.Experience of Counter-Learning Drives Unlearning, Nullification, Re-encoding and Replacement of Target Learning This experience consists of just a few repetitions, during the rest of the therapy session, of the same mismatch experience created in the previous step. Each mismatch is a juxtaposition experience, in the sense that the client experiences both reality according to the target learning and a contradictory perception or knowing, with both in the same single field of awareness. Two or three repetitions of that juxtaposition experience serve as counter-learning that functions as an experiential disconfirmation of the target learning. Because the counter-learning is occurring while the encoding of the target learning is labile, the counter-learning rewrites and replaces the encoding of the target schema in memory. As a result, the target learning no longer exists in memory, so it cannot be reactivated and cause a relapse. The target learning is a model of the world in semantic memory, not an episodic memory of specific events and experiences; the latter is not erased. The unlearning of the target learning’s version of reality is the profound resolution of a core emotional issue in the client’s life, as noted earlier.Footnote3 Successful erasure of the target learning is then verified by observing the markers of transformational change beginning to appear immediately: the symptom(s) driven by the target learning cease to occur; the target learning itself, which previously was felt as a potent and horrible truth of the world, no longer feels true or real and is not reactivated by situations that formerly did so, eliminating a problematic, distressed ego state; and those changes persist effortlessly and permanently. If the same counter-learning occurs without first finding, reactivating and destabilizing the target learning (steps 1 and 2 above), the counter-learning only creates its own encoding separate from that of the target learning. In that case, the two learnings compete for control of behavior and state of mind, producing at best only incremental change that is prone to relapse when the emotionally more intense target learning becomes newly retriggered by current circumstances.
An advantage of FIML as therapy for unwholesome or unwanted schema is FIML is mostly done in real-time, real-world situations so the schema is right there in front of you clear as a bell in your own mind. You can see it and see very clearly how it is distorting reality.
Therapies that work by recalling unwholesome schema in a professional settings have the advantage of: 1) relying on a professional; 2) avoiding doing this work with your spouse or best friend; and 3) aiming for wholesale erasure of the schema once and for all.
FIML practitioners could use a schema method to do this but generally FIML works by focusing on the unwholesome schema the moment it arises and whenever it arises in the real-world (conditions permitting). This method erases or extirpates the unwholesome schema by observing its maladaptive dysfunction as many times as needed.
FIML is also able to deal with more than one maladaptive schema, and in real-life there are many, without causing confusion because when unwholesome schemas are encountered in real-world, real-time, their structure and origins are generally easily seen for what they are.
Many unwanted schema can be extirpated with just a few FIML exchanges. Some are more stubborn and may require more time and multiple occurrences.
Another advantage FIML has is it prevents new schemas from arising and taking hold. Unwholesome schemas do not all come from the deep past or from childhood. Schemas also arise later in life and often are based on serious misinterpretations. FIML is very effective at stopping schemas of this sort immediately, before they can consolidate and cause harm.
I would add that unwholesome schemas exist in virtually everyone and often we are dealing not with our own schemas but those of others. FIML partners can eliminate problem schemas between themselves, but often can do no more than recognize them in others. However, understanding ourselves through FIML practice does help us understand others much better, and how deal with them more compassionately due to that understanding. ABN
Me on the outside vs me on the inside
This image was used on a social anxiety site to illustrate what it says. My take on it is virtually everyone in the world is like this if you expand social anxiety to mean inner confusion.
Under current worldwide social norms, inner confusion reigns because there is no way for individuals to communicate with profound authenticity, no way to connect on authentic levels. The closest most people can get is shared ideals, shared vows, shared beliefs, all mere pale shadows of true authenticity.
Those who lack profound authentic interpersonal communication must needs necessarily also lack authentic self-knowledge.
You cannot know thyself all alone.
You must be able to communicate it, communicate with it, interact with it to know it. And you must be able to do this with a knowing other who is doing the same with you. This is so because our psychologies are based on interpersonal communication. There is no other way.
FIML practice can correct virtually all interpersonal communication problems between two people. FIML optimizes interpersonal communication and by so doing optimizes self-knowledge as well.
Psychology as a feature (and bug) of language
Since almost all uses of language are ambiguous and since this ambiguity can only be resolved sometimes, it follows that whatever is not resolved is interpreted subjectively.
Since such subjective interpretations happen many times per day, it follows that individuals will tend to deal with unresolved ambiguity in idiosyncratic ways that tend toward becoming patterns in time.
This results in what we call “personality.” Extroverts seek to define the moment by asserting meaning while introverts tend to wonder about that or just accept the meaning asserted by the extrovert.
A paranoid person sees danger in unresolved ambiguity while a neurotic person worries and reacts to it.
Having experienced early trauma associated with unresolved ambiguity, borderline personalities are acutely aware that something is wrong and often mad about it.
Besides these rough categorizations, all people are molded by their habitual responses to unresolved ambiguity.
Personality is little more than a name for our groping attempts to find or manufacture assurance and consistency in a world where little is certain.
Instead of talking so much about our feelings or pasts, we would do better if we talked about how we talk and how we deal with the ambiguity inherent in virtually all significant communication.
Language itself is neutral as a thing in itself, but the way we use it is not neutral. We assume way too much and clarify far too little.
Alex Pretti: Background explained
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I don’t believe ‘the truth always comes out’, but it often does, especially within the surface signals of day-to-day news. Good brief video breakdown. ABN
FIML from a Buddhist point of view: What is it and what does it do?
FIML is fundamentally a communication technique with wide-ranging implications for many other aspects of being human.
FIML removes mistakes from communications between partners. FIML reduces or eliminates neurotic feelings. FIML encourages honesty, integrity, responsibility, and many other virtues. It greatly improves communication. It transforms beliefs in a static self, a personality, an ego, or a set autobiography to a more realistic understanding of the dynamic nature of being, speaking, listening, remembering, functioning. FIML skills are useful when dealing with people other than the FIML partner. FIML greatly reduces the need to rely on external standards (public semiotics) for self-definition and/or communication. FIML elevates consciousness in the sense that FIML practice is done consciously and improvements are made in partners’ consciousnesses. FIML works directly with partners’ experiences and thus is a deeply experiential practice that generates experiential understanding.
FIML greatly supports Buddhist practice and though FIML is not specifically a traditional Buddhist teaching, it does not contradict any core Buddhist teaching. For many people, FIML may be a very good tool to use with the Dharma. This is so because FIML allows each partner to identify kleshas (mistaken interpretations) the moment they arise and to correct them with input from their partner. FIML also helps partners experience the reality of no-self, impermanence, emptiness, and dependent origination. When these truths are experienced together with a partner, both partners are able to deeply confirm the validity of their insights as both share in this confirmation. Both partners will notice kleshas being eliminated and both will be able to confirm this to each other, through explicit statements to each other and also through observations of each other.
FIML practice also helps partners understand and experience how the First and Second Noble Truths actually operate in their lives. When one partner discovers a klesha through a FIML query, they will see very clearly how their mistaken interpretation, if not corrected, could be the source of suffering. When they correct their mistake, they will see how eliminating a klesha is liberating and how it produces a bit of “enlightenment” (Third and Fourth Noble Truths).
FIML practice encourages honesty between partners and many other virtues. FIML partners will directly experience the importance of being honest with their partner and treating them with the utmost respect and integrity. This strengthens partners’ understanding of the Buddha’s teachings on morality (sila).
FIML’s emphasis on fully understanding the roles of language and semiotics supports the Buddha’s teachings on Right Speech (for language) and wisdom (for semiotics). In the Prajna Sutras, “dharmas of the mind” (laksana) very closely correspond to the modern English word semiotics as that word is used in FIML practice. By focusing on this word and concept and experiencing with a partner how semiotics affect everything we think and do, partners will gain great insight into the kind of consciousness described in the Diamond Sutra—a consciousness without the “marks” or “characteristics” (laksana, semiotics, signs) of a self, a human being, a sentient being, or a being that takes rebirth.
FIML accomplishes most of what it does by being a technique that is called up quickly, the moment it is needed. FIML queries almost always lead to long and interesting discussions, but the basic technique must be done quickly. The moment either partner feels a klesha arising, they should stop and query their partner about what is/was in their mind. After hearing your partner’s honest answer, compare it to what you had thought. The better data from your partner should eliminate that particular klesha after a small number of its appearances. Remember, your partner’s data is better because you asked them quickly enough for them to be able to recall with great accuracy what really was in their mind during the moments you were asking them about. If you wait too long or get into long stories or theories, or become emotional, you will miss the chance to catch that klesha. When you do catch a klesha, feel good about it. That means there is one less hindrance in your mind.
Non-Buddhists will experience the same results from FIML practice as Buddhists, though their understanding of these results will be framed differently. We have discussed FIML from a non-Buddhist point of view in many other posts. Interested readers are encouraged to browse some of those posts for more on that angle.
FIML and memory distortion
Here is a study that shows how quickly we distort our memories: Event completion: Event based inferences distort memory in a matter of seconds. The study concludes, in part, that “…results suggest that as people perceive events, they generate rapid conceptual interpretations that can have a powerful effect on how events are remembered.”
This study shows that our memories of events are dynamic and can become distorted very quickly. These findings well support FIML practice, which is based on quick interventions while we are speaking to capture sound, usable data that both partners can agree on.
Blogger Christian Jarrett writes about this study saying that “memory invention was specifically triggered by observing a consequence (e.g. a ball flying off into the distance) that implied an earlier causal action had happened and had been seen (Your memory of events is distorted within seconds).” Well-put.
From a FIML point of view, we generate or maintain neurotic interpretations (mistaken interpretations) by believing we are “observing a consequence…that implied an earlier causal action had happened.”
When we misinterpret an utterance during a conversation, we tend to do so in habitual ways; we tend to respond to that utterance as if it had meant something it did not; we tend to understand the “consequence” that happens in our minds as “implying” or being based on something that our partner actually had intended when they had not had any such intention.
This study illustrates very well why FIML practitioners want to develop their skills so that both partners are able to quickly disengage from their conversation while taking a meta-position that allows them to gather and agree upon good data that they can discuss objectively and rationally.
When your partner denies that they meant what you thought they meant, this study will help you believe them.
As the Buddha said: “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
Covert speech proscriptions and the psychological harm they cause
Speech proscriptions can be overt with legal ramifications.
Or they can be sort of covert, couched in ideas like good manners, respect, make no waves, maintain friendly relations, follow group norms, etc.
I believe the covert ones happen most basically because almost all people are terrible at speaking their own subjective truths. And this leads to being terrible at hearing others’ subjective truths, even if they are well-expressed which is rare.
This problem arises from the pervasive, inherent ambiguity of language in general but especially spoken language.
Speech flies by and we are required to extract coherent meaning from bits of it. We make stories out of it and judge people, including ourselves, based on bad evidence.
Ambiguity in speech also requires us to maintain the same personas and most of the same beliefs for decades. We travel in herds of ideological banality due to it.
Staying the same, conforming to the group, is a way of displaying a profoundly diminished species of unambiguous meaning, even though we may sense that deep down the whole thing is a bad game.
I used to be bothered by this, but stopped after I figured out FIML and practiced it with my partner for a few years.
After maybe five years, our speech started to become so much clearer it didn’t even feel like the same medium anymore. After ten years, it got so good it seems we may have transcended psychology as it is normally conceived.
This happened because psychology as normally conceived is massively based on speech ambiguity and the ways people react to it. Fact is, you probably should feel a bit crazy in most interpersonal situations because speech proscriptions mixed with compounding ambiguities cannot possibly allow the psychological freedom needed to be cognitively healthy.
FIML is a dynamic fact-gatherer, a dynamic gatherer of facts between two people
FIML is a dynamic fact gatherer, a dynamic gatherer of facts between two people.
As these facts increase into the dozens, then hundreds, partners will see in themselves and each other a very different picture of who they are, a unique mosaic of their actual psychologies as they actually function in real-time, real-world situations.
This gathering of many idiosyncratic facts, this creation of a mosaic of psychologically unique communicative facts, reshapes the mind, its self-awareness and its understanding of what mind and consciousness truly are.
FIML is a species of subjective science.
It works with objectively agreed upon micro communication data.
The advantages of working with micro-data are three:
- 1) micro-data are easy to identify, remember and agree upon with little ambiguity or confusion
- 2) micro-data once discovered are emotionally and psychologically easy to accept, to admit
- 3) micro-data are objective in that both partners agree on what they are
Acquiring a mosaic of micro-data facilitates beneficial extrapolation into meso and macro levels of the mind.1
And this allows for a profound reshaping of both partners’ minds and psychologies.
This dynamic fact-gathering and enhanced understanding of the mind forestalls solipsistic error and also the error of clinging to group norms.
For Buddhists2 and others who practice mindfulness, FIML can be understood as partnered mindfulness. ABN
- See Micro, meso, and macro levels of human understanding for more. ↩︎
- For Buddhists, a FIML query arises in the second skandha, deepens in the third skandha and is initiated verbally in the fourth skandha, thus altering the fifth skandha or preventing its habitual recurrence. See The Five Skandhas for more. ↩︎
FOR BUDDHISTS: I hope readers of this site who are members of a Buddhist Sangha or close to one will encourage their Sangha to learn and practice FIML mindfulness.
FIML would work especially well within a monastic community. It would greatly enhance their mindfulness and raise their common awareness to new heights of clarity and harmoniousness.
Lay Buddhists who see each other often and already communicate well would also benefit greatly from FIML practice, both as a group and as individuals. ABN
Why you can’t fix it with generalities
Psychological, cognitive, emotional, or communicative problems cannot be fundamentally corrected by using general analyses or generalized procedures. You can teach someone to think and see differently, even to behave differently, by such procedures, but you cannot bring about deep change by using them. The reason this is so is change through generalizations does little more than substitute one external semiosis for another. The person seeking change will not experience deep change because all they are essentially doing is importing a different explanation of their “condition” into their life.
This happens with Buddhists who remain attached to surface meanings of the Dharma as well as to people seeking mainstream help for emotional problems. Any change will feel good for a while in most cases, but after some time stasis and a recurrence of the original problem, or something similar to it, will occur. You cannot become enlightened by importing someone else’s ideas. You cannot achieve deep transformation by replacing one inculcated semiosis with another. You cannot find your authentic “self” by using the static ideas of others.
The way around this problem is to use a technique that is at its core entirely dynamic. Buddhist mindfulness, which stresses attentiveness in and to the moment, is a dynamic technique. The problem with this technique in the modern world is it is not well-suited to the cacophony of signs and symbols that surround us almost all the time. Mindfulness too often entails being mindful of a cultural semiosis that is itself a tautology, a trap that does not contain within itself an obvious exit.
Mindfulness coupled with FIML practice overcomes this problem because the interactive dynamism of FIML gives partners a tool that strengthens mindfulness while at the same time affording them the opportunity to observe in the moment how their habitual semiosis operates, and why it operates that way. FIML gives partners the means to create a rational leverage-point that they can both share and use to grapple with neurotic issues that have always eluded generalized treatments.
FIML does not tell partners how to be or what to think. It describes nothing more than a technique that gives partners access to their deep “operating systems.” If you hack your “operating system” with FIML practice, you will find that you are able to eliminate neuroses (kleshas in Buddhist terms) and replace them with a semiosis (subculture) of your and your partner’s own choosing. To do FIML, partners must have a deep ethical, emotional, and intellectual commitment to each other, but it is important to recognize that these are not static or generalized ideas. They are dynamic principles upon which the transformational behaviors of FIML are built.
Stress voice
This post provides a concrete example of what FIML practice does and why it is needed. Stress voice is an involuntary intrusion of instinct into speech. In some contexts, this is a very good thing. In many other contexts, it can be a very bad thing because it alerts us to dangers that do not exist while generating the illusion that they do. ABN
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Humans are semiotic animals that respond to human signals as primary percepta.
Some obvious examples are sex in advertising, pictures of hamburgers, people enjoying a natural view from a balcony in a hotel brochure. Each of these relies on an “instinct”—sex, hunger, an animal’s response to nature—while at the same time signaling a complex human contribution to the basic signal.
Another type of human signal that arouses instinct is tone of voice. A good example of this is the “stress” or “alarm” voice that is used by most if not all mammals and birds.
The basic instinctive stress or alarm voice is a shriek. If words are used, the shrieking tone will be accompanied by rapidly spoken words—“stop! stop! stop!” or “Watch out! it’s falling” or “get down! get down!” etc.
In basic situations involving real danger, the alarm voice is very important. We definitely want to have both the voice and the sudden energized response it draws from us.
In many situations, though, the stress voice can cause problems when it arises due to simple miscommunication. For example, I say or do something different from what you asked or implied and it causes you—virtually involuntarily—to use an alarmed tone that involves a bit of a shriek and rapid words.
For example, you asked me to cut some mushrooms for a broth we are making. What you meant is you want the mushrooms to go into the clear broth after it has been made but I toss them into the pot with the chicken bones and vegetable scraps that will be strained and thrown away.
When you first see what I have done, you experience slight confusion, even cognitive dissonance, and say in an alarmed voice, “What are you doing with the mushrooms?”
In turn, I respond directly to your stress voice and to the now evident miscommunication with my own confusion and stress voice, “I thought you wanted them in the broth!”
If we are friends, this minor contretemps will probably be easily overcome and we may even laugh about it. If we have had many unresolved contretemps of this type, however, one or both of us may escalate the problem by being accusatory or even abusive.
Even though the mushroom contretemps is very simple and insignificant, it can still be dangerous even between good friends because this type of contretemps can quickly get blown out of proportion due to the primal, instinctive quality of the stress voice.
Similar problem situations might be miscommunicated directions while driving or working, messed up meeting times, or getting the wrong thing from the store.
These problems are generally easy to resolve, though they may still generate discord or stress both because a confusing miscommunication happened and also because the stress or alarm voice just is that way; it causes stress or alarm in and of itself.
If you can see and deal with concrete situations such as the ones described above, imagine how similar situations may arise in less concrete forms and how they can be even more dangerous and lead to even more serious problems.
Miscommunicated emotional, sexual, psychological, or intellectual signals can also give rise to primal stress or alarm tones and, in turn, generate further stress and alarm. Contretemps like these can be much harder to pinpoint, analyze, and understand than simpler ones involving concrete communication about mushrooms or directions.
In FIML practice, if partners can mutually understand a few concrete contretemps and how and why they generate stress and confusion and use these forms as basic paradigms for more complex contretemps, they will go a long way toward removing stress and confusion that is entirely blameless, unconscious, unmotivated, and unintended by either of them.
Micro, meso, and macro FIML
Micro FIML practice is basic to all FIML practice.
(A description of micro FIML can be found here: How to do FIML.)
Basic or micro FIML provides a sturdy foundation for many other kinds of interpersonal discussions. This is so because basic FIML makes partners confident that they can say what they think without fearing that their partner will significantly misunderstand them.
Why is that? The reason is if your partner interprets what you have said in a palpable—and especially a negative—way, they will ask you about it. Once they have asked you, you can clarify what you meant, change it, expand on it, explain it, or do anything else you want with it as long as you are being honest.
Basic FIML explicates all new clouds that appear on the horizon. If your partner speaks or communicates in a way that causes a small cloud to appear on your horizon and you have time, bring it up immediately using the basic FIML technique linked above. If you don’t have time to bring it up immediately, do it later when you do have time if the cloud is still there. Even if the cloud is gone, it can still be interesting to bring it up later because you can discuss the incident and learn more about yourselves from that. Very small incidents are often the most interesting because data points are clear and strong emotions are not likely to be aroused.
No FIML partner should ever carry around a shadow of misgiving or negativity about their partner without saying something about it. This is where meso and macro levels of FIML come into play.
Meso and macro FIML come into play when you discover that even though you have been doing basic FIML perfectly and dealt with every cloud that appeared on your horizon, still there is a shadow or haze developing in your mind.
You can’t remember when it started or how it started, but you know it is there.
If you have been doing basic FIML and are reasonably skilled in it, you should be able to bring up the matter of a gathering haze in your mind and clear it with your partner. Maybe you partner is spending too much time away from you or too close to you. Maybe you are starting to feel weird about something they keep saying. No single incident of their saying whatever it is has bothered you enough to mention it, but they keep saying it and that is getting to you. Once you notice anything like that, just bring it up and discuss it at a meso level while relying on basic micro FIML practice to steer you toward a good resolution that works for both of you.
Another example of a meso discussion might be something like: you are a bit tired, your partner says something and you respond in what seems a pleasant way to you and they respond to that in a way that seems sharp or restrictive to you. Since you are tired, you don’t do basic FIML at the right moment but instead respond sharply to what you had perceived as their sharpness.
If your partner questions you on that and/or if you notice it yourself, just do a meso FIML discussion that brings in all of the factors you are aware of. Your habit of doing basic FIML will make it much easier to have conversations on meso or macro levels than if you had never done basic FIML at all.
A macro level FIML discussion might entail a growing shift in your understanding of any macro subject—science, religion, philosophy, politics, etc.
As with meso discussions, macro discussions will be much easier and more enjoyable if partners know how to do basic FIML.
Basic FIML solves most communication problems by helping partners be honest with each other in ways that are helpful and productive without being phony. Basic FIML also helps partners sail past the many minor snags that can occur in conversations, such as quibbling over word choices, minor details, tone of voice, gestures, and so on.
This happens because basic FIML will already have provided many examples of small snags and how to overcome them. It does take some practice to get to this point, but it is not much harder than learning to sew or make pizza. Requires some work and there are better and worse results, but once you get going the benefits should be clear enough to keep you going.
In my view, FIML will not work for partners only if a misinterpretation is not addressed, not honestly addressed, or not substantially addressed from the micro level on up. If you always jump in at meso and macro levels, you will almost certainly cause more problems than you will solve.
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See also: Micro, meso, and macro levels of human understanding.
The definition of anti-FIML
This is how our fights almost ALWAYS end: he won’t let go of the fight until I “ADMIT” that I am “lying” and/or an a-hole, or both.
He’ll go on endlessly trying to *force* me into “admitting” to being a “liar” simply because I don’t agree with his perception/perspective of what he *thinks* MY thoughts are. He assumes the worst of me in arguments always. He always thinks I’m conniving/manipulating/intentionally trying to hurt him. He wants to force ME to deny the very reality of MY OWN thinking and ideas. Because he THINKS he can read my mind/know exactly what I’m thinking/what my intentions are, IF I disagree with him (say that my intention/thought WASN’T ___) THEN, I am a LIAR. He says that I’m either not “self-aware” or a lying jerk if I refuse to back down on what my thinking/intentions are. Only I know my thoughts but the argument + verbal attacks won’t stop until I verbally deny my actual thoughts.
My (28F) BF demands I agree with HIS perception of MY thoughts/intentions/beliefs
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This is a vivid description of what FIML protects against. Few people are as lost in their own mad world as the boyfriend described above yet all of us do stuff like that sometimes. ABN
What is FIML?
FIML is an acronym that stands for Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics.
FIML is a form of analytical psychotherapy done between two people, neither of whom needs any formal training in psychotherapy. It is designed to optimize communication and psychological well-being.
FIML is a technique that uses real-time, real-world communication data to clear up mistaken psychological interpretations that may have been held for many years or that may have just arisen.
By clearing up many small mistaken interpretations between partners, FIML gradually clears up the psychological bases of those misinterpretations. In this way, FIML optimizes the communication and psychologies of both partners.
For a basic description of how to do FIML see: How to do FIML.
For more information about the theory and practice of FIML, please see other posts on this site, most of which are concerned with FIML in one way or another.
[Abundant FIML information can be found under the tags brain science, and Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics accessible on the sidebar. ABN]
A way to visualize the value of FIML practice
FIML practice is like the JWST telescope compared to normal interpersonal speech, which is like Hale telescope at best.
FIML is a technical advance in listening and speaking which allows for much greater clarity and resolution.
In Buddhist terms, FIML is partner-based mindfulness that provides immediate objective control on real-time meaning and mutual understanding. ABN
Competence versus performance
An important distinction is made in academic linguistics between competence and performance. This short entry in Wikipedia gives some idea of why—Competence versus performance.
FIML practice, unlike most academic linguistics, is centered on performance, not competence.
Through practice FIML partners will come to understand how their communicative performances affect them both. By extension, they will also learn how their performances in both speaking and listening affect other people.
FIML deals primarily with communication mistakes and their emotional impacts on both speakers and listeners.
FIML partners will quickly discover that they make many mistakes in speaking and listening and that when these mistakes are not corrected, many of them can have serious consequences affecting the well-being of both of them.
In a nutshell, FIML removes performance errors made between partners in real-time. By having a reliable method for removing misunderstandings as they occur, FIML partners will also find that they are able to pursue many more subjects with greater depth and intensity than they had been able to do before.
Many of the errors removed by FIML practice will more be of a “psychological” or emotional nature than a linguistic one. That said, it is important for partners to focus a good deal of their energy on specific linguistic mistakes because when both partners agree on exactly what was said, they will have excellent data that can be profitably analyzed.
American Buddhist Net 