Understanding Truth Seeking

When mothers and daughters work with me, one thing that they end up doing is going in the circle of who's telling the story correctly. They go into this battle of who's telling the truth. It took me a while, but I realized this was getting us nowhere. I call this behavior “truth seeking.” Putting an end to “truth seeking” is the first skill I work on with mother daughter duos. 

Basically what's happening is they're looking for the other person to tell the story in the way that they experienced it. It’s hard to break it to them, but the other person can't do that. The way that your mom experienced the event is going to be different from the way that you experienced the same event. Looking for each other to tell the story in the perfect way is just going to create this never ending battle of going back and forth about who is correct. 

It's basically a never ending fight of trying to get the truth out of the other person. I stop that from happening and teach you how to hear the emotion. Mom’s sometimes have a hard time hearing their daughter's emotional experience and she wants the story told in the way that she remembers it. They struggle to understand how the emotional reality of their daughter can differ from themselves. What I have to remind the mom of is that I want her to hear what her daughter's saying emotionally. I want her to know what her daughter is trying to tell her about how she experienced something. I also want her to hear the emotion in her story. So I stop them from searching for the truth because it doesn't really matter. 

You know, it doesn't matter if your mom said it this way or said it this way. It doesn’t matter if your daughter did this before you did this. What does matter is how she experienced that story and the emotion she felt in that situation. In the beginning, we do a lot of practicing of listening for the emotion the other person is trying to convey. Watching that change and watching them actually be able to hear the emotion is really cool. 

When they finally stop the need of telling the story correctly, they actually get a chance to hear like, whoa, this is what it was like for you? Okay. I understand that. Maybe there's an apology after that or maybe they finally say they believe you. That goes a long way to actually being able to talk about the hurt, and being able to actually make changes because you finally have somebody who's ready to listen.

Here are a few links of other post where I talk more about truth seeking:
This Instagram Reel
This Instagram Reel
This Instagram Post
Leave me a comment on the posts and let me know what you think.