Speed reading our critics: How anxiety makes us gloss over the feedback and causes misunderstandings

I’ve had a few confrontations this week, a student angry at the way I told her not to do e-mail in my class, a fellow writer confronting me about my confrontation over his writing, my live in partner frustrated that again a fellow housemate’s bill ended up in the garbage and my leaving food out in the kitchen.

This past weekend I ran with a friend who posed an interesting question: What if we never acted out of feeling threatened? We pushed back, we picked our battles and fought them but always from a grounded place? What would that be like? I liked the idea and all week long I’ve been thinking about ways to keep my cool even when my position is part of what’s heating things up.

Today in one of these confrontations, I got a note that clearly misinterpreted something I said. I clarified but I also got thinking about how the likelihood of misunderstanding always goes up in conflict. Sure, we hear that, in conflict it’s useful to slow down, but more often than not the way that comes up is as part of a point-taking scold in a confrontation. I could, for example, try to take the upper hand in this conflict by replying to the email pointing out that he misunderstood me and he should really read me more carefully. Shame on him, right? If you’re in a conflict and you say “hey let’s slow things down, it’s easily interpreted as you trying to take the upper hand, gain the moral high ground, take control over the way its negotiated. I don’t think I’ve ever really taken that suggestion all the way in myself because it’s associated in my mind with lectures I don’t want to hear when embroiled.

I try to counterbalance my natural human tendency toward double standards with slogans. “I wouldn’t put it past me” is one of my favorites. I wouldn’t put it past me to do exactly what the e-mailer did, misunderstanding in the throes of battle. Whatever I could chide him for doing I do too. So what exactly is it that makes him or me more prone to misunderstanding in a fight?

I think I’ve discovered a big piece of it tonight. It’s embarrassing to admit.

I speed through feedback. Yes I’ll listen to it. You can’t be a decent person without listening to feedback. But lord, it’s always too long for my taste. And why? Because I feel threatened by it. So when I get criticized on paper I speedread it before quickly posting my response. And when I’m given feedback in person, I want to find the fast-forward button. “Yeah, yeah,” I want to say. “I understand. I get it. OK already.” Even when the person is not going slowly, I want him to go faster.

Tonight about leaving the stuff out in the kitchen I could feel myself doing it. My partner’s feedback style is that really gentle kind, full of reasons and easing into it. It tends to feel a little like water torture. I’ve told her I like it faster and more direct. But tonight it wasn’t her style I credited with my impatience. It was my anxiousness to not spend long bathed in evidence that I might be in the wrong. To counter my tendency, I really made a point of listening even slower than she said it, like she could have gone on an extra few minutes and I would have been fine. It’s early on, but I’d like to see if I could maintain this habit, going into what we musicians call half time instead of double time when I can feel the feedback coming.

I don’t think I’m alone in this trait. I’m looking for the right word for it. Hiss-understanding? The misunderstandings that arise when we’re hissing at each other. Because it’s not just general misunderstanding. It’s more specific than that. It’s two people skating too briskly on thin ice to make a connection possible. T’d reading? Like speed reading when you’re T’d off? If you have any suggestions I’d welcome them. To name it is to tame it.