Communicating in Quarantine: The False Fuel of Assumption

Has anyone noticed that being in close quarters with another person for long periods of time is a recipe for miscommunication? Or trying to carry on important conversations during social distancing can cause great misunderstanding? Relational conflict is at an all time high with these added stressors of a global pandemic and unprecedented circumstances resulting in prolonged periods of close contact with some people and excessive distance from others.

Easter Sunday 2020 was unlike any Easter I have ever experienced before. I’d love to say we nailed it – that we had a beautiful day with fantastic family memories, a delicious celebratory dinner, and a spirit of rejoicing in our freedom through the Resurrection of our Savior. But that would be a lie. This year, Easter was hard in more ways than one.

The truth is our Easter looked more like my husband and I missing each other in communication, arguing about perspective, and talking at each other more than communication with each other – off and on for six hours! We didn’t’ participate together in our streamed Sunday service. We never sat down to a meal as a whole family, and we tossed some eggs in the living room for an egg hunt at the last minute. We wound up hurt and emotionally distant from one another.

The main reason for this? Assumption.

Assumption Makes us look Foolish

Some of you may have heard the saying, “When we assume, it makes the first three letters out of U and ME (ASSUME)” That’s not too far from reality. I watch my sons interact with each other. I see how quickly they can get fired up, yelling, and getting aggressive with each other. Ironically, most of the time, their reactions are based on an assumption that their brother intended them harm. They feel threatened (physically or emotionally) and their fight or flight kicks in. A rocket blasts off in their souls, and its fuel is lies.

How could they be so foolish? And yet I find myself doing the same thing!

The fuel of assumption is an artificial fuel that can only send our rocket in one direction – destruction of relationship. We must fuel our emotions and reactions on the truth!

Assumption Signals our Fight or Flight

Have you ever felt this before? The internal burn, increasing heart rate, and sense of a need to find protection or escape from the situation? Our person or our identity feels threatened, and we snap back with “Well I . . .” or offer the silent treatment and retreat. We go on the defensive, buffering ourselves up or tearing the other person down in order to feel better. Or we feel the need to protect ourselves from further harm, so we go into emotional or physical hiding – sometimes both.

More often than not, when I assume and react, my husband is left wondering what he did wrong. His intention was not to wound, but to communicate. Sometimes, his words come out clumsy, no doubt, but when I allow the fuel of assumption to blast off my emotional rocket, I am submitting to chemical processes in my brain that are not based in logic.

The brain always wants to protect itself and the body. If there is a perceived threat, our sympathetic nervous system gears up for the challenge. It shoots us into one of three responses. We fight. We flight. Or we freeze.

Assumption is Framed in Past Experience

When we make assumptions and respond out of the most base urges of our human nature, we are allowing our previous experiences to define our present moment. As humans, our brains remember when we’ve been hurt in the past, and they have loaded weapons just waiting for that trigger to be pulled. We hear a specific word or phrase, and we frame it with the memories of how we felt when we heard that before.

A wound from a friend when I was thirteen can come up out of “nowhere” when my husband uses the same words that cut so deep. A look I see on his face may resemble one my dad had when he was disappointed in me. A phrase that hurt me years ago may be spoken in a completely different context now, yet it creates the same reaction. The image of the past arises, and I use that same frame to place around my husband and his intentions now.

The reality is that my husband is not my childhood friend. The look he gave me was one of confusion not disappointment. And the phrase is common use language that had been spoken once in harshness and now carries that connotation every time.

Assumption Creates a Win-Lose Mentality

With these ill-fitting frames, our conversations can easily morph from a discussion of differences to a competition of who is right and who is wrong – or even more likely, who is better and who is worse. This adds to the fuel of the emotional rocket as it continues a cycle of comparison, feeling threatened and a need to defend or protect one’s self.

When I find myself stuck in these cycles of communication, sometimes I lose track of where we were or where we are headed. What was the intended purpose of this conversation in the first place? I get the feeling that in order to find resolution, one of us will win and the other with lose. One will be deemed the victorious. One will be shamed.

Sure, in any relationship there is give and take, but it should never be victor and victim! We are all humans created in the image of God. He has called us to love Him first and foremost. Then he has called us to love one another.

Just because my husband and I may not completely agree on our perspective doesn’t mean that there has to be a winner and a loser. If we are able to stop this cycle of assumption, we can more easily understand where the other person is coming from and decide how to come to the best resolution of our differences.

Stopping the Assumption Fuel

One simple step in avoiding the relentless cycle of assumption, is to notice. Notice when the emotions start to rise and the rocket wants to blast off.

Stop and think about what that feels like right now. What happens inside your chest when your spouse or close friend says that one thing? What feelings does it evoke when you see that look? What does your heart do in your chest? Do you feel warm or flushed? Does your breathing increase? Do you feel muscles contract? Does your mind go blank? Do you long for escape? Do you shut down?
 
Take a moment and put yourself there. Imagine a tough conversation. Feel the feelings, and imagine putting a BIG RED STOP SIGN on that feeling.

The next time you start to feel that way, see the stop sign. Pause. Breathe and ask yourself what it is you are feeling and thinking in that moment. Hear the words you are telling yourself. What do you feel they are saying to you? Take another deep breath. And then ask a clarifying question.

Here’s how it looked for us a couple weeks ago. We were chatting when my husband said something to the effect of how he felt threatened when I didn’t recognize something he had done. I immediately wanted to respond in anger, “What?!? You don’t feel like I appreciate you? Well I don’t feel like you appreciate me!”

 But I didn’t. I stopped when I recognized the feeling, and I asked, “Can I clarify? Are you saying that you don’t ever feel appreciated by me?” I was able to determine what was fueling my emotional reaction: the feeling of an always statement, that I never showed him appreciation. And I asked him to clarify in a nonthreatening way.

This gave him an opportunity to say, no, that he just meant that one instance. Immediately, the boil in my chest subsided, and we were able to conclude our conversation without my emotional rocket causing chaos, destruction, and distance in our relationship.

If You’re Going to Assume, Assume the Best

Assumptions are going to happen. They are going to come up without our permission or awareness. They are going to surprise us. They are going to throw us off kilter and begin to fuel reactions that we don’t anticipate. We have to realize that whether we like it or not, this is the way we are wired.

Being in a relationship with my husband, I have to remember that we love each other. We are committed. When we find ourselves in communication that is leading toward assumption, I have to choose to frame his comments in the truth. He is not intending to wound me. He loves me. He is trying to communicate with me, and we are still growing in our ability to speak each other’s languages.
 

I am in process. My husband is in process. We are continually being formed into the image of our Creator. We are learning to communicate (and getting much more practice due to this time of quarantine).

Learning to notice the fuel of assumption and the initial blast off of my emotional rocket has been so powerful in stopping what could be some messy relational explosions.

Redeeming our Assumptions

Our Easter this year was hard, but it was redeemed. We salvaged what we could as we engaged in the Sight and Sound Jesus production as a family. We spoke truth to our boys about the freedom we have received from Christ – the freedom from the penalty of death as well as the freedom from the power on sin. And my husband and I made the decision to try another way. That evening we worked through our differences, we opened our eyes to the other’s perspective, we clarified assumptions, and we communicated our love to one another.

The power of the Resurrection of Jesus frees us from the power of assumption. We don’t have to continue the cycle of chaos and destruction in our relationships. We have His power to assume the best, to notice the feelings, to stop and clarify. We can fuel our emotions on truth and stop the false fuel of assumptions! We can learn a new way to communicate while in quarantine!