I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by love and acceptance. I'm afraid that you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh, and that your laugh will kill me. I'm afraid that deep down inside I'm nothing, that I'm just no good, and that you'll see and reject me. So I play my games-my desperate pretending games-with the facade of assurance on the outside and a trembling child within. And so begins the parade of masks, the glittering but empty parade of masks. And my life becomes a front.

I idly chatter with you in the suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that's really nothing-nothing of what's crying within me. So when I'm going through my routine, don't be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm NOT saying . . . what I would like to be able to say . . . what for survival I need to say, but I can't say. I dislike the hiding. Honestly I do. I dislike the superficial phony games I'm playing. I'd really like to be genuine.

I'd really like to be genuine, spontaneous, and me; but you have to help me. You have to help me by holding out your hand, even when that's the last thing I seem to want or need. Each time you are kind and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings-very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings. With your sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding, I can make it. You can breathe life into me. It will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. But love is stronger than strong walls, and therein lies my hope. Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands, for a child is very sensitive, and I AM a child.

Who am I? you may wonder. I am someone you know very well. For I am every man, every woman, every child . . . every human you meet.

All people are very, very tender and sensitive. Some have learned to protect themselves from this level of vulnerability-to cover up, to pose and posture, to wear a safe "mask." But unconditional love, kindness, and courtesy often penetrate these exteriors. They find a home in others' hearts, and others begin to respond.

This is why it is so important to create a loving, nurturing environment in the home-an environment where it is safe to be vulnerable, to be open. In fact, the consensus of almost all experts in the field of marriage and family relations and child development is that creating such a warm, caring, supportive, encouraging environment is probably the most important thing you can do for your family.

And this does not mean just for little children. It also means for your spouse, your grandchildren, your aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins-everyone. The creation of such a culture-such an unconditionally loving and nurturing feeling-is more important than almost everything else put together. In a very real sense, to create such a nurturing culture is tantamount to having everything else put together.

Dealing with Negative Baggage

Creating such a culture is sometimes very difficult to do-especially if you're dealing with negative baggage from the past and negative emotions in the present.

One man shared this experience: When I met my future wife, Jane, she had a six-month-old boy named Jared. Jane had married Tom when they were both quite young, and neither of them had been ready for marriage by any stretch of the imagination. The realities and stresses of married life hit them hard. There was some physical violence involved, and he left her when she was about five months pregnant.

When I met Jane, Tom had filed for divorce and joint custody of the child he had never seen. It was a difficult, complicated situation. There were many bitter feelings. There was no communication between Jane and Tom whatever. The judge swayed heavily in favor of Jane.

After Jane and I married, I took a job that required us to move to another state. Every other month Tom would come and visit with Jared, and in alternating months we would make Jared available in California.

Things began to settle down in a way that seemed superficially okay. But I ended up doing most of the communicating between Jane and Tom. About one out of every three times that Tom would phone, Jane would hang up on him. Often Jane would leave before Tom got there for visitations, and I would be the one to see Jared off. Tom would frequently call me and say, "Should I talk to you about this, or should I talk to Jane?" It was very uncomfortable for me.

This spring, Tom called me and said, "Hey, Jared turns five in August, and then he will be legally able to fly by himself. Rather than my coming to visit out there where I sit in a hotel room with no car or friends, why don't I pay for Jared to fly here?" I told him I would bring it up with Jane.

"No way!" she said emphatically. "Absolutely not! He's just a little boy. He can't even go to the bathroom on a plane by himself." She wouldn't even discuss it with me-and especially not with Tom. At one point she said, "Just leave it to me. I'll handle it." But as the months passed, nothing happened. Finally, Tom phoned me and said, "What's happening? Is Jared going to fly down? What's the deal?"

I was convinced that there was a lot of good potential in both Jane and Tom. I knew that if they could just be focused on doing the best thing for Jared, they could communicate and understand each other and work something out. But there were so many personal animosities and bitter feelings that they couldn't see beyond them.

I tried to encourage them to have a discussion. I told them there would have to be strict guidelines to prevent verbal attacks and things of that nature. They both trusted me and agreed to do it. But I became increasingly nervous that I would not be able to facilitate that discussion because I was too close to it. I felt that one or both of them would end up hating me for one reason or another. In the past when Jane and I were having a discussion and I tried to look at an issue objectively, she would accuse me of taking "his" side. On the other hand, Tom felt that Jane and I had an agenda. I didn't know what to do.

I finally decided to call Adam, a friend and coworker who facilitates the 7 Habits, and he agreed to talk with both of them. Adam taught them the principle of empathic listening. He taught them how to set aside their own autobiography and really listen to the words and feelings that were being expressed. After Jane shared some of her feelings, Adam said to Tom, "Now Tom, what did Jane just tell you?" He said, "She's afraid of me. She's afraid one day if I lose my temper I might slap Jared." Jane was wide-eyed. She realized that Tom had been able to hear more than just her words. She said, "That's exactly how I feel deep down in my heart. I'm worried that one day this man could easily lose it and hurt Jared."

And after Tom expressed himself, Adam asked Jane, "What did Tom just say?" She replied, "He said, 'I'm afraid of rejection. I'm afraid of being alone. I'm afraid no one cares at all.' " Even though she'd known him for fifteen years, Jane had no idea that Tom had been abandoned by his father when he was small and that he was determined not to do that to Jared. She didn't realize how alienated he felt from her family after the divorce. For Tom it had been like being abandoned all over again. She began to realize how lonely Tom had been during the past five years. She began to understand how his declaration of bankruptcy a few years earlier made it impossible for him to get a credit card, so that when he came to visit Jared, he had no car. He was alone in a hotel room, with no friends and no transportation. And, she realized, we had just dropped Jared off.

Once Jane and Tom felt really understood and got down to the issues, they discovered that there was not a single thing on either of their lists that the other did not also want. They talked for three and a half hours, and the issue of visitation never even came up. Independently, they both told me later, "You know, this isn't about Jared. It's about trust between the two of us. Once we have this solved, the problem with Jared is a no-brainer."

After this meeting with Adam, the atmosphere was much more relaxed and congenial. We all went to a restaurant together, and Jane said to Tom, "You know, it's kind of tough with the kids here to talk about things, but when I come down next month for visitation, let's take some time to talk."

I thought, This is Jane talking? I had never heard her say anything like this before.

When we dropped Tom off at his hotel with Jared, Jane said, "What time are we picking Jared up tomorrow?"

He said, "Well, my shuttle to the airport leaves at 4:00 P.M."

"Let us take you to the airport," she said.

"That would be great, if you want to."

"No problem," she replied.

Again I was thinking, Wow! This is a major turnaround!

Two weeks later, Jane went down for visitation. One of her bones of contention had been that he never acknowledged what he had done to her. But when they had their talk, for the first time Tom apologized to her in great detail for everything. "I'm sorry for pulling your hair. I'm sorry for taking drugs. I'm sorry for walking out on you." And this led her to say, "Well, I'm sorry, too."

Following his visit with us, Tom began saying "thank you." Tom had never said "thank you" for much of anything before. His conversations were now filled with thank-yous. And the week after his visit here, Jane received this brief letter from him: Dear Jane, I find it necessary to put in written word my thanks to you. We have shared so many ill feelings toward each other in the past, but the initial steps we took together last Saturday toward their resolution should be documented. And so . . . thank you.

Thank you for agreeing to meet with Adam. Thank you for sharing the things you shared. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for the love from which we created our boy. Thank you for being his mother.

I mean it as sincerely as can be, Tom At the same time he sent me a letter.

Dear Mike, I wanted to take a formal moment to thank you for putting Jane and me together with Adam. It has done more for my outlook toward my relationship with Jared and Jane than I can find the words for. . . .

Your desire to do what's right both now and in past years is quite commendable. Without your good offices, there is no telling how ugly things would have gotten between Jane and me. . . .

My deepest appreciation, Tom When we received these letters, we were stunned. And in the phone conversations that followed, Jane said, "We talked almost like giddy school kids." The understanding, the letting go, the forgiving, was so unleashing.

So many good things are happening now. Jane even went so far as to say to me, "Maybe when Tom comes up here, we could let him use one of our cars." I had thought about that many times, but I didn't dare mention it for fear of being accused of taking his side. I thought her attitude would be, "How dare you! You're trying to accommodate the enemy." But now she is recommending it. She even said, "What would you think about letting Tom stay in our spare room to help with his costs?" And I thought, Is this really Jane? It was a 180-degree turnaround.

I'm sure there will be challenges ahead, but I believe the groundwork has been laid. The tools for appropriate communication are there. There's almost a feeling of deep respect now for one another and a genuine concern that I see in Jane and Tom for each other and for our kids.

It's been a real challenge at times, but through it all it's been crystal clear to me that anything less than this would make life worse for everyone.

Notice how Tom and Jane were able to rise above the hate, the blaming and accusing. They were able to diffuse the conflict and act based on principles instead of reacting to each other. How did they do that?

In seeking to understand each other, they both got psychological air. It freed them to stop fighting each other and to connect with their own inner gifts, particularly conscience and awareness. They became open, vulnerable. They were each able to acknowledge their part in the situation, to apologize, to forgive. And this healing, this cleansing, opened the door to more authentic relationships, to creating a synergy in which they were able to establish a better situation for their child, for themselves, and for everyone involved.

As you can see in this story-and in every other story in this chapter-not seeking to understand leads to judgment (usually misjudgment), rejection, and manipulation. Seeking to understand leads to understanding, acceptance, and participation. Obviously, only one of these paths is built on the principles that create quality family life.

Overcoming Anger and Offense

Probably more than any other single factor, what gets families off track and gets in the way of synergy is negative emotions, including anger and taking offense. Temper gets us into problems, and pride keeps us there. As C. S. Lewis said, "Pride is competitive in nature. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. . . . It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone."3 One of the most common and debilitating forms of pride is the need to be "right," to have it your way.

Again, remember: Even if anger surfaces only one-tenth of 1 percent of the time, that will affect the quality of all the rest of the time because people are never sure when that raw nerve might be touched again.

I know of one father who was pleasant and agreeable most of the time, but on occasion his vicious temper was aroused. And this affected the quality of all the rest of the time because family members had to brace themselves for the possibility that it might happen again. They would avoid social situations for fear of embarrassment. They would walk around minefields throughout the day to avoid stepping on a raw nerve. They never became authentic or real or opened up. They never dared to give him feedback for fear that it would stir up the anger more than ever. And without feedback, this man lost all contact with what was really happening in his family.

When someone in the family becomes angry and loses control, the effects are so wounding, so intimidating, so threatening, so overpowering that others lose their bearings. They tend to either fight back, which only exacerbates the problem, or capitulate and give in to this win-lose spirit. And then even compromise is not likely. The more likely scenario is that people will separate and go their own ways, refusing to communicate at all about anything meaningful. They try to live with the satisfactions of independence, since interdependence seems too hard, too far off, and too unrealistic. And no one has the mind-set or the skill-set to go for it.

This is why it is so important when this kind of culture has developed for people to go deep within themselves. Then they can do the necessary work within to acknowledge their negative tendencies, to overcome them, to apologize to others, and to process their experiences so that gradually those labels are unfrozen and people can come to trust the basic structure, the basic relationship, again.

Of course, some of the most important inner work is prevention work. It includes making up our minds not to say or do those things we know will offend and learning to overcome our anger or to express it at better times and in more productive ways. We need to be deeply honest with ourselves and realize that most anger is merely guilt overflowing when provoked by the weakness of another. We can also make up our minds not to be offended by others. Taking offense is a choice. We may be hurt, but there is a big difference between being hurt and taking offense. Being hurt is having our feelings wounded-and it does smart for a time-but taking offense is choosing to act on that hurt by getting back, getting even, walking out, complaining to others, or judging the "offender."

Most of the time offenses are unintentional. Even when they are intentional, we can remember that forgive-like love-is a verb. It's the choice to move from reactivity to proactivity, to take the initiative-whether you've offended someone or been offended yourself-to go and make reconciliation. It's the choice to cultivate and depend on an internal source of personal security so that we are not so vulnerable to external offenses.

And above all it's the choice to prioritize the family, to realize that family is too important to let offenses keep family members from talking to one another, prevent grown brothers and sisters from going to family events, or weaken or break the intergenerational and extended family ties that provide such strength and support.

Interdependency is hard. It takes tremendous effort, constant effort, and courage. It's much easier in the short run to live independently inside a family-to do your own thing, to come and go as you wish, to take care of your own needs, and to interact as little as possible with others. But the real joys of family life are lost. When children grow up with this kind of modeling, they think that is the way family is, and the cycle continues. The devastating effect of these cyclical cold wars is almost as bad as the destruction of the hot wars.

It's often important to process negative experiences-to talk them through, resolve them, empathize with each other, and seek forgiveness. Whenever ugly experiences take place, you can unfreeze them by acknowledging your part in them and by listening empathically to understand how other people saw them and how they felt about them. In other words, by modeling vulnerability yourself, you can help others become vulnerable. The deepest bonding arises out of such mutual vulnerability. You minimize the psychic and social scarring, and clear the path to the creation of rich synergy.

Becoming a "Faithful Translator"

Really listening to get inside another person's mind and heart is called "empathic" listening. It's listening with empathy. It's trying to see the world through someone else's eyes. Of five different kinds of listening, it is the only one that really gets inside another person's frame of reference.

You can ignore people. You can pretend to listen. You can listen selectively or even attentively. But until you listen empathically, you're still inside your own frame of reference. You don't know what constitutes a "win" for others. You don't really know how they see the world, how they see themselves, and how they see you.

At one time I was in Jakarta, Indonesia, teaching the principle of empathic listening. As I looked out over the audience and saw many people wearing earphones, a thought came to me. I said, "If you want a good illustration of empathic listening, just think about what the interpreter or translator is doing right now through your earphones." These translators were doing instantaneous translation, which meant that they had to be listening to what I was saying at the moment as well as restating what I had just said. It took incredible mental effort and concentration, and it required two translators to work in tandem, based on their level of fatigue. Both of those translators came up to me afterward and told me that what I had said was the finest compliment they had ever been given.

Even though you may be emotionally involved in a particular exchange with somebody, you can push your pause button and step outside of that emotion if you simply change the way you see your role-if you think of yourself as a "faithful translator." Your job, then, is to translate and communicate back to the other person in new words the essential meaning (both verbal and nonverbal) of what that person communicated to you. In doing this you're not taking a position yourself on what the person is talking about. You're simply feeding back the essence of what he or she said to you.

Psychologist and author John Powell has said: Listening in dialogue is listening more to meanings than to words. . . . In true listening, we reach behind the words, see through them, to find the person who is being revealed. Listening is a search to find the treasure of the true person as revealed verbally and nonverbally. There is the semantic problem, of course. The words bear a different connotation for you than they do for me.

Consequently, I can never tell you what you said, but only what I heard. I will have to rephrase what you have said, and check it out with you to make sure that what left your mind and heart arrived in my mind and heart intact and without distortion.

How to Do It: Principles of Empathic Listening

Now let's go through a scenario together that will help us get at the heart of the understanding-or "faithful translator"-response.

Suppose for several days you've sensed that your teenage daughter is unhappy. When you've asked her what's wrong, she's replied, "Nothing. Everything's okay." But one night while you're washing dishes together, she begins to open up.

"Our family rule that I can't date until I'm older is embarrassing me to death. All my friends are dating, and that's all they can talk about. I feel like I'm out of it. John keeps asking me out, and I have to keep telling him I'm not old enough. I just know he's going to ask me to go to the party on Friday night, and if I have to tell him no again, he'll give up on me. So will Carol and Mary. Everyone's talking about it."

How would you respond?

"Don't worry about it, honey. No one is going to give up on you."

"Tell me what they're saying about you."

"When they talk about you like that, they're really admiring you for your stand. What you're feeling is normal insecurity."

Any one of these might be a typical response, but not an understanding one.

"Don't worry about it, honey. No one is going to give up on you." This is an evaluating or judging response based on your values and your needs.

"Just stick to your guns. Don't worry about what others say and think." This is advising from your point of view or in terms of your needs.

"Tell me what they're saying about you." This response is probing for information you feel is important.

"When they talk about you like that, they're really admiring you for your stand. What you're feeling is normal insecurity." This is interpreting what's happening with your daughter's friends and inside her as you see it.

Most of us either seek first to be understood, or if we do seek to understand, we are often preparing our response as we "listen." So we evaluate, advise, probe, or interpret from our own point of view. And none of these is an understanding response. They all come out of our autobiography, our world, our values.

So what would an understanding response be?

First, it would attempt to reflect back what your daughter feels and says so that she feels you really understand. For example, you might say, "You feel kind of torn up inside. You understand the family rule about dating, but you also feel embarrassed when everyone else can date and you have to say no. Is that it?"

Then she might respond, "Yes, that's what I mean." And she might continue, "But the thing I'm really afraid of is that I won't know how to act around boys when I do start dating. Everyone else is learning, and I'm not."

Again, an understanding response would reflect back: "You feel somewhat scared that when the time comes, you won't know what to do."

She might say yes and go on further and deeper into her feelings, or she might say, "Well, not exactly. What I really mean is . . ." and she would go on to try to give you a clearer picture of what she's feeling and facing.

If you look back at the other responses, you'll see that none of them accomplishes the same results as the understanding response. When you give an understanding response, both of you gain a greater understanding of what she's really thinking and feeling. You make it safe for her to open up and share. You make it comfortable for her to engage her own inner gifts to help deal with the concern. And you build the relationship, which will prove immensely helpful further down the road.

Let's look at another experience that shows the difference between the typical and the empathic response. Consider the contrast in these two conversations between Cindy, a varsity cheerleader, and her mother. In the first, Cindy's mother seeks first to be understood: CINDY: Oh, Mom, I have some bad news. Meggie got dropped from the cheer squad today.

MOTHER: Why?

CINDY: She was caught in her boyfriend's car on the school grounds, and he was drinking. If you get caught drinking on the school grounds, you get in big trouble. Actually, it's not fair because Meggie wasn't drinking. Just her boyfriend was drunk.

MOTHER: Well, Cindy, I think it serves Meggie right for keeping bad company. I've warned you that people will judge you by your friends. I've told you that a hundred times. I don't see why you and your friends can't understand. I hope that you learn a lesson from this. Life is tough enough without hanging around with someone like that guy. Why wasn't she in class? I hope you were in class when all this was going on. You were, weren't you?

CINDY: Mom, it's okay! Mellow out. Don't get so mad. It wasn't me, it was Meggie. Gosh, all I wanted to do was tell you something about somebody else, and I get the ten-minute lecture on my bad friends. I'm going to bed.