Issue # 16 Confessing Negative Judgments

Expressing negative judgments is probably one of the most sensitive topics around honesty. Some people use the excuse, “I was just being honest,” to justify mean-spiritedness or dumping their stuff on other people. Conversely, compassion can be used as an excuse to avoid difficult conversations.

Many relationships are crippled because of the conversations people are unwilling to have. Often the energy gets stuck and the people feel distant from one another because their judgments, anger and hurt are in the way. To add more insult to injury, the unexpressed energy tends to leak out in toxic ways and create more distance. It happens not only in romantic relationships, but also across the board from family to friends to work relationships.

One of my suggestions for sharing negative judgments is to get clear that it is the starting point, not the ending point. Beneath the judgments you have, there are often hurt, anger, insecurities, and personal growth available for both you and the person with whom you are sharing the judgments. If you let the other person know you have some judgments about them and your purpose in telling them is because they are in the way of your relationship with them or in the way of the love you feel for them, it helps the other person know that you are not looking to be mean to them. Rather, you are saying they mean so much to you that you want to have the judgments, upset or hurt out of the way so you can feel closer to them again.

Recently, a good friend of mine shared with me the following story around this topic.

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Conversation with Wayne
By Jerry Griffin

I am not sure as to why I decided to talk to my fellow employee. It may have had something to do with the many conversations I had with a couple of friends about honesty and the contamination that happens when toxic judgments aren’t revealed.

These judgments were in regard to a co-worker whom I had worked with for several years. At management meetings he would complain about most any new process that management wanted to implement as policy. It didn’t appear to me that there were any exceptions. In my mind he always complained about everything. I was so negatively charged about this judgment that I would often make side comments at meetings that were unkind and derogatory. I even would page Wayne, which was his first name, when he had a call as “ ‘Whine’ Smith on line 2.” I made him the butt of many jokes whenever possible. I had discovered in my conversations with my friends around honesty that judgments that are not acknowledged contaminate the true identity of the judged. With this in mind I asked Wayne to have lunch with me. He accepted and the next day we went across the street from where we worked. We received our food and then I told him why I had invited him to lunch. I was looking directly at him and it went something like this. Still looking at him, I said, “I have a judgment that I would like to share with you. I believe if I share this judgment with you, I will be available to who you truly are beyond my judgments. Would you be willing to hear what I have to say?” He said that he would, so I continued talking but shifted my gaze down at the table, no longer looking at him. I noticed that I was nervous and somewhat embarrassed. I told him how I felt that he was always complaining at meetings and that he seemed never to accept any changes in company policy without a lot of complaining. I had made a lot of disparaging comments about him in the meetings and made fun of him behind his back. I explained how I had used his name when paging him for a phone call. During this whole time I never looked at him and when I finished my confession I looked up not sure what to expect. I had imagined that he would be at the very least angry. When I looked at his face I was caught in total surprise. Tears were streaming from his eyes. I know my mouth dropped open, and it took me a few seconds to ask what it was that he was feeling. He simply said that he didn’t like the mean things that I had done and said to and about him, and I must care for him very much in order to confess to him those unkind acts. My sharing with him about how I had treated him was the most caring thing he could imagine. I told him that I was truly sorry for what I had done and for the first time I honestly was sorry.

What was even more surprising after our meeting was that Wayne still complained about changes in policy, but I hardly noticed. What I did notice, that had escaped me before our talk, was that he was very kind, helpful and very much a team player in a highly competitive business. I noticed how good he was with children. He was extremely patient in highly charged situations. There were many other endearing qualities that I discovered about Wayne over the next few months. What I discovered about myself was as long as I held anyone in negatively charged judgments, I would be unable to see anything that didn’t confirm those judging interpretations.

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