Judging

December 31, 2003 at 3:50 pm — Communicating, Power, Relating

Over the past few years, I’ve been learning to express my judgments in a way that I like better than my old way.

By judgment, I mean a statement that some person, event, or condition is good or bad, or morally right or wrong. For example, “John is lazy” is a judgment, a statement that John is bad in a particular way.

I’ve found that beneath every judgment lies a feeling, and beneath every feeling lies a need. Every judgment I make comes not from the person, event, or condition I’m judging, but ultimately from my needs, and from how I feel about my needs being either met or unmet. A “positive” judgment means that my needs are satisfied. A “negative” judgment means that my needs are unmet.

“John is lazy.” What needs and feelings lie behind that statement? The need could be nearly any need. Maybe I’m needing some companionship, and I’ve asked John to go to a football game with me. When John says that he doesn’t feel like going out today, my need for companionship isn’t met. I feel lonely, and attribute my loneliness to John. I see John as the reason that I don’t have the companionship I’m needing. I judge him to be lazy.

Judgments leave the most important information unsaid. “John is lazy” says nothing about my need for companionship or the loneliness I feel when my need isn’t met. My loneliness comes not from John’s actions, but from my need for companionship. If I had other people to be with, I wouldn’t feel lonely in response to John not wanting to go to the game. And my need for companionship is about me. It has nothing to do with John.

Judgments deflect attention away from my responsibility. “John is lazy” seems to be a statement about John. Though I’m the one making the statement, the content of the statement says nothing about me. It says nothing about my needs or about my feeling about my needs being unsatisfied. My needs and feelings are my creations, and therefore entirely my responsibility. By talking only about John, I distract your attention, and more importantly my attention, away from my responsibility.

Judgments are ineffective ways to satisfy needs. I believe that every judgment is an attempt to satisfy the need that gave rise to the judgment. But judging makes it less likely that I will satisfy my need. By judging John as lazy deflects responsibility for my feelings from me to John, and gives away my power. It makes John responsible for meeting my need. And given that John is not meeting my need, I’m stuck with my loneliness.

I’ve learned a more effective way to meet my needs: Express my needs and feelings directly. I might tell John, “I’m feeling lonely because I’m needing some companionship.” (I first learned of this phrasing from Marshall Rosenberg’s book
Nonviolent Communication
. The earlier first edition of Nonviolent Communication was my favorite book of 2001. Thanks to my friend Bill Pardee for recommending it!)

I see two main advantages in expressing myself this way. First, by expressing my need clearly and directly, this gives me a chance to find other ways to meet my need. And it gives John a chance to offer ideas if he chooses. Maybe he will invite me to his house to play chess.

Second, directly expressing my needs and feelings draws my attention (and John’s) to my responsibility. My need is my need. My feeling is my response to my need. If John chooses not to satisfy my need for companionship, I can seek other companions, or simply accept that I don’t have the companionship I need. In any case, I am now owning my need, and owning my feelings.

I’m still working on this. I’m often tempted to say “That was a great movie” instead of “I loved that movie.” Exploring the needs and feelings that give rise to my judgments is sometimes a lot of work. But I’m much happier with the results.

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8 Comments »

Comment by Chris Morris — January 1, 2004 at 5:35 am

I think there’s a lot of healthy approaches in this, taking responsibility for your own needs and speaking for yourself, rather than blaming others for not automatically taking care of you, but I fear that gone too far it leads to selfishness.

What if John is choosing not to be with you because John has decided to stay home night after night to get himself drunk and is developing into an alcoholic. Could you not then just decide, “Well, John is not choosing to be available to help me with my companionship, so I’ll just have to choose someone else who can meet my needs. John is free to choose what he needs, he’s choosing to medicate whatever pain is in his life with booze, so I’ll let him be, because after all, who am I to say what he’s doing is wrong?”

Granted, there’s only so much you can do to help out another person. John could stubbornly refuse your intervention, and maybe you’re only option at some point is to bid John adieu … but … is there a way for you to reconcile stopping down to try and help John without judging him? Wouldn’t it require you judging his actions as wrong regardless of their impact on you?

Comment by Jason Yip — January 1, 2004 at 7:26 am

This reminds me of some Thomas Gordon stuff.

I like to see it as being accurate/honest/genuine in your communication. All I really know is true is what I feel. The judgement is either a guess and/or a way to protect my feelings.

Re: Chris’s comment
Can you help someone and not use judging statements? Yes. I’ll let Dale fill in the details on that one… :)
I think it’s more important though to realise when we’re being dishonest in our day-to-day communication before we look at extreme cases.

Comment by Dale Emery — January 2, 2004 at 3:47 am

I believe that judgment is never necessary. As far as I can tell, anything I can do out of judgment, I can instead do entirely out of love.

If my friend John were hurting, I would offer my help—not out of judgment that his behaviors were “wrong,” but out of love for my friend.

I try not to imagine that I know better than other people—other adults at least—what is in their best interest. If I were to intervene in John’s life against his will, to force him to do something he didn’t want to do, then I would be acting out of my desire for John to care for himself.

As for “selfishness,” I’m guessing that you mean acting in my interests regardless of the harmful effects to other people. I see that not as a moral issue, but as a question of what works for me. I always act in what I perceive to be my best interests. I’ve found that my life works better when I construe my interests to include the interests of the people around me.

Comment by Dale Emery — January 2, 2004 at 4:04 am

Jason, I’ve read two of Thomas Gordon’s books (
Leader Effectiveness Training
 and
Sales Effectiveness Training
). That was a number of years ago, and I don’t remember the details, but I do remember liking both books very much.

Comment by Chris Morris — January 2, 2004 at 5:40 am

“I would offer my help—not out of judgment that his behaviors were “wrong,” but out of love for my friend.”

Without making a judgment, how is it you can even say he needs help? How can you say that confronting an apparent alcohol problem is helping him unless it’s directly tied to your own needs? If you really mean “to each his own” then you cannot say you’d help him, because you have no foundation from which to work.

“I’ve found that my life works better when I construe my interests to include the interests of the people around me.”

Interests defined by who? I assume you’d say, defined by those who own the interest. If John says his only interest is drinking himself to death — your interest is him taking care of himself and addressing his apparent drinking problem — who decides who is Right?

Comment by Dale Emery — January 2, 2004 at 7:09 am

Only John can say whether he needs help, or wants help. And only John can say whether I’ve helped him. I can’t say that he needs help, or that I’ve helped him, unless he tells me so.

About interests: Only John defines John’s interests. If he defines his interest as drinking himself to death, and I define my interest as him not drinking himself to death, then obviously our interests conflict. Who’s right? I don’t see the concept of “right” as being helpful to me here. The issue for me is what will I choose to do, given that my interests conflict with John’s.

And given that my interests very likely collide with each other. I’ve never had a close relationship with an addict of any kind. I suspect that I would have a complex mix of desires, some of them perhaps conflicting with each other. I want my friend to be healthy. At the same time, I want to respect my friend’s freedom to make choices for himself. And I’m sure I would have other desires as well. Ultimately, given my complex, conflicting mix of desires, I will act based on what I define to be my highest interests.

Comment by Charles Upchurch — January 3, 2004 at 12:12 am

When you use the word judging, what do you mean? To get out of the current logical loop in this conversation of judging the judge, it is necessary to better understand what exactly we are talking about. Judging, judgement, and judgemental are words used to describe a broad continuum of concepts. I see that Continuum of Judgement something like this:

Openness and Awareness

Perception

Discernment

Qualitative Analysis

Distinction

Differentiation

Determination of Meaning [as in Understanding]

Self-Awarness [as in how I feel about something, and where my preconceptions lie].

Determination of Relative Value [as of Better or Worse]

Personal Assignment of Value or Worth [as of Guilt or Innocence]

Moral Prejudice [as in I know what your kind are like]

Critique of Character///AKA Naming [as in “YOU ARE attractive, smart, capable, responsible, OR YOU ARE mean, lazy, careless, or stupid]

Punishment (or Mercy) [as in choosing my behavior in order to influence others]

How we see the concept of Judging is strongly influenced by whether or not we allow our understanding of it to be clouded by our relationship to power and authority, long companions of judgement in human cultures. If I assume that making a judgement about an idea or a situation is the same as rendering judgement on or towards another person, I am blinding myself to the reality of my relationship to power, and cannot truly understand judgement on its own.

Discerning one’s perception of truth does not make the thing true. It also does not make the thing untrue. Since we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, it behooves us as human beings to admit that judgement is a dangerous tool, like a sharp knife….it can be used to carefully cut vegetables, i.e. to help us live well in this world….or it can be used to impose our idea of how things should be on our world and those in it. Both involve judgment, yet the results spring from very different intentions. Now that I think of it, the value of judgement is all about whether or not it is used with the most effective foil for a sharp knife or a sharp tongue…compassion.

Comment by Jason Felice — August 10, 2004 at 2:02 am

With regard to Chris Morris’ comments, my opinion (and I’m also a student of Nonviolent Communication, although a really new one) is that no judging is necessary. If you want to help your friend quit drinking, it may be because you feel concerned because you value your friend’s happiness. Or it may be because you’re sad because you’d like some peace at outings with a group of friends. Or it can be because when he drinks, he becomes violent and you are furious because you value his family’s safety. All of these express a feeling and need on your part. In none of these have you judged John’s actions as wrong, and this will help moving forward with helping him.

Another sort of judging which may enter into the picture is diagnosing. Is John an alcoholic? Once you’ve owned your reasons for wishing to help and avoided making moralistic judgements (”what John is doing is wrong”), you no longer need to justify with diagnoses, you use clear observations. Perhaps John only drinks once a year at best, but you could still be furious because you value his family’s safety. Once you’ve owned that this is yours, John is much more likely to respect your opinion. Anyone can dodge and weave definitions of alcoholism or moralistic judgements or other judgements or comparisions by pointing out small logic differences, and they are very likely to do so because being judged is not pleasant. But it is much more difficult to dodge what your friend may feel about your behavior and what he says he needs, and there is not much motivation to do so if in the process your friend has conveyed that he will not judge you and he is still willing to respect you.

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