There is a saying attributed to Native American lore having to do with understanding people:

“Don’t judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their moccasins.” Today, we could easily recognize that no one can walk in another person’s Birkenstocks, Nikes, Wingtips or Stilettos. While the expression is old, I have found this a valuable way of understanding people and avoiding the tendency to judge them, then become irritated, and ultimately avoiding them. The idea of “walking in their shoes” is difficult but very valuable. Let me tell you about  two people whose shoes I need to walk in.

Jack: I play basketball with Jack fairly regularly. He is a very competent player, strong, and very capable. Off the court he is in a service profession. This particular pick-up game of basketball tends to be a bit more “aggressive” in some ways, namely some of the players, but not most of them, using a bit of pushing and shoving, but interestingly, no complaining, yelling, or threatening that is a part of some pick-up basketball games. I have known Jack for a number of years, most recently in this particular gym but also in another gym. While relatively tall, Jack walks with his head down most of the time when he is not actively trying to shoot the ball. But Jack is almost the only guy on the court who gets irritated at other players who, at least at this gym site, tend to foul a bit more than might be allowed elsewhere. I find it difficult to fully accept Jack thinking that he “should know better” given his helping profession.

Jane: I have never personally spoken with Jane. It appears, at least from a distance, that she is a reasonably happy person. I maintain a distance from Jane when we are in a common community group because of the way she indulges her young son, namely allowing him to run and scream, thus disrupting the meetings where I see her from time to time. I can understand, at least to some degree, Jack’s inclination to get unduly angry on the basketball court, but I find it harder to understand how Jane indulges her child.

The thing that is similar about Jack and Jane is that they irritate me to some degree. We have written quite a bit about how any form of anger, whether irritation, frustration, of whatever you call it, is really a secondary reaction. The primary reaction is disappointment, or as we have said in many of our writings, sadness. I am sad that Jack isn’t mature enough to give his best and see that other basketball players are doing their best. It is quite different from Jane, who also is doing her best in raising her son. I don’t want to be irritated with the likes of Jack and Jane. I find it immature for me to have such feelings for these people, who in my judgment, are good people. I understand, at least theoretically, that these folks are doing their best to survive and thrive in life albeit, with what seems to me, some behavior that adversely affects other people.     

While I have opinions or suspicions regarding these people, I do not really know how they feel, what they think, and what circumstances in life have led them to behave the way they do. I have not walked in their shoes for miles. I haven’t even tried their shoes on.

What is this “walking in their shoes?”

“Walking in someone’s shoes, metaphorically, means that you go through life, or a portion of life that the other person has or has had. This would be a great way to prevent any kind of judgment and accompanying irritation with people who behave in a way that you find odd, wrong, or offensive in some way. If we could stop time as we know it, change bodies with someone, live the life this person had together with all the challenges they had had, we would, indeed, understand why people act in a certain way. More importantly, we would understand their feelings, their beliefs, their values as well as the challenges they faced in their lives. Of course, we can’t do this: we can’t stop time, we can’t live someone else’s life, and so we can’t really understand why they act in the ways that they do.

If I can’t actually walk in their shoes, and understand the cause of their behavior and the feelings that cause their behavior, what can I do? I can start with recognizing my lack of understanding which just might help me progress to find a way to accept things that I don’t understand. But how can I accept something that I don’t understand and probably don’t like?

Accepting without understanding

• Avoiding a label or diagnosis

Unfortunately, therapists, like us, have a plethora of mental health diagnoses, which purportedly give us some understanding of people. So, I could say, for example, regarding Jack, that he needs to “work on” his passive aggressiveness and stop taking out his repressed anger on the court. I could judge Jane as indulgent and lacking in parenting skills. But I know better than that. We work diligently to avoid using such terminology, finding it wholly unproductive, judgmental, and without much merit because diagnoses of any kind, mental health or otherwise, say what is wrong with the person, but say nothing about what is right with the person. Our practice of psychotherapy is based on understanding above all, namely understanding what is right about people rather than what is wrong with them. So, the first thing to do is to throw out all diagnoses and start from the beginning.

• Note how you feel

This is absolutely necessary if are to be a friend, an acquaintance, or an observer. More importantly, if you really want to avoid the tendency to be angry, irritable, or judgmental, you need to know that you, yourself, feel all of these things to some degree. It is not wrong that you are irritated by this person’s behavior or words, but it is an indication that s/he has adversely affected you. Instead of rendering a diagnosis, thinking s/he should be this way or that way, simply note how you feel and allow that feeling to be your feeling, not a feeling that this person has caused in some way. Knowing that you are irritated, for instance, is not wrong, but it is not the primary feeling you have. You are disappointed. I am disappointed that Jack is seemingly so unhappy. I am disappointed that Jane doesn’t know that she is loving her son to a fault, and this young child will enter his later years thinking that he can have the freedom to do anything he wants. It is, however, very hard to stay with disappointment rather than letting this feeling migrate into irritation and judgment. This, by the way, is very hard to do. It is easier to think, diagnose, or judge the other person than it is to understand the person.  I am actively working on this as I observe how Jane and Jack act.

• Find the feeling of sadness

It might seem odd that I would suggest that you should be sad, but let me explain. Sadness is always the first emotion that we have before we get angry or irritable. What happens is this: something or someone does something that violates you, assaults you, or offends you in some way. At that moment…and usually for just a moment, you will experience some kind of felt assault. Importantly, there is a movement from being assaulted, into being hurt, into feeling sad, into feeling the possibility of being hurt again, which then leads into a defensive fear of a repeated hurt. This defense almost always results in irritation or anger. While it might sound like a long process from hurt to anger, it takes a split second. It is the really important emotion of sadness that always precedes fear and anger. When Jack elbows me on the court, I certainly don’t like it and I don’t like Jack in that moment. When I let myself recognize that I don’t know why he is so passively aggressive, I can begin to feel the sadness that my fellow team member seems so unhappy and angry.

• Face your irritability

Consider that this irritability (that has come by your racing past hurt and sadness) is based on your value system. When I observe Jane letting her little boy run “wild” in public meetings, I know that it jolts my own value system for raising children. I have learned the hard way that raising children is a good combination of freedom and an equal amount of limitation. So, when I observe Jane and her son, I can recognize that Jane was able to give her son a lot of freedom, which 2-year-olds need, but not enough limitation that they also need. Jack was evidently given the freedom to work hard on the basketball court but not given the limitation of accepting other players’ values.

• Walk in their moccasins

Walking in someone’s shoes is, of course, impossible. We can only imagine what might have led then to do what they do. We cannot really know what they feel, what they think, and what happened in their lives. We can, at least theoretically, realize that the thing that irritates us is what they say or do. Conjecture, without any evidence, of what might have led Jack to get so easily angered, and why Jane wants to give her son so much freedom. Even though you can’t “walk in their shoes”, realize that they are doing the best that they can doing what they do despite how it looks like to you and how you feel. You will feel a bit softer with them.

• Say nothing

Say nothing? Really? Yes, really. There might come a time when you can say something to your friend, but if and when you do that, you have to be able to speak of your feelings and thoughts about yourself and life, not about them. This is a very important aspect of respecting the walk that other people are taking in their lives. So, in the meantime, saying nothing is probably the best thing to do for the moment. Your silence may speak louder than words. More importantly, you will be able to examine your own feelings, and resultant emotions, and get better at understanding so as to reduce your irritability.

What good will “saying nothing” do? It will help you mature emotionally, and as a result mature socially. But this means that you have to know how feel, value how you feel, and keep your feelings to yourself. Do that, and you will discover that you get irritated less and judge less. You know that we all have different shoes and have walked different miles.