My daughter sent me an article about something she was learning in one of her classes in college.  During the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago, giant insects roamed the Earth. There were predatory dragonflies with two-foot long wingspans and scorpions the size of skateboards!  Besides “eeeewwww,” we both had the same reaction.  Giant insects roamed the Earth?  How the heck did we not know this before?  This got me thinking about how very, very much we don’t know.  

In graduate school, one of my professor’s would repeatedly remind us:  “When thinking about your clients, you always don’t know more than you know.”  In other words, we see our clients for an hour a week out of 168 hours.  They tell us about only a fraction of what their experience is and this is filtered through what they want us to know and what they themselves allow themselves to know.  With so much unknown, it is natural to fill in the rest with our own perceptions and ideas.  To be a good and helpful clinician, you have to be careful about the assumptions you make and the biases you bring.

This is true of every interaction we have.  In fact, when you talk to a neuroscientist, such as Michael Taft, he will explain to you that “no human being has ever experienced the actual world.  Your experience of the world comes to you through the signals of a group of peripheral devices, called “senses.”  Your brain takes all of the information gathered through your senses and interprets them into experiences.  The more experiences you have, the more data your brain has to interpret any new experience.  In other words, the older we are, the more we may think we know.  

The assumptions we make in thinking we know about others is based on the projections of our own hopes, fears, and worries.  Often they cause us to interpret what other people say in ways they may, in fact, not have intended. And often, the more history you have with someone, the more you think you know who they are and what they would think or feel.   When in reality, this may only be the result of a deeply entrenched dynamic based on a history of layer upon layer of perceptions that seem to confirm themselves.

So given that we can’t possibly know everything there is to know, or even know what we don’t know, we have to be careful with our interpretations.  In order to do so we have to be open to both what we may be assuming and what we may be missing in our relationships.  It’s good to stay curious and ask questions.  While it may feel comfortable to think we know how our loved ones feel or what their opinion might be, be open to change.  We all do it, and it could be exciting to learn something new about someone or understand how they have grown.  You might just be surprised at what you find.  Hopefully, nothing as creepy as a  four foot long millipede!