Do I get internal feedback from my own body, from my own thinking, from my own eyesight about how I’ve done something? Am I measuring the feedback with my own lived experience? Or am I getting feedback from others in incremental measurements about how I did, where I went wrong, where I should do differently next time?
One of the ways to manage this is knowledge of the task itself. Is there an accurate way to perform the task? Does a pair of socks go on in this particular way? Yes. They do. Is there a correct pair of socks to buy? There may be, depends on what you need them for? So, some questions that we are looking for feedback about have an accurate answer. This is how we can tell when people are lying to us. There IS an answer. It IS visible to myself. So I can see that I got something right. So when you tell me I am wrong I know you are lying to me. It might not be ‘your’ way of doing something but I got the task done. So I give myself feedback that what I did was ok.
Managing negative feedback can be challenging dependent on what percentage of an interaction is negative and the intensity or depth of the negative feedback. When there is a knowledge gap, the negative feedback can potentially have a greater impact on what I tell myself about my own performance because I actively don’t know how to do something, so I am more dependent on you to show me. Which means that I am more dependent on you to show me correctly, to not punish me for my not knowing, to try and help me learn in the best way possible. If I am getting negative feedback the entire time I may ‘turn my ears off’ and not listen to you. I might do this to protect myself because what you are telling me doesn’t work ‘for me’ because I am finding it difficult to deal with or it isn’t solving for me what I am trying to actually do, so you’re negative feedback is something that isn’t helping me to learn. So I may stop listening to you. I may also stop listening to you when you aren’t able to listen to me effectively. The quantity of negative feedback or the quantity of lack of feedback may also be the issue. I keep asking for hep but it isn’t there. I keep trying to interact with you but I am getting feedback that you don’t want me to interact with you. So I don’t. That is how I manage the negative feedback.
One of the challenges of managing gaps in knowledge and also in managing lived experiences of negative feedback is then trying to find the correct answers to what ‘is’ actually happening. Knowing how to learn how to learn requires a balance over the course of the day of feeling comfortable to take risks to try new things to bridge that gap but also to make sure that you are safe emotionally from the negative interactions when trying to learn something that may come from others. Hiding what you want to learn or your attempts at learning may still be visible to others but it may allow you the space to manage your learning without negative feedback. One of the big challenges then, is that this works well for independent tasks but it doesn’t for tasks that need to be performed with other people. Some of the gaps in knowledge can make this extremely difficult to navigate because feedback from others is actively needed to process certain types of information. When this information is never provided that gap is never bridged. Being cautious too is necessary when information is being provided by those with different motives for task completion. Threats of aggressive behaviour are not tolerated.