Timeless Communication

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”

— Tony Robbins

Last week we looked at some of the ways ways to become more comfortable with uncertainty and vulnerability.  I suggested that one helpful exercise toward this end is practicing your communication skills, which can involve you in feelings of vulnerability more quickly that most things I know—not just for the sake of just feeling vulnerable, but in order to demonstrate that it’s possible to feel vulnerability and to live through it just fine.  You may even come out of the experience with valuable knowledge that will help you in the future, plus greater confidence that feeling uncertain doesn’t mean anything very bad is happening.  This week we’ll look at some basic ground rules for engaging in communication in a constructive way so that your practice can be more rewarding.

Do you ever feel like no matter what you say, you're not being understood?  When this happens, it may be that the framework, the assumptions, the methods you're using are getting in the way of what you're trying to get across.  Think about how differently you react when someone approaches you calmly and respectfully versus when someone ambushes, pressures or screams at you.  It may be that there's valuable content that the person is attempting to relay in the second scenario, but you are unlikely to hear it because of the unpleasantness inherent in their attack.  Numerous skills may be lacking in such a case, and while we'll only cover a small number today, here are some thoughts on methods that will affect your communication styles for the better with consideration and practice.

• One of the most helpful guiding principles for skillful communication is the ability to acknowledge and represent that your feelings are no one else's fault.  This may seem like a radical idea, because it often seems that our feelings are a direct result of how others behave, i.e., if he would just listen, or if she would just stop nagging me, I wouldn’t have to be so angry…etc.  But this line of thinking puts you in the position of the victim, and predicates your happiness on the choices of others.  This suggests that you are powerless to change the situations in your life for the better, which is rarely the case. 
  • You have choices in your thoughts, which do much to give rise to your feelings; you also have choices in your actions.  You have the option to do the internal work necessary to understand and handle your own emotions on a daily basis, then take any appropriate actions so that they don't spiral out of control.  It takes two to tango, and (unless you've been kidnapped) you always have a part in the creation of interactions with another person, if only by choosing to be there and interact at all.  In your communications, it is often important to share how you feel, but this is best done without blame.  You might say, "When you slam the door when you come in and out of the room, I jump every time, which isn't pleasant for me. I end up feeling irritated, and then I end up resenting you."  You are explaining the situation from your point of view in a somewhat mechanical, logical way that is less likely to put the listener on the defensive. It represents how one thing leads to another in your personal experience.  This makes it more likely that the listener will actually see the problem you describe as understandable and, hopefully, be willing to participate in finding a solution.  (Timing is key here.  Ideally, you will find a time to attempt a communication like this when you’re calm and can remain solution oriented.)
  • This may be pretty difficult to do depending on the situation. When we haven't practiced this skill, we have a tendency to get lost in thinking things like, "You're stupid. You're selfish. If you cared about anyone but yourself, you would pay attention to what you're doing and think!"  Yet it's possible for someone else to have a viewpoint sufficiently different from yours that it has very sound logic, based on their unique experience and goals, that you would not have been able to figure out without their explanation.  If you allow yourself to presume that the other's viewpoint is valid and seek to understand it, you may be surprised how much there is to learn, and how much cooperation then becomes possible.
• It's essential to allow others the space to have their own reactions.  This is often one of the hardest skills to learn for numerous reasons.  We have a tendency to react to others’ emotions, whether out of a desire to help the other to feel better, or out of fear of certain outcomes, which can include fear of aggression or abandonment.  These fears can be based on ingrained past experiences, including in childhood, such that primal survival instincts kick in.  This may seem automatic, inevitable, and activate your physical fight/flight/freeze response even if you're just discussing who is going to walk the dog.  You may not even know consciously why you're getting so stressed out, and it's not easy to work with an issue you can't even see.  Psychological work like traditional talk therapy is designed to help you understand why you behave in certain ways so that you can spot these seemingly automatic reactions and practice responding differently when you choose to.  It may take some doing to recognize that flash point when old patterns start to smolder, but it can be done.  Somatic modalities like EFT can also work to release stress regarding both old situations and recent ones from the body, which helps you to stay calmer when facing something that triggers a disproportionate reaction.
  • Allowing someone else to express difficult emotions without immediately trying to “fix” them or defend yourself from direct or implied (or imagined!) blame absolutely takes practice.  Depending on your upbringing, your values, and the roles you tend to play in social groups, it can feel downright painful.  Yet everyone else’s emotions are created from a complicated mix of elements just as yours are, and no matter what someone else claims, they are not your fault, nor yours to fix.  Obviously if you love someone, you don’t want them to be in unnecessary pain, and you certainly may be able to help them to feel better in some ways, including by taking responsibility for your motives and actions.  But they have a right to feel their emotions and work through them.  If you try to be too involved in that process or take too much responsibility for how they feel, you are depriving them of important experiences.  Meditation and other calming practices help you to solidify states of mind that you can learn to recapture when you’re in challenging situations, which is part of why such practices are so valuable.  When you have a well-practiced state of calm that you can call upon when you’re being tempted to get drawn into emotions that are not your own, you have a lot more power to communicate in helpful ways.

These are just a couple of skills you can practice to improve your ability to communicate effectively and respectfully with others in your life, and they are definitely among the most challenging.  I didn't start with the easy ones, but with the ones that may take the longest to master!  I hope you'll dive into some area of these and see if you can make some progress.  When you can be more skilled with your communication and remain calmer while doing it, it's incredibly empowering.