Say No To Dysfunctional Communication!

This is my first blog and so I wish to add a wee caveat! Anything I share is based on my knowledge, my experience and my opinions. I am not glued to my opinions, nor will I aggressively defend them. I love to hear other peoples opinions and truly enjoy healthy debate. So in saying that, I welcome all input. I may agree with you, discuss further or agree to disagree, either way it is all in the interest of broadening the scope of our minds. So enjoy! 🙂

Seeing as though a blog is one way to communicate, for my first blog I’m getting the ball rolling with the topic of communication. Specifically the kind that takes place between your friends, family, colleagues etc. When I think of the meaning of communication, the definition that comes to mind is something to this effect; saying what you need to, through a medium such as speaking, emailing etc. So I thought, if I want to write a piece on communication, I should very well know the the precise definition. According to the Oxford dictionary, communication means “the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium”. Surprisingly (to me anyway), communicating has nothing to do with what you or I want to impart or exchange, it is simply an exchange.

So then, if I were to ask you, how is your communication with your family, your partner, through email, etc.? You might say it’s very good and you’d be right! I am sure you are exchanging information constantly, imparting things all over the place, through an array of mediums, to numerous databases and even countless brains! So a better question then is, how well are you able to communicate what you want to communicate? When you hit return on the keyboard, post on Facebook, or add that inflection at the end of your sentence, does your communication work for you? Was it effective? How would you know? I’m going to take a guess and say that it doesn’t always work the way you’d like. In fact, I’ll even go as far as to say that most of the time it isn’t working. So for clarity of communication, today I’m talking about effective communication.

How can I be so blatantly confident that we are not communicating effectively? Well how often do you end up in an argument or heated conflict you did not intend? How often do you observe passive aggression in yourself or others, such as sighing, whining, slamming doors, giving the cold shoulder? How often have you witnessed your voice rising above the other persons and even though you know you will regret it later, you unleash a fury of emotions all over the other person and in a distorted way you think it feels good?! Or simply, how often do you not feel good, not feel heard or feel disconnected?

Our feelings are an indicator of a need that is not being met. If the emotion you are feeling does not feel good or you are wanting to feel a certain emotion, then we are motivated to communicate in order to fulfill a need. So what are needs? I am not talking about the basics of food, shelter, clothing and water. Here are a few examples of needs we all share:

• Acceptance
• Autonomy
• empathy
• love
• trust
• inspiration
• interdependence
• meaning
• understanding

In the words of Marshall Rosenberg

“Judgements, criticisms, diagnoses and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs. If someone says, “You never understand me,” they are really telling us that their need to be understood is not being fulfilled.”

If our intention is to communicate what we are needing to, then how we communicate is often dysfunctional. We have become so bad in fact that we don’t even know half the time what we are wanting to communicate. When we don’t know in ourselves what we are needing to say or feel, then it makes it virtually impossible to acquire the skill of being able to hear what someone else is trying to communicate. I used the word dysfunctional, because it is just that and there’s no beating around the bush about it. When you begin to really think about this, begin to open your eyes to how we are behaving with each other, it will really seem quite ridiculous. You may then wonder, “what on earth happened? When did we forget how to communicate?”

I have spent a considerable amount of time in training to be a Counsellor and Life Coach. One of the most important skills in both approaches to helping, is simply learning to listen to another person and hear what they are trying to say. It is not what many might think and arduously applying some questionable Freudian theory and BOOM you are healed! It is really a lot about actively listening to someone’s communication. Listening to every level of their being and with every level of my own and helping them to hear with their own ears, what they are needing. Needing to say, needing to happen, needing to feel, needing to not feel, needing to be understood, needing to be heard. An unmet need is a symptom of imbalance. Treating that need appropriately leads to homeostasis or balance. Learning to communicate effectively, is not a skill just for a Counsellor, or one I must impart to my clients. It is something we all need to start doing if we are to meet our needs, those of others and thus, live well.

I see it like this. Picture two people, each with a tray of crystal bottles full to the brim with water. Each full bottle is an unmet need. The more full it is, the harder it is to keep stable. The more unmet needs you have, the more heavy and difficult the tray is to carry. One person is trying to free up a hand in order to pour a bottle out. To do this they need the other person’s help, but the other person’s hands are already full with their own bottles of unmet needs. Both are so exhausted from carrying their own trays that neither have the time to help one another lighten the load of unmet needs. So they are both just staring at each other and growing more and more angry with the situation. In summary, I see this scenario quite often where nobody is able to fulfill their needs and nobody has the time or patience to help someone else meet theirs!