Improving Communication: The Most Important Piece

The most common goal I hear from couples seeking therapy is to improve communications.  Expressed in various ways, they say talking to one another is ineffective and frustrating because they can’t hear each other or because they don’t feel heard even though they believe they’re hearing their partner.  When asked what good communication would look like, the response is along the lines of “he/she would hear my perspective.”  What partners are looking for is to be heard, validated, and respected.

Good communication is about more than one person being heard.  It is about being able to have a successful dialogue, about two people being able to express and be understood, about both being able to be relational as opposed to being individualistic.  However, I believe the strong need to be heard and acknowledged without consideration for the other is setup from infancy.  Mother/infant communication is one-sided because of the baby’s dependence on the mother.  Ideally the infant communicates feelings or needs, mom knows what’s being communicated and mirrors the feelings or takes care of the needs.

What so often happens with couples is indeed bad communication.  Ostensibly each person argues their perception of facts, e.g., what REALLY happened, argues their beliefs, e.g., what SHOULD be or happen, or argues feelings, e.g., what is felt vs what SHOULD(N’T) be felt.  All this happens under the guise of using logic on the other while each may be at a fever pitch emotionally.

What is happening emotionally can be many things but frequently involves some variation on the following emotions:

Frustration – the other person is not hearing, or they’re saying something they shouldn’t be saying.  They shouldn’t feel what they do, need/want what they do or, think what they do.  Emotionally there is an urgency to get the other person to change their wrong-headedness.

Anger – can escalate from frustration.  It feels like our needs aren’t being met or we’re not being accepted when the other person can’t accept our perception.  It feels like the other person is putting demands on us or rejects who we are when they’re asking us to give up our perception and accept theirs.

Depression – also can develop from frustration which leads to feeling powerless, helpless, or hopeless leading in turn to withdrawal or shutting-down.

These emotions promote responses that contribute to poor communication.  Partners end up saying hurtful things, trying to control each other, or becoming distant and disconnected.

There are many communication protocols and skills that are taught as a way to help these dynamics.  In general they all teach how to listen, how to speak, how to mirror/reflect back, how to make space for feelings (don’t deny, minimize, invalidate, etc.).  Learning such skills can provide powerfully helpful tools.  One of my favorites that I recommend most frequently is Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communications:  A Language of Life.

However, more often than not, when couples seek help with communications, learning communication skills is not enough.  The reason they’re not enough is because using the skills requires them to be calm and able to access thinking skills.  When we are too emotionally charged, our brains go into reactive mode.  Being reactive limits our abilities for rational thinking, good judgment, empathy, being relational – in other words access to adult capabilities and perspectives.

Therefore, more important for good communication than learning so called communication skills is being able to manage emotional reactivity.  I think of two important components to managing emotional reactivity.  First it can be learned as another type of skill:

Step one is recognizing our own emotional reactivity.  This step is about noticing when our reactions are intense, charged, or over-the-top, and naming those reactions.

Step two is owning our own intense reactions.  This step is about accepting that extreme reactions are our own – they aren’t because someone else has caused them.  Owning our intense reactions doesn’t mean that other people don’t impact us in negative or hurtful ways.  It means that the charge we have is tied to our own experiences, interpretations, feelings, and beliefs.

Step three is doing the work necessary to manage the intensity.  This step can in fact be adopted as a conscious choice to behave differently, but in some case it requires healing from earlier experiences.  This healing is the second component, and may be necessary for those reactions that have the biggest emotional charge or intensity.  Healing can happen in a variety of ways, which usually include some form of making sense of and compassionately witnessing the experiences.

Because good communication can’t happen in the absence of being grounded, managing emotional reactivity is paramount.  It enables being able to really listen and hear the other, and to speak without being defensive or offensive.  If you would like to explore improving your communication through learning new protocols and skills or through understanding and healing intense emotional reactions, I would love to help.  You can reach me at 720-363-5538.