Tag: communication

Conscious Communication

Photographer: Brooke Shaden

Emotional well-being flows from the ability to clearly communicate what you need. This is not an inborn gift, but a skill to be learned.

Where to start?

By tuning inward: learning to become conscious, or aware, of your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, beliefs, and bodily sensations. What is here, now? Then expressing what you find and what you need. To speak courageously, from the heart.

Such introspection, however, may activate a sense of vulnerability. When people feel vulnerable, they commonly compensate by becoming demanding and threatening, believing that forcefulness will increase the likelihood of getting what they need, or they retreat into a state of shut down and cut-off. Neither approach effectively gets one’s needs met. A demand implies that the recipient is of lesser value than the giver and, therefore, that the giver has the right to dictate to others. Even if you give in to my demands, you will likely do so with resistance and resentment. If you rescue me from my state of retreat, I am likely to resent you or be disgusted with myself for my perceived victimization.

Of course, the origin of such behavioral reactions comes from outside our conscious awareness: the nervous system is scanning, and detecting, a danger or threat to our well-being in such moments. When our needs for emotional and physical safety, satisfaction and connection are not being met, our nervous system does it’s best to protect us; unfortunately, we develop unhealthy habits of fighting, fleeing, or freezing (shutting down/cutting off) instead of socially engaging to get those needs met.

Conscious communication starts with activating and strengthening our social engagement system’s capacity to collaborate and connect with ourselves and others in healthy ways to get our needs met. It invites an openness and receptivity to see what “is” without judgment, shame or blame, welcoming all involved to identify, understand and express what “is” on the way to seeking resolution and repair. This principle applies to all relationships, including those with your business partners, co-workers, friends, children, and parents.

Practicing Conscious Communication

In this article, I’ve slightly modified Marshall Rosenberg’s four-step process, plus added two steps that will help you start on the path to becoming a master of conscious communication.

1. Identify the event that triggered your emotional upset. Consider what happened, being as objective as possible. Just describe the facts as if you were an outside observer. For example, saying, “My husband is never on time,” is less useful than saying, “My husband agreed to meet at the movie theater at 7 p.m. and didn’t show up until 7:30.”

2. Take responsibility for your feelings. When describing your feelings, choose words that express the sensations you’re experiencing, such as “I feel sad, lonely, frustrated, or jealous.” Avoid words that shame or blame the other: “You make me feel.” When you take responsibility for your emotions, you invite the other person to connect versus defend.

3. Identify what you need that you are not receiving. As infants, many of us had caregivers trying to figure out what we needed because we could not identify our needs and communicate them ourselves. Others had caregivers who did not try to meet our needs or were unsafe physically and/or emotionally. As adults, we may subconsciously expect loved ones to know what we need and spontaneously provide it, or we may subconsciously believe the other person can never meet our needs. You are much more likely to get your needs met if you can identify them and communicate them consciously and clearly: “It would help me if I know of changes that will impact what time you meet me,” or “To feel secure/safe/connected, it helps me to be certain of the time of your arrival.”

4. Ask for what you want. What specific behaviors or actions would fulfill your needs? For example, if you want more engagement from your partner, do not just ask him or her to spend more time with you; ask for something specific: to take a walk after dinner, or go to a movie on Saturday night. Express your need in the form of a request rather than a demand: “I’d love to spend more time together. Would you like to take a walk after dinner or go to a movie?” Or in regard to a pattern that isn’t working, “How can we create a system that works for both of us regarding tracking time?” Everyone has an inherent impulse to resist demands, whereas our sense of emotional safety, satisfaction and connection likely increases when we’re asked to be part of fulfilling a request or resolving an issue.

5. Consider the four gates of speech before you speak: Is this True? Is it Kind? Is it Necessary? Is Now the Right Time to Say it? Part of being conscious in your communication is pausing to be present with what you are thinking, sensing, and feeling before you share with your partner. Never dismissing or denying your experience; but rather, looking inward to consider if what you want to speak to the other person is the truth versus some fear, mistaken belief, or narrative from childhood. Communicating the truth with kindness doesn’t mean you never say anything difficult; instead, it means considering whether this truth may benefit the other person as well as yourself. Considering if it is necessary to say it will help with the kindness aspect: must this truth be spoken now? The necessity is inextricably linked to the importance you place on the topic coupled with your belief that communication around the topic will benefit the relationship in the end. Finally, consider the timing: while what you have to say may be true, kind and necessary, is now the time to say it? This doesn’t mean avoiding important discussions, it means being aware, or conscious, of your partner’s ability to engage openly and receptively at that moment.  These four gates of speech may take practice to implement with fidelity. For most people, they go against our habitual way of speaking.

6. Add in what I call the 5th gate of speech: In my experience, conscious communication may break down when the speaker isn’t ready to hear the listener’s response. He or she has the desire to be heard, which is absolutely imperative, but equally important is the willingness to hear your partner’s response. Before initiating communication, consider asking yourself: “Am I ready to hear the response to what I have to say?” Being ready to listen and be changed by what you hear are two healthy components to communicating. If you only focus on your perspective, on what you think, feel, sense and believe, then you are not consciously communicating, you are telling.

Although using this process doesn’t guarantee that you’ll always get your needs met, it will substantially increase the likelihood that you’ll spend more time feeling comfortable and at ease with communication, and less time in emotional distress. Conscious Communication is best practiced alongside the tenets of the Couples Dialogue that I teach to clients from Imago Therapy. For more on that framework, email me at laura@laurafishtherapy.com.

This article was adapted in 2018 by Laura Fish, LMFT. The skills of conscious communication and emotional awareness are vital components of the Chopra Center’s Perfect Health: Ayurvedic Lifestyle Certification Program.

Transforming Relationships

I draw from many sources to find help for couples struggling to stay together, to consider the perspective illustrated by the Chinese character for Crisis: a time of danger and opportunity.  Inspired by the work of Tara Brach, I’ve recently started asking them this question when they feel like all may be lost: “Might you consider what is happening right now as the Darkness of the Womb versus the Darkness of the Tomb?” 

In other words, are you willing to use this moment in time to transform suffering into an opportunity to birth new life into your relationship?

How do people open to new ways of thinking, feeling, interpreting and acting? This is complex, but it starts by harnessing the power of attention to create choice and change. You cannot control your partner’s actions, but you do have the power to choose what you do with that information.  Do you want to hold on to it, rehearse it, find more evidence to support it, or do you want to notice what happened, feel your feelings, express them, and find the opportunity for the two of you to grow in response to the stressor?

Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and integration grows. This quote by Daniel Siegel captures the essence of how the mind may be used to change the brain to promote health and well-being in oneself and in  relationships. What we pay attention to gets stronger; if the object of that attention is solely how awful your partner is, that is what will remain. While it is natural to attend to thoughts and feelings that arise from stress within your relationship, it is also possible to expand your focus to include the wider perspective of what is working in the here and now as well as what might help to bring about change.

I help couples start the process of birthing new life into their relationships by having each member do some attention training:

1) Don’t believe thoughts that breed separation, hatred, anger, and resentment: while your thoughts may be real, are they true? Maybe the thoughts have valuable information for you, but do they get carried away into areas that represent more of your fears, or your exaggerations, or your doubts e.g., “She’ll never change. She is just like this,” or “He is always disregarding me. He doesn’t care about me anymore.” Beliefs are powerful. But are they true? I help clients engage in focused exploration of their thoughts to find what is useful information and what is not entirely helpful or true. Finding evidence that does not support the hot thought creates potential for the birth of healing in the relationship.

2) Feel your feelings: your brain is wired to turn away from pain, including emotional pain. But what you resist persists, so the pain from feelings unexpressed doesn’t disappear. It’s possible to train the mind to be open and receptive to feelings without getting swept up in them, trapped in pain that you can’t recover from. Using openness and objectivity, I teach clients to observe, express and integrate whatever feelings arise so the old habits of pushing feelings away are left behind.

3) Turn toward what is going well, or love: our brains are wired to scan for danger, to track what is potentially harmful. You can override this mechanism by training your attention to notice and linger upon what is going well. One of the greatest pitfalls I see as couples try to work through problems is one or both members not appreciating the positive changes his or her partner is making because they are predicting the change won’t last. In this waiting for the shoe to drop mentality, you block the birth of growth and change in our relationships.

4) Act from your awakening heart: imagine yourself moving through each day from your heart center, a heart that is open, curious, accepting and loving, that is in the present moment, not driven by protecting itself from your partner’s past actions or hurtful ways of being.

I often see people who are clinging desperately to the story of how bad their partner is, interpreting every moment in the here and now through the lens of then and there. It’s also common for people to eschew the ideas of “feeling your feelings” and “acting from the heart” as just psychobabble. I get that a lot, and I understand that perspective.  It comes from the lack of education people are given about how the mind and brain work in the context of relationship. When someone feels hurt by a loved one, the brain sends signals of “Danger/Fight/Flee” automatically. The person will remain stuck in this defensive mode if he or she hasn’t yet learned the skill of using the mind to engage attention in ways that can soothe the brain to return the mind to an open, receptive state. The place where stressors can be transformed into opportunities.

Sometimes it takes a therapist as an attuned “other” to help two people who have become lost in their narrative of the other to use their minds to change their brains so they may bring forward a new, healthier chapter in their lives. With Tara Brach’s beautiful metaphor of the womb versus the tomb and the training of attention, change is possible!

Is this the end?

I had a man in session with his wife last week questioning whether therapy would actually help their relationship. Fair question.

This couple had been working with me for four sessions spread out over eight weeks and the tension and distance remained. The husband had done some research and the outcome for couples in therapy “wasn’t good,” he told me, “no offense.”

None taken.

Therapists aren’t miracle workers and counseling isn’t magic. Sometimes people come to therapy and their relationships will still end. But the research about the efficacy of counseling may not make clear two important variables that impact the potential outcome: the timing of the entry into therapy and the effort made in between sessions to affect change.

Couples often come to therapy when they are seriously considering ending the relationship. They may feel they have tried everything, that change seems nearly impossible, and that the other person needs fixing. Unfortunately, this constellation of beliefs and feelings is not the best foundation for cultivating change. It’s still possible, but each person must be willing to put in the effort to gain clarity amidst the conflict, heal the wounds, and replace old habits with new, healthier, ways of relating.

So how do you know when it is time to seek out help for your relationship? If you are influenced by the stigma that only “crazy” people go to therapy or only couples on the brink of demise need help, you may want to consider updating these views before “The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse,” show up in your relationship.

Relationship researcher and therapist Dr. John Gottman uses this phrase signifying the end of days to describe four communication patterns highly correlated with relationships at risk of collapse: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. 

Watch Dr. Gottman discussing these patterns on Anderson Cooper’s talk show to see if they seem familiar to you.

First, Criticism and Contempt:

As a result of repeated experiences with Criticism and Contempt one or both partners may succumb to Defensiveness or Stonewalling:

While “The Four Horsemen” are not the only communication missteps that trip couples up, they are common enough to be identified as clear risk factors for the end of days for couples. I like to refer to this in therapy because it highlights for people that it is not just the content of conversations that lead to trouble in a relationship, but also the process of communicating. In short, it’s both what you say and how you say it.

The earlier you begin to cast the spotlight of your attention onto the communication patterns in your relationship, the more likely you are to stop an unhealthy process that leads to hurt, distance, and eventually dissolution of the relationship.

I told the couple sitting with me last week that I can not predict if their marriage will last, that I do not have a quick and easy formula to give them to magically transform their relationship; but with time and effort they can rebuild their connection with attuned communication, patience and practice.

If you can identify any of the four unhealthy communication styles discussed above as part of your relationship, consider seeking help. Don’t wait until you can hear the hooves of the horses galloping through every conversation you are having trampling upon and destroying the love that was once there.

Please email me with questions about how you and your partner can achieve healing for lasting change: laura@laurafishtherapy.com.