Good communication is essential for relationships, but it’s challenging for nearly everyone. In my therapy practice, I help many people with communication issues, including couples, families, and individuals. This work usually involves developing reflective listening skills and learning to talk about one’s own emotions, rather than blaming others. However, these essential skills depend on something more fundamental: self-awareness. Successful communication is based upon our awareness of ourselves, which allows us to recognize what we are really feeling, listen to others without reacting impulsively, and express ourselves in an intentional way.
Most of us grew up in a family and culture that was not accepting of our feelings, in which emotional vulnerability was not safe, so we developed patterns of avoiding and rejecting our emotions, and disconnecting from what is happening inside of us. Painful or overwhelming experiences, especially as children, caused us to shut down our sensitivity in order to protect ourselves.
As a result, we have difficulty accepting our real feelings, or even recognizing them, let alone expressing them openly to others. Instead of being present with ourselves and transparent with others, we interact through patterns that serve to protect ourselves emotionally and to avoid vulnerability. Our communication tends to involve automatic reactions that are rooted in our past experiences and that reflect unprocessed feelings, which are outside of our awareness.
The key to improving our communication, and our relationships generally, is actually deepening our relationship with ourselves. Our capacity to communicate about our authentic experience is made possible by connection to ourselves, which allows us to recognize what is going on inside of us. We must work to understand our feelings, instead of avoiding them. We need to recognize our defensive patterns, which keep us disconnected from ourselves and others, so that they don’t automatically control us. When we inevitably become reactive, overwhelmed, or shut down during a conflict, we need the capacity to mindfully observe what’s happening so that we can choose how to respond to the situation.
The more we cultivate our awareness, the more we can move beyond automatic fight or flight instincts and into conscious communication. Instead of reacting, we’re able to share our true feelings in an intentional way. We learn to vulnerably communicate about our personal experience, creating connection with others, rather than generating defensiveness and disconnection. Our awareness gives us the capacity to listen non-defensively and stop engaging in cycles of blaming and arguing.
So while we do need to learn certain skills and concepts in order to improve our communication, more fundamentally, we need to be in contact with our authentic inner experience, as a basis for interacting with the world around us. We need to do our own work to understand our feelings and heal ourselves, in order to communicate well with others.
