Conscious Communication

              Most of us learned how to communicate by copying other people when we were too young to have any memory of this process.  Our daily communication habits are so familiar to us now, that we hardly notice them.   Yet many of us do notice that the way we interact with other people tends to create more distance than connection between us.   We may feel a vague frustration that our words do not seem to convey to another person what is really going on inside of us.

               Talking seems to offer our best chance of being seen and understood by another person, and we often feel a sense hopeless despair when communication leads instead to deeper separation and isolation.   When communication fails to connect us, or lead to greater understanding and acceptance, we most often blame the other person or ourselves, and either attack or withdraw from the relationship.   Few of us have any idea that it is our habits of communication, and the unconscious assumptions that underlay them, that are the cause of our misunderstandings. 

               Conscious Communication begins with bringing these unconscious habits out into the open where we can evaluate them honestly.   These familiar patterns of communication are largely responsible for our experience of disconnection from other people, and the most common ones are shared by many of us.  Once we look directly at how we learned to communicate, we can see if it is working for us or not.   And if it is not working, we can learn to stop doing it.

                 Then next step is to learn how to express our strong emotions and needs to other people while staying connected, and listen to other people express these to us, without evaluating or rescuing them.  Some of  the skills of Conscious Communication include emotional responsibility, opening questions, supportive listening, and assertion.  These are all relatively simple skills that do not require memorizing complex formulas.  Yet while the theory and skills are easily learned, the practice of them is difficult for most of us because our familiar habits are so compelling.

                To really learn Conscious Communication and make it part of your daily life, it is helpful to have the support of a teacher who can make the theory come alive through presentations, demonstrations, and guided role plays.   This process is similar to learning a foreign language.   The only way most of us begin to be fluent in Conscious Communication is to practice.  The more practice we do, within the safe and supportive container of a workshop, and with active facilitation and coaching, the quicker we are able to change our habits.