Case Study - Communication

If I could wave a magic wand over everyone’s Life Puzzle, it would be to wipe away all the angst that we create in our lives and the lives of others within the Communication area of all our Life Puzzles! Communication is a two-part process.  First there’s what we say to others and they to us.  But even more importantly is what our SELF communication—that internal voice that drives us all day that is the most vital aspect of good communication. Too many of us have a SELF communication stuck in patterns developed as young children but are no longer useful. Problem is, that SELF talk becomes so familiar, we fail to re-examine it as adults and thus, we walk into adulthood repeating this child-based SELF talk.

Tracy’s SELF talk resulted from a childhood of injustice. As a child, she had to constantly bear up under the pressure of watching her parents take out their own conflicts on her and her siblings. There was no place for her to express her outrage so she turned within. She maintained a constant SELF-talk highlighted on her parent’s latest outburst and how unfair, unkind and incomprehensible so much of their behavior was! This behavior represents a “normalcy” for her—she expected that this is how people acted towards each other. The frustration and anger she felt in her powerlessness to correct this situation left her walking into adulthood with a highly tuned “injustice filter”.

Because she’d spent so much time in her childhood ‘self-talking’ about the injustice she’d received, now when she interfaced with almost anyone, she would run their behavior or words through this injustice filter. Her SELF was so used to being hurt by others that she operated her life on the premise that co-workers and strangers on the street were likely to be like her parents. As a result, her SELF talk constantly said, “Look, that person is also hurting you” and the most minor facial expression might be misinterpreted as a slight!

Her SELF talk was out of control to such a degree that when she walked into my office, she had a litany of stories to tell of all the people in her life that were treating her poorly. And she was certain all these people were mean and needed to be confronted with their behavior else, like her parents, they would ‘get away with it’.

As we worked together however, I challenged her SELF talk and showed her how to begin to turn off that ever constant “I’m being slighted” voice and begin instead to understand her SELF. She needed to realize that when others are acting poorly, she no longer has to respond with her little girl/powerlessness which activates her inner voice where she runs these supposed slights over and over again. Instead, as she learned to put her own Life Puzzle together, she could also realize that others and their poor behaviors represented a lack of awareness of how to build their own Life Puzzle. When she put their actions in this context, her inner voice could shift from rage (why are they doing this to me?????) to compassion (their actions are a lack of awareness, I can deal with this as an adult and manage my response).

She could stop the constant inner chatter that kept replaying the supposed slight and instead switch on a more positive, Life Puzzle-making voice. The difference is literally to train her inner voice to move out of reactive and into proactive. It starts by recognizing her feelings (rage vs. compassion in her case), think logically how she wants to respond and in this process build a proactive process of SELF talk.

Now, instead of letting her SELF communication shut down her life—she’s able to use it effectively, manage her feelings, creatively think, more appropriately talk to these other folks and build a better community. As you can see; Every piece impacts the whole!