241 - Five Ways To Suck Less At Communication: The Revival
The communication toolkit
Communication is a big part of our podcast, so it’s time to revisit the five ways to suck less at communication! We’ve been adding to these and evolving them over the past 200 episodes or so, and here are the latest methods to avoid sucking at communication, both in romantic and everyday relationships!
Meta-communication: Essentially, communicate about the way you communicate. Some good ways to meta-communicate are:
Schedule time to talk. Taking time to regularly schedule a RADAR, or a time to discuss your relationship with someone, be it issues either one of you might be having or sharing positive moments, etc., can help mitigate the anxiety-inducing “We need to talk” text or call and promote a healthy discussion.
The Triforce of Communication. When you’re seeking simple support and instead receive advice, or vice versa, it can spark a disagreement or negative feelings. The idea behind the Triforce of Communication is that you preemptively let your partner know what kind of response you’re hoping to receive, whether you just need to vent and receive sympathy or if you want advice about your situation.
Choreography. Taking the time to recognize and analyze your behavior before and during a disagreement (while your partner does the same with their own behavior) can be a helpful way to identify patterns. Take ownership of your own actions when you’re feeling calm and neutral and recognize how you act during times of conflict. When you both realize you’re acting out your usual choreography during a future disagreement, you can instead divert behavior into a more healthy, previously hashed-out choreography to facilitate better communication.
Micro scripts. These are little phrases or words even that couples can create together in order to convey that something needs to be done or that you’re moving in the direction of something. Especially if there are frequent communication breakdowns, micro scripts can give you a dialogue structure to follow to get you to the other side of the interaction.
Clean Talk: As a sort of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) 2.0, Clean Talk has four steps to follow when dealing with an issue or conflict:
Data: Objectively state what happened, rather that putting meaning into it.
Feeling: Express how you’re feeling, using first person language, such as “I feel sad” as opposed to “You made me feel sad.”
Story: Instead of expressing a need that could perhaps be used to control someone else, express a judgment, or an assessment of what happened as it pertains to your own reality. Instead of saying something like “I need X, Y, and Z to happen,” phrase it as “In my opinion, it felt like this” or “In my judgment, this is what I think.”
Express a want: Instead of phrasing this as a yes or no question, express what you want in the future. “I want to feel close to you,” or “I want to feel included in your life” are some examples of expressing your desire without pressuring someone for a finite yes or no answer.
Know when to HALT: Refrain from heated conversations when you’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Additionally, we’ve added caveats of drinking/on drugs, horny, and sick to HALT, since all of these altered states can deeply affect how efficiently you’ll be able to communicate with someone.
Don’t listen to reply, listen to understand: Instead of focusing on your reply to someone immediately, seek first to understand exactly what they’re saying. Often, we’re already formulating our reply before someone is finished talking, and that can greatly skew our ability to recognize what they’re saying, which in turn can negatively affect your interaction with someone.
Seek an outside perspective: It’s important to give our partners a break, since often we rely on them for quite a lot. Getting outside perspective about communication dynamics can give you a valuable fresh look at how you interact with someone and give you a bit of insight on either the situation itself or your dynamic.