Usually there is an urge to just shutdown, run away and don’t express yourself because you think it’s not going to work anyway so why bother, right?
I think, like with any new habit (for communicator and listener), you have to give it a try first, at least for some time, to really evaluate situation, but also fight your own fear and shame of just speaking up.
If you don’t express yourself – other person won’t be able to have a chance to see their own triggers/traumas. It doesn’t mean they will necessary notice it and start working on it, but at least it’ll be exposed.
So what’s your story? Was it hard? Successful?
1 comment
For me, the biggest lesson I learned when communicating with my husband was to stop talking and listen to him.
Once I did that and started hearing his feelings and not trying to think of the next response I could come up with, I could begin to understand him more deeply and develop better skills at communicating *my* feelings because there was no fight to be had – and there was much more progress in us not talking past each other.
Now we can express ourselves pretty clearly and we can more easily identify our own triggers and be receptive to one another’s feelings and there isn’t so much a sense of “why bother?” anymore.