Why so much misunderstanding?

“I’m so tired today, let’s better discuss tomorrow how to celebrate your birthday,” Yana asks her younger sister, who is eager to immediately talk about all the details. Nina thinks that Yana is not up to her now … and leaves, slamming the door. In order to truly communicate, we must convey to the interlocutor our physical state and our emotions at the moment when we address him. But this is not enough – he has yet to hear and correctly understand what is behind our words. Mission Impossible? “In any case, it requires us to tune in to the other, to accept his feelings without evaluating or interpreting them, and this is difficult even for those who have developed the ability to empathize,” admits social psychologist Ekaterina Dubovskaya. In any case, communication failures of psychologists are not surprising …

We expect too much from communication

“Communication can be compared to a huge umbrella under which everything that happens between people is hidden,” says psychotherapist Virginia Satir. – Our ability to survive, establish close relationships with others, our idea of ​​the meaning of life, loyalty to our own ideals – all this largely depends on how we behave in communication with other people. Communication can be seen as a special measuring device by which people determine the value of each other. Since communication is so important to us, we are very sensitive to it, trying to figure out how best to behave, what and to whom to say, when to remain silent, and when to insist on our own. However, our self-perception is not always objective: “For example, “it is difficult for me to communicate” and “it is difficult to communicate with me” are not the same thing, comments Ekaterina Dubovskaya. “Someone believes that it is easy and good with him, but in fact it is difficult for others – he does not hear or see them, he communicates with himself.” That is why it is important to look closely at what is happening around us: if a desert began to slowly form near us (and this worries us), it is worth figuring out why.

We prefer monologues

“Communication is not always a dialogue. Sometimes we just need to speak out, and we can speak into the void or to ourselves, says psychotherapist Adolf Harash. “But only dialogue makes it possible to understand, to establish deep relationships.” However, even people with similar interests who work together or are friends manage not to hear or understand each other. When talking, we sometimes strive not for the exchange of information, but for the opportunity to have the last word. Then the only purpose of our discussions is to strengthen our conviction that we are right. Perhaps it was for this case that the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer proposed thirty-eight ways to be always right **. When debate is just a way to say “I exist!”, it turns into a series of monologues, where everyone impatiently waits for the other to be silent in order to speak for himself … The only way to avoid this is to want to feel the other. “Often we listen, but we put our own meanings and meanings into the words we hear,” explains Ekaterina Dubovskaya. – When we say to a friend: “Stop worrying!” We are indifferent to him, we reject his feelings. So there will be no dialogue.”

If it is necessary to explain, then it is not necessary to explain?

Hear and listen? It seems to us that this is elementary: it is enough to have time, to put yourself completely at the disposal of another, to “let in” his view of things. In reality, our fears and internal conflicts make us deaf: many have recoiled on the street from a man who seemed aggressive, but in reality only wanted to find directions or find out what time it was. In this we are like children – they also often do not hear us, acting in accordance with their own expectations: they collect toys when they were asked to collect a briefcase, or they go to dinner, missing the fact that they need to wash their hands. Adults in their fantasies go much further, trying to figure out the intentions hidden behind the statements of the interlocutor, even if they are not there. “After the corporate party, my colleague Anton drove me home,” recalls 29-year-old Regina. – I was already just falling off my feet from fatigue, but out of politeness I invited him to rise for a cup of tea. He looked at me coldly and said almost through his teeth: “Nothing will work, I have to get up early tomorrow.” Did he really think that I would rape him? Under the influence of his own sexual impulses, Anton attributed to Regina intentions that she clearly did not have.

“The interlocutor does not know what we feel, he can only guess or imagine that the same thing is happening to us as to him,” emphasizes Virginia Satir. Until our guesses and fantasies have been confirmed and refuted, they often become a source of misunderstanding and errors. With whom did I feel so good right now – with you or my idea of ​​uXNUMXbuXNUMXbyou? To achieve understanding, feedback is important. “Unfortunately, we do not use it so often, because it is not accepted in our cultural tradition,” notes Ekaterina Dubovskaya. “We believe that others should guess everything themselves: about our state, feelings, thoughts, plans, intentions, attitude towards the interlocutor.” And at work, feedback is often not provided for by business etiquette at all: the boss gives instructions, subordinates follow them, not quite understanding what and how they have to do, but not daring to ask again. “Feedback makes us much more effective in communication. Knowing that they did not understand him, the speaker will try to find other words, – continues Ekaterina Dubovskaya. “But for this, he himself must seek this feedback, must be ready to accept it.”

We are not addressing the one in front of us

The words that we utter are an attempt to bridge the distance that separates us from another person. But we are not given to meet another at the very depths of his being. “Each of us has a picture of the world that develops as a result of our experience,” explains Ekaterina Dubovskaya. “And we can only see what we can see. In communication, we often attribute qualities to people that they don’t have, we just invent them.” Worse, we are almost always talking to the wrong person! To whom are our requests for attention, pleas for love, or fits of anger addressed? To those whom we unconsciously identify with our first “others” – to our parents. Freud discovered a mental projection mechanism that parasitizes our communication, leading to misunderstandings. Projections cause us to sort things out with our father by referring to our husband, or get annoyed with a child just because he looks like our little brother. “Often people communicate not with their real partners, but with shadows from the past,” says Virginia Satir. “I have met families in which partners, having lived together for thirty or more years, take each other for completely different people and constantly experience mutual disappointment.”

Here’s another example: 42-year-old Evgenia can’t communicate calmly with her youngest daughter, 14-year-old Tanya. She realizes that she is much stricter with Tanya than with her eldest daughter, but she does not understand what makes her speak so harshly with the girl. And the thing is that Tanya’s blue eyes every time remind her mother of the terrible jealousy that she experienced in childhood for her younger sister. And she transfers to Tanya aggressiveness, which is not intended for her at all, treating her daughter the way she once wanted to treat her sister. Projection brings us back to our original childhood vulnerability. Therefore, if we want to stop poisoning our relationships with projections, the first step is to listen to the inner child, to establish a connection with him.

We reduce communication to words

Accustomed to relying on words, we underestimate other “channels of communication,” says Virginia Satir: “Different senses are involved in communication: you look at a partner and create a visual image of him. Then there is sound. Breathing, coughing, timbre and tempo of the voice are also a kind of information. Now, touch. Tactile sensations remain for life the most reliable source of information about another person. Each touch has a certain meaning: it can express love, trust, fear, weakness, admiration, neglect. I have noticed that when spouses gradually get into the habit and begin to enjoy touching each other, their relationship improves significantly.

Silence is also a way of communicating. “He who does not know how to be silent is not capable of speaking,” the ancient Greek philosopher Seneca assured ***. A pause in the conversation serves as a manifestation of respect for the interlocutor: at this moment we listen without interrupting, or we analyze what we have heard. But the silence is not easy to bear. We are constantly surrounded by sounds: the radio in the kitchen, music on the headphones, conversations on the bus, commercials in stores. It is believed that such a background improves mood, and in silence we are uncomfortable. Silence is unconsciously associated with emptiness and death, and sounds with manifestations of life. But the silence of lovers, for example, speaks of the depth of their feelings. Lovers can silently be together: this means that eros, the power of life, is stronger in them thanatos, the desire for death.

Accept yourself, trust others

Maneuvering between the fear of silence and the threat of misunderstanding, how to make communication successful? “Stop accepting ourselves for who we are not,” suggests Ekaterina Dubovskaya. But that kind of honesty doesn’t come easily. It is an illusion that it is easier for a person to talk to himself, an illusion that we understand ourselves better.” As a rule, an adequate self-image, the absence of aggression and the need to prove something makes a person a pleasant conversationalist. “A good attitude towards oneself – self-acceptance – has a great effect on communication,” continues Ekaterina Dubovskaya. “A person who loves himself, but understands that he can make mistakes, communicates better.”

Another necessary condition for mutual understanding is called by Virginia Satir: “When we avoid judgments and describe only our feelings and our interlocutor does the same, we can communicate openly, directly. We may not like what we hear, but we will understand each other. When we share our inner experiences with another person, we achieve two important goals: to really get to know him, moving from understanding to intimacy, and to bring into our relationship an element of trust that we all constantly need. Therefore, a father and mother who are unable to express their aspirations, to talk about their desires, can complicate the child’s communication in the future. Like those parents who prescribe to their child what he should feel, and deny his real feelings and emotions. Something unforeseen helps to achieve true understanding between loved ones, says Adolf Harash: “For example, spouses have been together for a long time, they can predict how the other will behave, but they have forgotten each other, they don’t see or hear. It is difficult to get out of this state on your own. But sometimes there is a breakthrough – if some impression touched them, it stung.

There are special techniques and methods that improve communication. For example, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), which teaches us to understand the way another communicates so that we can more easily convey our own message, or non-violent communication techniques, which promote “painless” dialogue and help to listen respectfully to the interlocutor even in case of disagreement ****.

Man among people

From the brilliant TV presenter who easily connects with hundreds of different people to the silent programmer who prefers to work with a computer, each of us has a need for communication – we need other people. “Communication is a sign of our inclusion in life,” notes Ekaterina Dubovskaya. “Sometimes it doesn’t even matter what we talk about. This is neither good nor bad: at the first contacts, we are helped by social norms that require us to talk about the weather, about trifles, because you cannot immediately tell about the innermost. But we make it clear to others (and feel ourselves) that we are accepted, that everything is in order with us.

“The need for communication and the need for solitude are not mutually exclusive,” says Adolf Harash. “Leaving society is also an act of communication, and a very serious one: I leave people because I want to feel my own existence.” But ordinary communication can be real. Think of the incoherent conversations about everything and nothing that leave a feeling of warmth and closeness. About feasts saved thanks to an appropriate joke or a funny story from life. And if suddenly there is a pause in a lively conversation, we embarrassedly say: “The angel has flown by.” In the ensuing silence, everyone suddenly feels defenseless, vulnerable, deprived of the usual clothes of words. Because our life is, in the words of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, “being-in-language.” And we are all talking beings seeking understanding.

* V. Satir “How to build yourself and your family.” Pedagogy-Press, 1992.

** A. Schopenhauer “Eristics or the art of winning disputes” (Collected Works in 6 volumes, vol. 6). Republic, 1999.

*** Seneca “Philosophical Treatises”. Aletheia, 2001.

**** More about this in M. Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication. Sofia, 2009.