As soon as two people begin to talk to one another, a complicated thing happens. Take an example from our family.
Our son used a topical medication for a mild skin condition. My wife brought home a refill of the prescription from the pharmacy. Later that day from the living room our son asked his mother, who was in the kitchen: “Where is the tetracycline?”
She answered: “In the small bookshelf underneath the phone.”
I don’t know exactly what our son thought at that point, but his face registered confusion, something along the line of: “That’s a pretty weird place for the medicine.”
Sure enough. When he looked where his mom had directed him, it was not there, and he told her so.
“Sure it is,” she replied, and walked into the hallway, and pointed to the bookshelf where the phone is kept. “There.”
He looked down to see the role of blue recycling bags used to bundle papers for the weekly garbage pickup.
Tetracycline ... recycling. They laughed.
When couples apply for therapy, they identify “breakdown in communication” as the most common problem. This should come as no surprise. What is surprising is not that human beings have trouble communicating, but rather that we can successfully communicate at all. Why is this?
Think of each and every person on this planet as a walking movie theater. In each mind there is running a continuous, sometimes coherent, often chaotic feature film entitled “My Life.” To each of us it is undoubtedly the most compelling, riveting drama available for home rental. In fact, it is so compelling – not necessarily enjoyable, mind you – that when another person meets us and begins running his or her own feature film, we have trouble paying attention. We react by trying to make what they say fit into the most interesting narrative already in progress, our own.
For example, take the phrase “close family.” Sarah recalls summer days filled with boating and water-skiing at the lake cottage followed by nights roasting marshmallows around a campfire. Eric remembers six brothers and sisters crammed into a two bedroom apartment with no privacy. Both families are “close,” although Eric would probably say “too close.”
Throw out words like father, mother, grandma, childhood, home, my country, job, money, God, and holidays to any group of 10 people, and you will set in mental motion 10 diverse scenes with specific, intricate associations. An event, such as a holiday get-together with the family, is an external, observable happening. An experience is my own, personal interpretation of what happened.
The risk in all verbal communication is to assume that when we use the same words, we are talking about the same experiences. If we make that assumption, then misinterpretation and confusion are bound to follow. This leads us to the first guiding principle of successful communication:
1. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Why is this a good starting point? Because then I recognize that what I am familiar with is my own highly subjective “feature film,” my own cognitive and emotional associations to the words you are speaking to me. When I realize that your inner experiences of life are not the same as mine, I can do a very useful thing:2. I can pause my own feature film long enough to watch yours.
This involves listening. I mean really listening. Many DVDs of feature films have an audio feature called a “commentary track.” Accessing it sometimes allows you to listen to the director of the movie talk about his inner experience, as the images from his film unfold on your TV screen. When we listen to the commentary track, we see more than the movie. We learn what the events of the movie mean to the person who made it.
When we listen to another person on a superficial level, we are just hearing a listing of events. Most likely we are off daydreaming about our own experiences of similar events. When we listen to someone on a deeper level, we ask them to tell us how they experienced the events. We want to know what the events mean to them. We want to hear their commentary track.
No wonder communication is constantly getting snagged. Really listening means thinking of you not just as a supporting actor in my own dramatic series, but as the star of your own show. That takes selfless concentration. Can you think of a better gift for the Christmas season?
(Pankratz is a marriage and family therapist for Catholic Charities Milwaukee regional office.)
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