Make Yourself Heard In Five Easy Steps
To make yourself heard is a skill that few have been able to master. Some avoid conflict because by failing to make themselves heard they can avoid feeling misunderstood or even hurt.
There are two main ways people fail to get their message across. Some people are too timid to speak. These people are consciously fearful of critical comments and rejection.
The second group talk loudly at all times, filling conversations with trivial opinionated content. No one listens to them. Such people have repressed their fear of rejection and in doing so create an environment where they will always lack influence and fail to be taken seriously.
To make yourself heard, you first need to make the other party feel they are understood so they are more likely to hear you. To enjoy life, you need relationships where you want to make yourself heard.
We know, however, that through conflict we can get to know ourselves, our partner, our children, our extended family members, our coworkers. Conflict defines our boundaries (what we stand for and what we stand against).
Through relationship we influence each other and establish more intimate contact. To make yourself heard and enrich your life and relationships with the gifts conflicts may bring is not as hard as you may think.
The Cost of Avoiding Conflict Is High
Whatever the reason, if it’s become unimportant and unnecessary to make yourself heard in a relationship it means intimacy has been lost. As a result you would want to avoid them. If this person is your partner or your child, you may experience psychological problems.
As the number of relationships lacking intimacy goes up, the wish to make yourself heard falls of the agenda; you also stop listening to yourself, and even forget your own voice. Then, you loose the ability to know what you want, what you like, your preferences. You’ll start to lead your life through habits, others’ expectations for you, and the requirements of your various roles.
You stop enjoying life. Before you know it, you’ll become addicted to certain destructive rituals and compulsions because they anaesthetise you against depression.
Unconscious Factors in Communication
All communication starts with us. When your defence mechanisms stop you from being honest towards yourself, your true thoughts and feelings will still be expressed unconsciously. For instance, your tone of voice and facial expression will give away that you are not happy while you are thinking and saying that you are.
When what you say is the opposite of how you look, it becomes very hard for those around you to relate to you. They will not know to which expression they should respond. Such unconscious cues block communication in too many couples’ conflicts.
We all have similar defence mechanisms, or blind spots of which we are not aware.
Making Yourself Heard Is a Communication Skill
To make yourself heard, it’s important to remember the presence of these unconscious factors in communication. Because this is the only way you can control the reactions of your reptilian brain – limited to “fight, freeze or flight” – and expand your behavioural repertory.
We can compare this to writing a better, more effective computer code without removing a previous one. We re-program ourselves every moment by choosing our thoughts from the various alternatives available.
It really is possible to control the automatic reactions of your reptilian brain by choosing your thoughts!
You already possess the knowledge and skills required to make yourself heard. Here are the steps to this process:
- When you feel the need to make yourself heard, listen to yourself before acting. Where does this need originate from? How much of it is about the person you address, how much about others’ expectations? What kind of awareness about yourself could communicating effectively bring you?
- The second step before acting is to listen to the other party. Even if they are not actually there, focus on processing their words in your mind and understanding them.
- Check that you really understand them. Repeat their words as you understand them, but don’t add any comments, and ask them whether you’ve understood them correctly. If the answer is ‘no’ repeat the process until you get a ‘yes’, after which you’ll ask whether there is anything they wish to add.
- When you repeat this process until they have nothing further to add, the person you are talking to will have a heightened awareness about themselves. They’ll feel they’ve been heard and understood (even though they may not necessarily be approved) and therefore they may be calmer.
- They are now closer to hearing you. When communicating the issue on which you want to make yourself heard, make sure to…
- focus on the issue without diverting to other subjects that bother you,
- speak without judging or blaming the other party,
- reveal your emotions and your vulnerability,
- express your thoughts in a solution-oriented manner.
Making yourself heard this way may be defined as constructive criticism. This is one of the most important tools of the complaint free culture. Research by John Gottman and his team shows that the probability of divorce exceeds 90% in couples who approach conflict with destructive criticism. You can use this method not only with your partner but in all your relationships.
I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences with this method.
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)image:Kurt Bauschardt
You can listen to the soundtrack of this video from here.
