3 Essential Skills for Healthy Communication in Relationships
Communication is key to any significant relationship in life, whether it be communicating with your significant other, child, sibling, parent or friend. All relationships come with their ups and downs, but refining your communication skills can help strengthen your bond, and make it easier to manage conflict.
Healthy communication may also prevent unnecessary conflict from arising in the first place. Communicating effectively can be broken down into three key components:
Listen
Express
Accept
Listen
Listen – really listen – to what the other person is saying. Effective listening is an active, not passive, skillset made up of a number of parts. The quality of your listening greatly affects the nature of the communication from the person speaking to you. Some important skills to keep in mind when actively listening include:
· Look at the person when they are speaking
· Be encouraging – nod your head, say “yes” and “hmm”
· Be patient and refrain from interrupting
· Try not to excessively question, and if you must do so, use open-ended questions. Try asking “how do you feel about that?’ instead of saying “do you feel sad?”
· Rather than attempting to offer solutions and solving problems, really just listen
· After closely listening to the person, reflect back, paraphrase and validate their emotions and meanings, eg, “It sounds like (situation) has been really difficult for you, its understandable that you might feel (emotion)”
2. Express
Being able to express how you feeland what you think(two individual matters) is crucial in communicating effectively. There are certain communication spoilers, which can have a negative impact on expressing yourself in a helpful way. Try to keep the following in mind:
· Be positive - stay away from judging, blaming, name calling or criticising the other person
· Use specificstatements that label a person’s behaviour(nottheir character), the way that behaviour impacts your feelingsand why
o “I feel [emotion], when you [specific behaviour], because…”
o E.g. instead of saying “You’re so messy!” try “I feel disrespected when you leave your socks on the floor because keeping our home tidy is very important to me”
o Sometimes it may be difficult to articulate why you feel a certain way due to the other persons behaviour, that’s ok, in that instance still try “I feel[emotion]when you[specific behaviour]”
· Try to choose a time when you are not feeling overwhelmed or tired so that you are more likely to express yourself accurately
3. Accept
Accept the other person’s opinions and feelings even when - perhaps especiallywhen - they are different from your own. Relationships are healthiest when both sides are able to openly and assertively express themselves (read my previous blogs for assertive communication tips).
It is critical to understand that your partner/child/sibling/parent/friend will never be exactly the same as you in the way they feel or think about things. This is what makes relationships fun and interesting! Accepting who they are and tolerating the differences, and the occasional resulting frustration, is an essential key for relationships to flourish