When communication becomes "pathological"

#selfhealersdiaries

How you ask for a partner to meet your needs is important in relationships and life with others.

Communication can turn pathological if we do not learn to detach and process how we feel. This comes from not having a language for our emotions in childhood. When we deny our emotions in order to survive, we miss an opportunity to describe what is happening within us .

We end up saying things we cannot take back.

Speaking in a way that makes our partners, colleagues and friends feel unsafe.

We put pressure on someone to meet our needs.

We prompt, cox, cajole, force or walk on eggshells.

We just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

Repeated, these behaviours indicate abuse.

While we might have different intentions, we are fuelling wounds in others. We might believe that we need to be heard and understood, but we are in fact controlling and forcing outcomes.

We are controlling externals, attaching to outcomes.

When others push back and create boundaries, or leave ,we feel like victims.

Unchanged, our behaviours can end up pushing away people where we are trying to engage with them.

Remember, people owe us nothing

The idea is to recognise the origins of our wounds in childhood, and to learn to be the parents we needed. To put words to how we feel.

To recognise what is danger and what is survival mode.

Someone writing what we do not agree with online is not a life and death issue.

A partner not texting or meeting our needs is not a life and death situation. As children, there might have been the risk of failure to thrive. Not now. We are adults. We have choices.

We can,

Recognise that there is no rush to address this now with anyone but the self.

To learn foremost to listen to, and understand ourselves.

To find out how we feel about situations we struggle with and parent ourselves.

To give ourselves that which we need from others. Soothing, expressions of love and to then decide,

What is ours?

Is it even ours

What is theirs?

What are we struggling with?

Why?

Do we need to do or say anything? Now? Later? At any point?

And

What do we want from this situation? Obviously if we are trying to have our needs met, we need connection and engagement.

What is the best way to get it?

What methods of communication can foster connection and engagement? Rather than apply approaches that will yield unwanted results.

Then reframe and create solutions.

Communicate and schedule a chat.

Make requests or express our needs.

Leave it with the other person to decide if they want to do something about this thing we want.

Not to keep begging or reminding, because that is control

But to step into our values and allow them to do what is best.

To permit ourselves to choose what is best for us.

They are an adult and we want someone who chooses us without us forcing them. We just strive to communicate in a way that promotes safety around us.

It is a classroom, but we got time.

Yet, we need tools.

We need practice. Above all, we need not lose ourselves while trying to be heard or seen by others.