Links below
will take you to the non-profit Break the Cycle! Web site (formerly "Stepfamily inFormation"). Use your browser´s "Back" button to return to the
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Premise:
From newborn infants to dying adults, we all communicate to reduce local discomforts - i.e. to "fill current needs." Doing that promotes satisfaction. Anything you do that causes a significant
emotional-spiritual-physical-mental change in another person can be called communication. Thus it is impossible to "not communicate" with other people, for silence and inactivity cause reactions and presumed meanings.
The quality of your life and key relationships depends largely on the effectiveness of the way you communicate - yet you probably don´t know what you need to know about this vital life skill. To reality check that proposal, mull these five challenges:
1) Name
a learned skill that you rely on more often than communicating to get your daily and special needs met. Note that thinking is internal communication.
2) How do you distinguish between effective and ineffective communication? If you´re not sure, how can you tell if you´re communicating effectively in situations you deem important?"
3) On a scale of 1 (totally ineffective) to 10 (totally effective), generally how effective a communicator would you rate yourself in calm times __ and in conflicts __ in the past year?
4) Identify
the five most important people in your current life. From 1 to 10, how effective would you rate yourself in your communication with each of them in calm __ and conflictual __ times? How effective would each of them rate you?
5) Take your time, and see how well you do with this
communication quiz.
Then return.
Pause and notice
what you´re thinking and feeling now. Would you like to improve the effectiveness of how you communicate with others and yourself?
This guidebook describes and illustrates seven vital communication skills that any motivated adult or older child can learn, with practice. If you can´t name the skills now, you´re probably not using them. That means
you´re probably used to communicating at
less than half of the effectiveness you could achieve in normal and special interpersonal situations. Restated: if you learn these skills, you may be able to routinely get your needs filled more than twice as often, and/or significantly faster and easier. That´s specially true in times of confusion, high emotion, and conflict. That can lead to less stress, more productive days and nights, and better health.
It also means you
can bequeath any kids in your life with a priceless gift: how to communicate effectively and frequently get their key needs met throughout their lives.
I´ve studied
and taught communication skills for over 40 years, as a teacher and a family-relations therapist. My education includes studying
Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), paradoxical interventions, and clinical hypnosis for several years. These taught me much about unconscious, paraverbal, and non-verbal communications. I´ve watched empathically as hundreds of troubled couples, or parents and kids, struggle to get their needs filled with each other, and fail - because they weren´t aware of these common blocks, and weren´t fluent with these mental/verbal skills:
Can you describe each of these skills and when to use each one? If you can´t, don´t feel badly. I have never met one of over 1,000 clients and students who could. The moral is clear: our culture doesn´t value effective communications enough to teach us these skills - yet. I believe that´s because most people don´t know what they don´t know about these skills and their benefits.
The skills are simple, learnable,
and effective - they help people fill their current personal and social
needs. The skills are sequential - each depends on knowing one or more of the others, starting with awareness.
Why Read This Book?
There are many books, tapes, and programs claiming to teach effective communication.
Satisfactions is unique for six reasons:
-
It´s based on (a) a well-researched "inner-family" theory of
personality, and (b) the related series
of seven learnable skills (above) that promote effective thinking
and problem-solving.
Communication effectiveness soars when your
true Self guides your other subselves. The related volume
Who´s Really Running Your Life? - free your Self from
custody and guard your kids (Xlibris.com, 2002, 2nd ed.) describes how to
achieve this.
-
This book proposes that effective
communication happen when people (a) get current
primary, vs. surface
needs met,
(b) in a way that leaves them feeling good about themselves, their
partner/s, and the process between them. I´ve never seen any other
communication materials propose the skill of
digging down to
identify primary needs as a requisite for effective
communications; Another unique foundation of this book is...
-
The keystone concepts of
R(espect) messages, E(motion) levels, and "Awareness "Bubbles." I´ve never seen
these described together
in 40+ years of research and teaching. If you can´t describe the five
messages we all decode from each other semi-consciously, you´re probably
unaware of how R-messages may degrade your most important
communications.
-
This book is one of a kind because it
contains Status checks (conceptual reviews and reality
checks) and Web-link addresses to many resource articles,
skill-practices, and worksheets in this Break the Cycle! site and others; and...
-
It includes (a) a 95-page communication and
relationship glossary of selected words and phrases, based on the
inner-family concept; (b) many page cross-references throughout the
text, and (c) a thorough index and to help you quickly find what you
seek. Finally, this book is like no other because of...
-
My unique engineering + business +
family-therapy + inner-family systems training and
experience over four decades. For over 40 years, I have studied
communication skills and taught them to hundreds of couples, adults, and kids. No other published author or group of authors writing about communication skills has my unique meld of training, experience, personality, and motivation.
Here´s
what you´ll find in Satisfactions - 7 relationship skills you need to
know:
Book Display
7 Relationship Skills You Need to Know