Lived Experience Forum

[cloudcore]

Communication is essential for our survival. As humans, we must communicate with others to have our needs met, to build connection and resolve conflict. When communication is effective, there is less room for misunderstanding, and people often leave a conversation feeling more satisfied and fulfilled. How we communicate can influence whether we can secure a job, maintain a healthy relationship, get the right support for our mental health, and even create systemic change!

Effective communication however is not just about delivering information, it is also about helping other people receive and understand it. It’s about speaking so that others want to listen! Effective communication skills involve verbal and non-verbal communication, active listening, and also assertive communication, emotional regulation and empathy.

Here is a breakdown of these skills:

              - Verbal communication: choosing the right words and tone
              - Non-verbal communication: controlling our body language, facial expressions and reactions

Found here

              - Active listening: listening attentively while someone else speaks, paraphrasing and reflecting back what is said, and withholding judgment and advice
              - Assertive communication: speaking honestly and authentically about our thoughts and feelings with confidence and respect, communicating clearly and directly

Found here

              - Emotional regulation: managing our stress and reactive emotions in a conversation
              - Empathy: the ability to recognize and understand the emotions of others

Found here 

It’s important to note that while your communications skills and styles may change depending on the context or who you are speaking to, they are all important to building connection, communicating your needs and resolving conflict. Without each of them, barriers to communication can arise and conversations can become quite difficult.

This month long discussion will be a chance for us to discuss each different effective communication skill, how they can help and ways to implement them into our lives. It is also a chance for us to share and learn about how to communicate about our mental health in different ways, whether that is with our peers, with service providers and in advocacy settings.

To start off the discussion:

1. Which effective communication skills do you think you are good at, and which skills do you think may need more work?

2. Do you find it more difficult to communicate effectively in some relationships/settings compared to others? If so, which ones? (for example, speaking to friends vs speaking to family, or face to face vs online)

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We recognise that how we communicate and communication styles are often impacted by our lived experiences and history, and are at various stages. We also acknowledge that many of us face barriers to communications, particularly Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities, through language and cultural norms. We welcome everyone to bring their experiences to this space. If you experience any distress whilst reading along with this discussion, please reach out to Lifeline 13 11 14 or the SANE Help Centre to speak to a counsellor.

[LostAngel]

I think that communication is when your clearly able to understand another person and they clearly understand you in terms of what your saying to each other directly as well as body language communication creates mutual listening,talking and understanding of each other 

[ArtistZ]

1. I'm good at expressing myself in person about happy, positive, logical, scientific and empathetic topics. I try to be a good listener in person too and give people the space and time to say what they need or want to say.

I struggle sometimes to express myself well in written form and rely on emoticons to show people that I'm being friendly because I don't always have the right words.

2. I often like communicating with people in a once off setting because then it doesn't matter if you're being 'weird' - they have no context or reference for your behaviour. 

Commuicating in close relationships is something I've worked hard on because it's really easy to internalise stuff rather than 'put it out there'.

I have a huge amount of trouble with confrontation and end up having to go away and have a meltdown afterwards.

[pinklollipop15]

Looking forward to the discussion!

I think I'm good at active listening and verbal communication but sometimes have difficulty with assertive communication particularly with people who I feel close to and don't want to upset their feelings. Sometimes I bottle up my feelings and frustrations rather than repeat for the tenth time my wishes. Sometimes I feel stressed but I'm getting quicker at regulating my emotions. Oh I have pretty much answered question 2.. speaking to people I feel close to I find more difficult at times. could be friends or family. 

[chibam]

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@cloudcore wrote:

To start off the discussion:

1. Which effective communication skills do you think you are good at, and which skills do you think may need more work?

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When it comes to really important stuff, I'm hopeless in real-life conversations. I feel as if I'm much better expressing myself in writing, but I really don't know, because I don't always get direct feedback that offers any insight as to whether I've been understood or misunderstood.

In real-life 'big' conversations, I never seem to have any sense of control; the conversation goes places I could never anticipate. I find myself having to address things on-the-fly that I hadn't really considdered, and the relavance of which I don't really understand. I get all turned around and lost in the discussion.

One of the big things I've historically struggled with is trying to explain to others why I don't like certain things. When your confronted with questions like that unexpectedly, and you can't clearly explain your position (because you've never really thought about how to explain it to someone who doesn't intuitively understand it), you come off like an irrational nut. So, you lose the conversation.

I guess that means I'm bad at Assertive Communication. Not that that's a bad thing; just more that I seem to be stuck with the wrong people.

In terms of trivial chit-chat, I'm much better; but even then there are problems, because I tend to unintentionally give off cues that give people the wrong idea about me. For example, I might slip up and let people know I have a working knowledge of how computers work, which solidifies their preconceptions that I must like computers; when in reality I despise computers and want a life where I spend most of my time engaging with friends/family in real life and doing hands-on work; with very little time being stuck behind a computer.

I think I also sort of struggle with Empathy, because, although I think I understand the emotions of others, I don't understand why they want to perpetuate their bad emotions; and I also don't understand how to make them happy.

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@cloudcore wrote:

2. Do you find it more difficult to communicate effectively in some relationships/settings compared to others? If so, which ones? (for example, speaking to friends vs speaking to family, or face to face vs online)

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I have a much easier time talking with strangers then with people who know me. Though it's been some time since I've gotten to speak properly with a stranger.

I have great difficulty talking with short-tempered, critical, or judgemental types; people who seem to be deliberately looking for any cause they can find to lash out at you or berate you. That's a massive proportion of the people I know, unforutnately.

Moreover, I find it really difficult/pointless trying to talk to people I know have a vastly differant mindset to me. It's not just a question of having the strength, the technique, and a realistic shot and meaningful communication, either. There are really immense ethical issues at play, too.

Is it right to encroach upon their cozy, little concept of their community with your disruptive alien mindset? Don't they have a right to have a sense of home? The sense that they are happily surrounded by a community who are all on the same team, playing to the same rules and towards the same goal?

I struggle immensely with the ethics of all this; which make it very difficult to communicate. I need help. But how much justification do I have to hurt/disturb others in order to obtain it? Ideally, I never want to hurt anyone, ever.

[BPDSurvivor]

@chibam @cloudcore ,

I prefer writing too, but I'm mindful things can come out differently when written as opposed to spoken (and vice versa).

There's so much more to communication than simply the words - need to consider emojis, tone, body language, upper/lowercase letters...

Emojis never really existed when I was a kid yet it plays a crucial role in communication nowadays.

 Just like the world around us, communication is always evolving.

BPDSurvivor

[chibam]

@BPDSurvivor  So true. I've been misconstrued more then once over a written message. There's a lot that's left up to the reader's imagination, as you say (e.g. tone).

Still, for some of us, even with all it's pitfalls, we are able to communicate far more effectively and clearly via writing then we ever could with real-time discussion. I guess all forms of communication have their respective pitfalls, and it just comes down to the individual as to which form suits their own individual strengths and weaknesses the best.

[cloudcore]

@LostAngel, I absolutely agree!

@ArtistZ I resonate so much with many of your points, thanks for sharing. Written communication can be really tricky for me too, which I don't find surprising given studies have shown us more than 70 percent of all communication is nonverbal! Without facial expressions and tone, friendliness and compassion can definitely be hard to convey, so emojis can help so much with half of those missing cues. We will be discussing this further tomorrow

@pinklollipop15 thanks for sharing! I have struggled a lot with assertive communication as well, and can relate to bottling up feelings and frustrations for the benefit of other people's feelings. It doesn't leave me feeling great after conversations though so working on being more assertive has helped me and my wellbeing greatly 

[cloudcore]

@chibam I hear you, communicating in writing can give us space to think and express ourselves without the pressure of other's cutting us off or judging us before we can express ourselves fully. While I personally find written communication more difficult (because I have a habit of over thinking about what I am writing! ), I can understand that feeling of "losing" in a spoken conversation. Communicating our feelings and thoughts in general can be really tricky.

Thank you for also raising the points around having conversations that might encroach on other's beliefs and feelings. It can be challenging knowing when we have the right to assert ourselves and discuss our views with people who might disagree with us or are not ready to have certain conversations. This is something we can definitely discuss in our topics about active listening and empathy 

@BPDSurvivor communciation certainly is always evolving!

[LostAngel]

Thank You CloudCore