By Counsellor/Psychotherapist Gill Jardine and Louisa Magnussen
Minds Anonymous is really all about language but largely the written form rather than spoken – we do of course offer some audio book versions of our support articles and will be providing more of these in due course.
In fact, a major point to the work Minds Anonymnous does, and where the idea came from in founder Louisa Magnussen’s mind back in 2020, was to offer a platform where people are able to ‘voice’ a story, in writing, that might be too challenging to voice out loud, and even more challenging to put the writer’s own name to – due to the stimga still experienced by many who suffer from mental illness.
The world of communication works much faster now than it used to. Letters posted before technology took over our communications would take days to reach their destination, leaving time for both parties to think before expressing an opinion and responding. Now, instant messaging is just that, instant. And the receiver can feel obliged to respond instantly too. There is little time to consider an answer. This could lead to misunderstandings or at least ill thought through responses. This clearly will make vast differences to content of exchanges and possibly actions taken as a result of such exchanges.
Life experiences and what happens to us all throughout life can be very complicated, the emotions attached, even more so. And not easily dealt with via instant messages. They need consideration and thought and maybe sharing with trusted friends and family over time. I wonder if all this speed actually makes effective communication more difficult. We all need time to think, we all need time to consider, we all need time to question.
What can we do to aid the situation? People are clearly social creatures who seek connection with other folk. However, we are also private creatures who like to control how much of ourselves we make evident to others. We have a dichotomy here – we want to be private whilst at the same time, share… We have little or no control over what another person thinks or says but we do have control over our own thoughts and comments.
Looks like it’s down to us then, we need to take the lead here but how? Well, we believe it is by thinking more about what we say, before we say it. When tackling a complex problem that needs discussing with another human, try making some bullet points before you talk or write to that individual, especially if you suspect confrontation may occur during this communication. List all the points you have found running about in your head and would like to either think about more or share with somebody else. Include everything – even the angry stuff or the frustrating stuff.
The idea being that you can see clearly all the things that have been bothering you about your situation. This will help you further understand what is troubling you. Look at the language you are using – does it really reflect how you are feeling? You may find the words are too strong or not strong enough so, find another word, one that more accurately describes it all. Consider; are you feeling irritated or ‘niggly’, angry or furious – identifying which fits will help you to know what you might want to do next.
There is a world of difference between irritated and furious which needs to be picked apart. Always keep in mind, how you actually feel? What are your feelings and how deep do they go? It will really help you to work things out either in your own head or if it involves another person. Understanding of yourself is crucial in finding contentment and language plays a huge part in this. You need to be able to use the words that you are comfortable with and/or you want the other/s to really hear.
As a society, we are not good at listening. Mobile phones have virtually managed to remove the art of listening in social settings. Just look around you, most people are on their phones during social occasions. Who are they listening to? I suspect nobody really, they will be too distracted to concentrate on actual content. What effect does this have on the quality of conversation I wonder?
At this point, I go back to our own responsibility for causing ourselves to be understood. I talked earlier about bullet pointing everything we want to include. The next step is to decide what you might want the outcome to be. If this is just a light-hearted chat, you probably don’t need to consider this but, if it’s really important, then you need to decide in advance what you would like to gain from it.
In order to feel well both physically and mentally we need to meet our needs. Physically we need our body to be working effectively and not be affected with a condition/s affecting fitness and getting in the way of us leading normal lives. Mentally we need to pay attention to our thoughts and our feelings which will tell us when things are not right. We may choose to keep things to ourselves in which case we must know and accept our own responses. If we choose to share then we need to take responsibility for what others know of us.
Believe in yourself, trust your feelings and be honest with yourself and, as much as you feel appropriate, be honest with others too. Other people don’t need to know everything about you, what you’ve been through or how you feel, but some of that ‘inner you stuff’ might just want to come out in a safe environment with the right people. Consider how you communicate with these people. Plan what you feel safe revealing and where your boundaries are with each individual you communicate with. We’ll talk more about boundaries, what they mean and how to set them in a later article.
For now, thank you for reading. For our introduction to Language as a topic click here to read SUPPORT: An Introduction to Promoting Understanding through Language.