You may be wondering why there’s a chapter on communication in a book about stress. You might also be considering skipping this chapter because communication sounds pretty boring. But hang on and don’t flip the pages to the next chapter or close the book! Communication turns out to be a hot topic because it’s one of the biggest sources of stress. You get along with some people, but others drive you crazy. You can talk to some people, but with others it’s more difficult. The quality of your communication plays a major role in how well you navigate through your daily interactions with peers, friends, teachers, family, and even strangers.
Communicating well sounds easy enough, but all too often teens—and adults—end up making a big mess of it. Because you communicate every single day in many different ways, it’s worth trying to get better at it. When you can communicate well, not only will your life be less stressful, it will also be more interesting and fun!
Over the next few pages, we’re going to offer several ways to improve communication. Let’s start by looking at some of the basic ways we communicate every day.
It’s almost impossible to go anywhere or do anything without communicating with other people. Talking is the main way you share information, ideas, stories, points of view, likes/dislikes, or the cool new app you just found.
Obviously, the main way you communicate is through words. Your words might describe a fun time you had with a friend. You also use words to explain something you just learned, to ask a question, or to talk with someone about a difficult situation in your life.
Words are not only spoken, but they are also written. You probably communicate a lot during the day with written words through text messages, e-mails, or answering questions on a test or writing a paper for a class. You read them in magazines and on signs, too. Written words are everywhere.
So now that we’ve talked about how we communicate through words (spoken or written), let’s explore communication in a way that might be a little different than what you’ve learned—a way, however, that can help you make the most of what you have already learned about communication. How well you communicate can make a big difference in getting along with people and how you handle social situations—and how much stress you have. And once again, your heart and emotions are, shall we say, at the heart of good communication—both as a speaker and a listener.
Let’s look first at a couple of basics of communication. Although quite obvious, communication is between a speaker and a listener. And good communication begins when you are more emotionally balanced. With more ability to self-regulate and take charge of your emotions, you can speak with more sincerity and are better able to carefully choose your words, which can make a big difference between blurting something out and saying it with care. Being emotionally balanced helps keep communication clear so you aren’t sending mixed messages where you say one thing, but you’re thinking or feeling very differently.
As we said a moment ago, communication is a two-way street; it involves a speaker and a listener. When you are the speaker, in order to communicate well, it’s important to speak from your heart, which means being emotionally balanced and centered and being honest about your thoughts and feelings. To speak from the heart, you first take a moment to get clear on how you truly feel about an issue and the main point of what you want to say. You begin by being honest with yourself, and to do so, it’s important to make sure that what you say matches with how you feel and what you think. If what you say does not match up with how you feel and what you think, you can end up sending mixed messages—and that can really mess up communication.
When speaking from your heart, however, it is very important to keep in mind that if you want to truly be heard by others, it is not helpful or smart to yell and scream at them. Sometimes you may need to speak in a firm tone, but exploding will only trigger emotional reactions and will put your listener on the defensive. And when you’re in a defensive mode, you really can’t hear what someone else has to say. As best as possible, try and get coherent first before communicating. In some cases, you might feel upset or emotional, but try to find a place of greater self-control and speak from there. Speak in a way that you would like to be spoken to, and also be open to hearing feedback from others without reacting negatively.
Sometimes it’s appropriate to “speak your truth”—that is, honestly communicate your feelings and thoughts about a situation. For example, someone at school might try to get you to take drugs and you don’t want to. Speaking your truth might be saying just that—that you simply don’t want to, even knowing that others may sneer at you and think you’re a wimp if you don’t take drugs like they do. Speaking your truth, which is speaking with the honesty of your heart, is often one of the last things people will do out of fear of the other person’s response.
Recall a time when you were afraid to speak your truth. How did you feel? Chances are it got all bottled up inside you, and you carried that burden for days, maybe even weeks. That’s a good time to ask yourself, Which is the better choice—living with the discomfort from bottling everything up inside or finding the courage to speak my deeper truth? Sometimes you may need a third person—someone more neutral—to talk with or have with you when you need to communicate with someone concerning a big issue. With most everyday relationships, though, just try to find the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say, but do it from a place of inner balance and calm.
We can always find reasons for not speaking from our heart, and in the moment, those reasons may feel justified. But are they really? Do any of these reasons for not speaking from your heart ever apply to you?
Do any of those sound familiar? It’s very easy for your head to come in with all kinds of reasons not to speak from your heart. But are they really in your best interest?
Recall a recent situation that became more stressful because you were hesitant to say how you really felt. Could it have played out differently if you had communicated how you really felt? Perhaps speaking up might have helped relieve some of the stress you were feeling. When you do this, the other person may not agree with you or may not be able to really understand, but you will know you are genuine. You’re being true to yourself. That’s worth a lot. Speaking from your heart can feel good and give you the confidence to do it again. You might just be surprised with the results! Remember to speak the way you would like to be spoken to. It will help the listener hear what it is you are saying.
We have been talking about speaking skills, but that’s only one part of communication. Let’s look next at the importance of learning to listen well and the benefits that you can gain from doing that.
Deep heart listening means to sincerely listen to and hear what another person says. It does not mean you have to agree with what the person says, nor does that person have to agree with what you say. Deep heart listening helps you get a better sense of what someone is really saying so you can understand where the person is coming from and how the person feels. It helps you hear what’s behind the words, which is sometimes called the “essence” of what the person says. It can help create a deeper connection with the person, too. Deep heart listening is also a way of respecting others because it lets them know you are willing to listen to their point of view, while at the same time it helps you to understand them and where they’re coming from. As you listen deeply, you help others feel genuinely heard and cared for.
Being a good listener is an important part of communication; it’s half of that two-way street that we talked about earlier. If a person feels like you have really listened, he or she will be a lot more open to hearing what you have to say. It makes for a much better conversation, and having these kinds of conversations can be some of the most fulfilling moments in life—both as a teen and also later on as an adult. The payoffs are huge if you really work at good communication!
So how do you deep heart listen? You start with getting coherent and genuinely hearing not only the words people say, but also the deeper meaning behind their words.
To help you know when (or if) you’re deep heart listening, think about people you turn to for real support and understanding; chances are they are good listeners. When you talk with good listeners, you may have conversations that are more genuine. Are there certain friends or adults you can turn to when you have a problem or need to be listened to? What is their listening like?
You can develop these same qualities and when you do, you will be less likely to take sides in an issue or get pulled into drama. Your friends will more likely feel that they’ve been heard.
How do you know if you’re not deep heart listening? Here are some clues:
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, chances are that you are not practicing deep heart listening. And if others answer yes to any of those questions, they aren’t deep heart listening either. To illustrate, let’s say you are telling a friend about the lousy day you had and you describe all the things that happened. Your friend, however, is texting someone else during your conversation and she keeps asking you to repeat what you said. She certainly is not deep heart listening. Deep heart listening means that she puts the phone down and genuinely pays attention, without distractions, to what you are saying. She might ask questions or acknowledge that a lot of lousy stuff did happen to you today. In the second scenario (when she listens), you are likely to feel that you have been heard. It might not solve all the problems, but feeling heard is worth a lot.
We’ve talked about the importance of being a good speaker—speaking from your heart—and a good listener—doing deep heart listening. The next technique, Coherent Communication, can help you gain the ability to be both a better speaker and listener, which is at the heart of good communication.
The Coherent Communication technique can help you be both a better speaker and a better listener. To learn the technique, we’ll give the steps first, followed by the Quick Steps, which you can use to refresh your memory of how to do the technique. Next, we’ll give you some helpful tips, and after that, we’ll walk you through the steps and give a little more detail.
Coherent Communication Technique
Step 1: Get coherent before communicating in order to effectively share and receive information.
Step 2: Listen for the essence of what is being said without prejudging or getting pulled into drama before the communication is complete. Speak in a genuine tone and consider what you are going to say in response and how it may impact others.
Step 3: During important or sensitive communications, confirm the essence of what you heard to ensure mutual understanding.
Coherent Communication Quick Steps
Once you understand the steps, you can use these Quick Steps:
Here are a few helpful tips to get the most out of the Coherent Communication technique:
Use Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1), Quick Coherence (chapter 2), or Attitude Breathing (chapter 4) to get coherent. Don’t rush this step. Practice Quick Coherence or Attitude Breathing with your eyes open so that when you’re talking with people, you can get coherent and they won’t even notice. In the middle of a conversation, it’s okay to tell them you want to pause for a moment. That’s honest communication, too!
When you listen for the essence, you’re listening for the deeper meaning of what the person is saying. A friend may tell you everything is okay and nothing is bothering him, but when you listen for the essence, you may detect that he is worried about something. You’re also simply listening, without all sorts of other thoughts or judgments running in your head.
Confirm what you heard to be certain you’ve understood what the speaker was saying. Because we’re often in a rush, this is the step most of us forget.
When you confirm understanding, you can just say a few words or a few sentences. It is not necessary to repeat the person’s entire message. When the other person feels as if you truly understand, it is at that level where true confirmation takes place—it’s more than just the words. For example, your teacher gives your class detailed instructions about an upcoming assignment and goes over two pages of instructions that you will need to follow. To confirm the essence of what you heard, you might say something like this: “So to get started, we should read all the instructions again, but by next Tuesday, you only want us to have the first four items complete. And if we have questions about anything, we can just ask you. Is that right?” If it is correct, your teacher will say so, or if he wants you to do the first five items by next Tuesday, he can clarify that for the class. After all, he might have said the first four items but actually meant the first five.
Of course it’s not practical to confirm mutual understanding in everyday casual conversation, but in important communications, it can save a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunications—and therefore it can also save a lot of stress.
Now that you’ve learned what coherent communication is, let’s take a look at some of the places where you may run into challenges. Applying what you’ve learned might just help improve your communication so you can handle these challenges better.
As a teen, you may feel that you are frequently misunderstood—not only by your parents and teachers, but also by your peers who may label you as a jock, nerd, hipster, geek, or prep. That can cause a lot of stress. For sure, adults do have a hard time understanding teens. They get really busy and, in a knee-jerk kind of way, will tell you in absolute terms what to do and how to behave without truly understanding you and your situation. Or because they are older, they always feel they know best and may think your opinions are wrong or immature. For some of you, it may often seem there is no time or space to talk with your parents. Practicing the Coherent Communication technique or Attitude Breathing (chapter 4) can help offset this communication gap. If you don’t get the results you hope for the first time you practice a technique, try it again later. You’ll build your confidence and your ability to navigate challenging situations.
The transformations you are undergoing can dramatically affect the quality of your communication with your parents. There can be a real gap in understanding each other. Some of you may get the standard, passed-down recipes for life from your parents, and you write your parents off as not really understanding you. And, in fact, that is sometimes the case; they really don’t understand you. Many of your parents and other adults in the family are trying to either adjust to the changes they see in you, or they treat you like the child you were three or four years ago. They may misread your moods, overreact to your misbehavior or rule breaking, expect good grades without knowing your full schedule, frequently point out only the negative stuff, and just not spend enough quality time with you. In short, many parents really don’t know how to adjust while others are unwilling to adjust to the changes you are going through. This can create friction and a lot of stress!
Because of the transformation and stresses you go through as a teen, you often need more sensitivity and understanding from adults due to the extra amped-up emotions you sometimes have. Parents and teachers could help more if they let teens know that they can’t always understand them, even if they’re really trying. And, because they can’t, it’s sometimes hard for teens to respect the useful trial-and-error knowledge their parents have.
As a teen, you need to do your part, too, which begins with understanding and acknowledging your moods, attitudes, and behaviors that can also widen the communication gap. Here’s a look at how that can happen.
You’ve probably heard adults say, “I wish I had known that when I was your age.” And many adults really do wish they had known what they know now as an adult when they were teens. Teens ignore a lot of things adults have learned that got them through difficult times in their lives. When you’re a teen, coming into your own sense of yourself, you feel right about your perceptions and feel like you know what you know. Current times are not the same as when your parents were teens. But adults sometimes have strong convictions about what is right because of the knowledge they have gained from trial and error. This wisdom might actually be a shortcut to help you work out a situation. Sometimes, the truth of who is right is somewhere in between. Both teens and adults have good points and can learn from one another when they respect each other. That mutual respect doesn’t happen as much as it should because parents and teens simply don’t understand each other.
Here’s a common example of a breakdown in communication. A sixteen-year-old wants to go to a big party. Everyone is going to be there. She wants to drive her parents’ car and pick up a couple of friends on the way. Because she just got her driver’s license, her parents don’t feel she’s ready to drive at night, especially with other kids in the car. She doesn’t believe it will be a problem and doesn’t pick up on or honor her parents’ concerns for her safety. Instead, she gets angry that her parents won’t let her drive the family car. She locks herself away in her room, depressed and angry for hours. Underneath the emotional meltdown, however, if she could push the pause button on her emotional response—by practicing Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1), for instance—she might sense that they are right or she may at least have a respectful understanding of why they are saying no even though she may not be happy about it. Maybe her parents have learned from their own trial-and-error experiences the dangers of driving home from a party under the possible influence of alcohol. The daughter may never admit to such a possibility, but her parents are not naïve to the many risks associated with teen behavior. After all, they were once teens, too. But because the daughter doesn’t feel understood in other areas of their communication, she can’t hear or respect her parents in this one issue.
What we just described may not be your exact situation, but you can probably think of examples that fit your experience. So what can teens do? They can try to understand that it’s not that some adults won’t understand, it’s simply that they can’t understand. Just knowing that can cut out a lot of hurt, pain, and depression. It’s not that many of your parents don’t love and care about you, but sometimes they don’t know how to show the love they have.
Let’s look at another example of how miscommunication can play out and also how to use the Coherent Communication technique to turn it around. Here’s what it might sound like when a parent misreads your moods:
Parent: I’m really tired of your bad attitude lately. It’s dragging me down, and I’ve got so many important things going on at work that I don’t need to come home to all your negativity.
Obviously, that doesn’t feel very good. It can either shut down communication or fuel an argument. This would be a good time to step back so you can begin to take the steps in what you can do to communicate better. It’s a good time to put the Coherent Communication technique into practice. A good place to start—step 1 of the technique—might be to do Attitude Breathing (chapter 4) to get coherent. The list below gives you some ideas of a replacement attitude. You could also do Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1) or Quick Coherence (chapter 2) for step 1.
| Negative Attitudes and Feelings | Positive Replacement Attitudes and Feelings |
|---|---|
|
Angry/Upset |
Breathe calm or neutral to cool down |
|
Anxious |
Breathe calm |
|
Fearful |
Breathe courage, peace, or calm |
|
“I can’t” |
Breath “I can” |
|
Impatient |
Breathe patience |
|
Judgmental |
Breathe ease, tolerance, or compassion |
|
Rebellious |
Breathe respect or calm |
|
Self-pity/Poor me |
Breathe maturity, confidence, or strength |
|
Shamed/Guilty |
Breathe kindness, care, or compassion for yourself |
Let’s say that in the example above, you use Attitude Breathing (chapter 4) and breathe in the attitude of calm. Once you genuinely feel calmer, you can speak from your heart, which might sound something like this:
Teen: I know you have a lot going on at work and have had to work longer hours than usual, but I don’t really feel I have a bad attitude. It’s just that I found out that my best friend is moving and it’s all happening very suddenly. We grew up together, and I know I’m going to miss her. I’m a little bit afraid, too, because I already feel empty. I don’t have any other friends that I’m that close to. On top of that, we’re learning some new stuff in math class that I don’t understand, and we have a test this Friday.
We can’t guarantee that your parent will change his or her own attitude, but you can feel good about speaking from your heart and making a sincere attempt to sort things out. Be patient with yourself and with others, too. Communication may have been a big issue for a long time, and it would be unrealistic to think it will all suddenly change. Keep working at it. You may start communicating better than many, or most, adults do!
You have other adults in your life than just your parents. You have teachers, coaches, counselors, your boss at work, and likely others. Just because they have certain roles, such as being your teacher or boss, doesn’t mean that good communication just happens. Everyone, including you, has to adjust to your growth and changes. That can cause adults some insecurity. In their own way, some adults are working on bettering themselves just like teens. It’s not that any road, smooth or bumpy, won’t get us where we want to go, but a smooth ride can save a lot of time and energy and simply feel better along the way, too. Good communication can smooth a lot of the bumps. The sooner there is a bridge in communication, the sooner everyone can have greater understanding, patience, and deep care.
You don’t have to learn another strategy of how to communicate better with other adults in your life. Follow the guidelines as discussed in the section above. It’s that simple—but again, it’s not always easy to do when long-standing issues or emotions are flaring. It starts with stepping back and getting coherent so you can approach conversations with calm and confidence. Your ability to self-regulate how you respond in situations is a big step in becoming more mature. And because of that, you may find that you gain the respect of adults because you bring maturity to a conversation rather than reactivity.
Now let’s take a look at some other people with whom you communicate a lot—your peers. Because poor communication with your peers can be a big contributor to your stress levels, it’s important to find ways to communicate well with them.
Communicating with peers seems like it should be pretty easy. But, in fact, it can be just as big a stressor as communicating with adults. One reason, as we’ve said, is the transformation that teens go through—from changes in their bodies to mood swings, tantrums, and unsettled emotions like anger and anxiety. Teens are also faced with pressure from their peers to experiment with risky behavior—everything from skateboarding down the railing of a big set of steps at the local library to taking drugs and having sex.
How teens digitally communicate with others also produces significant anxiety. With the explosion of social media and mobile phones, many of you are constantly dialed into your devices with your friends and “Facebook-like” sites. Social media then becomes the stage for venting anger, gossiping about others, and dissing kids you may not like. It’s the stage for sexting, too. Using social media in those ways only fuels hostility and creates a lot of drama and stress. Social media can also be a huge expenditure of time and can take away from any real and meaningful conversations you could have with your parents or peers.
Let’s look at something else now that can take good communication offline—something that is more than likely present every day in your life. It’s very common and you’re probably quite familiar with it. One word sums it up, or at least part of it: drama.
Got any in your life? No doubt you have plenty of drama around you and hear or use the term “drama” a lot. The Online Slang Dictionary defines drama as a “constant source of interpersonal conflict.” You probably see people getting caught up in all sorts of conflicts or maybe even creating it by gossiping about other people and situations that they really don’t know anything about. They pass on what they’ve heard and, along the way, exaggerate it, put it on social media, and talk about it as though it’s the end of the world. You probably know some people who seem to dramatize everything. You know—the drama queens or kings. A drama queen tells the first person she sees, “My dog jumped on me as I was leaving for school and got dirt all over my brand-new pants. They’re ruined, and I look awful, and what are people going to think? I mean, look at my pants. See that dirty paw mark. Stupid dog. I can’t believe he did that.”
Even if you’re not a drama queen or king, it doesn’t mean you’re drama free. As it turns out, drama doesn’t just happen on the outside, although that’s where it often plays out. Drama, in fact, starts on the inside and can have a big impact on how you communicate and relate to people. Typically, drama starts small, but then it gets pumped up and spreads quickly. Everything gets blown out of proportion, whether it is a put-down you believe someone gave you, something bad that might happen in your life, or relationship gossip.
“At my school, there is a lot of drama! Little things become really big things. Soon the whole school knows. So I have to be really careful of what I say and to whom I talk about things. To be honest, I am a little paranoid.”
Drama seems to be everywhere, but does it ever help find a good, reasonable solution to a situation? Of course it doesn’t. In fact, meddling with drama usually only feeds it and makes a situation worse. Getting caught in the drama loop also wastes a ton of time.
Now let’s look at the two levels of drama, which we think you’ll find helpful in seeing what’s really going on. The second level of drama in particular is one that might be new to you.
Drama actually happens on two levels. One level is the drama that occurs after something has happened. For example, let’s say one of your teachers got on your case for not having your homework finished. After she was finished talking with you, you felt scolded. Immediately, you found a couple of friends to tell them all about it and how unfair it was. You justify it by saying that this teacher is always on your case. You may even try to get them to take your side. A little later, you look for someone to listen to your story. Each time, the story gets bigger and bigger and more dramatic. A little bump becomes a hill, then a mountain. The result? A lot of stress for you.
Think of times you’ve gotten caught up in drama. It might not even be your own, but you find yourself getting sucked into someone else’s drama about something that happened. Write these situations in your notebook. Doing so might help you think of even more. Then ask yourself if getting caught up in drama helped at all, or if you ended up feeling like you were spinning your tires in a drama rut.
What effect did all that complaining and rehashing the story with your friends have on finding a solution to the issue? Whose energy are you draining when you tell that story over and over? That’s just one level of drama, however.
The second level of drama is one that can sneak up on you without you even knowing it. This level of drama is all the inner drama, or inner “self-talk,” that you have with yourself about the situation. You might think of it as complaining to yourself and rehashing what just happened. Hey, that’s handy when there’s no one around to listen, but in the end it only makes matters worse and keeps you on the drama treadmill going nowhere fast.
Inner drama is all the blaming, replaying, worrying, or justifying of your perspective after a drama-filled situation or event—perhaps something like this: My friends always get to go out on school nights, and it’s so unfair that my parents only let me hang out with my friends on the weekends. Or, Why did so-and-so avoid eye contact or barely look at me today? Doesn’t she like me anymore? You tell yourself a story that may not be entirely true. And the more replaying you do—some teens blame others, while others judge themselves—the bigger you make the issue and the bigger the energy drain becomes. The inner grumbling or worrying keeps the issue alive, and before you know it, you’re off telling someone else about what happened. It might even land on your social media page.
All of this rehashing of feelings and complaining about a situation rarely leads to a resolution of the actual or perceived issue. More than likely, it only makes it worse. No wonder drama stresses you out.
Taking charge of the drama in your life begins with getting to the source of the drama. The first step in putting the brakes on drama, either your own or someone else’s, is to become aware when you are getting caught up in it. If you don’t acknowledge it, you can’t possibly do anything about it. Sometimes listening for drama in another person can help you see it. Taking on drama and reducing it, then, is an inside job. Instead of feeding drama, starve it!
As you’ve been reading, you may already have thought of times you’ve gotten caught up in drama or maybe created some yourself. Make note of these and write them in your notebook. Be on the lookout for drama throughout an entire day and see how much drama plays out both around you and inside you. For instance, you might overhear someone at lunch talking about how unfair it is that his parents grounded him just because he wasn’t following some of the house rules of keeping his room clean and cleaning the kitchen thoroughly once a week. You hear him give all the reasons that he’s upset about being grounded. The story goes on and on, and the friend who is listening adds to it by agreeing that it’s totally unfair. Then someone else joins them, and it’s almost as though they try to outdo each other with who has the biggest complaint. This is why it’s so important to first recognize when drama happens so you can do something about it.
One way to become more aware of your outer and inner drama is to ask yourself in any situation or conversation, Which quadrant of the Landscape am I in right now? Be really honest with yourself. When you are in either of the left two quadrants, it can be a sign that drama is lurking. That’s because any of the emotions on the left side of the Landscape (chapter 3) can be fuel for drama. After all, you probably wouldn’t be complaining and worrying about something someone did or said if you weren’t angry, frustrated, anxious, or fearful about it. Negative emotions can drive drama in a very big way.
Once you notice you are on the left side of the Landscape and see that you are fueling the drama, you can take charge and stop the drama in its tracks. Ask yourself, What technique can I do right now that will help me stop fueling the drama and that will stop the energy drain? You now know techniques that can help you shift on the spot to the right side of the Landscape or at least reduce the drama down to a manageable level. You could choose any of them: Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1), Quick Coherence (chapter 2), or Attitude Breathing (chapter 4). Or you might do Freeze Frame (chapter 5) to get insight into a more appropriate response. And be sure to put the Coherent Communication technique that you learned in this chapter to use. See for yourself what a difference it can make for you. When you get drama out, you can see the situation in a more mature way. You might find the situation was really not that big of a deal after all. And even if it was, you’ve gotten yourself into a better place to work it out.
We’ve talked about many aspects of communication and some of the challenges that we all encounter. Paying closer attention to your role in any communication is important if you want to get along better with people and have less drama in your life. Learning how to communicate better now will not only help you be more responsible and bring more maturity to life’s interactions, but you’ll also build a good foundation for communicating your best throughout your life. So keep practicing! It will pay off for building better relationships, which we’ll talk about in the next chapter.
Your Stress-Bustin’, Resilience-Boostin’, On-the-Go Action Plan