The Power of Your Words (what you say (or don't say) can change everything)
I think we’ve all had moments where our responses have been reactive; rather then intentional. This often leads down a rabbit hole of feeling guilt, shame and regret of what was said and so the cycle goes.
I know I can relate to this dance. can you?
This post is my attempt to provide a reflective read in order for you to take a step back, pause, recenter and (re) remind yourself of some essential truths around healthy & effective communication.
I found these communication tips below inspired by Jefferson Fisher to be incredibly powerful and helpful, so I wanted to share the valuable insights with you.
You meaning; my people, my community. Let’s get into this topic.
Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. - lao TZU
These quick and actionable communication tips have the capacity to improve your relationships (including the one with yourself) because speaking in a self respecting and intentional way positively impacts everyone.
A lot of these suggestions are about saying less or nothing at all, as silence is powerful. Speaking with discernment is powerful. Less is often more when it comes to the power of communication.
If all you take from this read is to become more intentional and discerning around when you speak; than I’ve done my work here. Speak when you have something relevant to say and, on the contrary, know when to leave room for silence, for empty space (which can be difficult for many of us to do.)
Some of us find silence uncomfortable. Gaps in conversations awkward, so in order to prevent discomfort we talk. We talk when we have nothing to say because we’ve convinced ourselves that mindless chatter is better than dealing with silence.
This is such a false truth; and potentially repels those in the room that are seeking more depth and connection.
When I was becoming a therapist, one of the first things I was taught, was how to “sit with the silence in the room.” To be with the space. To be mindful not to fill the gaps in communication that happen in a client session. This is an important space for a therapist to hold for their clients. Those gaps that you leave space for are sometimes when really important moments or insights happen, as growth needs space.
3 basic communication tips for more clear + direct communication
tip #1
eliminate adjectives: be mindful not to abuse “filler words” such as: just, like, really, actually. This is especially true when we’re publicly speaking or looking to convey an important point. (I need to work on this)
tip #2
be cognizant of your tone and pace of words; remember that clarity exudes confidence. Confidence speaks slowly and clearly; This can be a great tip to remember when you find yourself in a situation where someone is trying to talk over you. You can convey your self respect and hold the attention by slowing your speech, keeping a clear tone and continuing on with your point.
tip #3
how to spot false truths: liars tend to speak fast and answer questions quickly.
When you have nothing to hide it’s more common to take your time while articulating your thoughts. When you’re looking to spot someone’s ability for honesty, note cadence of speech, fast, wordy and fragmented answers, space filling and intentional redirection of the conversation and the topic. This often can be a redirection back toward you.
ex: “where was I today? where were YOU today?”
confidence is quiet ; ego is loud
3 tips for difficult communication:
1. breathe
Especially when you’re feeling defensiveness surfacing: breathe. Before responding, practice calming your nervous system with a deep breath so you are less likely to be reactive and give yourself a moment of recollection to respond with well intention.
here’s how:
pause
leave 5-7 seconds of space
talk with intent by talking slowly and calmly
2. don’t be afraid to ask
When in the mist of a heated conversation, don’t be afraid to ask:
“did you really mean that?” (did you really mean what you said, did, etc?)
What this does is it gives the other person the chance to think about the hurtful, hateful, potentially offensive thing that they said and gives them the opportunity to respond in a healthier, more conflict resolved way.
This is especially beneficial in relationships where we feel or know that the other person has our best interest at heart. This question has the capacity to clear conflict in a more productive way by providing an “olive branch” for the other to course correct with in the mist of a heated conflict.
3. be truthful & direct with your responses
A sign of emotional maturity is being able to speak the truth clearly and with respect. This does a couple of things:
when you say the truth; you see the truth.
This is so because when you know how to speak honestly and with well intention, it reveals who can and (can’t) match you. People who are uncomfortable with the truth will not be able to sustain a truthful homeostasis, which you eventually will uncover by being and remaining honest on your end. It’s too uncomfortable for them; so saying the truth will help you identify where people stand. Then you get to decide what action you want or need to take in order for you to carry on with your self respect, way of being, etc.
you eliminate a lot of assumptions and false stories when you center on the truth.
Loads of confusion results when someone is “beating around the bush” and not being direct in their communication. This is so because the truth is usually more simple; it’s not noisy. The truth can be hard; but it won’t be chaotic. The truth can cause chaos depending on the reaction of the receiver, however that is not the fault of saying the truth; that’s more indicative of where the other person’s comfort zone lies with the truth.
When in doubt remember: The truth is fact. Fact is stable and steady.
key communication tip
what to say when you really don’t want to go: (meaning “go” to the event, the party, the dinner, the whatever it is that everything in your body is saying a big, fat inward “NO” toward.)
Here’s an example of a simple dialogue to build around:
I can’t make it. (clear, not wordy, truth, being direct)
Thank you for the invite (expressing gratitude)
Have a good time at (fill in the activity or event.) (expressing kindness)
Declining an invite doesn’t need to cause mental torture. It does not need to leave you feeling guilt ridden. It does not need to be wordy. It is not unkind to have no reason for the decline. You do not need to explain why you “can’t make it.” It’s perfectly okay & mature to say ‘NO” directly, concisely and respectfully. Believe it.
final words
Working on your communication skills is a practice that will serve you greatly as the quality of your relationships has been researched to be the biggest predictor of a happy, well lived life.
Until next time my friends. See below for some additional resources on this topic.
An Invitation For You
If this resonates with you:
Want more reflections like this?
Subscribe to my IAMWELL Newsletter to receive grounded mental-health insights, somatic reflections, and friendly reminders to support a life rooted in slow living, wellbeing, and mind-body connection.
Curious about working together?
You’re welcome to book a brief, free consultation call — we can explore whether we feel aligned in working together. (Reach out HERE.)
Have thoughts or reflections?
Feel free to comment or share — I’d truly love to hear what this brought up for you.
*Image by Photographer & Visual Artist Amy Lynn Bjornson
Confiding in Others (Why It's Important and Tips to Keep it Healthy)
Trusting someone to confide in can be hard to do. It’s scary to trust someone to hold what’s vulnerable for us to say.
we fear judgement. we fear not fitting in.
Yet, the truth is that we connect more with others when we go beneath the surface. Going beneath the surface is where deep connection lives. It’s so important for your mental and emotional wellness to know who the people are in your life in which you can confide in.
On the flip side of things: someone confiding in you is a true honor. It’s something to be mindful & intentional about.
In short, when it comes to others confiding in you; be a vault.
Be respectful of what others chose to keep private and solely disclose to you. Find ways to refrain from talking about others personal lives when they’ve asked you to keep the conversation between you and them private.
With that said; use your healthy discernment to decipher if a topic is healthy for you to hold. (we’ll get into this more below)
Your ability to hold space for someone is important in so many ways; you’re proving to yourself that you can be trust worthy. You’re proving to the other party that you can be, which will earn you mutual respect and keep the connection healthy.
We act as a safe place for others when we refrain from telling what’s not ours to tell. It will eliminate so much drama, outward chaos and strained relationships if we can learn how to hold space for other in a healthy way.
Simply put; Be a person that sways away from the drama and chaos of gossip.
What does confiding in someone actually mean?
Google says: “To confide in someone is to tell them something privately. We confide in people we trust. We all have secrets and subjects that are hard to talk about. When we want to talk about something sensitive, we look for someone to confide in: a person we trust not to blab about our business to the rest of the world. “ -(google)
How about when someone confiding in you becomes heavy and feels unhealthy?
Sometimes what others are asking you to keep private is unhealthy for you to hold alone. There are times when what others are asking you to hold is putting you in a compromising position. This could look like being put in the middle of a mutual friends disagreement; where you feel like you’re hearing information about a mutual party that’s bringing you into the conflict. (This is called triangulation in the world of psychology. This basically means that one party is trying to draw you into their side of the issue. This tactic is manipulative and can cause a lot of emotional harm to our connections.)
This could look like hearing information that’s not healthy or appropriate for you to keep to yourself. A solid example of this is when someone discloses any sort of situation that is unsafe. (self harm, abuse, etc)
It’s a really difficult thing to navigate when we’re hearing information that’s either not meant for our ears or where we’re holding information about the safety of another that puts us in a questionable spot.
So, what do you do when someone confiding in you, puts you in a tricky spot?
Here are 4 quick tips on how to handle this kind of situation:
Don’t compromise your values / sense of self (ever). Any situation or piece of information that requires you to compromise your moral compass, what you value or believe in is something to really question and think twice about. This usually is a sign that what you’re being asked to keep silent is unhealthy.
Don’t act impulsively. If the situation allows for it; give yourself the time to reflect on the situation in order to make a grounded decision on how to handle it versus acting on your impulses.
Seek professional consultation. If a situation is beyond what a friendship could or should hold; it’s a good idea to seek professional help in order to proceed. This could look like calling the SAMHSA hotline or seeking guidance from a licensed professional.
Be straight forward. Share with the person whose confiding in you in a respectful and caring way that the information disclosed is concerning (or share what it’s bringing up for you.) Basically, what I’m saying is that it’s okay for you to be authentic with someone about how something is making you feel. Too often we validate why “we can’t” treat ourselves with the respect that we deserve.
I hope this post offers you some sense of direction in terms of how to navigate the tricky relationship situations that we can sometimes find ourselves in. When in doubt, trust your internal compass and pay attention to when something is not sitting well within.
*The above image by Photographer, Amy Lynn Bjornson.
How to Feel Your Emotions (Especially If You Don't Know How)
What does it mean to feel your emotions? How do you do that?
In a nutshell, feeling your feelings is the art of decoding what’s going on with you beneath the surface. Beneath the smile. Beneath all the doing and distractions that you could bury yourself in as an attempt to avoid what’s really going on emotionally. Beneath the part of us that’s not being truthful when saying, “I’m good,” “I’m fine.” “Everything is great,” when it’s really not.
It’s easy to get in the habit of ignoring or disconnecting from our inner world, especially if past situations have brought up big, intense emotions. If we’ve experienced a past situation that brought up emotions that were too much for us to handle at the time, we might have picked up the habit of shutting off emotionally in order to self protect. If we didn’t have the skills or support to cope when hard experiences presented, it’s a natural response to shut down and numb out emotions that are too painful to feel.
The issue with this tactic is that shutting down emotions consistently can become a bad habit and lead to a permanent disconnect from our emotional state. Many problems will arise with this way of coping as a permanent solution. Lost relationships, strained relationships and a disconnect from yourself are a few to mention. If you want to live a life that’s filled with meaningful connection and a solid relationship with yourself, it’s important to hone the skill of expressing how you feel. Both to yourself and others.
The skill of expressing ourselves can be challenging and is not something that we all do with ease. To go further, unless we’ve put some time and energy into building a foundation of “Self,” our expression will be limited. “Self” meaning the relationship between you and you, which aligns with your ability to connect to your inner truth.
If we’re not in tune with who we are and how we feel, then expressing how we feel to others will be nearly impossible. Have you ever drawn a blank or became tongue tied when someone was trying to engage in a conversation that involved exploring and expressing your emotional world? If this has happened once or twice you sound pretty normal and human to me. However, if going blank and having nothing to contribute consistently when your emotions are being called toward self expression, it could benefit you to learn practices to help you express yourself with more clarity and confidence.
My hope for this post is for you to, first and foremost, honor where you’re at self expression wise.
Let’s recap real quick: As I mentioned earlier, the reason why self expression can be so hard is because difficult things have happened that have caused us to wall up. Overtime, a continual habit of shutting down and walling up our emotions will cause permanent emotional blockage. This could be a conscious or unconscious reaction to uncomfortable feelings. The end result of doing this continually is an inability to connect with ourselves and others emotionally.
Here’s the good news: Self expression is a skill that you can practice and get better at. You can remove inner walls and become a more open, self expressive person. It’s not too late and it doesn’t need to take 20 years for it to happen.
Let’s Begin
In this post I’m going to point out 2 initial steps that you can take to begin exploring your internal world. Change always starts with awareness, so using these 2 steps to begin to tap into your emotional self will help you begin to feel. If you are intentional about putting awareness and energy into this area of your life, the concept of momentum and focused energy will help you become more in tune with your emotions in time. With practice you will be able to begin to feel your emotions and then hopefully start understanding them from there.
Our emotions are always communicating to us through our physical symptoms, feelings and moods. Our job is to decode what these signals or symptoms are trying to tell us. Knowing what’s going on with you will help your relationships greatly because it will allow you to self express with more confidence and truth.
Step 1: SLOW DOWN.
Assess how fast you’re going in your life. When we’re constantly busy with tasks and “to do’s” we’re not creating the time to feel our emotions. There’s a fine line to distinguish between being productive and being distracted. In order to tap into how you’re feeling you need time to “sit with and process your emotions.” (We’ll go over this in Step 2)
An inability to connect to what’s going on with us emotionally creates a disconnect from our ability to self express. How can we be disconnected from ourselves and articulate our feelings clearly and successfully? Not very well, if at all, my friends.
The first step is to create the space for emotions to come to the surface and be heard and felt. Basically, the initial step is an inside job between you and you. It can take some time to become reacquainted with your disconnected self. This step is calling for you to get back in touch with the neglected pieces of you by exploring past experiences that were difficult and were left unprocessed. Slowing down will help you to create the space to spend some time sitting with and sifting through unresolved emotions that you left behind. “Unresolved emotions,” meaning emotions that were too hard, too uncomfortable or too big to be felt, for whatever reason, at the time.
I hear you and I know that what I’m pointing you toward may be extremely uncomfortable, maybe too uncomfortable. Please listen to that if that’s the case. If you’re feeling like you want to jump out of your skin by reading this, then I would point you toward finding a professional to help you through this first, very important step. See more about finding a professional to talk to whose a good fit for you HERE. Without the connection to our truth and the space to explore what our emotions are trying to tell us, we will chronically be unable to express our full truth.
Step 2: LEARN TO SIT WITH YOUR EMOTIONS.
It’s amazing what we do to avoid our feelings. We distract with all sorts of numbing agents; unhealthy relationships, alcohol, drugs, binge watching tv, overuse of social media, over eating, over working, over scheduling, etc. It can get sneaky to detect our specific form of distraction because it can appear in the form of overdoing good things; over cleaning, over organizing, etc. Note to self: Over doing anything is imbalanced and excessive.
The thing with emotions is that if we push them down, they don’t go away; They just become repressed. Repressed emotions are emotions that we unconsciously avoid in order to not feel their discomfort. Like I said, difficult emotions don’t disappear. They manifest into other things like over reactions, short tempers, snippy comments, passive aggressive behaviors and, overtime, symptoms like depression or anxiety.
Sitting with our emotions means allowing them to come up and move through.
So, the question then is:
Q: How do we allow for emotions to come up, move through and be processed?
A: We allow emotions to move through and be felt by allowing the space and welcoming the “hard” emotions to be with us. “Be with us,” meaning right by our side. Hanging out with us like having dinner with a friend.
That doesn’t mean sitting in your home and staring at a wall in agony. It means allowing “pain” to be sitting at brunch with you without drinking $20 bottomless mimosa’s so you start numbing out. It means going on a walk and allowing yourself to feel your emotions without asking 3 friends to join you that you know will fill the space with gossip and excessive talking. It means having a free weekend ahead of you and not over scheduling it minute to minute with social activities and tasks so you have no time to face what ’s really going on with you beneath the busyness.
I know that if avoiding your emotions is what you’ve been doing to cope, I might be asking for too much here. In this case, if all you do is become more aware of the difficult emotions that are rearing to get your attention, then that’s enough. Continue to practice your body and mind awareness, so you can start acknowledging what your emotions feel like and where they are sitting physically within. As you notice this, as hard emotions arise, you can begin to pin point what you specifically do to distract yourself from feeling them by paying attention to your immediate reactions. Do you grab for a drink? Do you start booking classes and trips to keep your calendar busy? Do you find the latest Netflix series to get lost in? What do you grab for when you start to feel uncomfortable? Keep in practice by paying attention to your emotions in whatever capacity that you can. Keep trying to identify and feel your feelings. Keep practicing and in time you will become more in tune. You will eventually see results in where you continually focus your energy.
Below is an exercise for you to practice to help you identify and get more in tune with your feelings. This is an exercise that you can do when you have 10-15 minutes and a quiet and uninterrupted space.
Step 1: Name the Feeling
When you become aware of a feeling, pause. See if you can notice the general tone of the emotion present. Is it positive or negative? See if you can name the specific emotion that you’re experiencing without judgment. (For example: Is it sadness? Is it fear? Is it shame? Is it excitement? Is it anxiety? What are you feeling?
Step 2: Tap Into the Feeling Physically
Emotions are called “feelings” because we feel them in the body. Close your eyes and see if you can observe where the emotion is lying physically within. Is it in your chest? Your throat? Your stomach? Encourage yourself to “allow” the sensations to be present without trying to control, reduce, or escape them. If the feelings are difficult, this requires the courage to stay with an uncomfortable emotion. (I know, I know, it’s hard.)
If you’re having difficulty tapping into what’s going on for you, it can help to bring in curiosity. Be curious about the sensation you’re feeling. Be present by following your curiosity and asking internal questions. Is the sensation pleasant or unpleasant? Is the energy you’re feeling light or heavy? Give the body permission to feel whatever is there. Stay with this experience for as long as you can. A minute or two is suggested.
Step 3: Explore What’s at the Root of Your Feelings
Shift your attention toward connecting what event or circumstance could be driving the emotion. (A loss, a transition, a fight with a friend, a hard conversation, a break up, etc.) Avoid thinking about assumptions or getting stuck in a story about the event or circumstance that’s creating your feeling state. Rather, stay present by focusing on facts. Keep it simple by asking : What’s at the root of my emotion? Why am I sad? Why am I nervous? Why am I angry? Why am I hurt?
See if you can feel without self blame or pointing the finger at another. The goal is to go beyond surface emotions to get into the root source of your particular emotion. Stay present and with your breath in order to do this.
Step 4: Ditch Self Criticism With Kindness
As you allow your feelings, bring kindness and self compassion to your experience (especially if it’s a tough one that’s causing you a lot of pain and suffering). Refrain from self criticism and judgement. Do your best to hold space for self compassion. If this is difficult for you to do, think about what you would say to your best friend If they were feeling your specific emotion. You might say to them: “I’m so sorry you’re going through this,” “I know this is hard,” or “I’m here for you.”
This step is about actively bringing a self loving stance to your experience. One of the most important things you can do in this life is learn how to treat yourself with respect and kindness. This respect that you give to yourself will be reflected back to you in all sorts of ways in this life.
I know that being in tune with your emotions and expressing yourself effectively could be really hard to do. I hope that these initial steps help you to chip away at the blocks and avoidance mechanisms that may have built up overtime. With practice your desire to understand what’s going on with you emotionally will help you in all areas of your life. Things will feel a lot lighter and conflict will be less and handled with way more success when you know how to self express.
Good luck friends! Below is a quick video that sums up what was just discussed via this blog post. Feel free to subscribe to my youtube channel for more videos HERE.
An Invitation For You
If this resonates with you:
Want more reflections like this?
Subscribe to my IAMWELL Newsletter to receive grounded mental-health insights, somatic reflections, and friendly reminders to support a life rooted in slow living, wellbeing, and mind-body connection.
Curious about working together?
You’re welcome to book a brief, free consultation call — we can explore whether we feel aligned in working together. (Reach out HERE.)
Have thoughts or reflections?
Feel free to comment or share — I’d truly love to hear what this brought up for you.
Let’s stay connected. You can find me on Instagram at @IAMKIMEGEL
*Above image is by Photographer, Renata Amazonas.