Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends. 

I hope you’re all doing so, so well. 

I want to open this episode with an announcement, but I want to give a trigger warning for a birth announcement. If you don’t want to hear about it, that’s absolutely fine! I completely understand. 

Skip ahead 30 seconds and then hear all about communication. 

But, we did welcome our third (and last baby) our closing chapter, earlier this month. Our only girl, she is healthy and happy and BIG just like her older brothers. We are all feeling very blessed and our boys are completely obsessed with their baby sister. I want to thank those of you for your warm wishes and prayers. I genuinely appreciate it! 

Now, let’s get to business today. We’re talking about talking. Communication. 

I would say there is nothing more important in navigating interpersonal relationships as well as the relationship that you have with yourself than to have a strong understanding about what is and what is not, communication. 

Let me start with one of my favorite quotes about communication. IT come from author Steven Covey, “we do not listen with the intent to understand, we listen with the intent to reply.”

This is such an important thing to know about communication. So let’s apply this communication with other people, even the ones that you get along with so well. Often when we are listening to people, we are often waiting for the chance to throw in our opinions. Why? Well, because we think about our opinions in a very inflated way. Meaning that we give much more importance to the weight of our opinions than what we are actually listening to. This is not a character flaw. This is human nature. Even if your opinion is that of yourself, like, “I don’t know what to say” or “I’m so the wrong person to be talking about this” or something like that, those are still opinions that you have, you might not be communicating with them but you are certainly communicating with yourself. 

Communication isn’t just a person to person interaction where words are spoken. There are many types of communication. You can even google, “types of communication” and row after row of hits will pop up, “10 types of communication, the 6 types of communication.” So for the purposes of this episode, I’m going to be referring to an article from Drexler university, called the 5 types of communication, which are: verbal, non-verbal, written, listening, and visual. 

What I want to make sure everyone really understands is that these communication types are, again, regarding interpersonal communication and the communication you have with yourself. 

Now, this one kind of throws people, but I want you to think about it like this: there’s verbal communication- the things that you say to yourself or think about yourself. There’s non-verbal things like body language- that’s when you’re being a jerk to yourself and you start to slump your shoulders and stuff like that. Listening communication is when your body is trying to tell you something and you are ignoring it- maybe you’re feeling anxious and instead of allowing yourself to listen to your body, you ignore it, or try to which will always create more of the feeling you’re trying to ignore. And then a form of visual communication is how we visually present ourselves. There is an amazing Style coach named Judith Gaton who says, “Style is an outward reflection of how you feel about yourself on the inside.” And when she says that, she is not referring to wearing like high-end fashion, or anything like that. She talks about things like a drawer full of janky underwear, poorly fitting clothing- it’s all tied to how we visually communicate to the world around us, and most importantly how we communicate to ourselves. If you’re interested, Judith has a podcast called Style Masterclass with Judith Gaton and an amazing book, How to be a fucking lady. She’s so delightful you should totally check her out. 

So we can all agree that infertility and certainly the completely engrossing aspects of fertility treatment create a LOT of thoughts and feelings, so in turn a lot of communicating with yourself occurs. 

And remember what I said about how important our brain weighs our opinions? Yea, so if your opinion about yourself is steeped in unworthiness, self-deprecation, self-hatred- well, that’s a lot of really crappy conversations that you are having with yourself and it will be reflected in all of the forms of communication that I just talked about. 

One of my favorite tools to build up the conversation in my brain, my communication to myself, is the mirror exercise. It literally takes 2-3 minutes (if that). So the idea is to stand in front of the mirror, in whatever you’re comfortable in- you can start out in slacks and a turtle neck for all I care, you don’t have to start out naked, although that is always an option. The only rule for the mirror exercise is that it is a no bullying zone. There’s no grabbing of your stomach and making disgusted noises, or anything like that. This is a moment of appreciation. Pick out 3-5 things that you appreciate about yourself. Again, you don’t have to start out with things that you love, although that is certainly an option. We can start with just appreciation. 

Maybe you appreciate your smile- start there. I appreciate my smile. You appreciate what about your smile? Maybe you like the shade of white, how straight they are, how healthy they are, how the last time you went to the dentist they gave you a clean bill of health. What it is you appreciate isn’t s important as the fact that you are outwardly appreciating it about yourself. It is that communication of appreciation that you are showing yourself. That is the most important aspect. You’re gonna aim to do 3-5 of these per day. You can rotate them, you can stick with a few tried and true ones, as you change that conversation with yourself.

I remember forcing myself to do this during our second stim cycle. I stood in front of the mirror, in my bra and underwear and starting at my bloated and bruised belly and expressed true appreciation for what my body was trying to do. Again, I wasn’t telling myself that I was the most gorgeous creature that has ever graced the earth but more like, “thank you for working so hard to do this. Thank you for working so hard.” And this was before there was an outcome. I was communicating with my body that regardless of the outcome, I was still going to do my best to love myself and be grateful for what it’s able to do. 

So that’s the first part of what I wanted to discuss regarding communication with yourself. 

So now we’re going to talk about interpersonal communication. 

There is so much research around communication and a lot of us understand those 5 aspects of communication with regard to interpersonal communication. So I’m going to talk about a lesser discussed aspect of communication. 

This is how I explain communication to all of my clients and it can be used for anything- work, friends, family, partners, etc. 

This framework that I am going to describe can be used for any type of relationship or environment. 

Ok, so interpersonal communication happens in 4 distinct parts. 

1. What you say (or what they say)

2. What you mean (or what they mean)

3. There’s what they hear (or what you hear)

4. There’s what you make that mean (or them)

So, the best description I have is that it’s kind of like that game telephone. 

So those 4 parts:

1. What you say (or what they say)

2. What you mean (or what they mean)

3. There’s what they hear (or what you hear)

4. There’s what you make that mean (or them)

So here’s a recent example of this happening – I have a client and her husband sat in on a session bc they had a disagreement around something and it was a perfect example of a miscommunication. 

Now, I am sharing this with the permission of the couple and really specific information has been omitted for anonymity. 

But basically they just experienced a failed transfer for their last embryo of their first cycle. I think this was their second transfer total. So during this grieving process they were discussing next steps, as we all do, and her husband said that maybe it was time to think about other options. 

Those were the exact words he used. And when we talk about communication or if you’re working with me, I like to work with really specific examples and using words verbatim is very important. Because MOST of what we “think” we hear is us actually making what the words that were said to us mean. Right? Most of what we experience during communication is related to what we make those words mean, so that 4th part of communication. 

So those were the words he said, “maybe it’s time to think about other options.”

Now, when he said this, my client said she shut down, immediately started crying and then a fight ensued because she made it mean that he was no longer invested in IVF and that he wanted to talk away from treatment. 

So let’s take this step by step:

1. He said, “Maybe it’s time to think about other options.”

2. What he meant, after we talked about it, was that it was really hard for him to watch her go through this grieving over and over and over. It was really tough on him to watch the woman he loves experience that, so he offered “other options” as a way to say maybe take a break for you, or to make sure she knew she had the option of not continuing. That he was ok if she wanted to take time off, stop, or look at other things. Not that HE was invested but he didn’t want her to feel like this was the ONLY thing and that she HAD to keep going. 

3. What she heard, though, was “let’s look at other options because your body isn’t up to this challenge so let’s talk about other things.”

4. She made that mean several things: 1) that he didn’t believe in her or her body enough to continue, that he wasn’t invested in IVF (with the subtext being that it was her fault for the failures) and that it was possible he might not want to even continue in the marriage without kids. 

Again this is a really specific example but I know this happens to everyone. And this argument that they had, dragged on for days until we talked and started to gain some clarity around it. 

Now, if you’ll remember I’ve said in the past that when people say things to us, whether it’s the words that they use or if it’s what we make those words mean, it is painful for one of two reasons- either we agree with what they are saying on some subconscious level or that we believe that they shouldn’t have said it in the first place (which only breeds pain bc you’re arguing with reality- they have said it so telling yourself that they shouldn’t have will only create more pain and resentment).  

In this case, it was that my client believed that she didn’t believe her body was able to get or stay pregnant so when he said “let’s look at other options” and then she made that mean that, then it (in her mind) confirmed the very worst thing that she believed about herself. 

Now the tricky part about this is that we think we are mind readers. We think, when we know someone (and even when we don’t) we think that whatever we make someone else’s words mean, is the truth. It’s the holy grail of truth and that’s why people get so defensive either because they are trying to explain “that’s not what I was saying (meaning that’s not what I meant)” and then the other person is like “but that’s what you said (meaning that’s what I made that mean).” 

So, we have this communication and then it devolves because of whatever we (or they if we’re talking to someone) make it mean and we believe that whatever we made it mean is the absolute truth. You can see how it’s a very slippery slope. 

Now, I can offer you several examples of how to combat this but my absolute favorite is something that I heard from Brene Brown and how she and her husband steve communicate.

She talks about how, when they get upset by something the other says, when they are opening the door to talk about it they will start with “the story that I am telling myself (about what you’ve said) is…”

Let me say that again, “the story that I am telling myself is…”

So for my client, the story she was telling herself was that her husband didn’t believe her to be capable of pregnancy and that he wasn’t invested in IVF anymore. 

In counseling we talk a lot about using I you statements. Like “when you say X, then I fell Y or Z.” and this is like a tried and true method except, in my opinion, most people don’t use it in that way. Most people still use it in a somewhat or blatantly accusatory way- because I you statements don’t really come that naturally. It’s not as if you are this terribly combative person, it’s that our brain looks for blame. And blaming someone else for the words they used is a lot easier than taking responsibility for what you made those words mean. 

So, if you are feeling really upset by something someone says to you, you can pause and reflect on what you made that mean. And if it’s something you want to talk to them about- because let’s be honest, some people say some stupid things and we don’t have the energy or interest to have a meaningful conversation with them about it. They might not be that important/ significant a person in your life. It might not be super close relationship that you want to continue to maintain or grow. That’s fine. Most of our communication is with people like that. You don’t have to engage. Let’s say an acquaintance says something that upsets you. You don’t really have an interest in making sure this is a deep connection that is maintained but you also don’t want to walk around pissed off because that’s a waste of time for you, you can go through the 4 parts of communication and just challenge what it is your brain made their words mean. 

Simply by asking yourself, “what else could they have meant?”

And if you want to stay frustrated, angry, or hurt, that is also an option. There’s no right or wrong choice. It doesn’t mean that you have to take it personally. You can decide that their words are a reflection of whats going on inside of themselves, rather thn an accurate relfection of you. You can decide that their words, their assumptions about you are wrong. And people can be wrong. And n some cases, “eh, fuck ‘em” is a completely legitimate response. 

There are a lot of options. 

But for the ones that you want to invest time and energy into, this is a great exercise. 

Ok, so we’ve got two exercises today: the mirror exercise to build positive communication with yourself and then the “The story that I am telling myself” exercise a-la Brene Brown. 

I think we all deserve the possibility of having safe, productive, and meaningful conversations with ourselves, and with those that we love. 

And that is what I hope for all of you.

So this is what I have for you this week. Have a beautiful week and I will talk to you soon.