Do you talk with or at someone?

Understanding and respect come from sharing emotions

- by NICK HAYNES

THE key characteristic that defines ‘talking with each other’ is when both of us are willing to communicate any vulnerable emotional and relational feelings that lie underneath what we think and believe.

When we look more closely at conversation and its effect on our social interactions, i.e., sociolinguistics, we see that it is not something our society encourages us to pay much attention to; either as a primary subject in the syllabus of mainstream education for our children, or as modelled by society at large.

I would suggest that this is a pretty extraordinary state of affairs for a species for which so much rides on how we talk to and understand each other. For the words we use and the meaning we make primes much of our behaviour. Verbal communication can be described as having two levels or sides to it. One is the sharing of information through words and the meaning that creates, the other is the emotional and relational feelings that words can trigger inside us.

Currently we prioritise rational and intellectual understanding over our inner world of feeling, while at the same time not recognising the immediate impact of our need for connection with each other through our behaviour.

The lack of awareness of this vital part of our nature is having a severe consequence for which we are all paying a very heavy and painful price.