Avoiding the chasm of the unspoken. Clean Communication — an essential tool to live lite
After the article, Confronting Truth — before anything can be changed, it first must be faced; in Sunday Syntropy last week, I promised you an article sharing a helpful tool central to all of the work we do in Syntropic World.
I will start with the premise that our life is relational. No relationship = non-existence.
Relationships are complicated and complex. Learning to be in relationship, to communicate, is most often trial and error. I find this strange, given that relationships and communication are central to everything. Surely quality education includes learning to be better communicators, to hold our relational development as central?
There is no arrival to being better at relational dynamics and communication. Instead, it is interwoven with the journey of life.
This includes being in relationship and communication with ourselves, our most essential relationships. When we lose the conversation and relationship with ourselves, we are lost.
I have found this poem helpful if this happens, as it will happen to most everyone.
What do I do when I am lost in the forest?
Stand still; the trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost.
Where ever you are, it’s called here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it, and be known.
Listen, listen, the forest breathes. It whispers,” I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying ‘here’.”
No two trees are the same to Raven; no two branches are the same to Wren. But if what a tree or branch does is lost to you, then you are surely lost.
Stand still; the forest knows where you are; you must let it find you.
Native Pacific Northwest Indian Tribe
Learning and living the model of Clean Communication, central to all Syntropic work, will ensure that you live LITE. (Or light! Your choice. Meaning living lite in weight, or light — as light.)
What I mean by this is you will walk your life without the burden of the unspoken, of vengeance, shame, hate, rejection, anger, frustration and darkness.
I have written about Clean Communication before. Here and, here and here. We teach Clean Communication in the Syntropic Enterprise Masterclass and Dare to Care. It is a central piece of the Syntropic Trust Manifesto.
In my life, the practice of Clean Communication is a non-negotiable for any relationship, including the one with myself. I prefer to live lite than fear confrontation, the unspoken, or being silenced.
I hope you find Clean Communication helpful in your life. Do let me know. I always love hearing from people; I will answer every email.
Clean Communication — a short primer
Clean Communication is very simple to describe and very hard to enact because the place it starts is with telling yourself the truth. Unfortunately, telling ourselves the truth can be so hard, particularly if we have invested untold energy and resources into what we know is no longer true for us, like a relationship that needs to be completed, with either another person or people, a project, an artwork or a business.
Clean Communication means having an awareness of very subtle signals that something might not be quite right.
Here is how it works.
We have person A and person B. These two people are having a conversation back and forth. In this example, person A is innocent during the entire process of this communication. Specifically, at no stage is person A attacking, accusing, judging, ridiculing, shaming, or otherwise person B.
Person A is not trying to undermine. They’re not being nasty, and they’re not being a troll. They’re just having what we would call a neutral conversation.
However, in this instance, person B registers a charge during the conversation.
What is a charge? A charge can be a very slight sense or feeling, physical or emotional, that something about the conversation, or what is being expressed, or how it is being expressed, isn’t quite right/safe/clear/decent/respectful.
The experience of a charge can be delayed. For example, you walk away from the conversation and only then register that something happened that doesn’t feel right for you, that there is something off balance.
An extreme charge is far easier to detect because we get angry, upset, mad or sad or feel threatened or attacked, ridiculed or shamed.
In this example, however, person A is innocent. They’re not doing anything deliberately, but person B hears, registers, or understands something, and they are charged.
Person B, in this example, has a minimal charge. If they do nothing about it, they’ll return to a future conversation with person A, carrying the charge, looking for evidence that something is going on. When looking for evidence, we often find it, even if it is not there. (Unconscious bias)
Person B will typically show up in a subsequent conversation with person A, bringing this charge with them, and as such, the field of the relationship is now charged, even if in the very slightest way.
If the field of the relationship becomes charged and we do nothing about it, then we contribute to the creation of the Chasm of the Unspoken. All those words, all the emotional pain, the misunderstandings — all in the field between, creating this chasm that might become too big to cross at some stage.
Perhaps you are familiar with this Chasm of the Unspoken?
Two things can then occur. First, as person B carrying this charge, after another conversation with person A, you may go onto your next activity and there when someone does something slightly off, you lose it. The emotion goes from charge to explosion.
Or it can be that you explode with person A. If person A is tuned into the field of the relationship, they might notice the charged space and raise it. If they do not, for whatever reason, the charge will amplify.
Many relationships carry some form of charge, and I am sure many of you have worked with, seen, or experienced family dynamics where a charge is generational.
This week I wrote this very short blog for Beauty of Beginnings about changing charge.
The principle of Clean Communication is simply that if you are the person aware of a charge, you are responsible for cleaning it up.
Suppose person B decided they would take responsibility for Clean Communication. In that case, person B could go back to person A and speak about their experience with the charge. Again, there are skilled ways to do this and tools to use, which we teach in Dare to Care.
Person B will stay in the communication until they’ve cleaned it up and returned to neutral.
A few notes:
We can only be charged by another at the personal/identity level if the charge already lies, dormant or active, within us.
Often charges come from miscommunication, making assumptions, missing vital contexts.
We might not know we have overlayed our whole story — including our fragility, trauma and confusion — onto the words and emotions that have been expressed.
If person A is not innocent — in other words — if person A deliberately sought to attack, ridicule, manipulate, gaslight, reject, or diminish, then our ability to speak to their words and actions is critical.
Again, the skills and tools to do this, even to be aware of what has happened, are critical. (See Dare to Care)
“We realise the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.” — Malala Yousafzai.
To create families, communities, enterprises and partnerships where Clean Communication is the foundational agreement and practice allows us to get on with the thing that we are there to do, whether it’s to have a wonderful life together or to build a beautiful Syntropic business. That is if we do not want to be stuck in a messy, charged, toxic, swampy place.
Often we learn that the issue that has created the charge is our “shit.” In this case, we do not have to return to person A. Indeed we might not engage with person A until we have cleaned our own house of charge.
I had this experience recently where I noticed I was supercharged during a conversation with a family member. Knowing that if I stayed in the conversation, I would potentially explode, I exited politely. It then took nearly two weeks to go into my emotional, mental, sensing, metaphor, and story steeped being and understand my charge. I did not step back into a conversation with my family member again until I could show up charge neutral.
On occasion it could also be that person A is unaware they are shaming, ridiculing or gaslighting. To find ways to speak to them about behaviour and actions they are unaware of, and to do so in a way that elevates them respectfully, is the central premise behind the name Dare to Care. Do we care enough about the other to speak truth in a way that serves them — caring more about them than we care what others, or they, think?
When we have work to do for a world with a future for Earth and all her creatures, when we need to find our voice, Daring to Care is essential — knowing that as we do, many will be angry or cruel towards us.
I salute Greta Thunberg, Grace Tame, Malala Yousafzai, Rosa Parks, Gandhi and all the women protesting in Iran today. And so many others.
Clean Communication is the path to speaking truth to power, beginning with speaking truth to our power or acknowledging its absence and Daring to Care.
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