The House of Successful Communication

Episode 20: Building The House of Successful Communication

Welcome back to The Jenni Carroll Perspective! In Season 4, we’re delving into the most pressing issue in marriage—communication. In our previous episode, we explored the formula that leads to communication breakdowns. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to "The House of Successful Communication," a framework designed to transform how we connect with our partners.

Imagine a house with three foundational steps at its base and three supporting pillars that hold up the roof. This structure represents the core elements of effective communication.

Foundational Steps:

1. Expectation Awareness and Management: The first step is to become aware of and manage your expectations in the relationship. Identify both the conscious and unconscious needs and expectations you have for your spouse. Know that unconscious needs and expectations center around our shared need for worth through validation.
2. Psychological Separation: This principle teaches that your spouse's actions and words are a reflection of them, not you. It's crucial to understand that their behavior is not a direct commentary on your worth. Embracing this idea can make communication more manageable and less emotionally charged.
3. Persistent Forgiveness: Forgiveness is about letting go of negative emotions triggered by interactions with others. It's a commitment to moving past grievances and aligning with the principle of Psychological Separation. This ongoing practice helps maintain emotional balance and fosters healthier communication.

Supporting Pillars:

1. Validation: Acknowledge and validate your partner's feelings and experiences. Validation is not about agreeing but about recognizing and empathizing with their perspective, which helps reduce defensiveness and opens up more productive dialogue.
2. Vulnerability: Effective communication requires openness and honesty about your own feelings and experiences. Being vulnerable means dropping your defenses and showing up authentically in your conversations, which can deepen your connection with your partner.
3. Boundaries: Establish and maintain clear boundaries to protect your well-being. Boundaries are about defining what you will and will not accept, and they empower you to engage in healthier interactions.

The House of Successful Communication empowers you to take control of your communication dynamics, offering strategies to improve how you interact with your spouse. If you are interested in learning more, head to jennicarroll.com to register for my new self-paced, online course. This course is designed to provide you with concrete strategies to enhance communication and transform your marriage.

Thank you for tuning in. Remember, you are light and you are love.

For more details on the course and to start your journey towards better communication, visit www.jennicarroll.com

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Transcript

Hello Dear Listeners, welcome to the Jenni Carroll Perspective. We are in Season 4, a series dedicated to the number one problem in marriage - communication! As a Marriage & Family therapist, I know just how challenging communication in marriage can be. In our last episode we uncovered the unfortunate formula that creates stress on our marriages and directly impacts how successful or unsuccessful communication becomes.

So for today, I’m very excited to share with you an overview of The House of Successful Communication. The House of Successful Communication is my framework for first understanding and then ultimately transforming communication in marriage. So, let’s get started!

Just to make sure that we are all on the same page, let’s review the formula that impacts communication. It has three distinct parts:  The first is: needs and expectations. Any long-term romantic relationship begins with both parties having certain needs for each other, and also, importantly, the expectation that those needs will be met. Some of our needs and expectations are conscious and some are unconscious. Unfortunately, no matter who you are or who you are married to, at some point (and usually sooner rather than later by the way) our expectations will not be met by our partner. So what happens next is that we engage in a process of personalization, which is the second variable. This means that we use our spouse’s words and behaviors and begin to create a story in our heads, what we will call our “narrative.” Within this narrative, we create negative meaning about ourselves based on how they failed to meet our expectation. Finally, the last variable is our universal need for worth through validation. In other words, we need to feel good about ourselves - the “worth” part, and expect our spouses to meet this need through what they say or do - the “validation” part. When we rely on our spouse to give us our worthiness, the foundation to our marriage becomes extremely shaky. Not surprisingly, communication is usually the first thing to suffer.

Okay, so we understand the problem, now we need to know how to fix it. We do so through the House of Successful Communication. 

I want you to imagine a structure, a house. In this house there are three foundational tiers to its base - steps - that are the primary support to the structure. Without these foundational steps, the house is doomed to collapse. Can you imagine this? Now I want you to think of three supporting pillars that complement the structure of the house. They hold up the roof so to speak. Take a second to complete the picture in your mind.

This structure is the House of Successful Communication. At its base are the three foundational layers or steps. The first layer, the foundation of the foundation if you will, is Expectation Awareness and Management. This speaks specifically to the first part of the formula we just mentioned. In order to change communication, it is necessary to bring awareness to the expectations that you carry for your spouse. This includes the conscious expectations you have to meet your conscious needs, as well as the unconscious expectations that center on the need for worth through validation. 

We all have needs and expectations and if you want to change communication in your relationship, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of first looking within to determine what those needs and expectations are. Without this process of self-awareness, it is really difficult to move forward. I would bet that if you spent some time thinking about it, you could make a list of the needs you know you have for your spouse. Once you do, consider the expectation that goes along with those needs and how you feel when the needs don’t get met. 

Ultimately, it is our job to manage our expectations, where the second part of this foundational step comes into play. We must first become aware of our expectations and then we must manage the reality that our expectations are not always going to get met. As much as we would like others, ie our spouse, to do all of the things that make us feel loved, and important and worthy, that is not going to happen. Soooooo, what are we going to do about it?

The second step of The House of Successful Communication is Psychological Separation. Psychological Separation is the principle we use to do just that - manage our expectations. This principle teaches us that nothing anyone else does or says is a reflection on us - only them. Even when we are affected by our spouse’s decisions, behaviors or words, we must remind ourselves that their stuff is not ours... it is NOT about us.

Okay, I’ll admit that this does get tricky, because it is very, very, easy... very natural to personalize the behaviors of others, and especially the behaviors of arguably the most important person in our life - our spouse. It is comfortable for us to rely on them to do the things that will make us feel loved. And it is also very easy to make it mean that we are “not loved” when they mess up or don’t meet any or all of the needs and expectations we have for them.

But, Psychological Separation is a universal principle that is. It exists whether or not we choose to use it for our benefit. Honestly, when we work to embrace and integrate this principle into our thinking - everything about our relationship just gets easier. A lot easier. If you are wrestling with accepting this concept, I want you to try pretending that you agree with it, and start acting like you believe it. The old fake it till you make it. Give yourself the opportunity to think this way. Try it out. See what happens.

Next up is Persistent Forgiveness. Persistent Forgiveness is the third step in the House of Successful Communication. Now forgiveness is something everyone is familiar with, clearly. But, I also know from my work as a therapist, that a great many of us, arguably most of us really, struggle with forgiveness... primarily because we misunderstand it.

In working to embrace the principle of Persistent Forgiveness, we must first recognize that forgiveness has nothing to do with anyone else. Ha! It is only about us. That’s the first key. Once we accept that part of it, it usually becomes easier to practice. And Persistent Forgiveness is really just the daily practice of working to let go of the negative emotion that gets triggered by our experiences with others. It is the commitment to letting go and moving on. Does this seem like it is connected to Psychological Separation? It should, because it is. When we recognize that other people’s stuff is theirs alone, it lessens our negative reaction to what we don’t like. Yes, we still get mad or upset or really upset perhaps. But, we are able to more quickly move through it and get back to our baseline.. our commitment to letting go.

Alright, let’s move onto the pillars. The supportive pillars in the House of Successful Communication are a little different than the foundational steps in that the pillars do require us to “do” something. They are action-based. And yes, I know that the foundational steps are principles that technically encourage us to think differently, and truthfully “be” different” - but they are more internal. The steps speak to a shift in thinking which becomes a shift within us. The pillars are more external - they are the way we act, something we actually DO.

So, the first pillar in the House of Successful Communication is Validation. You may have heard me say it before, but validation truly is the “magic bullet” of communication. It is a way of communicating that is extremely effective at combatting defensiveness. Why? Because when we use validation we acknowledge how the person we are speaking to may be feeling or what they may be experiencing. This is very powerful. Defensiveness arises when we feel attacked. When we feel a deep need to protect ourselves. When we experience validation from another person, we no longer feel so attacked and consequently, no longer feel the need to defend ourselves. At least not as much. 

What is also interesting about practicing validation is that as we work to acknowledge another person’s feelings and experiences, our perspective starts to shift. We become less rigid, more understanding. An important thing to know is that practicing validation does not mean we must agree with the person we are validating. We might totally, 100% disagree. That’s fine. Validation is not agreeing, it is merely acknowledging. Feeling acknowledged is extremely powerful. Don’t ever underestimate its power.

The next pillar in the House of Successful Communication is Vulnerability. Vulnerability can be a little tough to get to for some of us, but it really is essential for REAL and effective communication. Vulnerability is the willingness to be open and honest. It requires us to work to communicate in a way that focuses on our experiences and feelings vs. focusing on the actions of someone else. Let’s be honest, it is generally a lot easier to be critical your spouse, rather than to consider and communicate how you experience and feel about something. What goes along with vulnerability is the willingness to be real. To drop our “emotional suit of armor” that we often use (whether consciously or unconsciously) to protect ourselves from being hurt. We need to lose the suit of armor that is a barrier to vulnerability and instead, work at showing up authentically.

If you know that being vulnerable in communication (or in general) is something you struggle with, it is really helpful to first gather your own thoughts. Work to process and better understand your feelings and experiences BEFORE engaging in conversation with your spouse. I know this isn’t always possible, but what is possible is taking a break from a conversation turned argument and coming back it at after both of you have had some time to reflect.

The final pillar in The House of Successful Communication is Boundaries. Boundaries are another one of those ideas that are, frankly, frequently misunderstood. The confusion around boundaries has a lot to do with assuming that someone else plays a role.  Many of us are under the impression that we need other people to “honor” our boundaries. And, yes in some instances its helpful to communicate our boundary to other people. But whether or not they honor it really has nothing to do with the boundary itself. Why? Because a boundary is something we create, and we maintain. We don’t need other people to do anything.

Having clear, conscious boundaries is a responsibility we have to ourselves. It is up to us to decide what we will accept from others and where we draw the line. Obviously, we can’t control other people... but that is exactly why we need boundaries. Holding true to our boundaries protects us from the behaviors of others that have the potential to negatively impact us. When it comes to communication, boundaries offer us safety. They give us power to participate in ways that are healthy and safe. Having this system in place allows us to put vulnerability and validation into action.

So there you have it - all of the elements of the House of Successful Communication. What do you think? I have to say that one of the best things about the House of Successful Communication is that every single part - the foundational steps as well as the supportive pillars, are all things (principles and strategies) that WE do. We are not dependent on our spouse to do anything. It is really incredibly empowering to understand communication in this way. And, I promise you it is also all true. Using the House of Successful Communication will change your relationship, because you will change. Your perspective will shift, and you will think, feel and participate differently in your marriage.

Thank you so much for joining me today for today’s episode. I hope it was helpful or meaningful to you in some way. 

And remember... you are light, and you are love.

If you have a communication crisis in your marriage I have something that can help. I have a new self-paced online course that teaches you everything we talked about today in much greater detail. The House of Successful Communication IS THE FRAMEWORK for healthy communication and I will teach you the steps to get there. There is so much information in this course, and I make sure that you have concrete strategies to begin to implement everything you learn. The other great news is that not only is this course affordable - but it is also something you can do by yourself. You have the power to change communication in your marriage. Take advantage of this incredible opportunity that honestly has the power to help you change your marriage and your life.