Communication Isn’t Just Words: Why You’re Not Being Heard (And What To Do About It)

Why do conversations go wrong — even when you’re sure you’ve explained yourself clearly?

Most communication breakdowns aren’t caused by poor wording.
 They’re caused by stress, perception, and nervous system reactions.

In this episode, Vicky explores why tone leaks state, how the brain distorts meaning under pressure, and why “better communication” is not a behaviour you can implement.

You’ll discover:

• Why people hear criticism when none was intended
 • How stress changes what we perceive
 • The hidden reason people disengage in relationships and teams
 • A simple three-layer framework to clean up misunderstandings
 • The one question that instantly reduces conflict

This episode is for anyone who wants to improve their relationships, leadership, influence, or emotional awareness.

Because communication isn’t just about being right.

It’s about creating understanding that actually lands.

If you’re ready to go deeper into awareness, behaviour, and conscious living, you can explore Vicky’s Inner Circle membership community or book a discovery call via her website.

🎧 Listen now and start changing the way you experience conversations.

Transcript

It’s Not About The Words

When Stress Leaks Through Tone

The Broken Telephone Lesson

Why Brains Delete And Distort

Emotional vs Rational Memory

People React To Perception

Clarity Beats Capability

Safety, Meaning, And Words

Lead With Awareness

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, and welcome to the Rise Up Podcast. My name is Vicky Ross, and I'm your host. This is where we explore awareness, behavior, and the mind that quietly runs your life so that you can live and lead a conscious rather than a reactive life. So today we are talking about communication. There's no scripts, no techniques, not say this instead of that, because it doesn't work like that. But what actually happens between two nervous systems when we are trying to connect? That's what we're going to talk about. What's actually going on and why so many conversations go wrong, even when we are certain, absolutely positive that we've said everything clearly. Because if you can understand this, then you don't just improve conversations. You'll improve your life, you'll improve relationships, leadership, trust. Left peace. So is it worth doing? It's worth a hundred percent understanding and starting to make the changes. So have you ever walked away from a conversation thinking I did this right? I explained it perfectly. I was aware, I was thinking, and I know it landed. And then somehow the other person heard something completely different. And now you're not even discussing the original issue, you're discussing what they think you meant and what they think you meant, and it spirals and it goes completely out of control. And the question is, well, why does it happen? So communication isn't just words, and I think a lot of us know that, but let it land inside your body because it's never been about words. I want you to think about it in a slightly different way. Everything that is you, so what does that mean? Your values, your beliefs, your paradigms, your perceptions, your memories, memories of your future, memories of your past, your interpretation, all of that, everything, everything that is you is going on inside of you. And the only way that you can really share it is by using communication. And for most of us, it will be spoken words. I mean, we can write things to each other and say, this is what I mean. But most of the time, the way that we share what's going on inside of us is we open our mouths and words come out. So think about it this way: by the time the words come out, the whole process inside your mind has already happened. Your brain has already accessed the information, access to memory, access the meaning of the memory, access the feeling that you've attached to the meaning. It's accessed all of that, and then we share a part of it. And I mean a part of it because we don't share a hundred percent all of it. We have a summarized version, if you like. So by the time we speak, it's already come out. So a lot of people, because I teach communication, I'm so passionate, I love teaching it. Uh, some I'm still surprised that in 2026, when this podcast was made, most people believe that communication is about the words. And this is why they often say to me, as a coach, as a therapist, give me the list of questions, give me the wording, give me, and you it doesn't work like that because it all has to be depending on what the other person said, what you're going to say next, and so on. So it's not, and I really want to emphasize this it's not about choosing better phrases or being more articulate or being more confident, but communication is about your tone of your voice, the pace, the facial expression, your body language. It's about assumptions from both people. I'm assuming that you know certain things, so when I say something, I assume you understand it all, and the other person has to make some assumptions about what they think you mean because there's so much missing. So they have to fill in the gaps of what you have left out. And of course, last but not least, communication will also reveal the emotional state that we are in right now, as well as the emotional state of what we are about to share. So it's very, very complex in the best of worlds. And the responsibility for successful communication always, always lies with the communicator. So if what you've said doesn't land properly, it's not because the other person is not listening or not paying attention. I mean, those things could be true as well. Um, but it's because you haven't actually communicated effectively what you want to say. So I'm not blaming in any way. I want this to be an empowering aha. That if the ma message didn't land, it didn't land, and that's just what it is. That's just data. So you have to go back and go, what is it that I said or didn't say, and how did I say it or how did I not say it that made it not land? So in communication, we also have stress tells, and I'll give you something very personal. My stress tell is that my mouth goes completely bone dry. It's almost like something happens and somebody switches off all the water works in my mouth and goes and it's gone. Dry in milliseconds. Now, for years I didn't understand this, but now I do. And it happens when I feel criticized, when I feel attacked, when I feel under resourced, when I feel like I'm gonna be in trouble. And when something genuinely threatens me or something threatening is happening to me, even like for instance, the one time somebody broke into my house and we arrived literally minutes after they had broken in with the police. And uh, as I walked in and saw the carnage, because literally they had emptied everything from every room, um, and my mouth went bone dry. So that was like that whole sort of stress and fear and survival kind of thing happening. So it was my nervous system saying that you're under threat. Now, when it happens, I now I use it, I understand if somebody starts talking to me in a particular voice. So I've had this in the past. I remember a situation when about 15 years ago where I had a disagreement with a family member, uh, extended family member, thank God. And as they started speaking, I just went, and my mouth just went dry. And I thought, okay, okay, I know what's happening. So in that moment, when I see that's happening, I take a sip of water, I breathe deeply, I soften my body, I slow my speech, I pay attention to what is being said, and then how I need to respond, I you know, will think about what has to be done here, what what what goes on. But I do it calmly, I do it mutually, I'm not aggressive. Um, because if I don't regulate first, my tone will leak. That I'm in. That's not gonna do any good to any person. So you've got to be careful because your tone can damage trust long before words do. So I would encourage you to think back on this and just try and see what is your tell, uh, that you can interrupt the spiral before you say something and then have to repair. What is interesting with all the work that I do for others, I of course always do the work on me. I am like my first client always, is I don't get the stress tell of the dry mouth anymore because I'm so aware of what's happening and I straight away regulate myself. I don't have that unconscious, oh my goodness, I'm being attacked, and now I it's the stress that doesn't happen anymore. But um I become super alert and super aware to everything as soon as something starts to go wrong, and I'm very, very careful, and I'm very careful of what my ego wants to do because I do know that tone can damage. When I teach communication, um, it's always really, really interesting. I do an exercise that always surprises people. So here's a scenario, right? Um it tends to be leadership. So we're talking about senior directors, senior management, you know, the the big people kind of thing. And I say to them, right, we're going to do communication, I teach them the basics that all go, oh wow, yeah. Oh my god, how do how do we communicate? You know, when when they start to see the theory behind communication and the assumptions and the making up and filling in the gaps and all of that kind of stuff, they they they they get the theory and they straight away will say, How is it that we can communicate? It it feels like it's impossible. And I go, Well, I'm gonna take it a step further and I'm gonna demonstrate, and you guys will actually um have an experience because I want this to land. So I make everybody, and and this is where it gets really funny. I say to everybody, right, whoever needs to go to the toilet, please do that now. And they usually quite confused that. I actually tell grown-up people to go to the toilet. Uh I said, because we're going to play the broken telephone with a simple message. And as much as this message is very, oh wow, it's also hilarious. So I don't want anybody wetting their pants or being uncomfortable. So everybody has to go to the toilet. Then we start with a simple message. And depending on the size of my group, we we always run the exercise twice. So either half the group watches the other half, or if the group is big enough, um, the first one in is the one to read the message, and then we we do the whole thing in reverse so that first in is last hour type of thing, so everybody can see everything. Now, by the time it reaches the end of the room, that simple message, and I mean a simple message, is unrecognizable. Uh sometimes there aren't even words left, they're just gestures, and it's you know, people love and and but but but they get it. And then they say, well, it's not really fair because you know I have to uh remember the whole message and all of that. You know, I get I get the the the reasons as the justification of why we didn't remember it properly, and then I remind them that they go into complex meetings that last two, three hours sometimes, and they are expected to walk away with accurate information by not just the people that are in the meeting, by the bosses, by their teams, everybody's expecting that everybody will just be able to, you know, um share all what happened in the meeting, and you can just imagine what goes on there. So if they can't get one simple little message uh correctly, what happens to like a whole meeting? And this is I've seen this again so many times, and I've heard about it, where people go into these messages, which are two or three hours, and half the time they also are doing their emails and answering other things, so they're not even 100% paying attention. So when I say these things into the meet, you know, in in uh my training, then they all kind of go, Yeah, you're right, you're right. So I don't know how how the hell are we supposed to like communicate, and it lands, the message lands because this is what we do every single day. Now, for most of the time, it doesn't cause a huge problem. You know, you say something, they hear a version, they respond to that version, you respond to their version of your version. And some of the times this is where the arguments about interpretation happen. It's funny in training, it really, really is. But it in life, it can cause a lot of problems, and they can be expensive problems, even. So learning to understand communication and to understand others is like super, super important. So, why why does it happen? Why does communication go so bad? So you just got to know that your brain, and not because there's something wrong with you, everybody's brain will delete some of the information. So it will kind of filter through and go, oh, this is rubbish, this is not important, I'm I don't care about this. So it deletes information, it sorts it out. It also will distort information, it will say, Oh, this is what this means. So, for instance, if somebody came back and said, Oh, we just had the most perfect holiday and we had the most perfect weather. If they don't tell you what perfect weather looks like on a day-to-day basis, there's a generalization which also happens in the brain that perfect weather is a steady 30 degrees, no cloud, no rain, and all of that. That could be perfect for you, but maybe the person was going, oh no, no, no, no. Some days it was 45 degrees and some days it was 25. It rained for three afternoons, and yeah, we did have a couple of days that it had, you know, uh overcast. So that's now starting to become a bit more specific. But if it's left at, oh, it was perfect, then it's up for interpretation by the other person, and the assumptions go in. Picture this kind of scenario happening now at work or at s at home, but with something more important. Then you have to also take into consideration that under stress, all of this, the deletions, the distortions, and the generalizations, because of assumptions, get intensified. Curiosity drops, perspective narrows, and everything feels personal. Because if we are in a stressful situation, your body then goes into survival mode. And this is what happens to your brain. This is a neurological thing. It's not your fault. It's not like there's something wrong with you. This is just what happens to people when they are in stress. They go into survival mode. So in survival mode, we have to keep ourselves safe. We keep our, you know, keep ourselves alive. So therefore, we are constantly thinking about um who's going to attack me, who's in for me, and I need to protect myself. So we are narrow in our um perspective, in our view, and we everything's personal because we have to protect ourselves. So when someone says we need to improve this, the nervous system, your nervous system, might hear, I'm failing, and that's why I have to prove it, or I'm not good enough, that's why I have to improve it. I'm in trouble because what I did wasn't good enough. Even if none of that was said directly or personally to you. So communication is a nervous system first and a logical system second. And what also you have to understand is that you have two types of memories that help you understand how to react. So to know what's actually going on, you have to access memory. Now we have emotional memory, which happens from the day that you're born, and then we've got rational memory that happens from the minute that we have the beta brainwaves, which kick in roughly about the age of 12. And this is where we have the separation of the conscious and the unconscious mind. So, what does that mean? It means that because your rational memory has been going for roughly 12 years longer, it has more experience and it kicks in faster. So when you're under stress, the first thing that's going to be accessed for these kinds of things is your emotional memory rather than your rational memory. And unfortunately, your emotional memory is also bigger and stronger. And if you get, if you're unaware and unconscious in that moment and you go into stress, you will be accessing your emotional memory before you're rational, which will then hijack you. And that's all it is. So the bigger question, do you actually know who you are? When I was about 17, my dad spoke to his dentist, and the dentist said, you know, like, so what's your daughter going to do next year? Because it was my final year, and he said, Oh, she's good at biology and maths. Um, so then he said, Well, then she could become a dental technologist. It's good money, stable career, blah, blah. So my dad came home and announced it as if it was now decided. And I remember saying, Do you actually know who I am as a person? Uh yes, I have the aptitude to go and become a dental technologist. But I'm not somebody who can sit behind a desk all day making teeth. Nothing wrong with the job, it's a good job. It's everything that the dentist said was true. It just was so wrong for me. And for those of you that actually do know me, you'll probably giggle at this part because you know that I could never become a dental technologist. I'm a speaker, I'm a trainer, I'm a teacher. I have been even in those days at school. I used to teach my friends biology and maths, and I used to teach them how to make uh Greek food and Greek dancing and anything that I'm passionate about, I would teach anybody. So that path would have been soul destroying for me. But in his mind, it didn't matter who I was. What mattered was that he believed and what he believed was sensible. So when he had my reaction, he saw it as defiance. And that moment taught me something profound, and I really want this to land for you. But people don't respond to you, they respond to their perception of you. And I've had so many different times in my life where I've realized this when people say something about me and I kind of go, What? Why do they think that of me? And they think that of me because that's their perception of me. Filters through their value systems, it filters through their fears, it filters through their idea of what's right and wrong, and their perception then will skew who I am. So miscommunication is rarely about bad intentions, it's more about unexamined filters that people have. And when I say about people, I include you and me in that sort of equation. So we have to kind of become very clear about who we are and how we see things, and to recognize that when we are looking at situations, are we being right and fair, or are we looking at this through our filters? I once trained a group of senior managers, and their boss was in a meeting, banging at the table. So this is some feedback that they gave me, and they were saying, Oh, we need better communication, and this is unacceptable, and blah, blah, blah. So one of the managers that I had trained calmly asked, Sir, what is it, what does better communication look like specifically? You know, I we we agree with you, you we want better communication, but what does it look like specifically? And the boss just stopped and said, I don't know. And there it is. Better communication is not always about behavior. In fact, it's mainly not about behavior. You can't measure it and you can't implement it and you can't practice it. But if you can't describe it, nothing can change. So people walk out confused from meetings, and then we blame capability, or at least the managers will blame capability when really it was all about clarity. And we do hear this in a lot of leadership, but our when I do my work with people and some of it is one-to-one, it's like, what do you want? The clarity. And people don't have it, they're not clear. And then they're confused about why they can't get the results that they want. Of frustration just goes around and round in circles, and everybody assumes that everybody knows what everybody means when nobody does. Nobody's communicating clearly, and the people that are listening are not understanding anything, and so it goes. So, underneath communication breakdowns, there's something very, very human. People want to be seen and they want to feel seen, they want to feel respected, they want to feel capable, they want to feel safe. So, when appreciation is absent, anxiety rises. Sometimes it rises loudly, but often it rises quietly. People withdraw, they overthink, they stop contributing because what's the point? And they disengage. And the silent question then becomes do I matter here? Or do I have a purpose here? And that question that question changes behavior more than any strategy ever will. So if you want to clean up your communication, think about it in three different layers. So the first part is words. And in studies that they've done, and it's different to the original communication model, but in the later studies, the more accurate studies, they found that 20 to 40 percent of communication is the spoken word. In other words, what was said. Okay, 20 to 40 percent, it's the the smaller part. They used to say it's seven, but it's not. Meaning what it has taken to mean. So, in other words, what meaning did the communication have or land? And you know, you've got to ask yourself with everything that we say, the only reason that we accept it is because we take for granted that we know what it means when we say something, that there is a meaning. But what we don't really look at is that this meaning is very unique and personal to each and every one of us. And we assume that everybody has the same perception with the same meaning, the same everything, and it's not. And of course, the other framework is safety, what the nervous system felt when we communicate. So when we say something, when we say words, we have to ask ourselves what was said, what does it mean, and how did the nervous system feel? Because most conflict lives at level two and three. But what we argue is at level one. So we argue with the words, but it's not the words, it's the face expression, it's the meaning, it's the tone of the voice, it's all the nonverbal communication parts, which are 60 to 80 percent. So instead of defending your words, try asking, what did you hear me say? What do you think I said? What did you make that mean? You know, so what meaning did I, you know, that thing that I said, what meaning did you give it? What does it feel like? What did it feel like for you? Because that's not what I intended. I didn't want to make you feel bad or anxious. I just said it, so maybe I said it in a clumsy way, and I'm sorry. Um, but that's not the meaning I had. And that is being mature, and that's also being a leader in leadership. So, but even if you're not leading at work, you know, you it's still leadership because you're leading your life, and this is where aware it's awareness in action. So if you recognize yourself in this, and if you know that you're intelligent, you're capable, and yet there's conversations that still go sideways. This isn't a personality flaw, please. It's just a pattern, a pattern that can be understood, and a pattern that can change. Now, in my inside my rise of membership, this is the work that we do. I have themed ones where I teach different things to my group and we explore awareness, we explore behavior, nervous system regulation, communication patterns, beliefs, not to fix people, but to help them see themselves clearly. And if you'd like more personalized depth, you can also book a discovery session uh call with me through my website. But I just want to let you know that it just starts with awareness because awareness is the first shift to everything. I'd like to thank you for listening today. And if this episode triggered something, made you go, oh wow, or helped you to see something that you hadn't noticed before, I would be so, so grateful and appreciative if you shared this with someone who matters to you. Until next time, stay aware because awareness doesn't change communication, it changes how you experience your entire life. Have a wonderful week and hears to your success.