… Healthy personal development needs sufficient opportunities for successful interpersonal communication. Each of us depends on coherent feedback from fellow human beings, especially those close to us. Through this feedback, we receive information about the other. We learn how they view us and what our social surroundings think. In turn, we need our view of ourselves and the world to orientate and develop as long as we live in the best possible quality.
Therefore constructive – meaning coherent – communication is an essential condition for our healthy mental and physical orientation in our world, internally and externally, and thus for our well-being.
As long as we live, we’ll need constant updates on our orientation. Only so we can develop a better understanding of ourselves and others, turn to each other and communicate more often, and experience who and what we like or don’t like and what we want or don’t want. More minor and more significant challenges in social intercourse with us and others can then be mastered better and mean less stress for us. The degree of agreement with others ensures agreements that can lead to successful interactions.
It always takes at least two who are willing to achieve a good mutual understanding to communicate successfully. Suppose we add to the perfect idea of such an agreement a healthy portion of everyday life and individual differences in experience, conception, physical sensation, emotion, and mood. In that case, it is clear to us all from experience that communication – with all good intentions – isn’t always easy. I found valuable support in sorting out interpersonal communication in the work of Friedemann Schulz von Thun, which includes: „Six tools for clear communication: The Hamburg approach in English [sic] language”.
When the other can’t or doesn’t want to reach a social agreement with us, when the counterpart makes contradictory statements or uses confusing gestures, it becomes very hard or even impossible for us to figure out the others’ position on the discussed matter. In the long run, we are denied the opportunity to address these contradictory statements. We then can’t work together with them to clarify things. So-called twin messages or double binds are sand in the gear of our orientation and development.
“No human being can evolve its natural potential when their dignity is violated by either others or themselves.”
Gerald Hüther¹
This can result in numerous problems for people affected by double bind and narcissism in dealing with themselves and others through insecurity and even traumatization, a hotbed of constant internal tension.
So the next tasks are:
- Inform yourself about Double bind. Good to read are: “Double bind” on Wikipedia or the article by Marie Hartwell-Walker, “Meta-communication: What I Said Isn’t What I Meant”
- Inform yourself about narcissism. For example, on the page of Katharina Schuldner on Narcissism and the EDEN programme: Uncover. Unmask. Unfold. Reorder or with the works of Dr Ramani Durvasula “Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist” and “Don’t You Know Who I Am: Staying Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility” as well as “Behave” by Robert Sapolsky.
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