Communication Breakdowns
. . . supporting mutually satisfying
communications.
Whenever there is a breakdown in communication between two, when
the results are not mutually satisfying, it reveals that both have been
using their home-grown
definition of the word responsibility; specifically, it's missing the word "cause."
Other breakdowns can be attributed to:
-
acknowledgments
-
incompletes
- integrity
- perpetrations
- withholds
With a B.A. and an M.A. in speech-communication I know of no university/college/academy speech-communication
curriculum for mental-health and education majors (leaders) that address these
variables, yet each serve as a barrier to communication, to manifesting ones
stated intentions; evidenced by the fact that for the past five
decades 25% of our nation's
college freshmen have required remedial courses to learn what
their K-12 "teachers" failed to communicate. "Except for veterans who
become teachers few education majors have undergone
Leadership
Training (classes, courses, seminars and workshops
about leadership, yes.
Training, no)." —Kerry
We unconsciously create breakdowns and thwartings (including "accidents") to remind us that we are out-integrity (not
whole, not complete), that we are dragging around
remnants of prior incidents, interactions or conversations. These leftovers are referred to as
incompletes (prior interactions that were not mutually satisfying).
Each present-day breakdown, each time someone (or "the universe") thwarts
us, it gives us an opportunity to restore our integrity, to complete a prior interaction,
one in which someone else is most likely also incomplete because of the way we
interacted with them.
Our mind becomes clouded with incompletes,*
—so many that we
are no longer sharp, we're not in present-time. Usually our knee-jerk reaction is to blame the other person
for the breakdown; yet we know it's never ever the other person.
Most of us with poor penmanship are still reaping the consequences of
conning our penmanship teacher into passing us. "Honestly, I can't do
any better." Most of us have not experienced what it takes for a teacher
to insist upon standards, ergo, we don't know how to train a
child/employee to clean a window. P.S. It can be done and, you
probably have never "cleaned"
a window.
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Examples of breakdowns:
Supervisor says; "We start work at 8:00 a.m." The employee is late.
Parent says; "Time for homework." The child keeps
playing a video game.
Teacher says; "The homework is . . . it's due Friday." Several
students don't hand it in on time.
Friend says; "I'll pay you back on . . ." They don't.
A wedding couple vows; "Till death do us part."
They end up
divorced.
With each of these examples we see that the results
were other than envisioned; we see that none meant what they were saying and/or
implying. None were telling the truth yet most believed
they were. Each agreement-maker had no conscious intention for the
agreement-breaker to perform as expected; we know this to be true based
upon the results their leadership-communication skills produced.
Note also in the "Examples of breakdowns" the purposeful use of the words "says" and "vows" as
opposed to "communicates." When agreements (instructions) are communicated
they are co-created.
Notice that Mrs. _ _ _ _ an
officer at the DMV licensing dept, did not verbally
communicate, "For the first three traffic violations your vehicle will
be immediately impounded until you pay the $1000.00 fine. For your forth
violation, the car will be electronically disabled (and unsellable) for
one year. Do you agree to obey the traffic laws?" You:
"Oh, I see, you really really mean no speeding. Yes, I
agree. You have my word." We don't think of speeding as breaking an
agreement with a specific person. Police have come to believe they are
doing us a favor by giving us a "warning;" ironically, such "nice"
treatment rewards our in-your-face sneaky disrespectful treatment of one
of our high school
friends (now serving to protect us). Abuse of another always
affects outcomes.
Clarification: At first glance one might argue
that, with the exception of the "employee," none of the others had co-created
a verbal or written agreement to perform as expected; however, what they
all did have was
an implied agreement to be instructed, to do as
asked, or to honor their word. I.e. Few married couples are aware
that they have dozens of implied agreements between them—one of
which is to return home each evening, yet both
know that breaking that implied agreement would trigger worry, upset,
or anger. Another implied agreement is to acknowledge when you've
communicated abusively. You: "Jesus Christ. where
the hell were you? Oops, that was abusive. I'm having an upset.
Where were you?" It's hard to tell which perpetration an undesrable
outcome is for if we are not used to verbally acknowleding our
abuses.
With each of the above incidents
the agreement-makers and the agreement-breakers mirrored
the integrity of each other.
All had been
dragging around a lifetime of
verbally unacknowledged perpetrations into each new conversation. These thwartings and broken agreements
(these abuses) with others, are
referred to as incompletes. These incompletes now serve as barriers to
the experience of communication, of being in present-time. En
route to communication mastery we discover that we need someone to mirror
our integrity, specifically, life's unacknowledged good deeds and perpetrations.
Most people think that because they didn't
notice an immediate consequence for their first lie, first abuse, first
deception (specifically those that have not been acknowledged and
cleaned up through to mutual satisfaction) that they got away with it.
This is partly due to the fact that karma is not always instant;
instead, as one would have it, it's
often untimely
(it "happens" at the most inopportune time) and it's always perfectly appropriate. Most
everyone can recall a significant perpetration after which "God" didn't
instantly strike them down; however, there is always an
undesirable consequence for an unacknowledged perpetration. We
accumulate so many unacknowledged perpetrations we don't associate a
malfunctioning car or computer, a headache or a health issue, an accident, or another's abusive broken agreement with us, as
a consequence of any single specific out-integrity of our own. People who play the
maintaining-ones-integrity-game affirm that life works much
smoother "now" with fewer arguments, broken agreements, and accidents;
one reason is because I (or the "God" in me) no longer needs to pay
myself back for unacknowledged perpetrations; as Kant the philosopher
believed, you now deserve to have life
work.
The above agreement-makers
(the supervisor, parent, teacher, friend, and the fiancé) were so unconscious
they couldn't tell that the other was unconscious also; both were
doing their
imitation
of communication.**
Premise—when one is clear about his/her
intention they communicate consistent with manifesting their stated
intention—as such,
the results are
always mutually satisfying.
Conversely, when one is not clear about an intention they get a
result, an unconscious intention, just not the one they envisioned.
(see
Communicating Instructions)
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It is both irresponsible and unethical to create
the
illusion of an agreement with
a child or someone (such as a parolee) not committed to maintaining their integrity, to keeping
agreements; to do so is to set the person up to fail even
more in life.***
It's easy to see that agreement-breakers always pay themselves
back, they unconsciously intend their own consequence, if only by
unconsciously intending that
others thwart them. What's not commonly known is that there are
undesirable consequences for those who create the illusion of an
agreement, ergo, few Parole Board Members or teachers experience joy and happiness throughout
the day; in part because they are unaware of their cause of the breakdown
in communication with another, such as a student, for not intending that a student turn in his/her
homework neatly and on time.
Let's use the above first example of a breakdown, a common one between a parent and child. A parent
says, "Time for homework." Later the parent notices that
their child
is still playing a video game.
First, we see that the parent had no intention for their child to
recreate their instruction. We know this based upon the result the parent
produced. The parent had lapsed into doing his/her
imitation
of communication. Unfortunately, a parent usually gets angry and blames the child for their (the
parent's) failure to cause communication to take place. That specific blaming abuse,
if it remains unacknowledged,
affects all outcomes, for both, for life.
Yikes! You mean a single unacknowledged abuse can affect one's outcomes
for life? Yup.
It was the proverbial fork-in-the-road.
Any abuse, when acknowledged responsibly,
resets the game back to potential, to deserving to have life and
relationships work.
Secondly, unbeknownst to the parent, the child had his/her own
intention; the child is/was unconsciously drawing attention to the
fact that there is an incomplete in the space. Something other than the
video game was occupying
the space between the parent and child and so communication couldn't take
place until it (the incomplete) is acknowledged and therefore completed.
When a child thwarts a parent the child is drawing attention to
the fact that there are one or more incompletes between them; usually
it's a good deed or a
perpetration that needs to be acknowledged.
There are no exceptions to this phenomenon.
(Read
Clearing Process for a Parent and a Young Person/Teen)
It's important to note that this was not the first time the child
didn't "behave" —didn't do as they were asked/told. It began with incident number one; an earlier and
similar incident, one in which the parent didn't locate the source of
(didn't find out what the child's thwarting behavior was communicating non-verbally).
Quite often
children dramatize disrespects, upsets, perpetrations and observed
hypocrisies by misbehaving, thwarting,
failing, or even getting sick. When all else fails they enroll
a
teacher, a counselor, or even the police
(Columbine) so as to restore the experience of
communication that once was.
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Dramatization of a perpetration:
"Did you
brush your teeth?" The child lied and said, "Yup."
To this very day the child has yet to be acknowledged (caught)
for their first lie. It wasn't by accident that the child used a
contraction, the
less-than-respectful
"Yup," as opposed to the usual, "Yes Mommy" with
its built-in communication of loving respect. The unconscious mother, having similar incompletes
herself,
didn't hear that very first lie; she is ignorant about the effects of
verbally unacknowledged perpetrations so her child drags around the guilt,
sometimes for life.
Most
likely, to her, yelling isn't abusive. Misbehaving or failing in life and relationships is a child's attempt at recreating
the experience of integrity, of communication, of love.
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Dramatization of an upset:
Earlier the mother had yelled abusively at her child. The
abusive
communication triggered an upset for the child. The relationship is said to be
incomplete because the mother has yet to acknowledge, to herself or her
child, that she knows she
communicated abusively. The child knows what it's like to be
in-communication with his/her mother and it hasn't happened since before
the
yelling—possibly even earlier. The child, to draw attention to the
hurt, the incomplete (the absence of the experience of being in-communication),
begins to pout and thwart and to express an attitude.
All teen "attitudes"
can be traced to a single incomplete; again, there are no exceptions to this
phenomenon.
Using this example we see that the child is unconsciously thwarting
the parent [more accurately, the parent has set up their child to thwart
them]. Given that children who are whole and complete are
automatically driven to please parents, we ask, what is now driving the child to
thwart their parent? If incompletes are not completed a child will
often fail in school or life, or marry someone, of whom his/her parents disapprove. The mind, to be
right, and to make a parent wrong, will slowly (just short of suicide)
destroy itself by unconsciously resigning itself to a life of
mediocrity. It does this with smoking, drugs, unhealthy foods
and relationship choices; if the child was successful, both happy and
prosperous, the parents might think they did a good job.
The greatest gift a parent can give a child
(any age) is for the parent to first do
The Clearing Process
and then do
The Clearing Process for Parent and Child
with their child each evening.
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Here's a thought-exercise for someone without a child:
Can you imagine what must be going on in the mind of a parent who just
read the above and they refuse to do The Clearing Process
for their
child? Such a parent is withholding one or more significant
thoughts from their partner and, they are causing their partner to
withhold the same number of significant thoughts; the non-verbal
vibrations emanating from both parents train the child to be both
stubborn and deceitful—again, zero exceptions.
*
It takes a person training to become a
Communication Workshop/Support Group Facilitator about 60-hours (individual 3-hr
sessions, over a period of weeks) to empty his/her mind of life's
incompletes—to be acknowledged for all
good and bad deeds.
** Here's more about,
imitation of communication.
*** Health care professionals
often
"make" agreements, (appointments) with patients/clients who are not committed
to honoring agreements,
to being whole and complete. If a
therapist's receptionist dumps the "illusion of an agreement" in a
client's space it negatively affects the results of both—as in—the blind
leading/conning the blind. When a well-crafted, co-created
appointment (agreement) is not kept it creates space for conversations about
integrity as a
possible
cause for undesirable physical and mental health
results. Read
Conversations in Support Of Health.
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v 10.27
Bewith Test
Notice which sentence causes you to want to stop reading— something about that subject is your barrier to consistently manifesting the results you say you want.
Bookmark this page and come back later to see if you can be with
each sentence without it triggering an upset or judgment.
Definitions:
Mouseover definitions for elaborations
responsibility
breakdowns
acknowledgments
incompletes
integrity
perpetrations
withholds
variables
barriers
intentions
more topics
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