Tips for Having Tough Conversations

Have you ever thought about how scared you are to communicate?

→ To ask for what you need?
→ To state an opinion?
→ To set a boundary?
→ To declare a dream?
→ To let someone know how you feel?
→ To tell someone they crossed a line?

We fear communicating our truth and our needs because we want to avoid the pain of rejection or abandonment or being misunderstood.

But choosing to stay silent, to not rock the boat, to not risk being called selfish is playing small. It is abandoning yourself if it is causing you suffering and resentment. It is distancing you from the people that you love because they aren’t getting the full story.

We want to feel deeply connected to the people we love. We want to have peaceful relationships. We want to feel safe and seen and respected with them.

And often the biggest obstacle to this that I see is that we just don’t have the proper communication skills to express what we are feeling, set kind boundaries, ask for what we need or even to create a new family precedent of behavior.

We don’t feel safe or practiced in communicating our needs and our feelings, and we hold a lot of fear of being misunderstood, rejected, or causing a painful family drama.

So instead we keep it bottled in. We stew in it, let anxiety “what if” us until we drown in worst-case scenarios. We explode on our partners, who have nothing to do with it. We get sick. We are irritable and have a hard time being present. We come up with strategies to “get through” (more wine, anyone?) instead of strategies to actually improve the situation long-term.

Which all creates more distance and disconnection instead of deeper relationship.

So what can we do? How can we turn this around?

We have to be willing to have courageous conversations.

As Brene Brown says, “Clear is kind.” When we withhold our thoughts and feelings and don’t tell people how to treat us and then harbor anger and resentment as a result, we are being unkind, both to ourselves and the other person.

Here are a few of my top tips for having clear, kind and courageous conversations that will deepen your relationships:

The great thing about this work is that once we get over the fear, communication skills are actually easy to learn. If right now you feel like you can’t find the right words, things always come out wrong, or that someone like me can say it more eloquently than you, know that it is totally possible for your to acquire the knowledge and skills to have tough conversations gracefully, so that even if they don’t end in your ideal result, you can be proud of how you approached it.

Only through communication can we reach the deep levels of connection we are longing for.

If you are letting fear hold you back from these courageous conversations because you just don’t know what to say or how to respond when people don’t react favorably, let’s set up a time to chat about a Boundaries Intensive. During these sessions I help you write a script for exactly what to say and how to say it, as well as workshop different scenarios to handle your loved one’s response. You will leave feeling confident and equipped to start having courageous, clear and kind conversations. Set up your complimentary chat here to see if a Boundaries Intensive is a good fit.