Effective communication is essential to building a strong foundation for children and their families. It is through open, honest, and empathetic dialogue that we build the trust and understanding necessary for healing and growth.
It’s always important to seek to understand the person you’re talking to and provide a safe space for them to ask questions. If we walk away with assumptions or perspectives that don’t align with the other person’s, it isn’t effective communication because feelings may get hurt. We need to be open, honest, and create safety for effective communication.
When we experience trauma, and we either don’t communicate or don’t communicate effectively, we can’t move toward healing. We become stuck. That’s the position many families are in when they come to Lena Pope.
As a therapist, I help normalize their experiences and give them the words to express their feelings. Often, people who experience trauma at a young age don’t have the words to express themselves. We work with them to communicate effectively and overcome trauma.
The same is true when we work through communication struggles within a family. Often, I find when I’m working with a client exhibiting behavioral problems, the parent or caregiver feels like their child doesn’t understand how hard they’ve worked to give them a better life. At the same time, the child might be reacting negatively to how their parent is talking to them. They both get stuck behind a barrier of not understanding each other’s perspective.
And it’s not just the parent-child dynamic. When working with couples or doing parent sessions, you can sense when one or both are slipping back into patterns of no longer actively paying attention to the other’s perspectives. They begin to talk over or at the other and tensions immediately increase. When that happens, the best thing I can do is slow down the conversation and make sure everyone can communicate back what the other is expressing.
We don’t realize how much our unhealthy communication habits have been modeled and built off of our own parents’ or caregivers’ habits. Freeing ourselves from these habits can be a difficult hurdle to overcome, but it’s key to healthy relationships and our own mental well-being. Even more so for the children and youth close to us who are developing their own communication skills.
It takes work, but we know that when families can begin to understand one another—when they can move past resentment and transition into effective communication—they can work on a healing positive relationship with one another. They can grow together instead of growing apart.
Effective communication is fundamental to our well-being. It’s how we connect with others. My job is to equip clients with the skills to communicate effectively and live healthy lives. While ongoing therapy can be beneficial, the goal is for clients to learn the skills they need to develop and maintain healthy relationships as a day-to-day habit. It is thrilling to hear from former clients who, despite having difficult days, are discovering they are able to communicate and manage their relationships better because of the skills they learned from therapy at Lena Pope
For those who feel stuck in old patterns, it’s important to remember it is never too late to start therapy or work on healthy communication skills. Change is possible, but it takes time and effort.
We know this to be true: effective communication is a path to long-term healing and healthy relationships.
Your generosity enables us to provide critical counseling services. Please consider a donation today to ensure the children who turn to Lena Pope will receive the skills they need to communicate effectively and heal from the trauma in their lives. Thank you!
by Dakota Phelps, LCSW, Lena Pope Family Therapist
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