Communication breakdown…

I’m finding that I increasingly talk in clichés and with minimal thought and effort to communicating what I actually think and feel. It may be related to the fact I increasingly communicate using technology rather than face to face. It’s just as likely to do with the fact that I have children and I’m tired and simply can’t be bothered.

To be clear, I don’t think it’s just me. I suspect you’ll notice some of the same signs in yourself. The first thing I’ve noticed is that after returning from being on holidays, when people ask me how my holidays were, I’ve become one of those people who says, “not long enough”.

Now, I get it. We all like to be on holidays. We’d all like to be on holidays for another week or seven. But it still wouldn’t be enough. We’re never happy. I’m confident that I could be on holidays for the next three years, come back and have someone ask me how my holidays were, and still respond, “I could do with another week or two.”

Let’s be honest, half the reason we don’t think we’ve had enough holiday is because of how we use our holiday time. We don’t simply find a nice beach somewhere and relax. Instead we are busier while we’re on holidays than when we’re working. We make lists of jobs, far too many jobs to actually complete in the time that we are on holiday. We set ourselves up to feel like we failed in our holidays on the first day as we scrawl down this unattainable list of tasks.

If we do treat ourselves to a getaway, we still don’t let ourselves rest. Instead we insist on filling our days with excursions and experiences. It would be a waste of time to just give ourselves time to unwind. We have to be busy and doing something, creating photographic memories for our social media feeds, or we’re not getting the most out of our break.

Going back to the person’s original question, we haven’t even answered it. They didn’t ask if our holidays were long enough. They asked us how they were.

This is where my next concern regarding mine (and probably your) communication emerges. In truth, I’m actually happy that my holiday is finished. I’m delighted. I have children. Trust me, my holidays were long enough.

In fact they may have gone a few days too long. So while I’m actually happy my holidays are finished I communicate the opposite because I’m not in touch with how I actually feel.

I can’t begin to explain how happy I am to be out of my house. My holidays have been spent refereeing fights, working as a detective investigating who in fact started it, providing snacks, working as some sort of hostage negotiator to get them off their gaming consoles and acting as some sort of personal entertainer. Before being forced to come back to work, I had been considering committing some sort of crime to get me arrested and out of the house for a few nights.

Since being back at work I’ve picked up other times where I communicate things without actually considering whether they accurately represent how I feel.

I see this most commonly when answering someone who asks, “How are you?” If you’re like me, you either answer with “good”, “pretty good”, or “not bad”.

Studies that I’ve made up show that 98 per cent of the time when people are asked how they are they don’t even think about how they’re actually feeling before responding. We don’t think about it, do we? We reflexively answer with whatever the phrase is that we use when someone asks us.

But here’s the thing. The person who asked you doesn’t actually want to know how you’re going anyway; they don’t care. They only asked you because it’s an expected social convention.

Start testing it out. Expand your emotional vocab and start being very descriptive when someone asks you. Tell them that you feel “unfulfilled and like your life has been a waste”. Tell them that “you worry you’re going to die alone in crippling debt from spending all your money on collectible Star Wars action figures.” Or how about telling them that “you feel rage bubbling up in your soul and you’re imagining how big a chest freezer you’d need to buy to fit their body in.” No matter what you say, they will respond with, “sounds good” because they’re not listening and they don’t care.

Please don’t email me at [email protected] I won’t read it in a timely fashion as I don’t care.