I must admit that this is a part of my life that I’ve been re-evaluating lately. While communication seems so simple, it really does have a profound effect on your life, your day-to-day happiness, and the standard to which you hold others and yourself to. I know that on the surface, this may seem like a simple topic that doesn’t need much explanation, but as I’ve recently uncovered, this could not be farther from the truth.

Healthy communication is the foundation of any relationship in your life. Healthy communication can also act as a way you are remembered by other people because it goes both ways. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of the phrase “be the qualities you seek in others.” If not, I encourage you to lean into it. Being a healthy communicator is a multi-faceted label in my eyes. It’s not only about listening to people or making your points clear. In fact, it goes much deeper than that. Being a health communicator means that you create a safe space for others to speak and share their thoughts and opinions openly, without any recourse. Being a healthy communicator means understanding how to express yourself in a calm, collected, and level-headed way, no matter how heavy or upsetting a topic is. Being a healthy communicator means being able to express your truest feelings to someone, no matter how you think they are going to respond. Being assertive instead of passive. Explaining and speaking up instead of bottling-up.

I don’t want to sit here and act like this is the easiest thing in the world to accomplish, because it surely isn’t, but I do think the world would greatly improve if it was filled with healthy communicators. I’m hopeful that our generation will prioritize that in our own communities as we go forward. Read more at https://oursocalled20s.com/

In Friendships
Your close friends should know what you’re thinking before you even say it aloud. Your close friends should know how you’re going to react before they even share news with you. Your close friends should be the ones present with you when you cry, when you laugh, when you’re confused, when you’re feeling insecure, or when you just need someone to talk to. Your close friends should provide a safe space for you to talk freely, openly, and without judgement or belittlement. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Having a close circle that meets these criteria speaks volumes, but it also means something even greater in my eyes. It means that each individual can express their true authentic self; it means that there is no competition, jealousy, or negativity. It means that there’s nothing you can’t tell your friends.

If you have a close friend group where you have to bite your tongue before you say something, you feel small when you try to conversate or open up about your struggles or concerns, people talk over you instead of listening to you, or your words are held against you instead of uplifting your voice, there’s nothing healthy about that group. If you think about it, friendships are based solely on communication and interaction. There are no other requirements to be a friend. Do we get along? Do we have fun being around each other? Do I want to be around you? (Of course, there are deeper qualifications that you should consider, as mentioned in Intentionality, but we are focusing on the surface here.) If you can’t feel safe, secure, and not judged in your friendships, then odds are, some pretty unhealthy communication may be in the center of that relationship.

I have had friendships that I have had to cut ties with due to the unhealthy communication. I’m a bit stubborn when it comes to showing people the door because I want to assume the person meant well. I want to assume that the person didn’t mean what they said or did, but there comes a point where you can no longer ignore blatant disrespect. When someone makes you feel small, deliberately goes out of their way to mock you in front of others, uses your personal struggles as ammo to throw back in your face, or dumps their own personal trauma on you – run! There’s nothing healthy about that person, let alone their communication style. Unfortunately, it took me a while to get to the point where I can confidently see how black and white these situations are, but I hope that by your reading this, I can save you from the pain I’ve felt over the years. Although you may think you are being kind by being so passive, the reality is you’re hurting yourself and allowing the other person to get away with poor behavior which, most likely, affects you in more ways than one. Being assertive is a part of a healthy communication style. Don’t shy away from it.

In Relationships
I want to preface that fighting/arguing is normal. It’s part of any relationship. At the end of the day, you have two brains attacking life as one sometimes, and of course things are bound to clash. I’d be more worried if they never did. Having healthy communication in relationships is imperative to having a healthy relationship.

Your partner should be someone you can talk to about anything, no matter how hard or how upsetting the topic may be. You should be able to talk about anything! And when I say, “talk about it,” I mean without yelling, without judgement, without fear, without trepidation. It doesn’t mean that a conversation won’t feel uncomfortable, because that is likely, but you should be able to walk away from the conversation feeling better than when you walked into it. You should trust that your partner is going to hear you and not take offense to what you are about to say. You should know that your partner wants nothing but the best for you at the end of the day, so they are willing to see your perspective; they understand you well enough to know how you got there. You should be able to feel safe and trust the solution/response that your partner offers.

I’ve been blessed to have had a relationship where this rang true 99% of the time (again, there are always going to be rifts; that’s just part of it). I always felt uplifted after the discussion, no matter how heavy the conversation was. It always felt like a safe space, and I knew I could tell this person anything. My partner knew they could tell me anything and, at the end of the day, we had to work through whatever the issue was and meet each other in the middle. No one wanted one person to be more victorious than the other. No one spoke over the other. No one judged the other person for their perspective. Plus, when someone didn’t quite understand the other’s perspective off the bat, they just asked questions to better understand. I can’t tell you how freeing that feeling is in a relationship. Once you feel it, you’ll never let yourself go without it again. Healthy communication is the foundation of your relationship. You want to ensure you build your foundation out of granite, free of any cracks, so it can withstand all that the world brings your way as time passes. As hard as it may be to work through in the beginning, I promise you, your future self will be so grateful that you did.

At Work
Work environments are weird, especially at our age. You’re most likely not in charge, but you also know your boss doesn’t know how to make a PowerPoint or add an attachment to an email. All you can do is laugh at times. One of my coaches growing up told me, “Don’t ever let someone disrespect you or discount you just because you’re younger.” I think about this often today in my line of work as I’m often the youngest but hold positions of management. People don’t know exactly how young I am, but they know I’m younger than them. It’s a weird dynamic for me sometimes, but one that I think I have gotten better at navigating over the years.

At the end of the day, you should never stay in a work environment where you feel unsafe or unheard when you try to express safety concerns. You should never be in a work environment where you are asked to lie on someone else’s behalf to protect them. You should never be in a work environment where being yelled at is normalized. You should never be in a work environment where you feel uncomfortable being around someone or being left alone with someone. All of these environments are directly correlated to an environment with unhealthy communication. Why? Because in a healthy communication environment, all of these things would be opened up for discussion in a healthy way, without retaliation, and met with a speedy solution. If any of these poor environments sound familiar to you – run!

Of course, dealing with superiors isn’t always the easiest. You don’t want to seem like a nuisance, but you can share your feelings or concerns without being disrespectful or defiant. One trick that helps me is to start off a conversation with a question. It allows me to test the waters and bring attention to a point I want to make later. For example, let’s say someone is consistently snarky or aggressive toward you, and you want to bring it up to your superior. One way you could introduce this issue is by starting it off with a question like, “By any chance, do you know if (insert name here) is doing okay? I know he/she has seemed a bit tense lately.” This allows for an innocent introduction to the topic and also comes from a more caring and inquisitive place rather than an accusatory one.

Your superior might answer with an, “I’m not sure if anything is going on. Why do you ask?” Your reply could be, “Hm. Well, I’ve just felt a lot of tension/aggression in our communication. It’s made me a bit uncomfortable lately.” In a situation like this, you’ve just opened the door for conversation, you were assertive about what you’ve experienced and how you’ve felt, and no one can say you’re just pointing fingers or jumping to conclusions. Hopefully, you are at a workplace that will allow such dialogue to ensue with ease. I know firsthand what it’s like to operate in an unhealthy work environment, where communication styles are equally as unhealthy, and I don’t wish that upon anyone.

In Day-to-Day Life
In theory, we meet someone new every day, and we gain new friends (no matter how close or distant) every year. Make sure that as you add friends to your inner circle, they’re healthy people who respect you and know how to communicate. As we get older, we all have to unpack the baggage we bring into our adult lives. We have to sit with our childhoods, our trauma, our disappointments, our missteps, and our hopes and dreams for the future. Just as you must deal with these things and ensure that they don’t taint you as a person, so do those around you.

There is no double standard here. Someone else’s toxicity and poor choices do not have to be your charity case for the remainder of your life. You can care for someone and not consider them in your inner circle. You can offer someone help and not consider them in your inner circle. If your religious, you can pray for them and not consider them in your inner circle. Don’t let the people who are not putting in the same work as you into your inner circle. Their toxicity is contagious, and although you may become a healthier person and have healthy communication styles, you ultimately can’t work with someone who doesn’t understand or implement these same principles themselves. So, don’t try to fix them. Let birds of a feather flock together and protect your flock. Toxicity, especially toxic communication, can spread in ways you can’t immediately see faster than you would ever imagine.

Triggers
Sometimes we don’t intend to be a poor communicator. Sometimes we are trying our best, but there’s a war in our head that no one else can see. Sometimes we shut down because we don’t know how to express what weighs on us, or we lash out in anger because we are riddled with anxiety. I want to go ahead and say that this doesn’t make you a bad person. This doesn’t make you a broken person. It just means that there are some things in life that you probably need to unpack and get to the root of. Oftentimes, these stem from childhood and emerge in different ways as we become adults and learn to adjust in our new, ever-changing, challenge-ridden, growth-inducing world. It’s better to get ahead of these things now, while they are small blips in your life, before they become consistent and unhealthy patterns. A therapist is a great way to help uncover these patterns and learn better ways to deal with them. If you need more resources on this topic, check out Therapy. We All Need It.

Communication is inevitable in all aspects of your life. You can’t avoid it, and you can’t fake it, so make sure you go about it in the best way possible. Constantly try to better yourself in this department and watch to see that people around you are doing the same. The impact it has on your life is unsurmountable, so don’t settle. Set the standard for yourself, your friends, your partner, your life, and reach it. Heck, exceed it! The result will be beautiful.