Thoughts from the Therapy Chair with Joe Martino: Four Filters for Communication

If you’re like me, it might be hard to believe that we are almost to the end of July. With schools starting before Labor Day, a new year is less than a month away for many of our students. With the school year coming up with all of the stress it brings, it might be suitable for us to visit a stressor that is often overlooked. That stressor is communication.

Communication can be a stressor for every walk of life. In this article, I want to offer four filters for your communication that may help you and those you love to communicate more proactively. The filters are four questions we can ask to help us determine how to best proceed in our communication.

  1. Is what I’m about to say necessary? This might seem apparent to some. I think that any therapist could tell you how often we come across people who rarely stop asking themselves why what they are about to say is necessary. Sometimes, we are irritated because we’re overly tired, hungry, or just having a grumpy day. Will whatever you’re about to say be an issue after a good night’s sleep or a meal? Will it still bother you tomorrow? Would you benefit by allowing time for yourself to cool down? Two essential questions to ask ourselves are is it necessary to talk about this? And is it necessary to talk about it right now?
  2. Is it true? Again, a seemingly obvious question, but there are many times when a person is willing to stretch the truth to win an argument. More often, people will express something they thinkto be a fact as an actual fact. Whenever we are escalated, we must guard the words coming from our mouths and consciously distinguish between what we think and what we know. When it comes to another person’s motives, we can only guess. We cannot know what another person’s reasons are for doing something. Making clear distinctions between what you think you know and what you actually know is a great way to ensure that emotionally charged conversations don’t boil over into a full-blown fight.
  3. Is it kind? Perhaps, another way to ask this question is, “What is the kindest way I can say what I am about to say?” Necessary truth that isn’t kind isn’t usually helpful. Ultimately, we want our words to be beneficial and grounded in kindness. Kindness means we attempt to choose the words that have the best opportunity for helping the person we are talking with achieve their best. Kindness is concerned with speaking the truth and will be willing to have hard conversations, but it isn’t mean.
  4. Is it helpful? This is perhaps the biggest litmus test because if this isn’t true, I’m not sure the other three filters matter. Good communicators consider the impact of their words. Are the words you and I are using helping the situation in the moment and the person with whom we are talking? This doesn’t mean they will be happy about what we say. In modern parlance, it sometimes seems that we think a person’s response is the measurement of the rightness of something we’ve done. That probably isn’t a helpful metric because sometimes we don’t want to hear the thing or things that we need to hear.

Is it true, necessary, kind, and helpful? These four filters can help us decide if and how we should engage verbally with someone. If our words don’t match these filters, perhaps we should not talk or craft our communication differently.

Joe Martino is a counselor with Joe Martino Counseling Network.  He has locations in Lowell, Grand Rapids, Greenville, and Grandville.  For more information about Joe and his business, check their website or Facebook page.  He and the rest of the counselors and staff are eager to help those in need.

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