Relationships: Effective communication strategies for family ...

As I walked into CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, I saw someone sitting in one of the chairs in the front foyer. Her legs were folded into a lotus yoga pose, her eyes were closed, her index finger and thumb were touching, her palms were up.

?Weirdo,? I thought. I?m not sure where my animosity came from. I like yoga. I?ve done it often. But somehow, this woman who looked like she was about to chant ?OM? at the front of the CAMH foyer infuriated me. I punched the ?8? button in the elevator and slid into room 801, where the seminar on Effective Communication Strategies for Family Members had already started.

?Sorry I?m late,? I muttered. Jen and Emma, the clinicians running the session, invited me to take the photocopied handouts. I picked them all up, trying to make as little sound as possible. 1. Communication Barriers. 2.? Common Mistakes (When communicating with people in pain) 3. Blocks to Listening. I sat down at the packed boardroom table. How bizarre. We looked like a board meeting. But what kind of a company would we be the board of? What exactly would be accomplished at what appeared to be the quarterly meeting of the saddest business in the world? We must make photo developing machines.

?This Instagram thing is just a fad,? says the CEO. ?We need to focus on better quality paper. That?s what?s going to get us our customers back.?

?I?ve never seen anyone hang a tablet on their wall. People want pictures printed.?

We keep lying to ourselves, working at this impossible task, trying to think of reasons to trick ourselves into get out of bed in the morning.

I brought my attention back to the seminar. Jen and Emma were taking us through the ?Communication Barriers? handout. ?Bad Timing? was the first on the list.

?Sometimes people are not ready to hear what we want to say to them,? Emma told us. ?It?s an unfair tactic to insist on talking about a problem when it?s late, when one of you is tired, when you are rushing to get somewhere.? Good point, Emma. In the past few weeks, there hasn?t seemed to be time for me to talk to anyone about what I am feeling. I can?t find a spare moment. I?m too busy.

The second communication barrier on the photocopied handout was ?Avoidance.? People who are avoiding often claim that the timing is bad. ?If there is always a reason why one partner can?t talk about a problem, it?s avoidance.? Well played, handout. I sat up. I started listening more closely. I started writing things down. Jen and Emma took us through a communication strategy that Jen wrote on the board (There?s a chalkboard in this room! Oh for heaven?s sake if there is any proof that we have no idea what we are doing, it is the chalkboard in this room.) But we took notes because that?s what you do when someone writes on a chalkboard. Someone asked what happens when we do everything right, and we still can?t get through to our loved ones? Jen paused with her chalk in mid-air, and turned away from the board.

?Sometimes we get hung up on saying the exact right thing at the right time. But sometimes even if we do everything right, that won?t work. And all we can do is know that we did our best, accept that, and take care of ourselves. And that?s OK.? We were all silent. It did not feel OK.

But even while I saw futility in the handouts and the chalk-written acronyms, I also felt that for the first time in weeks, I could see why I hated people in yoga poses, and why I was avoiding everyone. I saw on the faces of everyone around me at that meeting that they were feeling the same way I was. We were scrutinizing the handouts carefully, looking for the step-by-step instructions to make our loved ones see how much they were hurting us. Trying to find the handout that showed us how to make the person we loved well again. Trying to find a business plan that made photo paper relevant.

Every other person who was at that table with me has someone who is carrying part of their hearts around with them everywhere. And that person is sinking. CAMH has lots of resources for families of people with mental health and addiction problems, but I think the main resource for me this week was a reminder that I was not alone. That I was not unique in my feelings of helplessness. On the way out I looked for the yoga woman I had disliked so much on the way in. I think I just wanted to see her again in my new, less alone frame of mind and wordlessly apologize for calling her a weirdo. Also, I wondered if she?d moved on to other, weirder poses. But she wasn?t there any more. I hope wherever she is, she found some peace. I did, and I?m thankful.

Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/11/22/relationships-effective-communication-strategies-for-family-members/

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