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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
Voiceover: [00:00:00] Rise Up Live, Joy Your Way. From emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness coach Kamini Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit. Through these small bites of self-visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live. Rise Up Live, Joy Your Way
Kamini Wood: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up Live, Joy Your Way. Whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening, thank you for, you know, hanging out here with me. I am always excited to have you here. And today, I wanna say right off the bat, you're not bad at communication . You were trained to read between the lines, and I wanna start there because a lot of people I work with, and this has been happening in more and more client conversations, they come in thinking, "Okay, Kamini, I'm just, I'm not good at expressing myself," or, "I don't say th- [00:01:00] things clearly," or, "I struggle with communication," or, "I'm, I'm just socially awkward," right?
I hear that more and more, I, and, and I just wanna slow things down because that's not what's actually happening all the time. Now, sometimes it is. I think that we do get anxiety at times, so I'm not disputing that that happens. But I wanna just say that sometimes it's something else. I wanna say sometimes it is a pattern we've learned or we've accumulated or assimilated, that's the word I'm looking for, assimilated from our, how we grew up.
'Cause if you grew up in an environment where people didn't say what they meant, or emotions weren't expressed directly, or tension lived just under the surface, you may have learned something specific. You may have learned to actually, what I call read the room. You're measuring. Uh, some of us refer to it as sometimes we walk on eggshells, right?
But you, you notice things. You notice tone shifts, you notice silence, you notice facial expressions and microexpressions, you notice energy changes, and you've learned to figure out what [00:02:00] someone meant without them actually saying it, and that takes skill. But you know what? Here's the trade-off, because when communication is indirect, clarity doesn't feel safe.
So you don't say things like, "Well, I'm upset," or, um, uh, "That hurt my feelings." Instead, you hint, or you soften it, or you wait for the other person to notice, right? And I just want you to pause there 'cause I think I've done that many times too in the past, where it's, I, I just wait for them to notice that maybe something bothered me.
Um, or you just stay quiet altogether because speaking directly feels like you're gonna completely expose yourself, and it feels way too risky. Now, it may show up in your adult relationships. You may notice that you struggle to say what you actually feel, or you rehearse every conversation in your head before you have it, or you overthink how something's gonna land for the other person, or you just expect the other person to get it.
Because that's what you had to do, right? You had to just get it, so you expect the other person to [00:03:00] get it. And you learned, "If I can figure this out, well, they should be able to too." But what ends up happening is we end up disconnecting with the other person, and it also creates confusion. And that confusion creates, um, you know, it, it creates disconnect and it creates disharmony.
Because when we're in relationships, we're communicating indirectly, um, you know, what ends up happening is things don't line up, and you feel misunderstood, the other person feels misunderstood and also confused. And then both of you start to think, "Okay, what's actually happening here?" And we end up almost cros- uh, missing each other.
And so that's why I wanna say it, it... I always look for the deeper patterns, right? So I don't, I don't say, "Yeah, okay, we could call it a communication skill issue," but I actually look deeper than that. I say, "Oh, wow, that looks more like a survival pattern. That looks like, wow, in, in order to feel safe maybe in how you were growing up, uh, what that meant was you limited [00:04:00] how you communicated," right?
So if honesty and communicating directly or assertively led to tension or withdrawal or sarcasm or anger or emotional distance, your nervous system learned it's better to stay quiet or it's better to soften what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna kinda dance around what I'm gonna say, um, and just not say it directly.
B- but those patterns don't just go away on their own, right? So it's important to ask yourself, "Do I, do I say what I actually wanna say? Do I actually communicate what I'm feeling? Um, or do I say what feels safest to say? Do I soft pedal it? You know, do I ask directly for what I need, or do I hope the other person kinda figures it out and picks it up?"
And when something's bothering you, do you address it, or do you just simply let it sit and be like, "You know what? It's, it's not a big deal right now. It's, it's just, it's fine. It's fine." But then eventually it just keeps building up, right? And this isn't about me saying to you, "Hey, I want you to become blunt [00:05:00] overnight."
Like, just go from soft pedaling and not really saying anything to just blurting out everything. 'Cause communication isn't about that either, um, b- because we do... I mean, there is a s- there, there are communication skills, right? That... So the goal isn't just to start blurting out things, but it's learning that clarity is not the same thing as conflict Right?
We can say, "Okay, that doesn't feel good to me," without it turning into something bigger. Or we can ask somebody, like, "Hey, can we, can we chat about this?" without it becoming a problem. Because the real work is rebuilding the self-trust and the trust in your own voice, and trusting that you can say something directly, and you can stay grounded even if the other person is having a response to it, and even if it feels really uncomfortable.
And it's important that you hear this, right? You are not behind, and you're not just bad at communication. What it is, is that you've adapted to some of the experiences you've had, and you now get to shift how you want to show up, right? You can, you can learn a different way of showing up, and you can shift that.
[00:06:00] So, you know, w- I talk about this all the time, you know, as a people coach. So I'm, I'm certified in helping people understand how communication works and better ways of communication, like how we present ourselves, how we're really, um, showing up with the other person, how we are expressing ourselves, the non-verbals.
We talk a lot about this in those communication skills, which is a huge part of this. However, it's also important to pay attention to your own nervous system. You know, communication skills are great, but if your nervous system is activated, the skills aren't gonna get us where we need to be until we deal with what's going on with the nervous system.
It's always about where's our nervous system state first, and then we can figure out, you know, what it is we w- well, we figure out how to communicate it and also what it is we wanna say. If you'd like to chat with me about how co- coaching can help you with things like communication skills or anything else where you feel that you might be stuck or stagnant and wanna move forward with in your life, whether personally or professionally, book a time to chat with me anytime at coachwithkamini.com and [00:07:00] until next time, stay well.
Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. For more information, Book a chat with Kamini at www.chatwithKamini.com, or visit her website at www.kaminiwood.com. You can also find Kamini on Facebook or Instagram username, it's authentic me. Thank you for listening!