Verified by 
Daily I look around me and observe how people shy away from genuine, self-revealing communication--almost as though to embark on such a path would be like walking into a minefield, where a single misstep might be fatal. But the communication we all long for--a powerful, expressive dialogue that might spiritually connect us to each another--is in fact fraught with danger and uncertainty. So almost all of us experience the need to carefully monitor just how much of ourselves we divulge to others. And we set up a lot more barriers to allowing others entry into our personally "barricaded" lives than we're likely aware of.
The very term communication has always been evocative and pregnant with meaning. Standing alone--like love, peace, death, virtue--it's infinitely rich in suggestiveness. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we all have a pretty good notion of what it's all about: namely, the ability of two of more individuals to converse meaningfully, with the goal of achieving some sort of deeper understanding and accord. It's certainly significant that the term is virtually devoid of any negative connotations. Almost never is it used disparagingly (unless some crank, by employing it sarcastically, subverts its meaning).
What We Learn in Childhood about Communication
But positive connotations or not, the early experience of most of us makes us wary about the viability of authentic, heartfelt communication. As infants, though we're not yet verbal, we possess a rudimentary language for expressing our physical and emotional states, which requires no learning whatsoever. As a remarkably sociable, interactive species--in a sense, absolutely yearning to be known--communication is simply where we "come from." It's inherent to our nature, and nothing could feel more vital to us. Ironically, though, what we all (to one degree or another) learn over time is how not to communicate, how to keep our mouths shut-or at least keep our most personal thoughts and feelings to ourselves. We learn to safeguard our vulnerability through censoring the expression of what's really going on inside us.
As children, innocent and artless, too often we told the unadorned truth about our experience and, as a result, our parents (or older siblings) turned on us. We got scolded or reprimanded, derided, ridiculed, or lectured to. Lacking the emotional resources to withstand such an assault, fragile and sensitive to the world outside us, our feelings got hurt. We felt disapproved of, our bond to our family suddenly weakened and made less secure. And so we felt compelled to reflect on just what we had said that contributed to this inner turbulence.
Consider that as a child whenever we're frowned upon by someone on whom we're dependent, such deprecation is experienced in the moment not simply as a withdrawal of love and support, but as threatening to our very sense of survival. Our attachment bond, our essential connection to those we depend on to take care of us and make us feel good about ourselves, has been endangered by our spontaneous, "unmonitored" communication. We therefore learn that it's risky--maybe too risky--to impulsively speak our mind when such unregulated candor can end up causing us hurt, agitation and anxiety.
Say at a very young age you experienced strong feelings of loathing toward your older brother because he refused to share his new toy with you. You ran to your mother, complaining vociferously about this perceived injustice and angrily announced: "Alan's mean! I hate him! I hate him!!" Odds are that your mother may have decided it wasn't right for you to harbor these feelings for your brother and, in no uncertain terms, sharply rebuked you for expressing such hatred. She may even have added--making you feel even more rejected and alone--that you had your own toys and shouldn't even be bothering him to play with his. Her anger trumped your own, at the same time it made you feel abandoned and uncared about by her. From such a frustrating interaction, you learned that impulsively and unashamedly venting your feelings could lead to a reaction that actually made you feel not better, but much worse.
If being straightforward in sharing thoughts and feelings wasn't frequently a punishing experience for us, we'd probably never teach ourselves--self-protectively--to lie in the first place. But the fact is that, depending on how critically our parents treated us, we all learned (to varying degrees) to fabricate, equivocate, and prevaricate. As we grew more and more to appreciate the possible repercussions of spontaneously opening up and confiding in others, we learned how such guilelessness subjected us to misunderstanding, denigration, and possibly some troubling feelings of alienation as well. Sadly, we learned that withholding, or falsifying, facts and feelings safeguarded us in a way that telling the truth simply couldn't be trusted to.
In short, we discovered the pervasive utility of telling lies--or, less extreme, taking certain liberties with the truth; or coloring, twisting, distorting, concealing, or otherwise misrepresenting information crucial to our "case." We learned that not being truthful could be a lot more reinforcing, or even rewarding, than simple honesty. Regrettably, our experience taught us that in telling the unvarnished truth, we stood a considerable chance of being misperceived, disapproved of, mocked, or verbally attacked. Additionally, in being honest and open, we may also have experienced one of the worst stings life has to offer--that most painful sting of rejection.
Our Need as Adults to "Hide" Ourselves from Others
At some point, the very thought of communicating candidly becomes for many of us fearful--essentially, a "learned phobia"--in that spontaneous, heartfelt sharing reminds us of past costs paid for such communication and leads to an uneasy sense of apprehension. And so, seeking to obliterate these anxious feelings and reduce our sense of vulnerability, we communicate increasingly less about what we think and feel. Ultimately, our very willingness to share who we are and what we stand for becomes severely compromised.
As regards being truthful with impunity, it might be worth saying a few words about Assertiveness Training courses, which came into vogue well over three decades ago. These classes and workshops specifically aimed to assure us that it really was in our best interests to tell the truth--so long as we did so responsibly (without, that is, aggressing against others). The popularity of these classes and workshops at the time gave convincing testimony to how deeply we all want--and need--to fully be ourselves in our interactions and share with others the essence of what we think and feel. Yet the eventual demise of these classes suggests (at least to me) that finally the "art" of direct but diplomatic self-expression was both more difficult to teach and to learn than had originally been conceived. Frankly, it's all too easy to place important relationships in peril if our self-disclosure or negative feedback is taken the wrong way. And, again, for most of us this really isn't a risk we're willing to take.
So this must be why, when I look around me, I generally continue to see the most limited, cautious, superficial sort of communication taking place. It would seem that telling the truth--unless it's done by a Master (i.e., someone with consummate tact, linguistic skills and good humor)--remains much too scary a proposition for most of us. It's far too risky to be attempted by a mere layperson, who typically would rather "fudge" than fight, would rather temper or edit a viewpoint than chance the unpleasantness, disharmony, or even rejection, of provoking someone who simply couldn't share this viewpoint.
In a sense, many of us already feel alienated from others enough as it is. Instinctively, we fear that we might end up feeling even more alienated should we disclose to them what we're really thinking and feeling. So our need to communicate is, finally, overpowered by our need to feel accepted and approved by the people who surround us. As a result, we become increasingly cut off from ourselves. And, because we don't communicate very meaningfully with the great majority of people in our lives, we feel increasingly cut off from them as well.
Is it any wonder that a study reported by Psychology Today many years ago found that more people would prefer to stay home and watch TV than spend an evening with their friends? A shocking finding, this--and further testimony to just how little satisfaction accrues to protecting our relationships with those we most care about through withholding from them precisely that which would make such relationships more satisfying. Yet for so many of us, it seems far more effortful to interact with others than to allow our eyes to be glued to an anonymous tube--which, after all, can't ever respond negatively to us, no matter what words we might impulsively utter at it.
If we, as the adults we are today, could only grasp that another's disapproval (or even rejection) is not something that in itself nullifies our worth--if we could just grasp that the judgment of others need not affect the way we judge ourselves--then the roadblocks to genuinely disclosing our selfhood could at last be removed. Of course, I'm assuming here that as adults we've also learned enough about basic tact and discretion that in speaking candidly we're still able to minimize any chance that our words might give offense. Certainly, our childhood spontaneity needs to resurface in a somewhat modified manner--informed by the prudence and circumspection that comes with age. But if we are to reclaim our birthright--our true assertive nature--we need to evolve to the point of such self-acceptance that the regard of others no longer controls how we regard ourselves.
Only then will we be able to express ourselves fully, without the usual constraints and inhibitions we place upon ourselves. Only then will we be capable of comfortably sharing with others what we most care about and believe in--without having to worry about re-stimulating archaic, exaggerated fears about their disapproval. . . . And only then can we truly be--or real-ize--ourselves with others.
