One of the hardest things for new migrants arriving to Aotearoa New Zealand is the dominant culture’s reverence for indirect communication. Firstly there is an expectation that everyone already knows all of the social rules or will be able to absorb them rapidly without ever being told them. Secondly, under the auspices of politeness, or not wanting to be mean, no one will ever tell you that you have made a mistake, or broken a social rule. Instead they will resent you for the rest of their lives and talk smack about you behind your back to everyone they know, while being nice to your face, because that is what politeness/niceness demands.
Unsurprisingly I think that this is deeply dysfunctional and has meant that at least in spaces dictated by the dominant culture we have become a nation of passive aggressive people. It is not nice or polite to not let someone know they have transgressed a boundary or social rule. It is more comfortable perhaps, not to have a direct conversation with someone but it certainly isn’t nice. Additionally this behaviour is based on some pretty false assumptions. It rests on the notion that everyone can read body language and unspoken communication effectively, and that we clearly communicate when rules or boundaries are broken with unspoken communication. Both of which are false.
In my practice as a counsellor I have come to realise that even people who believe they are highly skilled at interpreting unspoken communication are actually very bad at it because all humans are very bad at it. Instead what we actually do is project our own story into the space that is left by unspoken communication, and as we never check this story with direct communication, we accept this as fact.
A very low stakes example of this was recently, I was at an event, and I pointed someone out to my partner. I said to them, “I don’t think that person likes me, and I don’t know why, its fine but a small bummer because I think they are really cool.” Not three days later, I was in a zoom meeting with someone I wanted to recruit as an interview participant for my PhD. They had, immediately before our meeting spoken to the person I thought didn’t like me. That person had just told them that they thought I was really cool and was very excited for us to be connecting. A reminder to take my own advice!
Half my job is about paying attention to people’s unspoken communication, despite that, when I don’t have a contextual understanding of a person I am still really bad at it. Other people are bad at reading your unspoken communication and you are bad at reading theirs. This is not a moral failing, but it does mean that we need to do things differently.
If we want to have robust communities that take care of each other well, we have to be willing to step into the discomfort of direct communication. This means both being able to ask for what we need and letting people know when they have transgressed a rule or boundary. It means getting comfortable with the idea that we might mess that up sometimes and letting it be OK. When we are learning to communicate more directly, it is often useful to not speak from our initial emotive reaction. While emotions give us important information, the nervous system activation of being in our feelings can sometimes get in the way of saying what we actually mean. It is OK to not address things in the moment. There is no urgency, we can always come back to addressing an action or conversation when we are ready. A good step might be to first use the process I described in my last post, and then use having a direct conversation with someone as the action that you take.
“Instead they will resent you for the rest of their lives and talk smack about you behind your back to everyone they know, while being nice to your face, because that is what politeness/niceness demands.” Ha! Love this and your piece on clarity, direct communication. Yes, please. Especially as the world seems to be getting more aware of neurodivergence it might be the only way when felt sense is lost.