Are we in tune? When communicating in relationships, it is all about the right brain. Have you ever had one of those experiences where you’re trying to share with someone how you feel, and they keep giving you advice or telling you what you should do? Inside you can feel the tension building until you hear an internal voice yell, “Shut the hell up.” This is the feeling of misattunement.

Contrastingly, there are those times when you open up to someone and they barely say a word. You leave expressing how much better, and how understood, you feel. Remember, in relationships, less is more.

In my early years as a therapist, I felt so much pressure to have the right thing to say when my client was sharing some of the most painful and distressing moments of their lives. “What if I say the wrong thing or come of sounding patronizing or insensitive.” My efforts to have the right thing to say or sage piece of advice more often than not led to my client feeling somewhat dissatisfied with the session to misunderstood in worst cases.

Fortunately, after training and experience, I learned relational communication is a right brain to right brain process. It is not about what you are saying but what you are feeling TOGETHER. This begins in infancy. As babies, we do not have access to words as a means to communication. Our mother or father attunes to us through non-verbal means, such as eye gazes, tone, sounds, touch, etc. We also have a type of neurons known as mirror neurons that allow us to begin to connect and feel what another is feeling emotionally in their body; this is the basis of empathy.

After I understood this, I began to experience much more powerful sessions with my clients. It wasn’t so important what I said but how I was saying it. If we were emotionally connected in the moment, I could say, “Mary had a little lamb,” and my client would feel affirmed and validated. However, if you are not attuned right brain to right brain, every left-brain thing you do, such as continuing to talk, will make you more and more misattuned.

Attunement has to hit just the right spot. An example I often use is to imagine you’re eight years old and you wipe out on your bike and skin your knee. You come inside crying and asking your mother for help. An under attuned response would be your mother casually informing you the band-aids are in the hall closet and continuing to watch television. An over attuned response would be her jumping out of her chair, screaming, and calling 911. The first reaction leads to you feeling alone and uncared for the latter to being flooded with an increased level of fear.

Attunement is a felt sense in the body. Stop thinking so much and just try and really pay attention to what the other person is feeling and how they are expressing it non-verbally. We are naturally wired to do this for evolutionary reasons. This means we all have the capacity to do it successfully.

Listen more than you speak! This will take so much pressure off of and dispel the notion you have to have just the right thing to say. So the next time you’re attempting to understand or be there for someone in your life remember, it’s not what you’re saying but how you’re saying it.

–John Hawkins Jr., M.S., L.M.H.C.