Communication is relationship. Not just an exchange of words.
It's nervous systems responding to each other.
by Jana Denker
If you’ve ever heard a great speech, you’ve experienced this. A speaker can hold a room of hundreds completely still. They can create trust, ease fear or stir anger. People leave a room differently than they entered it. We know that speaking can have this kind of impact.
What we notice less often is that it happens in our everyday conversations too.
When we talk to each other, we don’t simply exchange information. We affect each other. And this happens through the words we choose and hear. But there is alo a layer underneath what is spoken. Who is speaking and what are they emitting?
There are several nervous systems in the conversation
Parents often understand this intuitively.
Imagie your child is frightened and you try to soothe your little one. But you’re nervous yourself. So you smile and say, “It’s all good, hun." And your child doesn’t settle. They hear your reassuring words. But they are also responding to you. To the tension in your voice. They pick up instinctively that you’re not quite as relaxed as you’re trying to sound. Something doesn’t match. Children are exceptionally good at sensing this - but us adults notice it too.
Maybe you know this co-worker whose calm makes it easier to have a difficult conversation. And you’ve probably also experienced a conversation becoming increasingly tense without being able to identify the exact moment when things changed.
Our nervous systems reading each other constantly, picking up subt clues in voice, posture, body language and respond to that. This is part of what we mean by co-regulation. And once you start looking at communication this way, your own state becomes part of the picture.
I’ve spent almost 20 years as a speechwriter working with the power of words to move people. As a somatic coach, I now pay attention to another layer of communication too: what happens in our nervous systems while we speak
When you know what to say — but can’t quite say it
You can be an excellent communicator and still have moments when the words you normally have access to suddenly aren’t there.
You know exactly how you want to set a boundary. Then you’re sitting opposite the person and find yourself explaining far more than you intended.
Or you have a clear point to make in a meeting, but someone challenges you and suddenly you can’t formulate it the way you could five minutes earlier.
Your communication skills haven’t disappeared. But under pressure, your access to them can change. This is why I distinguish between communication skill and communication capacity.
Knowing how to communicate is one thing. Being able to access that skill when there is pressure or something important at stake is another.
And your state doesn’t only influence the words you can access. It becomes part of how those words arrive.
Underneath this is what I call your stance: the overall energy of who you are while you communicate.
The person in front of you isn’t receiving a script.
They are experiencing you saying it.
None of this means you need to be perfectly calm before an important conversation.
And co-regulation doesn’t mean keeping everyone else comfortable.
A clear boundary may disappoint someone. Disagreement can create tension. That doesn’t mean the communication has gone wrong.
But the more capacity you have to stay connected to yourself when communication carries weight, the more choice you have in what you say and how you respond to the person in front of you.
So when you prepare for an important conversation, keep thinking about the words.
And notice what is happening in you as you prepare to say them.
Because your words matter enormously.
They just don’t travel alone.
This is part of the work I do with women in my 1:1 mentorship:
expanding the capacity to communicate what you know, feel and want, when it matters most.
You may also enjoy reading
Healthy aggression: What many women miss when setting boundaries
Sensitive? That's a real communication advantage
Comments