Enhancing Recovery - The Communication Circle

Enhancing Recovery is a series of 24 topics addressing the psychological and social aspects of successful, long-term sobriety. Enhancing Recovery is based on the course I developed and taught to recovering alcoholics. This lecture addresses The Communication Circle.

Transcript

Welcome to Enhancing Recovery, Part 1. I'm Dr. Lynn Brown. Today's topic is Communication Skills Part 2, The communication circle. There are four aspects to communication. I call this the communication circle because in communicating we move around the circle. First is expressing. Listening is a verbalization the individual makes which starts the communication process. It is a verbalization that expresses an idea, Concept, Opinion that the individual wishes to share with another person. Second is listening. This is what the receiver does in order to start his or her part of the communication. Listening is the first important link in the communication process. Third is understanding. Understanding is what the listener has to have accomplished in order for the communication process to continue forward. Both the sender and the receiver must be patient and allow for understanding to occur before the process may proceed forward. Understanding is knowing what the sender was expressing. I always remind people to stay in understanding as long as they can tolerate it. I say it this way because listening seems to be very difficult for most of us. Fourth is feedback. As I indicated in Communication Skills Part 1, Feedback is a verbalization by the receiver which pertains to what was expressed that moves the communication forward. It is not expressing. That comes after feedback. Copyright 2017, Lynn Baranius-Brown, Published by Best Life Publications. No part of this audio recording may be reproduced without permission from the copyright owner.