So much of the time in my workshops, with my clients, my work is about interpersonal communication, communication between people. The topic of intrapersonal communication is absolutely essential.

If you think about it, what gets in the way of me being honest with you, with me being transparent with you, one of the limiting factors is how connected I am with myself. If I don’t even know what’s going on inside me, how can I possibly share honestly what’s going on for me, if I have no idea? 

Likewise, if I’m on the listening side of things, if I’m trying to be present, what gets in the way of me being able to be present is if I have too much going on for me.

How I connect with what’s happening inside me and how I communicate is really essential.

Intrapersonal communication becomes essential for the interpersonal communication.

So often we find that how we communicate with ourselves is how we communicate with each other and how we treat each other.

In my workshops I often ask, “OK, when you feel like you’re less than perfect, when you feel like you totally screwed up, how do you talk to yourself?” And we write them down on a board. What we find is that people are brutal with themselves. We tend to really judge and criticize ourselves when we do something that appears to be a mistake or when we messed up. 

We get to work with that by transforming the way we speak to ourselves. We’re not trying to get rid of the judgments, but if we can connect with the life energy beneath them, the feeling and the needs, we can begin to transform the ways that we talk to ourselves in order to be healthier and more life serving.

Feelings and Needs Vocabulary Contributes to Healthier Intrapersonal Communication

One of the things that I find really helps in my intrapersonal communication, and also in the interpersonal communication, is developing a vocabulary around feelings and needs.

So often I have something happening inside of me. Some kind of feeling or energy and I don’t even have the words for it. If I don’t have the words for it, it’s going to make it very, very difficult for me to describe to you what it is that’s happening inside me.

We can use words as windows or as walls. I can use my words to block you out and not give you access to what’s happening inside me. 

With feelings and needs vocabulary I can use words more as windows and try to give you access to what my interior experience is.

Likewise, I might be able to more easily access what your interior experience is and we start to develop a deeper quality of connection. So developing feelings and needs vocabulary helps me to take this energy that’s inside of me, and it helps me bring it into the conscious mind.

We can always go trans-verbal later. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Feelings and needs vocabulary allows me to be clear and I can identify what those things are inside me.

Different Facets of Intrapersonal Communication: self-empathy

As far as intrapersonal communication, I would suggest a couple different parts of it. One of them I’ll call self-empathy. The other one I’ll call self-honesty.

Self-empathy has to do with, when I’m triggered, stimulated, I’m upset about something, how do I connect with what’s going on inside me. 

There’s a story about one time I was putting gas in my car and somebody pulled up to the gas station and threw their lit cigarette in the direction of the gas pumps. So the first thing that happened was I thought I needed to jump, duck and cover. Nothing happened. Then next thing that I noticed in my mind was that I was starting to judge the other person. “What a flipping idiot!” Well it turns out that later on, several minutes later, I decided to go up to that person and give him feedback.

If I had not transformed those judgments first, it would not have gone the way that it went which is actually that the person thanked me. So, what I did is, I noticed. The first thing I did is I noticed, “Oh I’ve got these judgments going on.” So we want to just green-light it. Allow it to be there.

And when I noticed that I was saying, “Gosh, what a flipping idiot,” I was saying two things. One, I was afraid because of my need for safety. Now that may seem obvious but I want you to notice how different that is from the judging the other person or judging myself. Now I was connected to the real life energy of it, safety.

The other thing that was really important to me in that situation to me was self-awareness and self-responsibility on the part of the other person who threw the lit cigarette in the direction of the gas pumps.

Having connected with that I really value safety and I really value self-awareness and self-responsibility, now I was in a different place. I wasn’t judging them or judging myself. I was connected to what was important to me. When I was in conversation with this person, they were able to recognize this as something that they also valued. 

Intrapersonal Communication Case Study: When I wanted to punch someone in a room of over 100 people

There was a different time when I was in a public event and there were over a hundred people in the room and somebody was about six inches from my face doing what most people would consider yelling, and telling me about how my values were what was destroying the planet. I noticed that I was irritated and the first thing that I wanted to do was punch this person.

Because I’ve had some practice at this I was able to give myself emergency self-empathy in the line of fire. Right in the middle of the conversation I was able to go inside and immediately connect with, “I’m feeling really disappointed because I was wanting a different quality of conversation.” 

And I was feeling irritated because I wanted understanding. I wanted to be seen more in alignment with how I see myself.

That helped me transform the conversation.

I was able to be more grounded and then I was able to show up more empathically for this other person and really hear some of the things that were very important to them.

They ended up walking away and I’m not sure if it’s because they were looking for a confrontation or because the way that I was engaging with them, they weren’t sure really how to engage back. I didn’t pursue it at that point, but I did prevent making a scene out of my reaction because I was in pain and I wanted the other person to feel the pain that I was in so I wanted to punch them.

So I connected with my own feelings and needs and was able to be more present in the conversation, actually transform that interaction from what it could have become.

Different Facets of Intrapersonal Communication: self-honesty

The other part that I mentioned about intrapersonal communication is self-honesty.

How do we coach ourselves? Do we encourage ourselves? Do we help ourselves to step up to higher and higher versions of ourselves?

In the situation at the gas station, after the person had parked and gone into the store I could have chosen to drive away and leave but I had the thought, “Well, what if this person does this again next week and they blow up a family and if I had said something maybe I could have prevented that.”

So I decided to give this person feedback but I was nervous because I was risking some kind of confrontation or conflict. 

I remember coaching myself a little bit, “Come on, Alan, you have black belt communication skills! You can do this!” I’ve been working on these skills a long time and the conversation actually went quite well. But it was that, sort of, encouraging myself that helped me get over that fear that I was feeling that would have prevented me from giving this person feedback.

Now, intrapersonal communication is just one facet of your entire relationship with yourself.

Cool exercise to try out

What I’d like to do is propose something that you can do right now which is, get a piece of paper, a blank sheet, and some crayons or colored pencils, something like that.

I’d like you to draw a picture of what it would look like if your relationship with yourself was a committed relationship. 

Most of us have never considered that.

What if your relationship with yourself was a relationship in which you can honestly say, “Till death do us part”?

What if you could look yourself in the mirror and not just gaze at your general outline but actually look yourself in the eye and say, “I’m here for you,” and have it be true?