Working with unconscious signals and processes in conflict communication

This is the second of three articles. 

Working with unconscious material entails surfacing unconscious messages into personal awareness, understanding the meaning and significance of the signals and integrating awareness into identity and conscious behaviour.  It also requires working with defences, edges and resistances, which will be addressed in the next issue.  The focus here is on facilitating awareness and ownership.

Working with unconscious or unintended communication requires great attention and respect:  attention because such unconscious communication is fleeting and easily missed; respect because it is easy to misinterpret or over-ride the resistance and process of the individual and think you know better because of their lack of awareness.  This is quite advanced work and training to work in this way is needed.

Paying attention to and working with unconscious or unintended communication is unusual and counter-cultural in most social and working environments.  It is difficult to work with unconscious or unintended signals if the only agreed agenda is to resolve a conflict using conscious rational methods.    Use of unconscious communication has to be legitimised and the nature of such a psychological contract is best explicitly agreed e.g. parties understand and expect that time and attention needs will be afforded to raising awareness of and inquiring into unconscious communication as part of the process.   If this does not happen, relationships may break apart before the transformation can take place exacerbating the problem and making it more difficult to tackle in the future. 

Surfacing unconscious signals to awareness and encouraging ownership

Unconscious or unintended signals are often incomplete, incoherent, and short-lived. Alertness and willingness to make time and space for them to complete and make themselves known is required.  This often means slowing the pace of interaction and paying attention to secondary or unintended signals.  This may be initially experienced as a distraction from the main issue and may be resisted so it requires that the facilitator direct attention on the secondary signals without being oppressive.

Working too early on the unintentional processes before rapport has been built is likely to be resisted and may escalate conflict or fracture the relationship.  The importance of building trust and a relationship (holding environment) that is strong enough to withstand the pressure of raising difficult issues and communication breakdowns is needed.  This needs to be created in advance e.g. through agreed ground-rules, a therapeutic or coaching relationship, a trusted facilitator.

Bringing unconscious signals into awareness is not always experienced as being in the best interest of the individual, especially if they are in a competitive or adversarial scenario where advantage taking, attack, or winning out over the other is the norm.  This kind of work needs to be done in a safe context where participants have agreed that it would be in the interests of all to disentangle the relationships and improve communication.  The emphasis needs to be on inquiry and learning through engaging in the conflict rather than victory or gaining power or advantage over the other.

Awareness of unintended and double messages

We will be more likely have clear communication if we are clear what we intend to communicate and send an unambiguous clear message.  However, this is not always the case and it is not just because of limited communication skills.  As mentioned in the previous article, repressed or emergent aspects of our personality express themselves and distort our intended communication by sending simultaneous unintended incongruent or contradictory messages.   For example, I may say that I am sorry for what I have done while at the same time exhibiting an unintended wry smile that is not congruent with the message of regret - a double message, part of which is outside my awareness or intention.

Double messages are an example of the unconscious distorting of our intended communication and often leave the receiver confused, suspicious or distrustful.  Even if they notice both messages, which one are they to believe or trust?  Perhaps they filter out and disregard the secondary or less powerful signal, the smile, and simply respond to the primary intention of expressing regret.  Or they may awarely respond to the secondary message and challenge or clarify the double message, which can be difficult or disturbing for sender and receiver alike.  Still more problematic is when the response of the receiver to the secondary message is a reciprocal and equally confusing double message.  So we have a confusing response to a double messaged communication - in short a communications mess below the level of either's consciousness that can escalate conflict and will be difficult to untangle.

Navigating the complexity of aware and unconscious messages and responses

When we react unconsciously to someone else's unconscious and incomplete signals, to their projections for example, we become part of their process - we cannot tell what is theirs and what is ours and we get so knotted up in their process that makes clear communication difficult.  They may also become part of our process if they are triggered without awareness by our unconscious responses.  Then we have a right old mess that is very difficult to sort out.  To do so requires someone who is able attend to both the conscious and the unintended signals, who can bring the different processes and signals to awareness and who can help amplify or unfold their meaning.

Mindell calls this drawing of the other person into our process 'dreaming up'.  It is hard to believe that we may be unintentionally triggering behaviour we dislike in others and that it has more to do with us than with them.  Withdrawal of the projection and ownership of the disavowed parts is needed if the knotting and confusing communication is to be relieved.  This requires both the ability to attend to and separate out one's own inner feelings, thoughts and responses from those of the other parties in conflict.  The key is to slow down interactions thus creating more time and space for the disowned part to appear, to draw attention to and work with them.

The challenge is complex.  It entails bringing the primary and secondary messages and their accompanying communication processes into awareness.  The main focus in working with unconscious messages is attention to nonverbal aspects of communication and the dissonance that becomes apparent when you attend in this way.  Many pay attention to the verbal content of their message but less or little to the non-verbal dimensions such as pace, manner, timing, which can carry the double message. 

Keeping in mind that around 80% of communication is non-verbal, we need to discipline ourselves to pay attention to these signals.  Commonly, when I ask people about these signals they give me an interpretation of the signals based what they have observed.  It usually takes a little time for people to get used to observing non-verbal communication and inquiring into the meaning of it rather than just assuming they know what the sender intended or meant.  Others observe well but don't necessarily see what they observe as relevant, significant or try to explore its meaning.

The sender may not take kindly to having attention drawn to signals that are unintended or outside their awareness.  They may feel embarrassed or vulnerable or may resist, deny ownership or responsibility, especially if they do not trust the awareness of the facilitator or if they suspect their admission or vulnerability will be used against them.  The facilitator must not be attached to a particular interpretation or have a point to prove but enable the sender to come to their own understanding of these unintended signals and the direction and motivation which unfolds as they continue to give attention to them.

There are a variety of ways that we can bring unconscious messages to awareness and explore them e.g. directing attention to the behaviour, encouraging the sender to intensify or amplify the signal, giving verbal feedback or mirroring the non-verbals, inviting contradiction of the signal, testing possible interpretations, or role-playing the observed behaviour to inquire into its impact.

As these signals are given more attention the strength, duration and clarity of the signals grow - enabling the sender to experience them more fully and allow their meaning to emerge.  By becoming / identifying with the signal and experiencing its force, the sender can gather new information about it, learn of its significance, discover the driving need or value and follow its unfoldment into action and fulfilment.  This is very different from the usual process of standing back from the behaviour and interpreting it from some interpretive framework or theory.  Occasionally the timely offering of an interpretation, even if wrong, may be helpful to the sender in advancing their inquiry but the facilitator must not impose.

The sender must be helped to discover their own significance and meaning.  Initially there may be no words, but movements, stances, images, proprioception (internal bodily sensations), etc.  It may take the sender time to allow the process, of which the signal is part, to unfold and to find the right words to reflect the meaning of the nonverbal communication.  Training is usually needed to help people create their own awareness and understanding of unintended signals but in time people learn to uncover the meaning and significance themselves.

The third article of the series addresses working with defences, resistance and edges.