You know the saying: “when you assume, it makes an a** out of u and me” – which can be often more truthful than simply clever.

So when should you assume?  Or should you?  What role does assuming have in communication, if any?

Actually, assuming is the lack of clear communication – you don’t really know, so you assume – you try to guess what the other person was thinking, what they meant to say, what was implied but not overtly stated.  And you further assume that the left out material was unintentionally done so – not meant to purposely make you look bad or leave you in the lurch wondering.

So by assuming, you try to do the person a favor and proceed to make the mistake of acting without clarifying, without getting full knowledge.  Other times you assume because you think you will look less than smart if you don’t, and no one wants to look stupid.  Then there’s the times when your ego tells you that it’s your right and you assume the higher position as your due.

“I assumed that you meant for me to have the last one, because you didn’t say otherwise…” (“Oh, I was saving that for Johnny, but I didn’t think I had to label it – I assumed you would ask before taking the last one…”)

“I assumed you would want me to join you, so I went ahead and booked my travel on the same dates.” (“Well did you also assume that I might change my mind, because that trip was cancelled two weeks ago.”)

“I just assumed you were too busy to take care of this yourself, so I went ahead and did it for you…”  (“You WHAT??  Well, you assumed wrongly – actually I was purposely waiting on that, to think it over a little longer before deciding which way to go, but now you have apparently decided it for me.”)

When the situation has a danger component, you should never assume and clarifications are mandatory. (“Do you actually know what you’re doing here, or should we call for help?” versus “I assumed you knew what you’re doing and now we’re stuck.”)

So, in the interests of maintaining crystal clear communication with others, you should never assume?  In a perfect world, that might be true, but that is far from the world that we all live in.  So when is it advisable to not seek out clear communication and instead to assume you have full knowledge instead of trying to clarify before acting?

When the person obviously needs help and is too proud or too stubborn to ask for it, pitching in and assuming is a good thing.  And when there is a crisis or general chaos, assuming a leadership role and taking charge when no one else steps up is also a public service.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  In general, assuming is a trait of poor communication and can frequently lead to mistakes, misunderstandings and hurt feelings.  A good habit is to catch yourself when you are about to assume something, then stop and speak up before acting, “Would it be OK if…?”, “Do I have all the information on this?”, “Is the procedure to follow [this]…?”  Your consistency in doing this will result in uncovering more information or verifying that you have complete information to decide, before potentially making a (small or large) mistake.  Don’t assume when you can easily ask!  Easily said; harder to make habitual.

I am mainly concerned with good communication, as in clear direct say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say communication.  But we all know that there’s a bad side to most things, including communication.  Bad communication comes in several forms.  One form of bad communication is unclear, unintentionally vague and therefore misleading communication.  Another form of bad communication is purposefully misleading, manipulative, intentionally divisive – this form is bad in the truest sense of the word. This latter bad communication is today’s focus.

Two articles in the recent news highlights this type of bad communication.  The Chuck Hagel nomination for Secretary of Defense by Obama is one such example. While Obama says, “My number one criteria in making [this] decision was simple – who is going to do the best job in securing America.” But that’s not the real communication.  The truthful communication is that he is picking the nominee most likely to align with him in his agenda to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and beyond.  While this is not in itself a bad thing, what is unfortunate is that he cannot state his real reason overtly, and so must disguise it under the bad communication of “the best job in securing America”.  The standard rhetoric tries to generically appeal but is so tired that no one hears it anymore.  Whether you agree or disagree with Obama’s politics, everyone knows them for what they are.  And to stay alive (i.e. be successful) everyone in politics, not just Obama, has to say and do certain things on the surface with the real agenda just underneath the surface.  So it becomes ‘politics as usual’ – a very nasty strain of bad communication.

The second article of example turns my stomach. It is the James Holmes preliminary hearing as the prosecution tries to serve justice in the terrible Aurora shooting case.  This psychopath who calmly killed 12 innocent moviegoers and wounded 58 others remained unemotionally detached throughout the hearing. This was likely on the advice of his defense attorney, so a mental illness plea can be entered to get him deemed not guilty.  When you take that many innocent lives for whatever reason (a voice in your head told you to do it), you must pay the price for your actions.  This was far from mental illness – it was sanely premeditated.  He is guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, yet a headlines grabbing attorney (c’mon, who would really want to defend this case?)  wants to try to find a loophole to circumvent justice being served.    Is it really worth giving up your soul simply to “win”?

Many attorneys, like most politicians, have strong communication skills. But when these strong skills are used for less than wholesome purposes – to push a personal political agenda or to free an individual who has wrought such devastation – it can be considered an abuse of those skills.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Direct, clear, concise communication is usually desirable, but that needs to be qualified as desirable when working towards a valid purpose. When an industry such as politics or the legal system has evolved to use rhetoric skills for a “valid” but perhaps immoral purpose, one has to wonder about the terms of success in the society in which we currently live.

It seems like it should be so easy to communicate – we all know the English language fluently – what could possibly be so hard about communicating?  Well, for one thing, English is so heavily nuanced, that communicating isn’t the problem as much as clearly communicating is.  Our English language has way too much wiggle room, so nailing down specifics of what you said and what you mean becomes a real challenge in communication.

Take for instance some New Year’s resolutions you might have made to yourself.  For instance, I’m hoping to 1) get more sleep, 2) start eating breakfast each morning, and 3) exercise more.  All good ideas!  But let’s look at each of these resolutions.

How much “more” sleep is beneficial?  Does 10 extra minutes count for much?  I once read that sleep should happen in ½ hour increments or it doesn’t do much good, which serves to question the research behind that assumption, and to whether you can generalize such a broad statement across all individuals.  But leaving that concern aside, let’s assume it’s true.  So now I want to get what? – an extra ½ hour of sleep each night?  an hour?  And what about if I wake up after 20 minutes, out of habit – is it worthwhile to force myself to lie in bed for another 10 mins to get a full ½ hour in?  And what about the kind of sleep – is there benefit to drowsy sleep or are we talking only about deep REM sleep?  Murky waters this sleep business.

Let’s move on to “eating breakfast” to get a caloric and energy boost on the day, most important meal and all that jazz.  While I believe that a morning meal is important and I should start to include one, what counts as breakfast?  Does a candy bar count?  How it is any different from a bowl of heavily sugar-sweetened cereal, especially if I drink a glass of milk with the candy bar?  I am quite serious!  How about a slice of pizza for breakfast?  Pizza covers all the major food groups.  How much quantity of any kind of food constitutes ‘breakfast’?  Another unclear area that makes resolutions hard to keep – or easy to fool ourselves that we are keeping when we really aren’t.

As for exercise, well you know how this one will go.  Self-talk will whisper “walking is exercise” and “any exercise is better than nothing” since ‘more’ exercise is the hard to nail down qualifier here.  Of course, I hear you saying that all of this unclear communication is just ‘cheating’ yourself, but isn’t that the point?  There is so much room for ‘abuse’ with non-specific language that we can tell ourselves (and others) anything and get away with it.  It’s so easy to rationalize bad behavior.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  If you really want accountability – yours or someone else’s – make your language as specific as possible.  This is especially true for goals.  Don’t allow yourself to settle for broad generalities or nothing will happen.  We always want what is easy, which is the status quo.  Change, i.e. growth, can only happen when we move out of our comfort zone, and specific tie-you-down-tight language is needed to get those well-intentioned goals to become realities.

Oh how we love to worry!  My mother-in-law is a worrier.  Long into our adulthood, while we were leaving from a visit, which is just an hour away, she would routinely chide, “Be sure to ring and let me know when you get home, or I will worry.”  And I would think, now the burden is on me to remember to call or in her mind she will be envisioning some horrible car accident if too much time goes by and she doesn’t hear.

Now I know you’re thinking, it’s just her way of communication how much she cares.  And while I agree that it’s her way, still there are better ways to communicate caring.  Like the direct way of simply saying, “Love you!”, “Come again soon!”, “Really enjoy when you visit!”  Worry is not just a useless emotion, it can also hurt your good health.

Worry is useless because it can’t change anything bad that may happen.  If there is a car accident, your worrying about it has absolutely zero impact on whether it happens or doesn’t happen.  Perhaps you argue that worrying helps a person to be more careful.  I would counter that worry makes a person timid and afraid to try new things.  When self-worry turns into fear of living life fully, then worry is limiting and detrimental to quality of life.  Fear of failure is a big worry that many people have, which then gives them license not to try.

Don’t try – you’ll hurt yourself!  Be careful with those!  Watch out for danger!  Many children are raised with so many cautions, some indeed warranted, but helicopter parenting is not.  I’m not a worrier but one time my teenage son missed an after school dentist appointment, which was very out of character for him.  He was very responsible as a teen, had a jam packed schedule of activities, and never let the ball drop on anything, with nary a reminder needed.

So this one time, I did worry as the time grew later and later.  Within 3 hours I had him dead in a ditch – what else could possibly keep him from missing the appointment?   After I called the hospital, I actually had worked myself up enough to call the police to report him missing.  Naturally they humored me, hearing from off the handle parents all the time, and told me to wait 24 hours before he could be deemed officially a missing person.

I tried to say that they didn’t understand that MY son was different, not your average teenager and this situation was serious – he was that responsible.  I know now that they hear these cases all the time and are trained to say the right thing – which is not “worry is a useless emotion” – more like, “He’s a busy teenager, maybe he just forgot.”  Which was exactly what had happened, after which I chastised him with, “You had me so worried!”  Why is it always the forgetful but unintentional victim’s fault when we choose to make ourselves crazy with worry?

The reason that worry is detrimental to your health is because when we imagine the worse – that horrible accident with your baby in the ditch crying out for you and you can’t help – those deep emotions feel real to the brain and the body acts accordingly and goes into stress mode.  Prolonged stress from a lifetime of worrying can be very damaging to the body.  Useless worry with real health consequences from all that stress taxes the body needlessly, with no benefit.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Do yourself and your body a favor and shake off worry.  It seldom helps and can really hurt.  Worry is a mental habit that can be changed with practice; when a habit hurts health, it needs to go.  There is really no connection between degree of caring and amount of worry expended.  The Jamaican song lyric “Don’t worry – be happy” is very true since too much worrying is the antithesis of happiness! 

The holidays are here – ‘tis the season for miscommunication big time!  At this time of year, more than any other, we start stressing all over the place – and when stressors go up, communication tends to go down.

Since Thanksgiving, retailers are desperate to catch shoppers for pretty much 30 straight days, to wring out every last opportunity they can to stay in the black this year.  And after the economic woes, it’s a bleak attempt.  It started with the madness of Black Monday and went downhill from there.

In the frenzy to hook shoppers, retailers advertise special print ads, in store specials, online only prices, with prices sometimes changing multiple times throughout the same day!  Prices are even reduced further with coupons mailed, in store coupons, emailed coupons – where’s the best price?  What’s the best deal?  Who has the bottom bargain?  Do you even know what you’re actually buying?

My daughter bought a 50” LED Westinghouse TV for $349 and I bought a similar 50” LED RCA TV for $528 – in another life I would have taken my time and known the factors that warranted a $179 price differential – a whopping 50% increase!  But in the frenzy to get the best deal before you miss out, communication is limited and the decision making process is so rushed that rationality is compromised.  I still have no idea why one TV was worth 50% more than the other, which I doubt it actually was.

I miss the days when you could actually talk to a knowledgeable salesperson, who would communicate with you the differences between two similar products, especially when making a major purchase and you could make up your mind with good trust that you understood what you were buying.  Those days are gone – not only are salespeople less knowledgeable across a variety of products, but a 50” TV hardly qualifies as a major purchase anymore!

Maybe the communication is that we live in a pretty disposable society where you pretty much get what you pay for and good service is the exception not the norm.  No maybe about it – that is our reality today.   Sadly, the commercialism of the holidays intensifies this sorry state of affairs.

My hope is that in your life, you don’t let holiday stressors get to you and instead you maintain your good communication skills for an enjoyable season – or at least renewed spirit in the New Year!

“To improve is to change.  To be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill

It almost the New Year and perhaps resolutions loom for you, things that you would like to change about yourself.  The typical resolution is to lose weight, to join the gym and get in shape, to start eating better (fewer sweets) – in general to take better care of ourselves, to be nicer to our bodies.

Change is hard – self-change is really hard.  Changing something about our personality (stop procrastinating, stop being late), our physique (as above), our character (be nicer, kinder, less judgmental) requires self-discipline to implement the desired change.

And who is really going to hold us accountable – are you strong enough to hold yourself accountable?  That kind of self-communication, self-talk boosting yourself along to continue on the desired path day after day is more than I can maintain.  I’m just a pushover when it comes to holding me accountable.

So why is change so hard?  It’s hard to implement for several reasons:

1)      We are creatures of habit – habits are hard to break because it is just so easy to slide into the comfort  and reassuring behaviors we have in place, even if they aren’t habits that are in our best interest to keep

2)      Our brains seek out patterns to make sense of being bombarded by data.  We look to see what is familiar in newness, to attach it to something we already know and understand.  Change represents newness, which is not desirable in the case of self-change.  The status quo is the desirable default option.

3)      Change in one area can have a significant impact in other ancillary areas of our life, so change can be threatening and upsetting.  Our ego can take a hit when the announced change is unsuccessful and we feel like a failure.  Better not to risk changing and protect our fragile ego.

But change is necessary – without change there is no growth.  We must change to stay vital and enjoy life to the fullest.  So how do we make our New Year resolutions successful, and deliver the changes we say we really want to do? (“This year for sure I’m going to…”)

The best way to give change a chance for success is to start small.  Take the big goal and break it down into smaller chunks.  Then take each of those small chunks and break them down into even smaller steps.  Then tackle each of those smaller steps one at a time.  It’s hard to see the change when it’s that small, but slowly, slowly you will be moving towards accomplishing the larger goal.

Give yourself plenty of time – don’t rush – and at this time next year you will be looking for a new goal, with this one successfully accomplished.  And even if it’s only one goal, it’s one that you haven’t been successful completing up to this point.  And it took you more than a year to get where you are, so don’t rush the fix.  Take those small steps towards the goal which will become new habits and you won’t even fee the change when it gradually but surely happens.

The key to change is to tie it to what already exists – we like what we currently have and we will ultimately reject sudden change.  Gradual and comfortable is the best way to communicate any change – to ourselves, to employees, to public policies.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Change is inevitable for growth – if you’re not changing, you’re dying.  Everything changes, but not everyone embraces change.  So win the change battle with the holdouts by going slowly, tying the new to the old, and taking your time.  If every step is thought out in advance so every small action moves in step with the desired change, it will be successfully implemented.  Just don’t expect the New Year’s resolutions to be done in a month – and don’t give up either!  Success isn’t right around the corner, but it is within reach, if you do the necessary advance planning to stay on course. 

You probably have experienced the person that goes on and on and you just can’t get a word in edgewise.  It’s so frustrating to talk to this conversation hog, even though you may find something of interesting in what they are saying, because they go on and on and on…  The rules of polite conversation dictate that you allow others to have a turn speaking.  But some people don’t seem to know the rules, so the reaction by others is to either avoid their company or to interrupt them whenever possible.

A critical communication skill is getting our fair share of turns in a conversation.  Without this skill, a person can be capable and intelligent, but will remain in the lower ranks of their profession because they can’t be counted on to speak up when needed.   If they clam up in silence when interrupted or sit out a conversation with a conversation hog, they are doomed professionally.  So this skill is a must have.

Or maybe you are that person.  Do you find that you are interrupted often before you have a chance to finish your story?  That you pause for a breath, and someone jumps in to take a turn when you weren’t through speaking and weren’t quite ready to give up your turn?

The source of this problem is that person who is constantly interrupted is giving off false signals of being through talking and ready to yield the floor.  At this point, others naturally jump in, thinking the turn taking was turned over when it wasn’t intended to be.  A good example is Margaret Thatcher who was forever being interrupted.  This is a common problem, even for some high status people.

Language is like a formal dance – one person leads, takes a swing around the floor, then another person politely cuts in, with the permission of the first person – a tap, a nod, an agreement that their turn is over for now.  Only in conversation, this exchange is done with a pause, a drop in tone on the last word, and eye contact to the next speaker.  Sometimes there is even a literal handoff, a hand gesture to the next in line to speak, or a verbal, “Jack?”

To keep from being interrupted, refrain from giving off false signals and don’t do the things that signal you are ready to give up the floor.  Instead pause for breath in the middle of a sentence, maintain or raise your tone before pausing, and don’t allow eye contact during the pause.  Then when ready, give the proper signals and end your turn speaking politely.

As for interrupting a conversation hog, it’s hard to teach the traffic rules to someone who isn’t aware that they need a lesson.  So let them fend for themselves and move on – just make sure that you aren’t the one being the conversation hog and not allowing others their fair share of conversation turns.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  The rules of the conversation road require skills to manage the intersections.  The ability to get a turn to speak and to maintain it for as long as is reasonable is high on the list.  Introducing a topic to discuss and then supporting and maintaining the conversation is next.  Then is the ability to pass the conversational turn over to another.  Spotting signals that you are next to speak is important.  As is the ability to stop people who blatantly interfere with the process.  These abilities make up the repertoire of a skillful conversationalist.

Things are just supposed to always work out happily in the end.  People are supposed to be able to read your mind and know exactly what you want and what you mean, so every relationship always runs smoothly.  Conflicts are always that other stupid person’s fault for being so dense and for not understanding.  Right!

I know you weren’t born yesterday and haven’t been living under a rock, so you know that none of these things are ever going to be always (or even often) true.  That’s just not how relationships work, no matter how much you wish it were all true.

One thing that can help is to establish clear expectations when the relationship is just beginning, or close to the beginning, to get you and the other person on the same page.  No, it’s not easy to do, and no one wants to do the icky stuff when there’s not a problem – yet!  But what is certain is that when the inevitable problem happens, if you did do the hard work up front, the problem would be easier to deal with down the road.

My daughter is just in such a position right now with her soon-to-be father-in-law.  She knows that he is a problem waiting to happen, mainly because they are very different people.  While we can choose to avoid people we know we don’t agree with and who are too old to realistically change, we can’t avoid offensive family.  And if we could avoid the new family, it’s not a good idea to do so – it just gets things off on the wrong foot when you marry in and immediately start avoiding…

I recommended that she have a chat right from the beginning and lay out the expectations of the relationship, so the air is clear before there is a big blowup.  But she’s just a kid, and for her to initiate such a difficult conversation with a strong personality who is a generation older is probably not in her ability to do.  What a shame, because I can see a world of hurt coming in a few years.  This situation, which is starting out badly now, is just going to get worse through time.

One issue in play is future grandchildren.  This very personal decision is not anyone else’s business besides the couple, but this FIL doesn’t see that it’s not within his rights to intrude.  He constantly makes mention and puts pressure on her (not on his son).  I also recommended that she tells him to back off on this and put the subject off limits, but she doesn’t have the force of personality to do that either.  And while I could, this is not my battle to fight.  Adult children need to learn to fend for themselves.

All of this and more is caused by not establishing relationship expectations up front.  And since this relationship is just beginning, with the marriage marker coming, it’s a perfect opportunity to address the situation.  I don’t have a crystal ball, but you don’t need one to see the clear future before it happens.  This is a relationship train wreck waiting for the imminent crash.

COMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  Most people have on rose colored glasses, believing the best about the relationships in their life, when the good relationships could be so much better and the warning signs with the poor ones go unrecognized.  And if they do see them, most do not have relationship skills to work on things to make them better.  We all deserve happiness in our relationships, and setting clear expectations is one way to get there.  Simply verbalizing what we want from the other person is a healthy way to start.    

You know those situations, it just feels like you’re getting nowhere with this person, which is likely true, and so the best avenue is the path of least resistance – avoid that person or retreat when you can’t.  But what if you can’t  avoid or retreat – the person has valuable skills to offer which you need – and interaction is necessary?  Understanding why you feel as you do when you’re around this person and why they are the way they are is a big step in changing your discomfort.

Who is being described here?  You might recognize him – and it usually is a male – the person that makes everyone uncomfortable, tense and rattled may not do or say anything concrete to complain about, but just being around him is unsettling.  He is too close in proximity, although he may not actually touch you; his language is awkward, crude, inappropriate; he laughs at the wrong times and just misses the point in conversations; his questions are wrong and ones that no one else would dream of asking, and he doesn’t understand the answers; he tries too hard (embarrassing) or won’t try at all (infuriating); he is big, clumsy, erratic in behavior and appearance, so being out in public with him is agony; he keeps everyone in turmoil much of the time.  But he is needed and provides a valuable function – he’s almost indispensible.

The hard part is that he will never change – his adult personality is locked in.  The good part is that you do have a way to deal with him.  This situation is simply a language difference – once you understand him better your behavior towards him will change.  He is not being purposefully obstinate, uncooperative, crude, vulgar, or deliberatively uncooperative.  He is simply touch-dominant in a world of largely successful sight and hearing dominant colleagues.  We reward the visual and auditory dominants with good grades in school, promotions at work, and positive reinforcement to keep doing what they’re doing.  Our “don’t touch!” society rejects the touch-dominant individuals and unjustly punishes them repeatedly until they are beaten down so far that they can’t change.  This ‘language’ difference is the real reason for his behavior, not some inner motive to make your life miserable.

If you were to pretend that the language barrier is that he speaks little or poor English, you wouldn’t be half as annoyed with him – you would know that communicating with him would be difficult and misunderstandings were probable.  You would make an extra effort with him, try harder and be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when needed if he weren’t a native speaker.  You would try to work things out without having bad feelings and work to get the job done.  So it can be with the touch-dominant colleague.  Have some faith that it isn’t a person problem; it’s a language communication problem.  Sensory language has more influence than most know to give credit for.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  We all have a dominant language, which we retreat into most severely when we are upset or under stress.  Touch-dominant people have little room to move because all they have to relate to is feelings and emotions.  To make matters worse, they are in a minority in the general population and others have a hard time relating to their touch dominance.   With nowhere to ‘go’, few others to relate to, touch dominant individuals can be at a real disadvantage in communicating with work colleagues who simply don’t like or ‘get’ their world. 

In the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit, the toy rabbit just wants to be “real”.  Just like Pinocchio, who desperately wants to be a real boy.  And in a book I just read, the main character observes about another character, “He was talking for real.  It was strange.”   So what is meant by “real”?  And how do you tell between what is real and what isn’t real?

The answer depends largely on what the ‘real’ is referring to.  The definition of real can be:

Not organic, living, breathing as in artificial: “Is that (Christmas tree, floral arrangement) real?”

Authentic, but not wholly possessed by the person: “Is that (hair) real?”

Fake, counterfeit: “Is that (designer handbag, diamond) real?”

Disingenuous, insincere: “Is she for real?”

Exaggerated, deluded: “Get real!”

And the second part of what’s real has to do with the purpose for needing the thing to be real.

When the item under consideration is an object, what does it matter if the Christmas tree/floral arrangement/hair extensions/designer handbag/diamond is real or not, especially if you can’t tell the difference to the naked eye?  If the purpose is to beautify the surroundings, and that is accomplished by artificial means, what difference does it make?

But somehow value and self-worth get tied to whether an object is ‘the real deal’ or a ‘fabulous fake’, where there should be no such connection.  “I enjoy this because it is beautiful and it makes me happy to look at it” should have nothing to do with price paid and feelings of self-value, and yet it just about always does.  In our culture, the fabulous fake is second fiddle to the real deal, and those feelings are transferred from the object to the owner.

How about when it is not an object but a person or their behavior that is being questioned for being real or not?  Now the question of reality is one of perception – what’s real to one person isn’t always the same as what’s real to another person.   Our individual reality is colored by our history of personal experience and our reaction to events, which are not shared by any other person exactly.  Even people sharing the same event have two different realities, based on their unique filters of the experience.

So which version is the real one?  What is the ‘truth’?  Of course, they both are.  Truth and what’s real is different for each person.  And understanding THAT reality for what it is would solve a whole lot of communication problems, especially problems that arise around accusations of deception when it might simply have been different realities colliding.

COMMUNICATION TAKEAWAY:  We all live in our own reality, our own versions of the truth, which by definition is different for each person because we are all unique individuals.  Our personal experience filters our view of events; there is no universal reality shared by everyone.  Yet we believe, we hope, we fervently wish  there was one reality, so we can declare to others, “See, I TOLD you I was right!”, which is code for “my view is the truth, verifying my sanity and ability to function well in this world”.  Our ego needs to be right, our self-esteem needs continual boosting, our super-ego needs reinforcing.  But our communication takes a hit when we don’t allow that others need the same things.