Relationship Development & Therapeutic Communication

Without realizing it, even the most trivial communicative exchanges in our daily regimes are deeply personal. Scientists at the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging believe this is because the human brain's ability to decipher information "is so automatic that you can't turn it off." This knowledge magnifies the importance of therapeutic communication, or learning to be consciously aware of the language we give and receive, in our deepest relationships.

Realist and Subjectivist Assumptions

• Virtually all mental health disciplines employ some form of therapeutic communication. According to author and psychologist Paul Watzlawick, "reality perception and reality construction" are consistent factors woven throughout all therapeutic techniques. Obstacles in relationship development often indicate fears of adjusting our constructed realities to include new information including the ideas and views of others.

Reality Perception

• When we call upon reality perception, in essence we are utilizing all of our senses to gather information in an experience. This is the state before opinions are made and the optimal place for implementing therapeutic communicative techniques of "listening" to and "acknowledging" our partners. In his work, "When Relationships Generate Realities," Professor Kenneth J. Gergen testifies to this holistic sense of perception in saying that words alone do not "function as mirrors or maps of an independent reality."

Reality Construction

• When we construct reality, we not only use our physical senses, but call upon our prior "beliefs, attitudes, and values" as well. A constructed reality, better known as social reality, plays a highly subjective role in forming the roots of our social identity. In the realm of relationships, a constructed reality leaves little room for alternate opinions and views. It is a conditional place of "oughtness" which tells us and our partners who we should and shouldn't be. Marital counselors often incorporate "role playing and suggesting" in breaking away the layers of constructed realities in a fun and non-threatening way.

Defining the Language

• Understanding the science of how your partner thinks promotes positive relationship development.

  The geography of the human brain is categorized in right and left hemispheres. To effectively translate the language of those around us, we must first understand which side of the globe we live on. Therapeutic communicative language comes in many forms including "reason, intuition, body language, spatial distance, listening and acknowledgment, or silence." Prescribing to a "relational form of communication," or taking a relative or balanced position in subjective and objective thinking, may perpetuate a deeper understanding between those who call upon reason during decision making and those who use intuition.

Counseling Statistics

• Throughout the past decades, the taboo associated with therapy has gradually waned. Though the basic techniques of therapeutic communication are generally helpful to any relationship and can be implemented outside of a therapist's office, by the year 2018 marriage and family therapists will "experience growth of 14 percent, which is faster than the average for all occupations," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.