Written by: Shalyn Isaacs / Communication Coaching / November 15, 2021 / 10 minutes read

Something I have noticed over the years is that communication issues and communication anxieties often arise when people are feeling insecure or lacking confidence in who they are. Often, I have seen people feel anxious about their communication because they are fearful of how people may perceive them. However, according to meditation traditions from around the world, we often do not see the world, ourselves or our relationships with other people accurately. Oftentimes, we are perceiving the world and our interactions with others through the lens of our own past life experiences and thinking patterns. According to author Anais Nin: “we do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

I started practicing Vipassana meditation 8 years ago with the intention of discovering the  thought patterns that were preventing me from living a fully engaged, authentic life. However, I now see that a steady meditation practice is something that can support people with improving their self-confidence in ways that enhance their communication patterns. 

Meditation brought me to the concept of self-compassion and I began to wonder: “what  if there is nothing about people that needs to be fixed? Who told us that we are broken?” From that  point forward, I became concerned with seeing things as they truly are through the practice of Vipassana meditation or Zen mindfulness meditation practices. Often times I have seen people feel the need to disconnect from their bodies in order to create illusions of safety and feel free of the fear of judgement;  yet this dissociation prevented them from responding to the world from a place of awareness and  intentionality. Instead, they resorted to living from a place of survival and trying to please others. This coping strategy of needing to please others impacted their communication and mental health. For example, I have seen people I have worked with as  a Leadership Coach state that they struggle to communicate their thoughts and emotions accurately to others because they are experiencing feelings of anxiety, depression, mind-body disconnection, or other mental health issues. In these cases, I worked with them to create a meditation practice that would aid them in alleviating anxiety and fear of judgement in order to communicate in ways that felt natural to them.  

When I began practicing Vipassana, I started focusing on the sensations within my body and cultivating mind-body integration. I began noticing that many of my mind’s delusions were  actually the oppressive social narratives embedded in racism, sexism, capitalism, and white supremacy that I had internalized and adopted as my own. I was seeing myself through the eyes  of those who benefited from me remaining powerless. As I chipped away at my ego’s illusions and deconstructed oppressive voices, one day I realized that I was left with a feeling of  nothingness. It is within this state of emptiness that I discovered my freedom to choose who I  want to be in the world during this lifetime. There is peace and liberation in the emptiness – in  the knowing that who I am cannot be defined by illusions created by oppressive systems. 

I intend to use mindfulness practices to help my clients cultivate mind-body integration to decipher who they are from who they have been told they should be. For me, improving communication is not always about reconstructing our communication patterns in order to suit the needs and expectations of others (although, sometimes it can be). 

Personally, I believe that improving communication is about letting go of the need to communicate in a certain way that will allow us to be taken seriously by others. However, this is a “both-and” situation. I have noticed over the years that sometimes we need to be confident in our individual communication styles and own-it, and sometimes we need to recognize that our communication patterns are based in coping mechanisms that we developed from painful past life experiences. 

There are many different meditation techniques and styles out there that can support one will uncovering false perceptions, correcting cognitive distortions, and alleviating anxiety in ways that enhance overall communication. I have suggested to people to start with a simple 5-minute meditation practice every day in the morning and then move forward step by step from there. 

If you are interested in how communication is influenced by mental health and developing strategies such as mindfulness-based practices to support you with enhancing communication – feel free to reach out for a 30-minute consultation!

To work with Shalyn Isaacs as your psychotherapist (qualifying) at Well Said: Toronto Speech Therapy, schedule an initial consultation by clicking the link below or by calling (647) 795-5277.