Babbling About Communication Is A Survival Skill

#227: You can say the right words, in the right tone, at the right time and still watch someone hear a completely different message. We get personal about that frustration and ask a sharper question: what if “miscommunication” isn’t mostly about speaking, but about interpretation and the story the brain writes in the split second after you talk? 

We pull a surprisingly useful tool from healthcare communication skills, the teach-back method. Instead of ending with “Do you understand?” we explore how repeating something back in your own words exposes the gap between intention and impact. From there, we break down the three layers in every conversation: reality (what was said), perception (what it felt like), and interpretation (what it meant). That framework makes the everyday telephone-game effect easier to spot in relationships, friendships, family conflict, and work. 

Then we zoom out to the neuroscience and trauma lens: the brain isn’t a video camera, it’s a prediction machine built for survival. Old criticism, abandonment, lies, or emotional neglect can teach your nervous system to treat ordinary feedback, distance, or inconsistency as danger. When fight-or-flight kicks in, clarity collapses and we protect ourselves through arguing, shutting down, sarcasm, leaving the room, or people pleasing. We also talk about confirmation bias and how our minds scan for proof that our oldest fear is true. 

If you’ve ever thought, “That’s not what I said,” this one gives you a new way to slow the moment down and ask better questions, especially “Help me understand what you meant by that.” Subscribe for more honest conversations, share this with someone who values real communication, and leave a review with the most common phrase you think gets misread.

Transcript

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A Personal Question About Being Misunderstood

Johnna 0:00

What is up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Babbles Nonsense podcast. So this episode is probably one of the most personal episodes that I have done in a while. Not because I'm going to tell you some dramatic story or expose someone else's behavior, but because over the last few weeks I have found myself asking questions that I genuinely just don't know the answer to. And I think those types of conversations turn out to be the best conversations. And conversations that involve someone sitting behind a microphone pretending they have life all figured out is just utter bullshit in my opinion. But the conversations where someone says, I've been thinking about this and I wonder if you've also experienced it, too, can be very genuine and can kind of connect us all together. And what I'm going to talk about today is communication, but not communication in the way that most people talk about it. So if you're interested in communication or what I'm having to say or communicate to you, no pun intended, stay tuned.

Why “Communication Is Key” Falls Short

Johnna 1:26

All right, all right. I said we were going to talk about communication. I'm going to try not to babble and keep this short and sweet because it's just obviously random thoughts. Um, still got to do some more deep diving, probably with my therapist, probably with me. This would probably be a great one for her to come on for me to have all those hard-hitting questions about communication. Because again, like I said, I'm not, I don't want to talk about communication in the way that most people talk about it. Almost like every relationship podcast, marriage counselor, you know, business book, self-help book, whatever you're looking at, says that communication is key, which, yes, it is, but we've heard that so many times that it's almost become meaningless. Because if communication were actually quote unquote key or the answer, then why are so many people communicating every single day and still feeling misunderstood? And that could be any in any relationship, friendships, you know, paternal, um paternal, what if you're with your parents? I was trying to come up with a a great word for that, um, sibling relationships, romantic relationships, situationships, um, work relationships. It's almost like a lot of people are just being misunderstood. And so it got me thinking, is communication really the problem? Which it still could be, but maybe we should think about it from the other way. Like interpretation is, perception is. So I want you to think about something for me. Have you ever left a conversation thinking, I don't think that's what I said when like someone reiterated it back to you or whatnot? You're like, I don't think that's what I was saying. But you know, sometimes you're convinced that it it was by the other person. And not because you were trying to manipulate someone into believing what you said, or not because you were changing your story after you heard what they said back to you, but because somewhere between your mouth and their ears, something changed. The words that left your mouth were not the same words that landed in their minds or their perception of what was said. And I don't think we spend nearly enough talking about that aspect of it of the interpretation from the other person's perspective.

The Teach Back Method For Real Clarity

Johnna 3:35

And I can say, like for an example, as a nurse practitioner, one of the things that we're taught in school or just in medicine in general, is it's called the teachback method. So if you've ever worked in medicine or I'm sure you've been to a doctor, nurse practitioner, some kind of something at some point, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So let's say you come to me, you see me in the ER, I spend 15 minutes explaining a new medication that you're being discharged with. I tell them when to take it, how to take it, what side effects to watch for, what happens if you miss a dose, or you know, um, when to stop taking it, when do you when to follow up, things like that. And then we end the conversation by asking, do you understand? Almost every patient says, yep. But that question, if you really think about it, is actually useless because hearing something isn't the same as understanding it. So, like you hear it, it hits your ears, it goes to your brain for processing, and then just saying yes does not mean that they understood what was being said. So instead, we don't ask that question in medicine. We ask the patient, can you tell me in your own words how you're going to take this medication, what the side effects are, why you're taking this medication? Because I don't actually know what they heard until they repeat back what I said. I only know what I said to them. So if we think about that, if we pause and just truly think about that for a minute, I know what I intended the patient to understand. I have absolutely no idea what actually landed to them just by the phrase, yup. And here's what's fascinating. Sometimes that patient repeats back something completely different than what I explained. Not because they're unintelligent, not because they weren't paying attention, but it's because they're human. Their brain filled in the gaps, especially like as humans, when we don't understand something, we kind of fill in that gap from what we think our understanding of something is. And depending on your background, depending on where you work, depending on how you know intuitive you are with medicine, going to the doctor, maybe family members have had the same experience, you're all going to understand something different. And that's why we have to use that closed loop communication, repeat it back, confirm the message, remove assumptions. So if that's what we do in medicine to make sure someone completely understands, because obviously when we think about it, like this could be sometimes it could be a life or death situation. Um, using the medicine as an example on discharge, like what if it was a blood thinner? Like, what if you had a blood clot in your leg and we're giving you a blood thinner? And that's a super important medication to take because blood clots can become very deadly if not taken care of and treated appropriately. So why is it that we do that in medicine? And I'm sure other jobs do that too for safety precautions and reasonings, but we don't do that in relationships with other human beings. We just assume if I said it, they heard it, you know. But honestly, like we can all have examples in our life where that's just not true.

Reality Versus Perception Versus Interpretation

Johnna 6:50

There's actually three different realities happening in every conversation. I'm sure you've heard about this, like my side, your side, and the truth, or it can also be like the perception, the reality, and the interpretation can also be those three conversations. And reality in that conversation, if we're taking it from the reality, perception, and interpretation perspective, then reality is what objectively happened, right? Like you have your reality, I have my reality in what happened in that moment. But we also have to understand when you have your reality and I have my reality, we all have different things going on in our lives at that moment. Maybe I'm saying something, but I'm thinking about something else. Maybe that person hearing it has also got something stressful in their mind, so they're not hearing every word I'm saying. So the words that actually come out of your mouth is the reality. The perception is what another person experienced. And then interpretation is the meaning their brain assigned to it. And so none of those three things are the same thing, but yet we spend our entire lives acting like they are when we have quote unquote miscommunication. So another example would be to think back to elementary school. Um, I'm sure at some point your teachers all told you to play the telephone game where one person whispers something into another person's ear, and then by the time it reaches the tenth person, the sentence has completely changed. Um, and teachers do this to show you, like, when you're spreading gossip and things like that, it's not always going to be the truth. And it's not that nobody lied, it's just that nobody intentional or like nobody lied and nobody intentionally changed the message. It's just that every single person genuinely believed they were repeating exactly back what they heard from the other person. I don't know, maybe someone whispered too softly and you know someone was too embarrassed to say, Hey, I didn't hear you. What did you say? It could be any it could be any number of things. And so the haunting question for me lately is what if we play telephone every single day when we're talking to someone, like inside our own minds? Like, what if that's what the reality of it is? What if every conversation we have first passes through our own fears, our own insecurities, past experiences before we ever respond to someone? And if I had to guess, that's probably what's going on, right? Sometimes I don't think we're actually responding to the other person. I think we're responding to our interpretation of another person, and that changes everything. And I want to give you a great example of that because if I know that sounded a little confusing, but like I have a friend where when I talk to him and I just talk about my feelings, I'm a very, I would consider myself just blunt. Like I just say something very bluntly. But he perceives it a lot of times as attacking when that's not my intention, that's not my goal. And so the biggest thing is like, why are we not understanding each other when we know each other very well? Like he knows that I'm not attacking him, and he knows that like my intention is never to harm someone. So why are we not hearing each other? But I think it's because of what I just said. I think we when someone says something, we immediately pass it through everything, that trauma, those insecurities. Oh, someone said it this way before, and that's exactly what they meant. And we assign a meaning to someone within like 2.3 seconds before we actually take that time and say, wait a minute, is this actually what they said, or is this my fear and insecurity coming out? You know, like legit, that's what I've been thinking about. And I truly believe this is kind of what's been going on in my life when I, because I know I've been misunderstood a lot. So clearly, like the common denominator is me, right? Like if I'm misunderstood a lot, then I'm not communicating clearly, or I'm just, you know, communicating to people who have a lot of trauma. I don't know. One or the other. Um, but I do think like thinking about it this way, for me, anyways, kind of changes everything and how I'm going to start trying to communicate in the future. Because now the question isn't who's right in this situation. The question then becomes, what happened between my words and your interpretation, or vice versa, your words and my interpretation of it.

Your Brain Predicts Meaning From History

Johnna 11:01

And I kind of looked up a little bit of it, and neuroscience does give an incredible answer for this, and that is the human brain is not to design or is not designed to accurately record reality. It's to design to keep us alive, which obviously makes sense. And so, since those are two completely different jobs, we like to imagine that our brain is this video camera that it records exactly what happened, stores it away, and then plays it back whenever we need it, but it doesn't. Our brain is much more like a prediction machine, it takes our past experiences, our beliefs, relationships, trauma, insecurities, attachment style. Put whatever else you want in there when it comes to like therapy, therapizing words, and it constantly predicts what is most likely happening in reality at that moment. So if we think about that, it's predicting reality. It doesn't simply observe it, and that's incredible to know, but also at the same time, if we think about it, a little dangerous because if we've spent years around people who criticize us, our brain learns that. So then your brain is saying, okay, whenever criticism leaves someone's mouth, it equals dangers. And if you've maybe been abandoned, like maybe it's your your parents or your siblings or relationship after relationship, then you start equating distance to danger. So if you've been lied to, as another example, then like let's say that's happened multiple times in your past, then when someone's communicating inconsistently, that also equals danger to you. And then our brains aren't trying to ruin these relationships, our brains are then just trying to prevent us and protect us from experiencing pain again because brains don't like to experience pain. And that's what I mean when I say communication really isn't about words anymore, and that it's about that interpretation because it then just turns into this survival mechanism, which is really cool, but also really sad because how are we supposed to fix this, right? But I think the part that gets a little bit more interesting is that, you know, we've talked a lot about trauma on this podcast. Me and you have talked about trauma bonding and you know, all the things trauma. And maybe we've talked about it a little too much because everything gets labeled as trauma now. We even had a podcast where we talked about, you know, where we take it a little too far sometimes with um therapy words and whatnot. But real true trauma or even repeated painful experiences does something very fascinating to the brain. Our brain starts collecting this evidence and then it thinks about it, which we can also call rumination, where you just keep remembering it. And so your subconscious almost turns into this lawyer every time someone communicates to you. Every experience you've ever had then becomes this evidence in a case that you're trying to build against someone. So, for example, let's just say someone grows up constantly being criticized. Nothing is ever good enough, you know, they never they never got a good grade on a test, or maybe they got just barely a good grade, but it just wasn't good enough for their parents, or they go and clean their house and it wasn't the right way. Their parents say, Oh, you missed a spot. Eventually, your brain starts creating a rule, and it may be something like quote unquote, I'm only valued when I'm perfect. So then you can fast forward 20 years and then they get married, they have a spouse, and then their spouse starts saying, Hey, can we talk about something that bothered me today? And so to the spouse, that's just an objective question. Like, hey, can we just talk about something? But the person hearing that, maybe their brain doesn't hear that question automatically, they hear, What have I done now? You know what I'm saying? Do you see the difference in how that brain interpretated interpreted just someone basically saying, like, hey, I just want to talk about something on how I felt today. And it's not that the words they use were dangerous, it's just that meaning to that person became dangerous due to the history attached to it. But we can also flip it and give you another example. Imagine someone who grew up feeling invisible. Nobody ever asked how they felt, nobody checked in on them, nobody was emotionally available to them, and then you fast forward another 20 years and they're adult, and maybe they're going on a date or getting ready for a date, they're dating, and someone canceled dinner on them. That's the reality. Someone just canceled dinner on them. That person, when someone said, Hey, I can't go to dinner tonight, probably perceived that as they don't care about me, they don't prioritize me, I'm not important to them. When in reality, that other person just had they couldn't find a babysitter. You know what I'm saying? And again, it's not about what was said so much. It was how it went through all those filters in our brain and processed it. Because our brain attached an old meaning to that new situation many years later. But what's even more crazy is the brain does this automatically without us having to like do anything about it, which is kind of not just crazy, but kind of scary. So you don't wake up and consciously decide, like, hey, I'm just gonna misinterpret and perceive something differently and have a bad day and start a fight. We're not, we're not doing that when we wake up. Hey, I'm not gonna say some people are, but we're we're honestly not just waking up and saying, let's see whose day I can ruin today by perceiving what they say incorrectly. We're not waking up saying, I'm going to interpret today through the lens of my childhood trauma. It just happens. And I genuinely think that's what causes a lot of what we call miscommunication or um perception or whatever we want to say. I think that that's what causes a lot of these issues because we're now in survival mechanism and going through the lens of all these things, um, and then hearing what what quote quote what we want to hear. But it's sometimes not even what we want to hear. It's just what your body and your brain is used to. So in reality, our brains are mostly just trying to protect us because they cannot, it cannot distinguish, you know, emotional danger from physical danger.

Conflict Triggers Fight Or Flight

Johnna 17:13

And the thing with emotional danger, like social rejection, whenever that happens, it activates many of the same brain regions that physical pain once caused. And if we think about that, our brain has evolved in a world where being rejected by your tribe could actually threaten your survival. So in today's world, even though someone's disagreeing with you isn't really life-threatening to your tribe or your, you know, your sustainability in this world, your nervous system can react as if it is. That's why you can literally feel your heart race during conflict. Your chest may get tight, your stomach drops, thoughts speed up, body is interpreting and preparing for danger. It's in that flight or fight mode. And that's why sometimes I forget which part of the brain, um, I've heard a lot of people talk about it when I've um listened to these podcasts, shuts off, and you can't make sound decisions. So that's why they say never make a decision when you're angry. Um, because if that danger is simply someone saying, I experience this differently to you and your brain, and then we wonder why communication just falls apart at that moment. Because once our nervous system feels threatened, we no longer can communicate at that point. We're just trying to protect whatever that be, pride, ego, you know, harm. We don't want to, we don't want to hurt. So sometimes that protection comes out as arguing. Sometimes other people maybe shut down, um, maybe become sarcastic. Some people leave the room, or some people just agree because they're people pleasers. And that's just a few examples. You know, I was a type of person that just would apologize immediately, and not because I believed what I said or did was wrong, but because to just make it more peaceful, felt safer in that moment than sitting there arguing and trying to make someone understand what I was meaning. But I have noticed this, it's almost like I've it's like this awakening moment for me just thinking about all this lately because I've noticed it when I've communicated with people. And I'm like, why did that make someone so upset? Or, you know, did I say that wrong? And then you almost kind of gaslight yourself into thinking, like, oh, I should just apologize because I did something wrong when we're not always intentionally doing something wrong. Now, sometimes we do communicate poorly or tone, or maybe it wasn't the right timing and things like that, but there's also this other aspect of it of what someone else has been through and all these filters the brain has to put it through to process what they heard first, even if it's within a millisecond. And all of this has left me wondering like, how many arguments are actually about the thing we're arguing about? Because I I try I truly don't think many are, like just from thinking about arguments in my past experience. I think true arguments are about fear, and whether that be fear of rejection, abandonment, not being enough, being misunderstood, not mattering, you know, losing control, being blamed, shame, whatever the fear is, I think it's uncomfortable. And our greatest fear often becomes that lens through which we hear everyone else. So if my greatest fear is not being enough, I'm going to hear criticism everywhere in everything that anyone says, whether that be my boss, my romantic partner, my friends, my parents, my sisters, my brothers. And on another example would be if my greatest fear is abandonment, then I'm going to hear distance everywhere. And so on and so on and so on, right? Like we could do one for control or anything. You can kind of put any example anywhere. And not because these things are objectively happening every single time, but because our brains are constantly scanning for evidence that confirms what we already believe. We're just trying to make ourselves truth tellers. Which, um, another therapy word, this could be called confirmation bias. And so once we develop a belief, our brain becomes remarkably good at finding proof that that is true, no matter what we hear, no matter what we see, all of it. So, for example, if I believe people don't care about me, guess what I'm gonna start noticing? Um, every unanswered text, can't text, canceled plan, forgotten birthday, oh wow, they don't care about me when really it could just be something simple, right? But I might completely overlook all the times that that same person has showed up for me because my brain has already created this bias and it's just trying to protect you. And it's not that you're trying to be intentionally dishonest or you're you're not trying to like hurt someone else. I think it's that your brain truly filters that information. We all do it, we're all guilty of it. No one can sit there and say, Oh, I don't do that. We all do it, which is why I've started asking myself a different question lately.

Better Questions That Reopen Connection

Johnna 21:46

So instead of asking myself, what did they mean, I've started asking, what story is my brain immediately creating? And I think that that's what Mean You this whole time has been trying to tell me, and it just clicked recently, which is crazy. I've known her now, I want to say two, almost three years. And like she's been telling me that all the time. Like our brains create stories. And I think now I'm just understanding what she means by that because of some um personal experiences I've been through lately. And those two things aren't the same question. That has been one of the most humbling realizations of my life recently. Um, and it and I hope, like obviously, this is just all recent. So I'm hoping like the more I sit with this and the more I can, you know, talk through in therapy on how I can rewire my brain to give up those past traumatic experiences will help me communicate and hear things better from other people. I'm hoping that, you know, by realizing this, that sometimes that first story my mind writes isn't the only possible story. And honestly, that can be confusing, that can be uncomfortable because we also have to have discernment in there too. We have to discern like, am I being gas lit? Am I being just because the world we live in, which is just awful. Like all the the advice that we get also plays into it, right? Like you have all this TikTok advice and therapy advice and all this advice where someone's like, oh, they're definitely manipulating you. And oh, so then you have all of this bias from the outside sources, the bias from your brain that it's been telling you from past experiences that's creating this reality for you. And so then you have to discern through all of that. So it's a lot of work, and I'm just now realizing it. So definitely going to be talking about this in my next therapy session. But I think that just knowing that and just knowing that it can be uncomfortable and having this information is better than not because then it can make you more aware of conversations. It can also make us more emotionally healthy adults and how we can develop better relationships with people in our lives. Um, it's obviously not going to create 100% certainty all the time. Like I said, you got there's so many things, there's curiosities, there's discernment. Um, but I just think that maybe instead of saying I know exactly what you meant to someone, we can become people who say, Can you help me understand what you meant by that? Because I think I know, but I want to know what you think you said. And I think there's a massive difference between those two sentences because one closes a conversation and then the other one opens it. And if we could y'all all just get on the same page, I think life would just get better for all of us. But again, I'm I'm fumbling through this because I'm this is all just kind of new to me just from conversations recently in my life that's made me go, what is going on? I feel like I'm saying everything I can in the right ways, but again, it's how someone's filter and bias and trauma and all this stuff that they process that their the story that their brain

Final Takeaways And What Comes Next

Johnna 24:45

creates. So I'll probably have Mean You back on to kind of discuss this more because she said it, gosh, probably 5,000 times on the podcast episodes and to me, and it just all of a sudden had a light bulb moment, and I just wanted to jump on the mic and share it with you guys. So hopefully that made sense to someone out there. Um, but yeah, until next time, bye guys, you know.