How & Why Your Non-verbal Communication Matters

Today's episode is all about non-verbal communication, it's role with authenticity and trust, and why it matters so much in romantic and sexual relationships (and all relationships, for that matter). 

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Transcript

0:00  
Welcome to Sex help for smart people. I'm Dr Laura Jurgens. I'm here to help you have better sex, intimacy and relationships. So let's get at it.

0:09  
Hello and welcome to episode 81 wow. I can't believe we've been doing this for 81 weeks. By we, I mean you and me, you've been listening for however many weeks you've been listening, but I've been here for 81 weeks, which I'm excited about. I'm celebrating. This is the first time I tried to allow my cats to be in the room while podcasting, and then realized that was not going to work, so they have now been kicked out. All right, today we are talking about non verbal communication. And I just want to say so non verbal communication, the research tells us all. The research suggests that the numbers, you know, the numbers, may be slightly imperfect, but we we have a pretty good estimates these days.

1:03  
13%

1:05  
of human communication, what we understand from what someone's telling us, is directly related to verbal content, what they are actually saying,

1:17  
and 87%

1:21  
is all of the non verbals. Now that's broken down differently by including body language, micro expressions, tone of voice, but I'm just going to lump them all together

1:32  
and say 87%

1:34  
y'all. That is a lot, and I want to say what this means, and also, incidentally, if the verbal content conflicts with the non verbal so if that 13% the words that you're actually saying, or that someone is saying to you, conflict with The 87% the body language, the micro expressions, the tone of voice, we will not believe the verbal content. We will believe all that other 87% over the verbal content. So classic example, right? You ask somebody how they're doing, and they're like, fine,

2:20  
and they maybe

2:21  
have a little tension in their body, or they have a little expression on their face, but you can even just tell from me role playing, that not feeling fine fine, that you don't buy it, right? You don't buy what I'm selling there. You don't buy that. Everything feels fine, and that's because you're smart

2:43  
and your subconscious is smart.

2:46  
Your subconscious has evolved for millennia and millennia, even before we had language. We have such a deep evolution of communication before we were even Homo sapiens before we were even the modern form of humans, we have been communicating, and we've been communicating

3:10  
through that other 87%

3:14  
and that is why we believe it more than we believe the 13% of verbal content. It makes a lot of sense, because the body doesn't lie, but we can lie, or we can obfuscate, or we can have good intentions to white lie or protect someone from the truth, or pretend. We can even lie to ourselves and be pretending, right? But that's all stuff that the mind is trying to layer on to the reality of what's happening in our body. And okay, so that's the deal with non verbals. They're way more important than the actual content of what we're saying, and we need to kind of make peace

3:58  
with that, because it's just a fact of life.

4:01  
So some people who are really good at lying and who are really believable liars, what they do is they actually convince themselves. They convince themselves that they

4:14  
believe what they're saying.

4:18  
And this is also, incidentally, what you do, if you're a really great actor, you convince yourself that you are this character. You really feel into it, you bring it into your body, and then you express it from that place, and that's what makes it believable. It's an art form. It's pretty amazing, but for the vast majority of us what's happening and those and the people who are just like really good liars in that way, yeah, it's it's a skill, it's an unfortunate it's like a superpower that's been used for evil instead of good, right? It's too bad they could probably be amazing actors, but the deal is for relationships and. And for your intimacy, for your sex life, for how you communicate about your sex life, for how you communicate with your partner, for how you feel safe with your partner, for how you feel trust and love, and those emotions that lead us to feeling intimately connected and potentially wanting to, like, you know, get down with someone being authentic and in alignment where your non verbals and your verbals are actually matching up is really important. And for real communication, we also need to be honest with ourselves. And a lot of times there's when something's off. The people closest to us are the ones who are most likely to notice. So that's your lovers, your partners and your and also your kids. Yeah, when you bullshit your kids, they know they may not know exactly what's going on, but they know something's wrong, and that's what's going on with partners, too. They may not know exactly what it is, but they know that there's something you're not saying. And if we don't actually figure out what it is for ourselves and tell ourselves the truth so that we can tell someone else the truth,

6:13  
people

6:14  
fill in the blanks.

6:18  
They don't just because they know something's wrong, something's off with the verbal content and the non verbals. A lot of times, what's happening is people don't know what actually the truth is, what our truth is, but they know that something is off if we don't tell them what our truth is, for whatever reason, we might be lying to ourselves, pretending, protecting, whatever. But what happens then is that they will make up a story, and it's usually not correct. It's usually not right. The stories we make up about where other people are coming from, at the bare minimum, it's not the whole story. We might have a guess that's somewhat on the mark, but we'll still be missing the full context of their actual experience. So if we want people to really know us and to really understand us, we actually have to show up incredibly authentically and in alignment with our deepest truth, not the surface truth, not the thing that we just tell ourselves out of convenience, not the lazy truth, but the real, deep truth. This all, all of this means, right? It means also that to be truly loved, to really be known, we have to be known in order to be really loved, and we have to be known in order to be really satisfied. And all of that, that being known, being understood, enough to be loved and to be satisfied, including sexually satisfied, we have to be known and understood in order to be truly sexually satisfied, it really requires some deep honesty from us, we have to be willing to fill in the real truth, and that means we have to know it ourselves, like I really have to know what my own emotional needs are to be turned on. I can't just pretend that, you know, I'm just going to be turned on by the exact same thing that you know is shown in in all the rom coms or something, right? Like, I can't pretend that, you know, what does it in porn for some actor who's pretending, or maybe they're not, sometimes they got a real good fluff they're not pretending anymore. But I can't pretend that what works for somebody else is gonna work for me. I can't go through my life telling myself that I should just be like, I don't know the heroine of a romance novella, and I should just really love it. If somebody wants to, like, throw me against the wall and, like, rip my bodice, maybe I would start wearing bodices. I can't pretend that that's what's going to work for me and expect myself to have a deeply fulfilling sex life. I need to actually go inside and learn my own erotic being. I need to learn what really does work for me, what I am really seeking, what really does turn me on. I need to go on a quest and find that out so that I can share it in honesty and alignment with my partner, even if it's vulnerable. And here's the kick, this is like the hard part, right? Is that being really honest with ourselves, we have to confront all the shame we might have about being different than what we think is, quote, unquote normal. Usually, we're wrong about what's normal. I can tell you, there's so many flavors of normal. It is beautiful and wonderful. The diversity of human sexuality and yours is beautiful and wonderful too. Even if it's not stereotypical, there are ways we can play. A consensually with adults with literally any desire that's out there, we can figure out how to help you play with it consensually in a way that feels great, but whatever it is that's true for you, we gotta find it first so that you can be honest with yourself and your partners about what it is that you want and need, and that goes for the types of touch you want, the things you want someone to say to you, the emotions that you want to feel evoked, the types of things that help you feel safe enough to connect with a partner intimately, the types of things that help you feel open and help you actually kind of ride the discomfort of vulnerability. What are, what are your needs for that we need to know, and we need to stop shaming them, and we need to be willing to actually be known and tell people those things, and if we instead hide it behind a mask of people pleasing, or shame, those are the two most common things that we hide behind, where we think we're quote, unquote, taking care of everybody else, but really, what we're doing is hiding our truths, or we feel shame and we don't want to own up to it, so we're pretending something else is true for us we will never feel truly loved if that's the situation, because we're not known and we're not even loving ourselves, because we're not willing to actually be ourselves. So when our verbal content, that 13% is in full alignment, when it is in integrity, with the body language, the micro expressions, the tone, and you know when that's happening, because it just is everything you're saying feels 100% true for you, like I was talking. Here's an example. This is just a random example on the top of my head, because I was thinking about this Maui retreat that my colleague, former client, Keima, and I are putting together, and we're super excited about it, and I we were having this conversation about what we really want people to get out of this. And I said to her, my deep desire for this experience, and I only want to do it if this is what I'm doing, I am going into this to help people start their year finally feeling enough. I want the women who come to this to have the most joyful, playful, ecstatic experience in Maui, and it's January, and there's gonna be humpback whales and like we're gonna go on river adventures, and it's gonna be amazing, but my deepest goal is that they leave each of those individual women who decide to come and decide to invest in this and decide to throw their lot in with us crazy fools, I want them to leave knowing that they are enough exactly as they are, and taking that into the rest of their lives, that is my purpose for doing this retreat. And I am when I said that, I lit like I could literally just feel it resonate in my body as this sort of like open joyfulness, because it was 100% true. I deeply want that. That is what I am there to accomplish. So that's just an example of like, when something's true, it feels good to say it, it feels wonderful to express it, and even if it's hard, even if it's a hard truth, and being honest doesn't have to be mean, right? But sometimes it is a hard truth. So I have said to people, you know, I really need to not stay in this group, like I can't really be here for me, because there's something about this group that doesn't feel right to me. This has come up for me recently in this like kind of new sports community that I jumped into, and somebody kind of came at me really hard, and it made me feel really uncomfortable, and I just felt like, oh gosh, this person I tried to reach out and ask for a repair conversation. They said hard No, and came at me hard again. And I just really felt like they weren't willing to give me she wasn't willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. And it all started with this little misunderstanding that I felt like we could clear up. But apparently no, and I was like, I'm actually gonna need to tap out. I can't. I don't feel that I can participate in this group anymore, because I don't feel comfortable just hanging out and pretending that nothing happened when there's somebody who won't give me the benefit of the doubt. And I just know myself. I know that I get really scared of groups of people. That's like, my big fear is like. Humans. Uncaring humans are, like, my biggest fear in the world, and so I'm like, give me the rocks, give me the water, give me the rapids, whatever, but just don't give me uncaring humans. So I said, I got to tap out, and that was a hard thing for me to say. I said, I'm happy to, you know, hang out with the rest of you in other settings, but I can't be part of this particular group because she's already established there, and she was there first, and I'll tap out, right? So that was a hard thing for me to say, but I need but when I said it, I still felt that like ring of alignment, that ring of truth, when I've had moments like that with my partner too, where I've had to say something like, this is just truly not okay with me, or I've had to say something like, I'm scared to tell you this, and I am actually really terrified right now, but I need to tell you that this thing is what I want, and that, well, that happened when I was interested in, you know, opening the relationship so that I could date women. And that was a terrifying, terrifying conversation, but it was in alignment with me. It was my truth,

16:13  
and I had to say it, and it felt so good to say it, even though I was literally in tears because I was so scared, so but I felt so much calmer and so much more at peace afterwards. And that's what happens when we live in alignment with our truth. But we have to know it. We have to start by knowing it. And that's where I start with a lot of clients, because most of us run around with stories about who we are in our heads and what we think we should want and what we think we should like, and what we think we should do and how we should talk to people, like, should, should, should, should all over the place, and it gets in the way of what's true for us, and it shames what's true for us. So the first step, and I know it seems crazy that I started out saying we're talking about non verbal communication, but now we're in like, how to you know how to address your shoulds and why it's so important. But actually these things are completely linked, because we in order to find your authenticity, so that what you say, the words that come out of your face, are in alignment with all of your body language, your facial expressions, your tone, your micro expressions. The thing that needs to happen is you need to deeply know and accept yourself, and that's why all of the intimacy, sex, relationship coaching I do, the foundation of it is the relationship with yourself, self acceptance, compassion and awareness and really embracing who you are, what you need, what you need to start giving to yourself, what you need to ask for from others, all of that, that alignment, that authenticity, makes real communication possible, and then people believe you. I never, I will tell you there's apparently something out there in the world now called, like, a trust deficit or something with social media. I don't know, people are like, saying that in the business world anyway, that you need to have, like, you used to need to have like, seven contacts with some person that doesn't know you in order for them to be interested in, like, following you or joining your email list or whatever, buying some shit from you, and now apparently you need to have, like, 40 or something. And even then, there's this, like, what's called the trust deficit. I don't have that problem in my business. I'm not a big social media person either I could. I don't like doing it, so I just don't. But I don't have that problem when people come, for example, on a consult call with me. I don't have a problem with people not believing what I'm saying. It's because I'm not ever bullshitting them. I know what my limitations are before I get on that call. If I am not a good fit for you, I'm gonna tell you, and I'm gonna try to help if I can help you, find some other resources that are a good fit for you, but people know, because they can read my non verbals, they're in 100% alignment with what I'm saying. So if I say I can help you, then you know that I can help you now. Does that mean that I know exactly how we're I mean, I usually have a pretty good idea, but I need to learn about you first too, right? Like, and there will be surprises and stuff along the way, and maybe we'll find a couple things that I can't help with. I don't know usually, usually we find find great ways forward, and I don't have that problem, but people believe me, because I am in alignment with myself, and so I don't, yeah, I just don't have that problem. But that's that's a thing in relationships too, is, do you believe your partner? Do you believe what they're saying when they say, yeah? Of course, I really want to be with you, and when they say, I love our sex. Do you believe them? Sometimes people are actually in alignment, and we are not in alignment enough. We have so much story that we're not able to actually take in the truth coming from someone else, but sometimes someone else is saying, Oh yeah, I'm totally calm. Let's connect. And they're not really present. They're not present with us, and they're pretending that they're present with us. And instead of taking a pause and saying, Hey, actually, something's off for me, and I really just need to, kind of like, refocus and see if my head, I can get my head in the game here, right? That would feel better. But instead, they just sort of pretend that they're paying attention to us, and that feels awful, right? So there's a lot of this, like misalignment stuff that happens in couples, and a lot of times that people really well intentioned people, they don't mean to be bullshitting themselves. They don't mean to be lying to their partners, and they don't really they're not lying because they're not intending to lie. They just don't even know their own truth enough to know that they're like nervous systems dysregulated, or they're freaking out about something else, and they just don't know how to be present, right? There's all kinds of things. But if something's going on for you in your relationship, and you feel like there is something off, but your partner says, No, try first Not, not to believe whatever story your brain wants to make up, because it'll make up like the worst possible catastrophe, right? It'll make up like a horrible story that makes you feel horrible, but do also not tell yourself that you're crazy. If something is feeling off, it probably is off, but it might just be off with their self awareness, and maybe they need help, or maybe you need help to understand what how you want to show up for that. How do you want to talk about it? What is important to you, what are your values? How do you show up for that conversation? Because the more you're in alignment with your non verbals, the more it's likely to help your partner be in alignment with theirs too, right? And what happens sometimes is we just start focusing so much on the content of what someone's saying, and then trying to convince ourselves that we believe it, because we think they're a good person, but they're just it just isn't working. We're not seeing eye to eye, we're not on the same plane. We're not really connecting. And I want to just emphasize with this whole conversation that it's okay, that non verbals matter. They are 87% of human communication. It is okay if something feels off, just try not to project your worst fears onto your onto the story about it, because there's a good chance that's not correct, right? But if something feels off, it probably is off. We just need to figure out how to make everybody feel safe enough and give everybody enough space to figure out what's really true for them, so that we can invite them to share that with us.

23:07  
All right, this is a little

23:08  
bit all over

23:12  
in some ways, but I think it's like really profoundly tied together, and I really just want the take home message for today is that your non verbal communication matters for you to really be known and loved and understood and for you to have a really deeply satisfying sex life, you need to know and accept yourself enough to be truly authentic with people. That means your yes is definitely a yes. Your no is you are owning when you need to say no, and you are also showing up to say what's true for you, what you want, what you need, where you're willing to negotiate and where you're not right, and you're willing to do that kindly and with space for the other person, that is where the foundation of really great intimacy is is in in that like deep integrity with ourselves. And that's really what I came here to say. So I hope, I hope that has resonated with you, and you have enjoyed this, and maybe it's given you some things to think about. I would be really curious to hear about your experience with non verbals. So feel free to reach out if you want, and if you know, if you are sort of struggling with where you what you want and how to get it, and really identifying for yourself, what are your needs and what's possible for you and what's possible for your partnership, if you have a partnership or your dating life, if you'd like to be dating or are dating, I want to encourage. You to when you are ready come do a consultation, because the worst case scenario is you're going to leave with some more information. The best case scenario is you're going to leave with a plan for how we're going to get you from where you're at now to where you want to be. And that's usually what we do. I really want to invite you to do that when you feel ready, because a lot of times we need help. I needed a lot of help with figuring out what was true for me. I needed help because all of the socialization, all of the shame, and all the stuff I had learned and all the stuff I hadn't learned was in the way, and I didn't know how to navigate that. I didn't know how to find it, and I didn't have a road map for like, what were the topics I really needed to figure out, and I needed someone to normalize it all for me. And that's why I got coaching. And I want to invite you, when you are ready for that, to get coaching and get yourself in full alignment with who you are. And that is a place of deep joy, I can promise. All right, my friends, I'll see you here next week. Next week. Oh, hey. I also want to say for those of you who want to come to Maui with me in January, it is actually coming up pretty soon. It is August right now, and I don't know when you're going to listen to this, but please get on it, because we have one more spot left in the house, and we have just this is going to be the most amazing retreat in the history of retreats, as far as I'm concerned. So if I were you would really want to come? So come to Maui, go to my website, Laura jurgens.com click the link and see all the details, and then decide if you want that last spot in the house. Awesome. See you here

26:45  
soon. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide. Find your secret turn arms. It's right on my website, www.laurajurgens.com and the link is in the show notes. I'll see you here next time.