Each of us has a nervous system, a personal history, and a view or model of the world which are unique to us. When we meet another person and communicate carefully, we are sensitive to the other individual in hopes of truly making contact and learning to appreciate his uniqueness, even as we, ourselves, change and grow from our experience of the differences between us. Much of our education is directed toward insuring that the verbal language which we share with other speakers (English, for this book) overlaps enough to enable us to make contact. This gives the people in the same language/ culture group a basis for communication. In the case of the languages of the body, tonality, etc., almost no formal education is given to us; in fact, little is known about these languages. Yet, these non-verbal messages constitute the bulk of the information which is communicated by human beings.
One of the ways in which each of you can become more sensitive to the variances from person to person in the non-verbal language which carries so much of our communication is to consider the differences in gestural and body language from culture to culture. In some cultures (Italian, for example), holding the hand palm-up at about chin level, extended in front of you, and opening and closing the hand is a way of signaling goodbye, while, in our culture, this gesture means something close to come here. It is also true in our experience that within cultures there are many differences in the meaning of the elements of non-verbal language. The furrowed brow for one person may be a signal of anger and displeasure while, for another person, it may simply signal concentration. Or again, shifting your gaze from the face of the person to whom you're speaking, just after hearing a question and prior to responding, is a signal in the behavior of one person roughly equivalent to Vm uncomfortable and don't want to respond, while, in another person, it is simply a way of cueing himself (specifically, of making a picture which will serve as the basis of the response) to respond appropriately. Translating it into words, it means (approximately), I'm organizing my experience with pictures and will respond in a moment. Each of the body movements, postures, tonalities, etc., which we employ in the non-verbal languages we use to communicate is the result of our own personal history, our own nervous system; few, if any, of these are conscious; few, if any, of these are standardized, either within our culture or across cultures. The point we are making here is that, while the bulk of communication between people is non-verbal, little of it is calibrated, and there is a great deal of room for miscommunication, especially in the Mind-Reading and Complex-Equivalence phenomena we have previously identified.
One very general overview of the process of communication which we have found useful in organizing our experience is that each communication — composed of the specific body posture, movement, voice tone and tempo, the words, and the sentence syntax — can be understood to be a comment on three areas of the ongoing experience:
The communicator, Self;
The person to whom the communication is addressed, the Other; and
The Context.
We represent this visually by the symboclass="underline"
We have found it useful to check a person's communication for his ability to be aware of and communicate about each of these dimensions. If, for example, a person is unable, at a given point in time, to be aware of and to represent to himself and to others (communicate) each of these parts of human experience, then this present inability is connected with the difficulties in his life which brought him to us for therapy. Thus, it indicates to us where we may choose to intervene to assist him in developing his ability to experience and make sense out of each of these parts of human experience, thereby creating more choices for himself. Notice that the same modeling processes detailed in the patterns of verbal communication in Level I of this part of the book also occur here at this higher level of patterning. When a family member says to us,
I'm scared.
we understand that he has deleted (linguistically) a portion of his experience; specifically, who or what is scaring him. When a family member is unable to be aware of and communicate about his own feelings and thoughts, or his experience of another family member with whom he is communicating, or the context in which the communication takes place, he is deleting (behaviorally) a portion of his experience and also a portion of his potential as a human being. In our experience, the process of restoring this deletion will be a very powerful learning experience for the individual, and it will assist him in having more choices in his life.
One of us [Virginia Satir] has identified four communication categories or stances which people adopt under stress. Each of these Satir categories is characterized by a particular body posture, set of gestures, accompanying body sensations, and syntax. Each is a caricature:
(1) Placater
Words — agree — ("Whatever you want is okay. I am just here to make you happy.")
Body — placates — ("I am helpless.")
Insides — ("I feel like a nothing; without him I am dead. I am worthless.")
The placater always talks in an ingratiating way, trying to please, apologizing, never disagreeing, no matter what. He's a "yes man." He talks as though he could do nothing for himself; he must always get someone to approve of him. You will find later that, if you play this role for even five minutes, you will begin to feel nauseous and want to vomit.
A big help in doing a good placating job is to think of yourself as really worth nothing. You are lucky just to be allowed to eat. You owe everybody gratitude, and you really are responsible for everything that goes wrong. You know you could have stopped the rain if you used your brains, but you don't have any. Naturally, you will agree with any criticism made about you. You are, of course, grateful for the fact that anyone even talks to you, no matter what they say or how they say it. You would not think of asking anything for yourself. After all, who are you to ask? Besides, if you can just be good enough it will come by itself.
Be the most syrupy, martyrish, bootlicking person you can be. Think of yourself as being physically down on one knee, wobbling a bit, putting out one hand in a begging fashion, and be sure to have your head up so your neck will hurt and your eyes will become strained so, in no time at all, you will begin to get a headache.