Your lack of eloquent language is not the problem, your judgment is.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

"How do I make it sound like I'm not judging someone when I actually am?"

Has anybody ever had this thought (or intention)?

I am a super eloquent and articulate person. This is not a secret to most people. And by far the thing I get asked the most often by my clients is some variation of the above.

They want me to tell them how to use language to make things better and to ultimately bypass something that is way deeper than words.

I'm going to tell you a secret.

Yes, sometimes what we're missing is the actual words. Like, a big one for most of my clients is when someone shares an emotional experience with them and they know it's not their fault but actually don't know what to say to have them feel seen and heard because they never have had that modeled before. In those cases, providing them with helpful language to evolve a relationship is great. Like learning how to say: "Thank you for sharing that with me." and then zipping it.

However, most of the time we are using our intellectual sovereignty (that's fancy eloquent speak for our language) to defy areas of ourselves where we're not so sovereign, like our emotions, and our bodies.

Why is this problematic?

Well, because in the example above, the issue is not the other person's behavior nor is it your lack of words. The issue is your judgment of them. And it doesn't matter how eloquent you are, people can feel your judgment. And judgment feels like shit. Because we can all feel. And judgment paired with nice language feels like extra rotten shit.

So the real question that has you claiming all of your power is: "How do I resolve the judgment I have for this person so that I can connect with them?"

One of the things I find to be the most fascinating about this branch of work with my clients, something I do usually in the first month or two of our time together, is that when we can identify what the key issue is, and we address that, we also easily resolve the language issue. Because once something like judgment or fear is resolved, new words avail themselves pretty effortlessly, as do new forms of connection we never knew were available.