Summary
You always have choices in how you communicate. Understanding external communication is important both for your helping skills and for assisting clients to communicate better. Try to develop a helping manner that Is comfortable for clients. Five aspects of communication are verbal, vocal, bodily, touch and taking action communication. Dimensions of verbal communication include formal and informal language, content, amount, honesty and ownership of speech, Dimensions of vocal communication include volume, articulation. pitch, emphasis and rate (VAPER). Dimensions of bodily communication include facial expressions gaze, eye contact. gestures. posture, physical proximity and clothing and grooming. You cannot property understand communication independent of its cultural context. You are more likely to be perceived as vocal and bodily communication matches your verbal communication. Your feelings represent your animal nature and are not skills in themselves. Feelings or emotions are processes at varying levels of your awareness Physical reactions both represent and accompany feelings. Three important areas of feelings are experiencing, expressing and managing them. Your mind significantly influences how you feel, physically react and communicate. You can use a simple situation-thoughts-consequences (STC)framework for analysing relationships between mind, feelings and communication. In addition, the STC framework can be used to analyse and alter your underlying mind skills as well as your various thoughts.