Most of the clients, who come to a drug rehab center, have a well developed set of communication skills. They are very personable, and have the ability to be quite charming. When you talk to most of them at depth a little bit, it does become rather apparent something is missing. While they have the skill to quickly form a shallow bond, they have a lot of difficulty making a deeper connection.

It may have something to do with most of the communicating in the past couple of years has involved a least a degree of manipulation. They are skilled at hiding the truth. They are skilled at getting people to provide and do things, the individual may not want to do. These skills are useful if you are trying to acquire drugs or justify your own behaviour. They are not useful at building deep trusting friendships.

Part of it comes from the “fear of really knowing me” type of thinking. If they really knew me, they wouldn’t like me. There are 2 main distortions in the above statement. Number one is you are mind reading and fortune telling. You do not know how someone is going to react. Maybe they have the same fear. Maybe your opening up will allow them to open up. The other distortion in the above statement is negative mental focus. All you are focusing on is your less positive traits. Everyone has both good and bad traits. You are assuming you will only “expose” your bad stuff.

Real communication involves asking questions to understand the other person’s fears and dream, not yours. If you are worried about your acceptance, you are not listening to what someone else is saying. No real communication takes place if you are in the, how does this affect me, type of mind. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Ask more questions based on their answers. See if you can have a whole conversation WITHOUT bringing up your history or opinion. Stop worrying about how you look. Start talking about them. Drug rehab is a perfect place to start. Lots of people you do not know. Lots of people, with time on their hands, a captive group for you to practice on. Make some new real friend in rehab today.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 6:07 am and is filed under Alcohol Blog, Drug Rehab, Rehab Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.