Posted by Vargas Consulting and Wellness on January 29, 2024

Communication challenges can cause conflict in personal and work relationships. Poor communication can lead to miscommunications, stress, arguments and people feeling misunderstood. Communication can be aggressive, passive or assertive.

Passive communication can include people pleasing behaviors. Passive communication and behavior involves allowing your own rights to be violated by failing to express honest feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Communicating in a passive way can lead to feeling helpless, stressed or resentful. Passive communication refers to avoiding saying what they think and feel. People with a passive communication style often ignore their own needs, sometimes allowing others to walk over them. They may be overly excessively apologetic and indecisive, allowing others to make decisions fo them. A person who communicates pasively, eventually may feel frustrated due to their inablilty to fulfill their own needs. Without the ability to assert themselves, communicating passively may make the person feel out of control of their own life. People who are passive may have past trauma, have low self-esteem or have poor social skills and may not know how to expresss their needs.

The best type of communication is assertive communication. This is when you can express yourself clearly, openly, and honestly while accepting and respecting the opinions and feelings of others. Learning and utilizing basic assertiveness skills can improve communication, reduce stress, develop trust and achieve your goals. Assertiveness includes respect for yourself and the other person. Ways you can use assertive communication are clearly stating what you want, having good eye contact, listening to others without interruption, having confident posture, using positive and non-threatening messages.. Saying "no" can help you avoid getting overwhelmed. When you use assertive communication, you develop trust, protect your boundaries, achieve your goals and feel confident.

Aggressive communication disrespects and insults the other party, leaving yourself feeling guilty or angry. They may raise their voice to make sure they are heard and make their point. Aggressive communication can include yelling, bullying, sarcasm, deceiving, manipulating, or guilt tripping. Aggressive communication and behavior involves communicating in a demanding, abrasive, or hostile way. It is insensitive to others’ rights, feelings and beliefs. The usual goals of aggression are domination and winning, forcing the other person to lose. Some people have no idea their behavior is aggressive, they think they are just telling the truth and being honest. Those who use aggressive communication can hurt others feelings and destroy relationships. The tone of aggressive communication is confrontational. It can feel exhausting and frightening, causing others to stay away from you.