Tips for Making it Easier to Talk

When it comes to talking about your current situation, here are a few hints that may make the conversation easier:

  1. Decide what is important to you. If possible, try to decide which things are most important to you, and are the things that you really want to talk about. Quite often you will find that there are only two or three things that you really want to discuss.
  2. Create a headline. In order to introduce the topics that matter to you, it may be helpful if you can give a headline first. It may be something like:  "look, I want to say a couple of things that are on my mind. Is that OK with you?". The advantage of doing that, is that it alerts your listener to the fact that what follows is something that really matters to you.
  3. Try to be specific. As you talk about the things that concern you, or worry you, try to be specific. You may find it is easier to move forward in stages. You can start off talking about awkward subjects with generalities (try phrases we all use like "can we talk about the way things are at the moment") and then it's easier to move to more specific areas ("look, I'm just not sure how long I'm going to be in the hospital this time"). If there is something you've been thinking about or worrying about a lot, it's perfectly OK to say so. ("For the last few days, I've really been wondering about..." etc.). That way you'll ease your way into important topics and your listener will be drawn into focussing on what it is that you want or need.
  4. Ask questions. As the conversation continues, when you're doing the talking it's a good idea to break up your own speech to see if the other person is following you. You can use any little phrase you like to do that ("do you see what I mean?" or "does that make sense to you?" or the more universal "are you with me?").
  5. Summarize clearly. Towards the end of the conversation try to make sure that what you've said has been heard. If you have asked for some things to be done, for example, it's worth summarizing ("So you'll call your mother about next weekend, and also ask Dorothy to pick up the children on Friday").
  6. Cope with humour. A lot of people ask whether humour is a good thing to use when talking about difficult issues and subjects. The simple answer is this: if humour was useful to you before you were ill, it will be useful to you now. If on the other hand you have not used humour as part of your style of talking in the past, this may not be a good time to start doing so.

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This page was last updated: October 27th, 2004 at 10:06am.