Inner Dialogue

INTRA-PERSONAL COMMUNICATION by Dr Adalat Khan professor American Central University FOR the majority of people, communication only means having interaction with others. This a great fallacy because communication also takes place between ourselves. In fact, all forms of communication originated from with in us in the form of intra-personal communication and only then it leads to communication which involves other. The thoughts going on in our minds like thinking whether to say or not to say something is just one example of intra-personal communication. According to some experts, we communicate with ourselves 50,000 times a day, which indeed is a lot of communication, and which needs great attention. Intra-personal communication is also known by many other names like self-dialogue, self-talk, inner monologue, inner dialogue, inner speech and self-verbalisation. The understanding of Intra-personal communication and improving it can tremendously improve the quality of our lives. The following are some of the points which emphasises the importance of self-talk.

1.	IT AFFECTS OUR PERFORMANCE Intra-personal communication begins with thoughts which leads to feeling and finally, ends up in actions. Positive intra-personal communication leads to positive feelings, which in turn generates positive actions. Likewise, negative self-talk will generate negative self-feelings and negative actions and performance. People who affirm their capabilities, strengths and good qualities perform better than those who oppress themselves with negative self-dialogue.

2.	IT INFLUENCES OUR COMMUNICATION WITH OTHERS There are many examples of people who stammer, cannot express themselves clearly or face identical handicaps which stems not from any physical defect, but rather from their low self-esteem due to negative intra-personal communication. They face these problems because in their minds, oppressing dialogues like “ I am scared ”, “ They don’t like me ”, “ What will they think? ”, “ My English is not good ”, etc, are repeatedly played. When we convey this type of messages to ourselves we feel uncomfortable and lose confidence. This behaviour relayed through our body language put us in negative vibration with others and thus stops us from effective communication. It is known of world class communication that before they deliver public speeches they affirm and reinforce themselves with positive intra-personal communication. Our intra-personal communication has either a positive or negative implications on our communication with others.

3.	IT MAKES A DEEP IMPACT ON OUR PERSONALITY: Intra-personal communication has a deep penetrating influence on our overall personalities. I used to feel bored, unhappy and miserable for no obvious reasons. That was quite depressing and at times, quite frustrating as I wouldn’t understand why I felt that way. A book titled Thinking Skills by Richard Nelson Jones was an eye-opener which helped me become aware about the concept of intra-personal communication and its bearings on our personality. Now, I consciously monitor my intra-personal communication and my life has become mush better and happier.

4.	STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING INTRA-PERSONAL COMMUNICATION. The important of intra-personal communication and its impact on our personality, life and performance should motivate us to improve it. There are many ways in which we can improve our self-talk. The following are some of the strategies which can help us acquire healthy intra-personal communication styles.

a.	AWARENESS It is unlikely that people consciously indulge in negative intra-personal communication. Rather, they may do so due to ingrained style of thoughts, similar to how people automatically drive. By consciously focusing on our thoughts we become aware of its nature and only then can we do something about it. Closely monitoring how we communicate with ourselves and what we communicate will enable us to know about the nature and the quality of our intra-personal communication.

b.	CHOICE After focusing on intra-personal dialogue, one can evaluate its quality. It is not necessary that people indulge all the time, either in negative or positive self-talk, rather they have a pattern either negative or positive which prevails most of the time. It is necessary to choose thoughts which are positive and consciously stop those which are negative. Initially it will be very difficult to do so due to old habits, but through mental discipline, persistence and will power one can choose self-supporting thoughts thus improving intra-personal communication.

c.	TAKING ACTION Nothing happens without action and in terms of the subject of intra-personal communication, action means continuously engaging ourselves in self-dialogue which is positive, self-supportive and affirmative. At times when one is feeling down, depressed and indulges in negative intra-personal communication, a deliberate self-dialogue like telling ourselves “stop it”, etc. will help in giving it up. One of my friends says that whenever he gets involved in negative intra-personal communication he tells himself “cancel” which enables from dwelling in negative thoughts.

d.	PRAYERS Finally, one effective way of improving intra-personal communication is through prayers. Prayers help people to get positively reinforces and feel connected to a force bigger than them thus giving them hope and security. Intra-personal communication which takes place among ourselves has strong bearings on our thoughts, feelings and actions. Our actions sum up to our performance and people are either known for their performance or remain unknown because they do not perform. Therefore, we need to improve our intra-personal communication. By disciplining our thoughts, taking conscious efforts to indulge in positive self-talk, and avoiding negative self-verbalization, any individuals can learn to improve themselves and become proactive people.

Intrapersonal communication is language use or thought internal to the communicator. Intrapersonal communication is the active internal involvement of the individual in symbolic processing of messages. The individual becomes his or her own sender and receiver, providing feedback to him or herself in an ongoing internal process. It can be useful to envision intrapersonal communication occurring in the mind of the individual in a model which contains a sender, receiver, and feedback loop.

Although successful communication is generally defined as being between two or more individuals, issues concerning the useful nature of communicating with oneself and problems concerning communication with non-sentient entities such as computers have made some argue that this definition is too narrow.

In Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson argue that intrapersonal communication is indeed a special case of interpersonal communication, as "dialogue is the foundation for all discourse."

Intrapersonal communication can encompass:


 * Day-dreaming
 * Nocturnal dreaming, including and especially lucid dreaming
 * Speaking aloud (talking to oneself), reading aloud, repeating what one hears; the additional activities of speaking and hearing (in the third case of hearing again) what one thinks, reads or hears may increase concentration and retention. This is considered normal, and the extent to which it occurs varies from person to person. The time when there should be concern is when talking to oneself occurs outside of socially acceptable situations.
 * Writing (by hand, or with a wordprocessor, etc.) one's thoughts or observations: the additional activities, on top of thinking, of writing and reading back may again increase self-understanding ("How do I know what I mean until I see what I say?") and concentration. It aids ordering one's thoughts; in addition it produces a record that can be used later again. Copying text to aid memorizing also falls in this category.
 * Making gestures while thinking: the additional activity, on top of thinking, of body motions, may again increase concentration, assist in problem solving, and assist memory.
 * Sense-making (see Karl Weick) e.g. interpreting maps, texts, signs, and symbols
 * Interpreting non-verbal communication (see Albert Mehrabian) e.g. gestures, eye contact
 * Communication between body parts; e.g. "My stomach is telling me it's time for lunch."

Intrapersonal communication in dreams
A particularly interesting example is that of a recently designed technique of 'interviewing' one's dream characters, particularly during lucid dreaming. In the lucid state, the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming, and can proceed to question, in-depth, each dream character, whom are necessarily understood to be part of the 'self' in either a psychological sense or in the more scientific sense of each aspect of one's dream arising from one's own brain processes.