Five Axioms of Communications
In my career I found communications both challenging and integral to any therapeutic process. In my early years I did a lot of relationship counselling and learned about the challenges first hand. Given the huge impact and relevance of the non verbal realm, there is clearly a strong relationship between our early "Object Relations" development and our learned behaviours in the form of our communication styles.
Human communication is never neutral. Every gesture, silence, joke, or eye‑roll is part of an ongoing dance where we co‑create reality with others. Paul Watzlawick’s communication theory gives a compact, very usable map of that dance.
1. You cannot not communicate
If another person can perceive you, you are communicating—whether you speak or stay silent, show up early or arrive late, lean in or look away. Even “no response” is a response, carrying information about interest, power, or safety in the relationship.¹
2. Content vs. relationship
Every message has two layers:
- Content: the literal “what” (the information).
- Relationship: the “how” and “what this says about us.”
“I need to talk to you” can land as caring, critical, or threatening depending on tone, timing, and history. The relationship layer usually dominates; when the relationship message and words clash, people trust the nonverbal and the context.²
3. How we punctuate the story
Conversations are continuous, but we all “cut” them into cause‑and‑effect stories: “I only nag because you never help” vs. “I never help because you always nag.” Each person’s punctuation makes their own behavior look like a reaction and the other’s like the cause. That framing keeps many conflicts stuck.³
4. Digital (words) and analog (nonverbals)
We send “digital” messages through words and “analog” messages through tone, posture, facial expression, and behavior. “I’m fine” is digital; the crossed arms, flat voice, and turned‑away body are analog. When those two levels don’t match, we usually believe the analog—what the body and tone say about the relationship.⁴
5. Symmetrical and complementary patterns
Relationships tend to organize into:
- Symmetrical patterns: moves that match each other (you raise your voice, I raise mine; you self‑disclose, I do too). These can support equality or fuel escalation.
- Complementary patterns: moves that fit into difference or hierarchy (one‑up/one‑down, caretaker/dependent, pursuer/distancer). These can be stabilizing or rigid and stuck.⁵
Problems arise less from single messages and more from repetitive patterns—rigid escalation in symmetry or rigid polarization in complementarity. Seeing the pattern is often the first step in changing it.
6. Communication as reality‑making
For Watzlawick, communication is not just about exchanging information; it is how we build and maintain our versions of reality. In couples, families, and groups, repeated ways of talking and responding gradually define what is “normal,” who is “the problem,” and what is “possible.” Shifting how people interact—punctuation, patterns, and relationship messages—can change how problems themselves are experienced and maintained.⁶
Footnotes: AI GENERATED THROUGH PERPLEXITY:
- Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J. H., & Jackson, D. D. Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. Axiom 1: “One cannot not communicate.”
- Ibid., Axiom 2: every communication has a content and a relationship aspect.
- Ibid., Axiom 3 on the “punctuation of the sequence of events” in interaction.
- Ibid., Axiom 4 on digital (verbal) and analog (nonverbal) communication.
- Ibid., Axiom 5 on symmetrical and complementary interaction patterns.
- Watzlawick, P. How Real Is Real? and related writings on constructivism and interactional views of problems.
