Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

01273 921 355
Online Therapy In the Press
  • Home
  • Therapy Services
    • Fees
    • How Psychotherapy Works
    • Who is it for?
    • Individual Psychotherapy
    • Child Therapy
    • Couples Counselling and Therapy in Brighton
    • Marriage Counselling
    • Family Therapy and Counselling
    • Group Psychotherapy
    • Corporate Services
    • Leadership Coaching and Consultancy
    • Clinical Supervision for Therapists and Trainees
    • FAQs
  • Types of Therapy
    • Acceptance Commitment Therapy
    • Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Body Orientated Psychotherapy
    • Private Clinical Psychology
    • CBT – Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
    • CFT – Compassion Focused Therapy
    • Coronavirus (Covid-19) Counselling
    • DBT – Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
    • Divorce & Separation Therapy
    • Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
    • Existential Therapy
    • Group Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Integrative Therapy
    • IPT – Interpersonal Psychotherapy
    • Non-Violent Resistance (NVR)
    • Family and Systemic Psychotherapy
    • Schema Therapy
    • TA – Transactional Analysis
    • Trauma Psychotherapy
  • Types of Issues
    • Abuse
    • Addiction
      • Gambling Addiction Therapy
      • Porn Addiction Help
    • Affairs
    • Anger Management Counselling in Brighton
    • Anxiety
    • Bereavement Counselling
    • Coronavirus Induced Mental Health Issues
    • Cross Cultural Issues
    • Depression
    • Family Issues
    • LGBT+ Issues and Therapy
    • Low Self-Esteem
    • Relationship Issues
    • Sexual Issues
    • Stress
  • Online Therapy
    • Therapy for Anger Management
    • Online Anxiety Therapy
    • Online Therapy for Bereavement
    • Online Therapy for Depression
    • Online Relationship Counselling
  • Practitioner Search
    • Our Practitioners
  • Blog
    • Ageing
    • Attachment
    • Child Development
    • Families
    • Gender
    • Groups
    • Loss
    • Mental Health
    • Neuroscience
    • Parenting
    • Psychotherapy
    • Relationships
    • Sexuality
    • Sleep
    • Society
    • Spirituality
    • Work
  • About us
    • Sustainability
    • Work with us
    • Press
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us – Brighton & Hove Practice
    • Contact Us – Lewes Practice
    • Contact Us – Online Therapy
    • Contact Us – Press
    • Privacy Policy

July 26, 2021 by BHP Leave a Comment

Name That Tune

How can an old parlour game help us reflect on the way we communicate? Quite a lot it would seem.

Many of us will have played the game where we tap out the rhythm of a tune or song and ask our partner to guess the name of the piece. The challenge for the person doing the listening is that they have to use only limited information (the rhythm) to piece together something much more complicated in its whole. It is a different story for the person tapping out the rhythm. For them, the whole tune is in their head and it seems obvious that what they are hearing (in their head), is also what is being heard by the recipient.

In a study using the game to explore expectations in communication, over 90% of the people tapping the tune expected the recipient to guess correctly – some admitting to be dumbfounded that their recipients could not understand them. Sadly, this expectation was not matched by the results, where only 14% of recipients managed to guess the tune correctly. Imagine the frustration on both sides!

The fact that the large majority (over 9 in 10) of the tappers (as we will call them), felt they had supplied all the information required for their message to be understood, makes a useful reminder of the difference between the message we think we are communicating and the meaning that is created by the recipient. It is interesting that in the study of the exercise referred to above, the recipients did not just say they didn’t know the answer – over 8 in 10 of them named a tune they were sure was correct even though it was often some distance from the one in the head of the tapper. In other words, they created a meaning from the message which was quite different from the one being communicated by the tapper – which, of course, led to even more frustration: ‘How could you possibly misunderstand that? It’s so obvious!’ Worryingly, when it comes to communication, what seems just so obvious to us, can lead to confusion or misunderstanding for those on the receiving end.

The tapping game might also make us reflect on just how limited words can be when it comes to communicating the thoughts and feelings we carry. Like the complex melody, much of the nuance may be lost without access to the pitch, timbre and colours which make up the detail. As humans, we are meaning-seeking creatures. If there are gaps in our understanding, we will fill them in an effort to make sense. But in those fillers, we often go awry – gloriously so in many cases, which is why metaphor and symbolism can be such fun – but awry, nonetheless.

It takes a lot of work to be really understood and a great deal more to understand fully. But when we feel anger or frustration at others for not getting our message, or when we deal with similar feelings when our friends or partners never seem to appreciate our understanding, we would do well to remember that the gap between what is being communicated and what is being understood is considerably wider than what might at first appear.

 

Kevin Collins is a UKCP registered Psychotherapeutic Counsellor with an academic background in the field of literature and linguistics. He worked for many years in education – in schools and university. Kevin is available at our Lewes Practice.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Kevin, please contact him here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Further reading by Kevin Collins –

I never thought my son would be addicted to pornography

Why is it hard to make decisions?

Communication, communication, communication

Filed Under: Kevin Collins, Relationships, Society Tagged With: anger, communication, Relationships

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Find your practitioner

loader
Wordpress Meta Data and Taxonomies Filter

Locations -

  • Brighton
  • Lewes
  • Online
loader
loader
loader
loader
loader

Search for your practitioner by location

Brighton
Lewes

Therapy services +

Therapy services: 

Therapy types

Therapy types: 

Our Practitioners

  • Mark Vahrmeyer
  • Sam Jahara
  • Gerry Gilmartin
  • Dr Simon Cassar
  • Claire Barnes
  • Sharon Spindler
  • David Work
  • Susanna Petitpierre
  • Thad Hickman
  • Angela Rogers
  • Chris Horton
  • Fiona Downie
  • Dorothea Beech
  • Kevin Collins
  • Rebecca Mead
  • David Keighley
  • Georgie Leake

Search our blog

Work with us

Find out more….

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Charities we support

One Earth Logo

Hove Clinic
6 The Drive, Hove , East Sussex, BN3 3JA.

Copyright © 2023
Press Enquiries
Privacy Policy
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptReject Privacy Policy
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT