How do we understand anyone?
Someone speaks, someone gestures, someone communicates something about their experience. What happens in the other, the listener. From the first moment the mind starts interpreting. These interpretations are mostly unconscious. In our conscious experience we are following the sources of information - the words and their potential meanings; the visual information such as body language and gestures, the auditory information such as tone and inflections; and any other sensory information such as touch or smell. All these systems are being utilized and most of the "processing and interpreting" are going on unconsciously. What is most critical to really getting what the other is communicating is the process of empathic identification. Our minds search for linking experiences. What, within us the listener, links to the picture, the story, the video of the person trying to communicate to us. The links are our own stories, pictures, videos that resonate with those of the communicator.
Most of these resonances take place outside of awareness in our unconscious minds. The relationship the listener has to his/her unconscious mind will determine how rich and complex the listeners understanding, the "getting" of the person communicating. In a given moment the "gates" between the unconscious mind and our conscious self are more or less open or closed. Ongoing feeling states such as fear, anxiety, "downess" influence the gates. If the listener's conscious mind is "open" to the resonating experiences generated by the unconscious mind, he/she can either share the actual experience or try to make sense of the significance of the linked experience.
