Avoiding Interpersonal Conflicts

I myself would not choose to avoid conflicts. I like to face them head on and hope to not crash. My dad on the other hand tends to avoid conflict a lot, especially with me. I was having a conversation with him about going out of town for the weekend. I told him before I asked that I was not sure what he was going to say. I was right, I did not know what he was going to say because he did not say anything. When I asked him, he asked a few questions and then just got up and walked away. My dad used physical avoidance inorder to avoid answering my simple question, which had a simple answer of yes or no. For the both of us it is a lose, lose situation because he has to try and avoid me, while I lose because I did not get an answer. I wish that my dad would give me an answer, especially the one I want. But if it came down to it I would rather have him be accomodating, have his way because at least he would not have to try and avoid me then and I would not be in an awkward situation of not being able to give my friends an answer.

communication climates

My communication climates change drastically between school, work, and home. Most people would think that work would probably be the worst communication climate, however, I would have to disagree. At work, I feel comfortable talking to my boss. If something is going wrong or needs changes, I feel it is easy to ask her questions and to provide feedback on how to help change the situation.
For example, I had picked up a few overnight shifts, sort of as a trial to see how I liked them. They are different than day and evening shifts because during the day there is a minimum of 2 information coordinators working and can have anywhere up to 4 throughout the day. This is the same in the evening. At night, you are all by yourself, there is no one else to whom you can ask a question to. For about five years, they have always had the same two people working night shifts with a third person who picked up on occassion. There are always disputes between the night time and day time people. I had worked mostly days before trying the evening shift. When I took these shifts I thought about how the communication climate might change. It did slightly, but not in a negative way. I just found that they worked at a faster pace.
At home I feel that the communication climate changes drastically from one minute to the next. For instance, if we are talking about family events, our work schedules, or what we are doing that day, it is a happy sunny day climate. On the opposite spectrum, if we are talking about relationships and other such issues, the climate becomes very stormy, very quickly. I feel that the storm often stays for a while, until it cools down enough.
At school I feel that the communication is overcast most of the time. This is because I listen to the lectures and take notes, but have little time to communicate with classmates.

Hinting

If anyone knows me, they know that I am never one to make a decision. If I do, it is after a long thought process, followed by a long conversation with someone to make sure I am making the right decision. Even after being given choices, I never like to make a decision because if something ends up going wrong or one party ends up being more fun than the one I chose, Iwould not want it to be my fault. I am the queen of hinting however. I tend to make hints especially if I do not like one of the options I am given. I do this because if the people I am talking to are truly listening to me, they will understand what I am saying and take it into consideration when they are making the decision.
I am also likely to use hints when trying to be polite, but still get the message across that I do not like what you are doing. I use hints to get the desired response that I want, without directly knowing if I hurt their feelings or helped to make a decision, important or not.
An example of when I used a hint was saying "I am getting a little tired, can we leave soon" to my boyfriend, instead of saying "you've had to much to drink, we have to leave!"

Why I Self Disclose

As you should know by now, I am a somewhat quiet person. I keep a lot of feelings to myself and do not like to let people in. There are a few different reasons why people choose to self disclose information. The main reason I choose to self disclose is the reason called "Catharsis" in the book. Catharsis is making an effort to get something off of your chest. I am one that strives for perfection and am often ashamed of making a mistake. When I self disclose, it may not seem like a huge deal to someone, but admitting my mistake to someone is very significant to me. I do self disclose information other than just mistakes I have made. I often disclose information so that I can hear the other person's reactions and feelings to what I have told them. That way I am able to clarify my beliefs, opinions, and thoughts. In my first year of college I had something quite terrifying happen to me. I was blaming it on myself, but knew that it really was not, so I disclosed information to my mom, so that she could tell me that what I was feeling was right and that what happened to me really was not my fault.

Self-Disclosure

I was friends with a girl that we will call Jane. Jane and I talked about almost anything, from family, friends, deep down to relationship details. Jane and I would get together just for the purpose of talking. We both trusted each other with what we were talking about, even though we could not always relate to each other and or agree with decisions we made. We were talking about relationships one day, when she said "Alyssa, I have to tell you something that I no one else knows about". I became a little nervous, with so many different ideas running through my head, but I would have never come up with this one. Jane telling me this was obviously diliberate and significant. Obviously I can not say what she told me because that would break the trust in each other. She had said little remarks before that made me think what she told me, but I never thought it was true. It was very random because we were not talking about relationships at the time she disclosed this information. I would say that the depth of what she disclosed to me is quite high. I think the depth is high because it is something that she had not told anyone else, was about her relationship with someone of the opposite sex, and shared many of her feelings.

Relationships are Constantly Changing

There is no such thing as "happily ever after", unless you are watching a disney movie. When my boyfriend and I first started dating, it seemed like we would never fight. There would never be any differences that we would have to argue about, any feelings that would be different. But reality hit, which I knew would come about, but he did not. As you grow in a relationship, you learn more about the person and ideas may change. When I first started dating my boyfriend he did not have a job. It did not bother me at the time because he had just got laid off. After a few months however, my feelings changed, therefore our relationship changed. I felt that did not want to make an effort. He told me that I was making too big of deal about this, because I had no problem with it before. Because time goes by ideas and people change, so in order to keep the relationship happy and move into the "happily ever after" that does not really exist, my boyfriend needed to realize that we will have arguements, that does not mean that we do not like each other anymore, it just means we have a problem. Life goes around in a big circle and every once in a while there may be a bump in that circle but we need to get past it and the best way to do that is to communicate!

Why We Form Relationships

There are many reasons why people form relationships. I think that I have formed relationships with people based on appearance, similarities, differences, liked someone purely because they have shown interest in me. However, the relationships that have lasted the longest were based on the saying "opposites attract". I find that when I do have many similarities with people, its not that I do not get along with them, but I feel I also need a person who compliments me. I am always known as the shy, quiet person who does not usually say much to anyone. This is especially true in a social situation. The relationship that I am in right now definitely fits the "opposites attract" saying because he is the exact opposite of me in social situations. He will say just about anything and do just about anything even if it is slightly embarrassing. When we go out places he is always talking to people and being the "loud, attention drawer". This compliments/makes up for me being the less talkative type, but also makes me push my envelope in order to become friends with his friends. He definitely dominates the social aspects in our relationship, but I compliment him in that I have much stronger work ethics then he does.

Message Overload

According to our book we only remember about 50% of what we hear, immediately after we hear it. After time passes, it slowly dwindles. As human beings we are constantly hearing things, someone talking, a lecture, when we have a conversation with one or more people. I can only imagine how often we would be in the state of message overload if we remembered 100% of what we heard. I think that everyday I have school that I come home and am in message overload. I choose not to talk to people right away when I get home because if they told me anything important I feel I wouldn't remember it. It also would not be fair to them because my listening skills would not be very good. I often catch myself beginning to listen mindlessly or not even paying any attention at all during long lectures. I think the best way of avoiding the feeling of message overload was if we had a few minutes of break every half hour to hour of lecture. I remember that my high school teacher used to talk about message overload. She did not call it that, but she used to allow us to stand up and stretch talk for about two minutes and get back to the course work. This really helped me stay focused. I also felt I could recollect myself so as not to feel I was overloaded.

Defensive Listening

I am the queen of defensive listening. I am the type of person who always thinks they are right, even if they really are not. In the book they say it is often teenagers that perceive their parents questions as distrustful. I am not a teenager anymore, but still have that issue. My parents are constantly asking me where I am going, what I am doing, and when I will be home. Deep down I know that they are just asking because they care about me, but most of the time I take it as them not trusting me. When they are asking a ton of questions is the time that I become a defensive listener. The other night I came home later then I said I was going to be out. The next day they started drilling me, asking who were you with, what were you doing that you were out so late? I started saying things like why does it matter. This just led them to asking more questions because they thought I was hiding something. In reality it would be a lot easier if I would just ask their questions instead of becoming defensive. I hope with time (as I get further away from my teenage years) I am able to become less defensive and or they stop asking me so many questions!

Mindless Listening

I am embarrassed to admit that I react to others messages without thinking much. I usually just say "oh yea?" or "I agree" or "is that right". I am not the type of person that has a lot of patience with people, especially if I am busy or not interested in what they are saying. I think I do this a lot with children, because I do not want to take the time to tell them that I did not understand them, so they need to repeat what they just said. I got caught being a mindless listener from a child. I was babysitting a set of twins who are 2 years old and their older sister who is six. One of the twins started talking to me and I did not catch one hundred percent of what she said so I just said "oh that is pretty cool". After I said that the older sister tells me, "I know what she really said!" To just kind of play it off I said, oh what did she really say I did not really understand everything. I told her what I heard, hoping that I was right. I started listening at the beginning when her sister was talking, but when she started talking so fast I just ignored what she was saying. I was a little embarrassed that a six year old had better listening skills then I did. I did learn that I need to improve my listening skills because people will notice when you are not truly listening.

Culture and Nonverbal Communication

In July of 2008, I had the chance to take a trip to Europe. My best friend lives in Switzerland, so I went to visit her. I went to other countries such as France, Italy, and Germany. While I was in Germany I quickly learned that in different cultures, nonverbal cues can mean different things. In the United States when you want something and it is crowded you often stick up your hand as to the number of items (usually beverages) you want and then tell them what kind. While I was in Switzerland, we went to a bar/restaurant that was quite busy. I was ordering a beverage, "American style", sticking up my fingers as to how many I wanted (one) and then told them what kind. We got a table and the server brought us our drinks. To my suprise I got two drinks instead of just the one I thought I ordered. I told my friend that I only ordered one and asked her why I got two. I showed her exactly how I ordered it and what I said (incase my german wasn't up to par). She told me that in Germany when you order something, sticking up your thumb means one and then any finger after that is one plus the number of fingers (even if they cannot see your thumb). This is an example in my own life where my cultural background was interpreted according to theirs.

Non Verbal Communication

I think of texting as non-verbal communication. We can relay messages to each other, but we do not get to see any non-verbal body communication/language. Because of this I think we use emoticons. With the emoticons we can express many different feelings. Often times it is almost impossible to tell if someone is telling a joke, being completely serious, or somewhat in between. In most instances when I am sending a text message that I want them to take as a joke I will put a smiley face like :) or if its really funny :D. If I am poking fun at someone but want them to laugh I may put a ;). Other non-verbal but abbreviations that can be used are phrases that tell them what you are doing verbally like "LOL", laugh out loud, or haha, as in you are laughing. Although these are intended to be useful, there are still times where the emoticons can be misunderstood. In these cases the only fix would be to have a real face-to-face conversation where real emotions can be seen by the body's expressions. Other expressions such as a <3 for love may seem less passionate than the actual words "I love you" coming from a persons mouth. Because of the increase in technology I think more emoticons will be made, but the important part is that these non-verbal communications are understood correctly.

"We" language

My friend's birthday was coming up. She was going to make plans for a few couples to go out to dinner at the Melting Pot to celebrate. She was talking and said that we would love you guys to come. She was talking about "we" as in her and her husband, even though her husband had no idea about these plans until she was talking to me about them. She asked if "we" as in Adam and I would be interested in going. I took it upon myself without asking him, to say that we would love to go. He was with us that night but was not paying attention to the conversation. When I reminded him of it a few days later, he said that he knew nothing about it. Since I never checked with him, I think this would be an example of where a "we" statement should not have been used, unless I consulted with him first and made sure he was able to come with.
I was lucky in this case that he could go so that I didn't have to break the plans that I made for the two of us. Next time, I will make sure that if I do make a "we" statement that I make sure that WE both agree!

Relative Language/Relative Words

Relative words gain meaning by comparison. When I think of the sayings such as "i'll call you back in a sec." or "ill be over soon", I think of that as being within the hour. Everyone has their idea of what a little bit or soon might be. The only way of knowing what a person means is comparing what your interpretation is compared to theirs. I am constantly having a problem with a friend of mine saying that she will call me back soon. We were talking one day about what we were going to do. The best time for me to do something was earlier than later, but she did not know that. She had to go because her mom needed her so she said she would call me back soon. I did a few things around the house, completing everything I had to do, but she still did not call me back yet. After two hours past I finally decided to call her. She said that she had gotten done with what her mom wanted her to do a while ago but was waiting to call me back because she did not say i'll call you back in a few minutes, she said i'll call you back soon. She did not want to rush me. Her interpretation of soon was three or four hours later. Even though this may not seem like such a problem, I could only hang out for a short time by the time we got together because I had things planned later. So, we now know how we compare a little bit in time and can take that into consideration when we are talking.

Consider When and Where to Express Your Feelings

I believe in the statement "there is a time and a place for everything". An issue that I can think of where I had to wait for the right moment, was discussing with my boyfriend how much it bothered me that he wasn't looking for a job. I knew that just coming out and telling him would not work because it would just be brushed off. This was something I thought out carefully. I had to think of both my feelings and his. I imagined this conversation in advance. I thought about what I would say, what he would say, and then what I would say back.
When it came down to actually talking to him I had feelings of nervousness, but after I was happy. I had to choose a time that was right for the both of us. Bringing it up in front of his friends wouldn't have been polite of me. I wanted this to be a real conversation so I didn't just want to add it onto a fight we were having.
I chose a time when it was just the two of us. We were having a good night and I said that I wanted to talk about something, but didn't want to ruin the night. I picked a time where we weren't going anywhere so we had plenty of time to talk. I talked about how I felt about work ethics and why I would want to look for a job. At first he expressed feelings that were some of anger, but then he understood where I was coming from.
I think that choosing the right place and time to have this conversation made a huge difference!

Fear of Self-Disclosure

I am much like society in feeling that we should not express our emotions and that revealing them can seem very risky. This may sound stupid, but often times I feel that if I talk to a man, that he will always constrew it as being "hit on" rather than just wanting a friend to talk to or having something in common with them. I think part of this is societies fault. I went out with my boyfriend and one of his friends after one of my softball games. We went to a restuarant. We played bingo there and were all having a good time. My boyfriend went to the bathroom, while he was gone his friend and I were talking. When he got back we were still talking. At first I wasnt saying much to his friend, because I didnt want to express my feelings towards anything beause I didnt want to hurt any feelings he may have about the subject we were talking about. I took the risk of talking to his friend. My boyfriend did not like that I was talking to his friend so much and took it as me liking his friend. I got up the courage to tell my boyfriend how much I liked him, disclosing information I didnt tell anyone else. Here I think there was both a fear of being rejected from my boyfriend after telling him that and a fear that my boyfriend would think I was only disclosing this information because I felt bad. I think for him it took a lot of self disclosure to tell me he was a little jealous of how much I was talking to his friend and how much he cared about me.

Gender and the Influenceon Emotional Expression

Since as long as people can remember, men and women have shown or hidden their expressions of emotion differently. I think that men and women have different ways of expression emotions because of gender roles and their biological sex. According to the book, women are more attuned to their emotions than men. I can think of an example where this fits my life. I was having a conversation with my boyfriend about finding another job since he was laid off from his old one months ago. I was telling him that I felt that he was just being lazy and if he really wanted to go get a job he would at least put a little effort into it.
When he started talking he would say a few words like, youre just jealous that you have to go to work and school. Why can't you just let me do what I want. When we got down to the bottom of it, I found out that his feelings were much different than the ones he shared earlier. Before he was not attuned to his emotions, but after a while he came to a better understanding of himself.
He realized that it wasnt that he didnt want to have a job so he could support himself better, but that he was afraid he wouldnt get as good of paying job as he had before. As we kept talking more and more feelings began to come out. We have had a few other conversations on the same subject but he would always say lets just drop it. He never wanted to express his feelings of anger towards being laid off in the first place and the anger he felt because I had a job and was supporting myself. He began to dig out the real roots of his feelings and became much more attuned. I feel that a women would have come to the conclusion earlier and would have expressed this feelings much sooner than my boyfriend did.

The Pillow Method

I was never a person that did well at empathizing. An example of when I used the pillow method was when my friend and I got talking on political issues. Position one of the pillow method was "I'm Right, You're Wrong", which is the usual stage I stay in no matter what. I found faults in his side of making abortions legal. So, as we were talking, I tried to flip the stage, moving to position two which was "You're Right, I'm Wrong". I thought about everything my friend was saying and why they might think that. I did pull out a couple flaws in my arguement as well. Position three was easier to come to than position two. Position three is seeing that we are Both Right, Both Wrong. We almost had a debate, but more made of list of all the strengths and weaknesses of our arguements. During this time, we saw that there were a few perspectives we saw eye to eye on. Position four is The Issue Isn't as Important as It Seems. As we continued to talk about his we realized that this was not a situation that we should be seen as extremely important. Although it is one of today's top controversial subjects, we saw that maybe neither side was 100% correct, but by working together a better perspective could be taken into consideration.

Gender Roles

I think that gender roles are still being learned from watching men and women such as your parents, the media, and other reinforcements. Even though gender roles are still a big piece of societal norms, I think that gender roles are being broken more and more these days.
An example that I can think of in my life is when I play sports. I play in a co-ed softball league. People are all different ages from 18 to 60. I think that people use non-verbal cues, such as dress, height, weight, etc. to adjust where and how they stand on the infield and in the outfield. I am not a big person, I am only about 5 feet 2 inches and being a girl, people always move in. I think that women have had the gender role of watching men play sports, cooking and cleaning. When I got up to bat everyone moved in, that was playing in the outfield. They never expected that I would hit the ball farther then where they were standing before they moved in.
I think that I am androgynous, because I combined what were masculine traits with feminine traits. I think that this goes both ways in that in that women can take on some "masculine" traits and men can take on some "feminine" traits.