Communication Errors

I never would have known there was a school of thought about “objects” unless Marcy said something. It seems that some sort of strong focus is considered and the object like, the object of my desires or the object of my disapproval, of my joy, etc. Now that’s a loose explanation but that’s what I took from how Dr. T explained it. The school of thought is that anything focused on is the object so it wasn’t a slip of the tongue or even his personal belief that woman are sexual objects when he asked me about my “sexual objects”. He was speaking purely from a lingo, technical, psychology standpoint. He said he forgets sometimes that the lingo isn’t universal. He said he was careless in his speech by not being aware that not everyone is familiar with psych schools of thought. I smiled at him because it wasn’t too long ago that I did the same type of thing, assumed others had information that they didn’t have.

He and I have communication errors all the time but it’s not anything new for me. If it only happened with a few people I could say that it isn’t me but since it happens quite often with many different people from all walks of life I have t accept that most of the time the communication errors are on my end. At least this time it wasn’t my fault.

I am sometimes so literal and so matter of fact that it must be hard to figure out why I say what I say. The other day I was talking to a friend who was clearly in distress and I was all level headed and frank. After I hung up I thought to myself, damn, she must have thought I was cold because I skipped over the emotional stuff, sorted through what she said and then tried to come up with a solution. I do that all the time and it can make a person feel misunderstood. I can appear to not validate them when I skip over the emotional response and go straight to logic. I don’t mean to but I may give the impression that I don’t hear their amount of despair. How many times did I tell an old therapist of mine that I didn’t want to hear about how strong I am or hear that I have coping skills and I can get through this too? I hated when she said that. Looking back maybe she comes from the same frame of mine as me. I hope not because I know where I learned to skip emotion and sort through this and that to come up with the best way to solve a problem or back then to stay safe(r). I do this still, I can within seconds dismiss or recognize then dismiss just like when I was little. I sort through things, put them in order of importance and go down the list one by one until everything has either been dismissed or recognized and solved. That mode of thinking doesn’t allow for others to feel their feelings or express themselves because while they’re still on issue number one I’m on number 10 and frustrated because they’re still hanging on to issue number one when I was so sure we were on the same dang on page. So, seeing as how I’m not the best communicator in the world I do have to allow for the communication errors of others or I can’t hope for the same response for myself. Dr. T came off looking like a true SOB and sometimes I come off looking like an ice cold bitch. We live and learn right?

Sometimes I read the old entry linked to in the above paragraph because it grounds me, gives me a wake up call that my smile is sometimes a miscommunication. The entry says in part: “If you never say I’m not doing well (or speak in a language that only I understand) …how are people to really know just how much you need them? If people don’t know just how bad things are getting then when you crash they’re taken off guard. It’s like, oh man, I thought everything was going so smoothly what happened? I hid the pain of my heart with the smile on my face, that’s what happened.”

This sort of hidden emotion and assumption of information was also part of the problem with Dr. T and myself. He was visibly shocked when I said I believed he couldn’t give a rats ass about my artwork. We’re supposed to talk about that some next week. His lack of response and my lack of response let this thinking go on for months. It’s another example of how important it is to communicate and not assume the other person knows what you’re thinking or feeling. I read the above entry from time to time because it can relate to so many things, not just strength but also communication and assumptions.

Austin