No. 17 - Communication

I have actually been subconsciously thinking about this topic for a while…

I honestly might be the worst conversationist to ever exist. And I have only come to realize that recently. So that's great no? I sometimes wondered why either I get told "it's not entertaining to talk with me" or "[I am] not engaging in an active conversation with people" a lot of the times — I found out why.

This is limited to texting, but I believe that one of the easiest ways to tell how interested the other person is seeing how much "blue" there is on your screen (how many texts you have sent compared to how many the other person has sent). Intuitively, if the other person is interested in engaging in the conversation, they would not only be replying to my messages but also asking questions and adding their perspective onto the conversation.

I figured that there were two major reasons to why my screen was full of blues:

1. I don’t ask questions.

If I want the other person to ask me questions and be curious about what I’m talking about, I should
too be excited to here about them. But sometimes I’m too caught up talking about myself that I never ask questions when someone else talks about themselves.

It is drastically easier to talk about myself than to consider the other person’s situation enough to ask an engaging question, and it took too long for me to notice that this doesn’t apply only to myself but others too.

I should be giving people a chance to talk too.

1. I talk too much about myself to the extent that others don’t really have anything to be curious about.

Given the fact that I am nonstop talking about myself (point #1), I overshare, which as a byproduct makes everyone who has to sit through my rambles to know too much about me that they simply don’t have much to ask me. For example, I would drop every single detail of my day, not leaving any space for questions, which causes an awkward silence after my yaps.

I always repeat to myself to distinguish the difference between merely responding and actively participating in a conversation. Sometimes it seems like the people I wish to talk to the most don't reciprocate that thought. Which is very sad and unfortunate but what can I really do about it other than a) gaslighting myself that they are just busy and it will be temporary, b) forcing to keep the conversation going, or c) never talking to them ever again after reaching the conclusion that they simply hate my guts.

The aforementioned (a), (b), and (c) come in a cycle — and this only builds onto my anxious attachment style where I try to hold onto things that keeps harming me (maybe this is why I enjoy rock climbing even though I am constantly injured). Weirdly enough, once I reach stage (c), just as I start disappearing and distancing myself away from whoever, they come back suddenly interested in me. This applies to whoever it is; it’s so weird to experience because no matter how different of people they are, everyone does this to me. It’s like I was being annoying to them but then the moment I actually accept and disappear they think “Oh wait life is kind of boring without her pointless rambles” and come back??? Like what is going on. I thought you hated me.

To fix this chronic issue of mine, I am trying to slowly change how I communicate with others. I have been attempting to ask more questions to others and have them share about themselves. I talk less about myself, and I try my best to only talk about myself when the other person asks me.

Or honestly, I just need some therapy. This really could be an easy fix.

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17/100