Sometimes We really are as We appear and sometimes We are not - Communication and Me

Enjoy a little bit of my Creative Writing submitted on Communication for College

In my life, I realize like most people, I have my own style of communication.  We joke about watching Telenovelas, and the deep voiced characters that are sometimes portrayed.  Oh, to have the baritone voice and a Harvard vocabulary, and we would be silver-tongued orators.  However, life is much different than fiction.  You may only use the gifts you are blessed with and hone the talents you have.  Communication is a gift, that can become an asset and ultimately a talent that will assist you in your life experience.

The choice of topic that I write about is: By not wanting to share my inner self, I have survived and/or I have damaged many relationships.  This can be a connecting thesis statement too.

In my life I have learned that silence is truly golden at times.  From an early age, in my household, we learned our child golden rule:  Children are to be seen not heard.  You may not see the relation to communication in that statement, but it did affect my life.  Breadth and Depth (Floyd, 2017) were learned at an early age from a reverse perspective.  I learned that there were things that can be discussed but I was not a part of the conversation.  That relates to my adult conversation, and the ability to compartmentalize what is revealed and hidden.  One can discuss a variety of things on the surface, but there are things that should not be discussed openly with everyone, even if they heard it.  Sort of like an early form of the Jahari Window (Floyd, 2017).

The Johari Window teaches us that we have four components such as Open, Blind, Hidden, and Unknown that can be revealed.  Like the child who saw and was seen, so is the person.  Similarly, there are things that we do not yet understand about ourselves, and only through the witness or assistance of others do we grasp it.  If relationships were embodied by this concept, we can understand what couples mean when they say, “he/she completes me.”

This springboards to expressive talk and instrumental talk (Floyd, 2017).  As a person, I have been one to believe that you cannot always reveal everything about yourself. Yet, I do understand that life is built on communication.  For me I am expressive, and relational in my communication.  However, it does have a compartmentalization to my style that I am aware of keenly.  My natural tendency is to listen, even though my inner turmoil is to speak.  Plus, communication is a means to an end in my life.  Through it I express myself, am understood, and find personal satisfaction, as well as understand others.

This brings me back to the connecting thesis statement.  I have made it this far in life by hiding my inner self to certain people, sometimes to my chagrin, and sometimes to my fortune.  Many times, I have been reluctant to share because of my stereotypes and image management (Floyd, 2017).  Like the dog who is afraid of his own shadow, I can admit to feeling averse to connecting with someone as a natural declination.  Being an expressive introvert has its pros and cons unfortunately (Ederveen, 2015).  Like you, I have something to say, but I do not trust people naturally by my disposition.  This is part of my image management, avoidance behaviors, and my “reverse” similarity assumption (Floyd, 2017).  How do I want the world to see me, and how does it see me?  How do I want to be understood, and how am I understood?  Due to this, I can say that I have fostered some good relationships and missed out on some good ones too.

As an introvert who likes to talk, there few people I am willing to allow inside my real or ideological personal distance (Floyd, 2017).  I think that this is because I waver or fluctuate on my positivity bias (Margaret Banford, 2019) between individuals as a protection measure to ensure my inner self remains whole and undamaged.  Consequently, it affects my communication with others, even though I am aware of the predicted outcome value theory (Floyd, 2017).  The 4 needs are strong inner desires (need for control, need for inclusion, need to belong, need for affection (Floyd, 2017), but there is a balance that I find myself walking because I weigh the value versus the risk of harm to my inner person.  All things are personal to some degree so to speak with communicating with me my friend says.  She may be right!