Post 2- Anger

         In my personal experience, how I react to anger varies on who I am angry with. For example, with my mother I tend to loose my patience and blow up on her. When it comes to my boyfriend I either express it calmy or not at all. I briefly touched on this on my Conflict Assesment paper, but I react to conflict differently depending on who I am frustrated with, or where we are. There are a lot of factors involved to how I channel my anger. On page 143, it talks about the term anger-ins which is the idea of not expressing your anger to the person who has upset you. It also suggest that you may express that anger to someone else,like venting. I find myself doing this more, but more so to get advice and vent so I don’t blow up on the person I am mad at. I want to hear if I am in the wrong or if I am not seeing something, so I use this more as a time for suggestion and for me it works really well because then I don’t blow up on the person I am angry with. I am able to think things through before I talk to that person about why I am upset. This also follows under the idea on chapter 8 of taking a time out. It suggests that you should exit temporarily, to help you cool off (Pg. 147). I think this is the best way to express anger as long as you aren’t permanently ignoring the issue that made you angry in the beginning.

          However, when I do blow up on someone out of anger, it never solves the issue at hand. Instead there is a lot of shouting, and not any attempt to reach a common goal to resolve the issue at hand. 

Chapter 7- discussion 1 STRESS

 The first solution indicates that we need to approach our tasks with a positive  attitude, because how we approach our tasks plays an important role on the level of stress we feel about them (Pg. 129). When it comes to school I tend to go into essays or homework with a negative attitude so it makes the process drag out longer cause I am dreading it. I need apply this positive attitude to work, because I need to realize that I am fortunate enough to have a job in this economy. I need to see work as an opportunity to make money and bond with the kids that I babysit.

 The second solution suggests that we need to see work as a game, and a type of play (Pg. 130). The author also suggests that we need to take ourselves less seriously. I firmly believe in this, because when you stress too much about life, it could lead to health issues and make you not value life as much.  I need to see work more as a play, and my job is to pretty much play with kids and keep them happy. When we loosen up and aren’t as stress about things. The third solution is about integration, and that one needs to understand that joy and pain are often found in the same play, but both are valued (Pg. 130). As soon as I read this I thought of a love, hate relationship. With school, I struggle to have a positive attitude with assignments, but then there are times that I enjoy doing an essay topic of my chooising. And in the end I need to see school as the fact that I am fortunate enough to get a higher education, and that the pain from staying up late and doing homework will be worth it in the long run, when I have my degree. When it comes to work my job can be very rewarding and I enjoy that factor of it, because I am able to see kids that I care about grow and development. Sometiems it is painful, because the kdis don’t always listen or I may have been up late the night before doing homework so im cranky. But in the end there is nothing better then going to babysit and the kids come running to the door smiling shouting my name to give me a hug. I think that life happens to us all and we forget what we have, and what we should be fortunate about and instead focus on the negative. So, I really appreciated this discussion question.

chapter 6 discussion 3

What I always enjoy about these chapters, and this class in general is that I can always apply what we are talking about to my everyday life and the conflicts I have in communication. In a lot of classes you are in class, because it is a required class to graduate, while yes this is a required class that I need, but I feel that this class is worth my time because it is helping me become a better communicator in a professional atmosphere, with my friends, and family. I do a lot of anazlying my past and current relationships when doing these discussions and from this weeks I realized that I used to be in a more competitive relationship where there was always a win-lose outcome. Now, through those experiences with the competitive relationships it has led me down a more positive path, that I now communicate in a more cooperate manner and it is always a win-win outcome. One of the many things that leads to a successful relationship is , I feel cooperating. The book defines cooperation as working together rather working against one another, and that cooperation generally increases levels of trust, openness and collaboration(Pg.110). All of these things can only better your relationship with someone. When you care deeply about someone you want to be able to open up to them and trust them with all that you got, being able to do those things allow you to have an open and honest relationship with good communication. I didn’t realize until I took communication classes, how important communication is in our lives and how not communicating can get quickly misinterpreted into many other things for example when you ignore someone after a fight they could assume the worst or assume your thinking something when your not, maybe you just want time to cool off. Overall, we need to all work towards win-win outcomes so that we can all learn from communication with others.

Power abuse relationships

After reading the instructor wrap up on Chapter 6, it made me realize that my last relationship consisted more of an abusive power communication. So I have been in both positions, being the person with more power as well as being the person with less power. Both positions ultimately, suck. I am more of a person that likes to compromise with people because I know that it ultimately makes me a better person and allows me to understand the person I am communicating with a little bit better so when you have the power or lack the power there usually isn’t much compromising.  To quote the wrap up, “those who abuse power may find that the other person responds in passive or passive-aggressive ways in order to avoid threats and abuse.” I find that when you have less power, you do feel passive and your communication is very passive aggressive, however when you feel like your the one who has the power in a relationship you feel very strong, and this is when that power, becomes abusive because you know you have the power to control the relationship and a lot of time people abuse this power. When you are in an unbalanced relationship, it is ultimately going to lead to a miscommunication and break up. Again, in the instructor wrap up she talks about giving up that power to resolve conflict and I absolutely agree with that.  If one person in a relationship feels like they have the power, they tend to talk down to the other person, making them feel insecure and weak which can make that person not want to open up to their significant other. . When there isn’t this power struggle it eliminates competition within two people. Whenever two people are competing that leads to win-lose outcomes which again leads to putting someone down in order to make you feel like you won. Ultimately, a power struggle relationship leads to many communication errors

Loss of trust

I have lost trust in someone before. I was in a three year long relationship where my boyfriend lied and cheated on me. When someone close to your lies and you loose your trust in them, it makes you feel insecure. It is hard for you to put your trust in someone again, because nobody wants to feel pain again. The trust was restored overtime, but never was 100% the same. We had, as the book puts it, an unhealthy level of trust. Once you have distrust in someone, it is hard to build that trust up again. The way to build that trust up is to slowly open up again, and when you have already lost that trust within an individual it is hard to communicate things that are personal. I also feel that once that trust suffers, an act of powerful speech definitely plays a role in a relationship. When you feel insecure after being lied too and your trust being lost, I think a form of powerless speech takes over the relationships communication. Powerless speech simply means to feel uncertain or unsure of onself. 

Chapter 4- post 3

After reading chapter 4, I couldn’t help but think of my boyfriends flaws in communicating. While I love my boyfriend to pieces, nobody is perfect so am going to use him as my example for this discussion.

          I wanted him to read chapter 4. He is just like me and when we talk, especially serious talks he doesn’t always let the other person finish what they are saying before he passes his judgment on the issue or what not. Part of the S-TLC that I really related to was the STOP step. As our professor talks about on the blog, when the book talks about “stop” it simply means to take a time out, analyze the conversation rationally and consider all the options. A lot of people (like my boyfriend) take things personal, rather than seeing the other persons goals, and considering their conflicting parties. I think this is why sometimes I prefer to write a letter to someone, because I feel I can say everything on my mind, without getting interrupted. I have always found this to be helpful, but I like face to face interaction for multiple reasons, one of which, is that the person you are talking to can see your emotions and that can make the topic seem more serious, and more important to you. 

Being a good listener

Listening is described on page 73 as being open to the other persons view and willingness to suspend judgment during the discussion, and patience to hear the other out. I think this is one of my biggest struggles as a communicator. I will sit their and it will seem like I am listening, but I don’t always take it all in. I get distracted very easily. When it is something of importance to a friend, yes I am 100% paying attention but when a friend is just chatting about non-sense, sometimes I catch myself being physically apart of the conversation but not mentally. I am also not a very patient listener. I always want to get my ideas, comments or concerns out right away when someone is talking instead of waiting till the end of their story. I am aware this is an issue for me so I try not to have things around me that could distract me, such as my phone, or objects that I could play with. I think when someone is talking I don’t suspened my judgement, I want to say what is on my mind and it is definitely something I need to work on as a communicator. Being a good listener is a huge role in any conversation.