Brains and conversations

[valis2]

So I've been brooding rather intensely for a few days, and it's brought some focus about my interpersonal conversational skills. Or rather, lack thereof.

I don't think I have ever had a clearer picture of just how much effort it takes for me to converse with people. Depending on who I'm having the conversation with, I engage layers, sometimes multiple layers, of modifiers in my brain to prevent the wrong thing from being said.

By layers I refer to processes meant to take certain things about my conversational partners into account. You could also term them as "filters," but I'm not certain that the word correctly conveys the meaning. I once took a quiz on LJ that claimed my conversational style was called "the Changeling." It was an incredibly accurate result. I am a different person with different people. With bookwench2096 I am sarcastic and absolutely raunchy. With my friends in WI I am less sarcastic and absolutely not raunchy at all.

A few examples of layers:


• Age. Am I speaking to someone young, or old? If so, I'll temper my conversation accordingly. I won't bother with references that either is not likely to get.


• Position. Is this person somehow my superior, or could impact my job or do they know one of my bosses? This layer is so horribly intense that sometimes I end up stammering like an idiot.


• OMG THEY ARE SO COOL. This is another layer that just kills me. It's particularly horrible at a con, for example, when I'm talking to someone really amazing like alchemia, someone I really admire, someone who is super talented. Sometimes I manage to get out something that resembles speech; most of the time I just manage to say something really stupid.


• Customer. Is this person thinking about buying something from me now, or maybe in the future? Another tough layer. I have to weed out anything that might possibly offend.


• Friend of a friend. I'm out to lunch with my sister, let's say, and her boyfriend's best friend. I have to somehow not embarrass both myself, and my sister. A unique kind of pressure.


• I want to say something clever now. Oh, this is the worst, this is the one that just destroys me. It means that I just about completely stop processing just so that I can desperately think of something clever to say. And sadly enough, if I weren't trying to think of something clever, I probably would have thought of something clever.


• Am I interrupting too much? Am I doing something weird with my hands? Am I smiling strangely? Internal questions often push me right over the edge and stop processing dead in its tracks. Especially when I immediately start obsessing over the last hundred conversations and whether I've interrupted too much or done something weird with my hands.

These layers engage to form a barrier to prevent me from hurting someone else's feelings, and they are based upon the person. The more layers that are engaged, the more I start thinking about them, and the more I have to put in intense effort to figure out what I can say, and the less I am actually able to get out that's intelligent and relevant.

So where did these layers come from? Well, my father is definitely where I eventually learned a lot of logic and analysis from. I am not logical by nature, you see. My "logic" is actually just a huge repository of remembered situations (or even remembered stories by other people). If something occurs, I look through my logic bag, and try to see if anything similar has happened to me, or if I've ever heard a story like that. Based on that, I'm sometimes able to formulate the best course. This "logic" also fuels the layers, in a way. I am very thoughtless in my conversations, and my father would often take me aside later and explain which things I'd said that were "wrong" and might have hurt the other person's feelings.

My mother, for example, likes to use self-deprecation to make other people feel better. "Oh, I can't draw at all! I'm the worst artist in the world! I can't even draw a smiley face!" she'll say. I picked this trait up early, and used it quite a bit. However, it backfires, and often. People get really sick of hearing you put yourself down (an ex-fiancée once went into a rage about it), and the worst is when you insult yourself in some way and the other person gets insulted by it indirectly. For example, one time I heard my mother talking about how fat she was and she went on and on about it, and her best friend just sat there with an uncomfortable look on her face, and then I suddenly realized that her best friend outweighs her by at least a hundred pounds. So this is something I've worked very hard to stamp out of my speech. I've also tried to get rid of another thing I picked up from my mother, which is the tendency to say, "I like it," and "oh, I hate that" about absolutely everything that anyone brings up. Hey, it's no problem to say it occasionally, but when you are just making every conversation a litany of your likes and dislikes, you are not really talking to someone. Especially if you're not explaining why you like it or don't like it. Especially if you're simply interrupting throughout the whole thing to say whether you like it or not. I think about conversations I had in my early twenties and I just cringe.

The emphasis on "right" and "wrong" words can be really difficult to get around. I often tailspin into paranoia, certain that someone is avoiding me because of something I've said, or implied, or that I wasn't interesting enough. This is exacerbated by society, in some ways. We are expected to not point out stupidity or insults in our conversations; most people will simply "be polite" and continue talking, and then later laugh about the gaffes to other people. I've done it myself. The problem with this is that I have to then rely on my faulty logic system and my elaborate layers system to prevent these gaffes, and sometimes it's just not possible. And because no one will tell you when you've really made a gaffe, I am left to imagine gaffes where there are none.

Of course, when I am certain about a real gaffe, it makes me cringe in a way that is pretty extreme, and I can beat myself up like nobody's business about it. I go back over old conversations, and I pull out flaws and magnify the stupid things I've said until I cannot understand why anyone would want to be friends with me, much less even talk to me. It's rather extreme, and usually I'm able to take a deep breath and slip off to the side of it. Sometimes, though, I sit and stew for a day or two, and this entry is the result of that. Just trying to understand the issues involved with this is helpful.

For me, online communication is a huge relief in some ways, and a new kind of fail in others. The layers are a little confused, especially at first, by this situation; I have no visual cues to set the proper layers in place, for example. I have no idea if I'm talking to rich, poor, young, old, the Pope, whatever. But I have the advantage of having time to think things through before I post them. I can check my words for double meanings that I didn't notice when I first thought of them. This eliminates a bunch of gaffes. Honestly, I'm terrible at subtext most of the time. The unsaid and unseen can flummox me. Nonverbal cues are not as obvious to me as they are to most, though I do still see them sometimes. So being online and having a little extra time, and not having the layers all pressing down at once screaming "DO NOT OFFEND HER! SAY SOMETHING CLEVER NOW NOW NOW!" is helpful, but then again, I still have to work very hard to avoid saying the Wrong Thing.

Please don't look at this as "Now I have to reassure Valis that she is not an evil bitch from another galaxy and that I like her" situation. I'm serious. This is me trying to know myself, and sharing the process, and hoping to hear of your own conversational styles and experiences.

Comments

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I have to go to bed in a minute, but I wanted to say, you're right. I do put Nick in some unpleasant situations and the only thing I can say is that it's a holdover from childhood. When I was a kid and first watching the show, he scared me. He seemed angry and unpredictable, and I had the feeling Cody was controlling him. Even protecting Murray from him. Watching it now, I'm not sure why I thought that, but I can't shake the feeling. So, yeah, he gets into some fixes. That hotheaded Italian thing, I guess.

Oh, wow! That's really interesting! Because I definitely get that from your writings--it really comes through. Very very interesting.

See, I was totally obsessed with Cody when I originally watched them in the eighties. I really adored Cody and thought he rocked big time. In fact, I barely remember Nick--I remember Murray more than Nick!

And now, somehow it's all transferred to Nick. ha!

Makes me worry about your reaction to the next one that's coming up, where he does another very bad thing, but it's totally accidental.

Oh dear! Well, bring it on. Don't worry about changing stuff for me; I'll just deal with it. I'm hardly your whole audience, lol. ;)

How come everyone has to reassure Murray that he's useful? Can't he just be useful?

It's all about Murray and his insecurity, which pops up every so often, y'know? And it's a trait I share with him, which is why I have been really wanting to explore it for a long time. But once I've explored it, I'm not sure I'll explore it again. *nodnod*

[little-tristan.livejournal.com]

Nope, no can do. I have to change it now. It's okay, actually (assuming poor catyah isn't done and now has to start over), because I'm really taking it back to what it was going to be before I changed it the first time. If that makes sense. See, just this one time, you kind of are my whole audience, so if it falls apart on you at the end, I failed, and will have to crawl under the patio. No pressure, but you don't want that, right? :)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Oh noes! Now I feel hellaguilty. I'm so sorry--please don't change it on my account!

Then again, if it prevents you from crawling under the patio...

[little-tristan.livejournal.com]

Okay, disembowling you was *so* not the point here. Take deep breaths and repeat after me "It's better this way". I figured catyah would call me out on the ending anyway ("I love it, of course, but you can do better", she'd say, and I'd know she's right, because I knew it first.) It's all shiny now with panic!Nick and war flashbacks and all kinds of things I never write, but probably should.

Never feel guilty for making someone do her best. :)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

My ideas on changing SPAG and logic problems? That's quality control. My ideas on changing plot to better suit my own rather silly predilections? That's not really quality control--that's just greedy me. lol.

[little-tristan.livejournal.com]

I'm not knowing what SPAG is. Sorry. But this is a one-two, really. I took it in an unnatural direction, because I wanted to go there, knowing full well it would come off forced and unnatural. Now, I could try and work with that, or I could give it the proper ending, which more people will like anyway. So, not really a problem. These things often go their own way. Untergehen, for instance, was supposed to go on for another 2 or 3 pages, but after Nick and Cody sat down at the end of the pier and started staring off to sea, it was over. Nothing I could do about it.

This one, which is, by the way, the one that starts with the lovely wrench throwing bit, was actually conceived around the idea that got cut. I'm just putting it back. So it's really not your doing. I just need to be told to do the right thing sometimes. :)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

SPAG = Spelling Punctuation and Grammar

This one, which is, by the way, the one that starts with the lovely wrench throwing bit, was actually conceived around the idea that got cut. I'm just putting it back. So it's really not your doing. I just need to be told to do the right thing sometimes. :)

heh. The stories sometimes tell themselves, you know. But I'm too much of a control freak to admit it. ha!!

[little-tristan.livejournal.com]

I know! Writing used to seem like the ultimate form of control to me. I made the world! I control their lives! But the stories tell themselves, and if I try to work them too hard, they get back at me by sucking.

This one's currently dragging me all over hell's half acre, but it's the way to go, so no complaints.:)