communication

[anaris328]

I am wondering if I have a diagnosable condition. I'll just give a bit of background about myself. When I was in third grade I was told by a school counselor that the best strategy to handle being teased by other children was to ignore them. When I was in sixth grade I was teased by everyone, and tried to ignore them, but the teasing caused not only enormous amount of pain, but that belief that ignoring it would be the best way to go stripped me of my defenses, and made me believe that if I retaliated it would get even worse. So I ended up being trapped in silence.

Once I became an adult for several years I became very bitter, and apathetic. I did not have the capacity to make friends since it was beyond my capacity. When I was about to turn 25 a guy asked me out, and after a little time I ended up falling in love with him, but because of my inability to express these feelings he ended up dumping me and getting involved with someone else. Later on I found out that he was seeing three people at the same time and thus felt that it was more his faults then mine that caused him to dump me.

But to feel emotions again made me develop the ability to make friends, though I found out that there was a problem that I've been running into over and over since then. From the age of 7 to the age of 25 I had few friends and have not developed the skill of communication over that time period. Whenever I converse about difficult topics I find that I pause for long periods of time trying to come up with the right words to say, when at a party with several people I find it difficult to converse with people that I don't know. I've been told that I am sometimes incoherent in casual conversation. When I was in college I found myself dreading writing essays because I felt my response would be incoherent and I would end up getting a bad grade because it was beyond my capacity.

What I find most troubling about this is that there is a chasm between what I think and what I say. I am a very rational person and my thought processes are exceedingly coherent, but whenever I try to convey my ideas they end up just coming out wrong. This provides endless frustration for me and makes me doubt my abilities.

I think this problem has come from the years I spent in isolation. As a child I was neglected by my mother, ostracized by my peers (my dad was out of the picture entirely) and once I became an adult I found that I could not establish ties with others. Thus my communication skills are lacking, and while they have improved over the past few years they are still not to the level I would like them to be.

I find that this makes it difficult to establish and maintain friendships, it makes me doubt my ability to work effectively and has made job searching an anxious affair, and I feel that the ideas I think about I am unable to convey to others. I am wondering if this condition can be identified and what can I do to improve my communication skills?

[Jennifer]

I think you have a clear idea on what the problem is, no diagnosis for inablity to communicate and poor self-esteem. You will have to build your self-esteem up in order to be able to learn how to reach out to others. therapy would be the safest place for you to do that, it seems as if there is years of stuff that needs to be worked through for you starting in your childhood. If you can afford therapy, that is your best option.

[anaris328]

I have received therapy and I have found it to be unhelpful. I find that questioning myself and finding where inaccuracies in my belief system are as effective as talking to a therapist. The problem is my self-esteem is directly tied to my ability to communicate, so if I feel that I am incoherent I feel horrible, and if I am conveying my ideas well then I feel very confident. Thus improving my communication skill is the best way to boost my self esteem, but I am not certain how to improve communication.

Talking to people is not the best strategy since if I talk to them and I end up being incoherent I will lose access to them, and if I try to talk to them too much they also grow tired of me. I don't need therapy, I need strategies.

[Jennifer]

That is what therapy is about, getting strategies, you are asking for my help and I am a therapist, if change is going to occur in your life you need to make change happen. that will only happen if you let it happen. You can try a public speaking course or a motivational course. The self-esteem needs to be raised before you can communicate and its not just communication from what I'm hearing, it is emotions. At some point along the way you shut off your emotions so there is nothing to communicate because you are unsure of your own emotions. You also need to open to new ideas and work on yourself. If you have isolated yourself from others and you are saying that you can work better on your own which is defeated the purpose of what you are trying to ask for help for. In order to let go and have therapy work for you, you would have to form a relationship and be able to communicate, doing that in a safe place is a good idea to start out with, but that is up to you.

[Slackey]

I too feel constricted by communication when anxiety hits me, and often when I am with my friends. Also, at times when I generally feel confident and am lacking anxiety, my communication skills are fine.

I feel strongly that communication is separating me from the rest of world. My inability to express myself and complete thoughts make me feel helpless, socially awkward. I fear I may never get that job I want. I fear speaking in public. I fear talking to people of authority. I fear talking to my father. I no longer want to fear these things, and communication does have a lot to do with it, or is a direct result of my sickness.