Friday, April 8, 2011

It has been recently brought to my attention, by several different sources, that I talk a lot.I know that I talk a lot. I have always talked a lot. I have a very random thought process, that mostly contains of the fact that I think out loud and I think very randomly. For instance...my friend just reminded me about a story I once told about how everytime I see garbage bags on the side of the highway, I anticipate that it could be filled with dead bodies. Everytime that I walk in the woods, I feel like I am going to happen upon lost children. I sit up at night thinking of a plan if someone were to break into my house at any moment....basically I often anticipate the worst possible scenario. Oddly though, I would consider myself to be a pretty positive person. Someone told me recently that I do this thing when I am having a converstaion, where I tend to talk over them, fill in thier answers, anticipate what they MUST be thinking and basically hold the whoel converstaion with myself. Well that cant be fun for the person on the other end of that conversation. So, obsess is what I do best, so I have been thinking about why I think that I do this. One. I am ALWAYS thinking. I am always wondering about things that have not happened to me yet, or fear that things will repeat the same pattern that they have in the past, or wondering about some off the wall subject. Then I feel this overwhelmong need to share EVERY BIT of this information with everyone who I come in contact with. Two. I am ALWAYS analyzing. I am trying to figure out what people are thinking, mainly what they think of me and what they are thinking about what i am saying. I think that I know people that are close to me very well, so I think that I know what they are going to say. Three. I am impatient. I like to dominate conversations. Its not that I don't care what you are saying to me, I really do. But I am also anxious to relate to it and somehow bring it into my own experiences. I am a problem solver. If someone comes to me with a situation, it is far more likely that I am going to try to "fix" your problem then really just listen and empathize with you. I have mixed feelings about this quality in myself. Four. I am DEEPLY disturbed by long periods in which no one says anything. When I am driving somewhere with my husband, he would be happy not to say a word the entire way there. I think that the only reason anyone could POSSSIBLY have for not talking is if they are upset. Therefore when it gets too quiet I start analyzing what I could have done to upset the other person. Are they mad at me? Are they upset about something I did? Five. Genetics. Six. Constant need for approval and to feel like people are relating to me. I think that most of us have a hard time feeling like those around us REALLY understand what we are like. Who we are. What our lives are like, what our days are like, its hard to really know someone that way. But we are all desperate to feel understood. The truth is, no one will really ever know what it is like to be us. The things that we struggle with, worry about, love, hate, are irritated with...no one will really know that.

My immediate reaction to being told that I talk a lot, was yeah I talk...but half the time no one is really listening. Its more of my random babble. Calming myself down and just bringing the listener along. The things is, I don't think a lot of the time that I am expecting the other person to really KNOW....just for them to empathize. The most important thing I can get from this is actually in two parts....ONE i need to stop thinking that other people are going to always get it. Sometimes they will, sometimes they wont. I also need to stop trying to fix everyone else's lives. People aren't always seeking an answer.The same way that I am not.TWO. I need to realize that conversations are two part. There is speaking, then listening. Asking and answering. If I am having the whole conversation with myself, I am not really allowing the other person to think for themselves. I may think that I know what someone is going to say, but you may be surprised if you let them actually answer. I also am trying, TRYING, to learn that silence is not always bad. Just because someone is not talking to me, it does not mean that they hate me and are annoyed by the fact I am even sitting next to them. Sometimes silence is just that. Silence. No need to analyze further then that. I find that as I wrote this blog...the reason i started this was basically to have a constant outlet to " think out loud" no one is necessarily going to answer me. But I still learn to define and resolve my anxieties by putting them out there. and one more thing....those of you that have listened to HOURS of me going on and on about nothing in particular.thanks.

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