Struggling with Communication: My Honest Journey

It has finally become clear to me that, my communication problem is that I keep trying to do it with other people. I suck and communicating with anyone. I do me, anyone and everyone. I don’t know how to do it. At all. Ask anyone that has ever spent more thank six to eight minutes with me.

I have read, heard that a bit part of effective communication it listening. Probably the most important part of communicating is listening so you can voice an appropriate, well thought out and CLEAR response. Sigh.

“You only hear what you want to hear!!”. Well, yea. Be it intentional or not, I imaging everybody only hears what the want to. Sure, you can ignore shit, pick and choose the bits you want to, creatively arrange the words to fit what you want. OR, you could actually listening, trying to hear and understand what is being said and honestly believe you did in fact hear everything correctly.

AND, you could still be all kinds of fucking wrong. Not even close. Sigh.

Now, I am guilty of both kinds of ‘hearing’, not gonna pretend I am not. Again, I imagine just about everyone is also.

I think I have heard what was said. I am in fact sure I have. I proceed to move along in the direction of the end of my life with that information as one of my guides. Oops. Big, big mistake.

You see, I am sure, completely sure and unwavering in my belief that someone said, “Blue is my favorite color.” Now, at some time, at some point that person and I had been in a conversation that included colors. During that conversation I heard something the led me to believe that blue was their favorite color. So, I find out now that is green, not blue. Oops.

But, the thing is, I did not purposely choose to believe something that was not true. I am not trying to be contrary. I am not trying to ruin anyone’s life, destroy a relationship, beat someone down by getting that information wrong.

I just got it wrong. I seem to do it a lot. With everyone. About anything.

Then there is my ‘tone’. I am often accused of having a condescending, shitty tone. OK, perhaps I do. Is it intentional, am I trying to be belittling and shitty? NO. (Well, 90% of the time anyway.) I do no know why my voice has the quality. I can speak without it if I sit, concentrate, speak very slowly and at very low volumes. All things that I seldom do because I seldom sit still in quite environments. I get agitated, spooled up easily and start to talk fast. When I do that, I sound like an asshole when I speak.

I know this now because EVERY SINGLE PERSON I HAVE EVER SPOKEN TO has told me so.

Now, if I happen to be talking to someone that is already emotional about something, someone the is already angry about something, someone who is sensitive to tones, shit goes from bad to worse really quickly.

That collapse and deterioration of the situation only aggravates me more. So, I speak faster and my tone get even shittier. Eventually, I am really shitting and probably mean to be by then. “Fuck this.” sort of thing.

Now, I know this and have tried had to prevent it by NOT TALKING. You would think that would help. Nope. Not at all. Now I accused of stonewalling, shutting out, giving The Silent Treatment. Well, yea, exactly! If I speak, someone is hurt. If I don’t speak, someone is hurt.

I listen but do not understand so I am ‘not paying attention’ or ‘twisting words’ or ‘only hear what you want to’.

When I speak I am ‘condescending’ or ‘arrogant’ or demeaning’ or ‘patronizing’.

When the originally topic of conversation is long lost to the conversation about what an asshole I am, how much I hurt someone, how hard it is to talk (communicate – remember what this is about) with me, my frustration with it just pushes me to the point of giving up and walking away.

I have told people in the first few minutes of meeting me, “I have a really condescending, shitty tone of voice a lot of the time.” They don’t believe me until it is a shit show and all I can do it think, “I fucking told you so.”

I cannot live life sitting quietly, whispering at a snails pace. I also cannot hold a normal, pleasant conversation let alone a serious, emotional, important one with anybody.

Nor can I just stay quite.

I’m fucked as is everyone around me.