[link, xtina, brains]

[wispfox]

ladytabitha notes that the corollary to "communicate, communicate, communicate" should be "pay attention!".

And yes, I _do_ realize that people (myself included) have trouble with body language. I feel like even in those cases, there is still other information than words. Perhaps, things like people suddenly getting quiet, or not being as chatty as normal, or something. Behaving differently than normal, vs. body language signals. And yes, sometimes the reason for strange behavior is because someone is feeling unwell; that's still something that's useful to know, because - if nothing else - people who don't feel well tend to want different things than when they do feel well.

Of course, my next corollary now wants to be "if someone close to you asks if you're ok, take a moment to see if you can figure out why they are asking, before replying". I mostly note this one because I've run into too many people who say they are fine when they are not, and obviously not. And I do understand automatic responses, as I might answer automatically before answering for real, depending on my distraction levels.

As with everything, it's about doing the best you can, not about being perfect in your ability to communicate.

Of course, in my head, paying attention to cues which may not be words is part of communicating. Communication should be using all input available, and not just a subset. I will note that I strongly prefer verbal communication to confirm the things I'm picking up through other methods. Largely because, for me at least, the other methods are more vague and abstract, and have too many possible meanings. Words can and often do, as well, but they are easier (for me) to use to home in on something.

Comments

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

One interesting thing about having a lot of my initial interactions occur via the 'net is I learned to read "body language" in text. This was easiest with texting programs where the letters appear on both screens simultaneously (these were pretty primitive, I don't even know if they exist anymore), since you can see the pauses and alterations to words like in a verbal conversation.

Yep. I remember using 'talk', which does this. :)

I note that I intentionally include things like pauses (...) and pertinant facial expressions and such in my text conversations, for reasons like this.

I _know_ how useful that is, and because of the effort it took me to learn how to use it, I am aware of such things enough to put them into text.

I used to pause a lot when someone would ask me a question. Somehow I got this notion that this was not only not weird, but polite - I was actually considering the answer

*nod* I suppose it would depend on if someone feels like a question shouldn't _need_ consideration. In that case, I can see how that would seem strange. In a case where consideration makes sense, though, a reply which is too quick would also seem off.

I do try to take questions such as "how are you" seriously. I don't always succeed - if I'm sufficiently distracted I will rattle off an automatic reply (e.g. "I'm doing OK") and then proceed to explain how I'm not OK at all, which is probably rather confusing but thankfully most people seem to get that I was distracted by the not-OK.

This makes sense to me. I note that I will also - if distracted - tend toward replying automatically first, then for real.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I miss talk. It was so much more expressive to type in real-time.