Oops. I've seemed to stretch the term "regular" to it's antonym of "occasional."
I'd blame it on my busy schedule this semester ... actually, I will blame it on that. This semester has been exhausting. I'm so glad that it's concluded, and I can finally relax. Even though it finished more than a week ago, I'm slowly coming out of hibernation. Emphasis on slowly. It's nice to not have a set schedule for a little bit, and not be bogged down with 25 things to remember to do by Friday.
Through all the exhaustion, I actually learned things during classes and relationships with friends. I've learned about the importance of friends, and that a friendship is two-fold. You have to encourage and be real with someone for them to be like that with you. We can't simply have them do all the work, and we can't do all that for someone. It's a partnership.
In my Interpersonal Communication class, we learned how to take some of the main principles of good communication, and relate it to relationships. It's mind-boggling how many ways there are to bring people down. In communication terms, this is called disconfirming communication. The book listed many ways someone can put down another person. Some of these terms might not be as clear as some, so I would encourage you to look them up.
- Verbal abuse
- Complaining
- Impervious responses
- Interrupting
- Irrelevant responses
- Tangential responses
- Impersonal responses
- Ambiguous responses
- Incongruous responses
As there are these nine ways to disconfirm someone, there are three main ways to confim someone through communication.
Recognition - This is the first step toward communication. Simply showing someone that you are confirming their existence through language.
Acknowledgement - This is through confirming what they say and do as well as how they feel. You are responding to them talking to you, and responding that they have feelings instead of putting your feelings ahead.
Endorsement - This is showing a person that his or her feelings are valid. You are encouraging them to have healthy feelings in the situation without saying that they are dumb for feeling that way.
Sure this is a very objective way to view confirming communication, but it's still a good basis to build off and to apply to your own life. Since there are less ways to build someone up, it makes me realize that doing so is supposed to be easy. We are supposed to, and we created to encourage. However, the sin in our lives has developed countless ways to tear someone down.
As I conclude this blog, I want you to develop a new definition of communication. It should be as confirming as we can make it. In reality, it's hard to do this even though it shouldn't. We tend to mask our insecurities by putting someone else down because it feels good to be in control. We don't think before we speak. I challenge you to encourage someone this holiday season because we never know if someone needs it, and you might be the person to turn someone's day around.
