Sunday, October 7, 2012
Week 7 dicussion - Question 3
The reading that I found interesting and want to discuss this week is the Obstacles to Communicating Emotions effectively. As a young adult, I feel like people my age have the most trouble trying to communicate how they truly feel. Instead, we all "beat around the bush" or not say anything at all. After reading, I understand now why this is so. One of the obstacles is social expectations. Society gives us a standard on how we should act. Men are supposed to be more reserved and quiet about their feelings and women are more vocal. This makes men more suppressed with their emotions because they feel like it's manly to do so. The second obstacle is self-protection. Sometimes, we don't want to voice out our emotions because we do not want people to act a certain way towards us or see us differently. Another obstacle is protecting others; we don't talk about our emotions sometimes because we fear it may hurt another person's feelings. The last one is social and professional rules. This obstacle happens because people feel like the roles they play in people's lives make showing emotions inappropriate.
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I was just talking about this in one of my posts as well. In particular, the part about how men are supposed to suppress their emotions because of societal norms stood out to me.
ReplyDeleteMy boyfriend is a classic example of this problem. The most frustrating part about this is that he just can't seem to grasp the right words to describe what he's feeling so he just gives up completely instead of trying harder, which just leads to both of us becoming upset. I actually showed him parts of this chapter, however, and now I think both of us are more aware of why it can sometimes be difficult to express our emotions.
I also found this part of the chapter interesting. I have noticed how many people have trouble communicating their true emotions. Too many people do not get straight to the point. They talk about certain things but then never get to the point of feeling that they actually want to talk about. Social expectations are probably the biggest obstacles to communicating emotions effectively. Many people want to fit into society or fit into the group of people that they hang out with. People try to act how they are expected to for their age or for their gender. This makes it really hard for people to express their true emotions because they do not want to seem different from anyone else.
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ReplyDeleteI thought this was a very interesting topic also. I think everyone encounters these obstacles on almost a daily basis and being able to better understand how to overcome these things would really help everyone. I agree that people our age have a problem truly communicating what they are feeling. I feel like we all have so much going on in our head and live we do not always sit back and think about how we are actually feeling and how we could better express those feeling. I also agree with gender roles getting in the way of truly expressing our feelings. If a man were to feel really sad about something, it may be harder for him to express that because of what is expected of him.
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