feelings and touching ESSAY

In my “Insight to Daily Life” class we are doing a unit on “feeling and touching others”. At the beginning of the unit I first brainstormed my basic orientation with other people. I had said “Well with close friends I’m really open but I’m shy around others so unless they talk to me, I’m quite”. In general, I feel like i'm loved a lot more by my outside school friends more then the ones here. And I am loved by my family more then anyone.
My goals when I talk to someone and I’m having a conversation with him or her are that I want to create interest; I just want to interest them. Another big thing is to make them happy, to make them laugh and feel good after talking to them. Those are my main goals. But then once again what should me on my goal list is; for the person to feel comfort around me, for them to want to have another conversation with me after they leave, to keep them wanting more. But ii have different goals in different cases. Like when I am talking to my parents I want them to be proud of me, to be able to trust me at the end of the conversation. But then with a friend, I just want to interest him or her and be able to help him/her out with their problems, because I know that on there side of it, they just want my advice.
There are so many different ways that people can wreck conversations. And most of the time when you ask your self this question the answer is most likely going to be: because they are selfish. They always end up talking about them selves. They interrupt, change the topic, talk about themselves too much, etc. but on the other hand some techniques that you can use to be polite is, to use great eye contact, keep good body language, focus, use clarifying questions, and grunt, etc. now those techniques will keep them talking!
This all relates to the “ 10 obstacles to empathic listening”. The 10 different ways of listening are; to give advice/ fix-it, to explain it away, to correct it, to console, to tell a story, to shut down feelings, to sympathize, to investigate, to evaluate, and to one-up. No these are all the different ways people may ruin a conversation, or in some cases make it better. After reading these 10 ways, I noticed the 3 ways I use them. First I investigate to get some background on the issue, then I make them feel better by consoling them, then last I give my opinion and advice on the situation. Most of the time this technique works very well! Which brings me to this cartoon Andy handed out in class. It was different ways that you can have a better conversation with a child. The one way that I want to try using more in my real life is the “ don’t ask too many questions”. I feel like I sometimes ask to many questions, which make me look a little obvious that I want to figure something out. So from now on im going to try and let them bring up the answers of questions that were unasked.
In class I was taught about Goleman’s argument. His argument was that we are basically walking mirrors. What happens is that when we interact with others, we start to pick up each other’s feelings/emotions/actions. Like if one is in one position the other will slowly pick that up. My reaction to his argument is that I think that this is half true and half not because for example if im sad and im with happy people sometimes ill get annoyed and go home because im not feeling good. But in other cases I agree that we mimic others because when interacting, we are like mirrors. Like when im watching a movie, if there’s an emotional scene ill sometimes shed a tear because I am starting to mimic them.
Now to move on the “feelings” part of this unit, why do people touch? I think that people touch to get a certain feeling across. And some people don’t touch to avoid aqward-ness. When Andy listed the different “feeling” categories, I was in the patchouli category because I am a very affectionate person, and I receive a lot of affection as well. I am very satisfied with the amount of affection I receive, I don think I want more or less, I am just right! I think that our society regulates our physical pleasure. And this is because it is morally wrong to do certain things with touch, or even just weird. Like if you sit next to someone in an empty train, its just plain weird. But that’s because our society molded it this way. Like no one thought of it as this way but when you get a mani/pedi or a massage it is a type of prostitution. This is true because you are paying a person to touch you… not in a perverted way but just to touch you. People need to pay other people to make them feel a certain way because they can’t get it any other way. This relates to why people go shopping so much. They shop to make them feel better. I can actually relate to this because when im down or upset I always go out and shop and most of the time when I buy something new, I do feel a lot better!
Now sometimes touching can get very out of hand! And you have to be strong and stand up for your self. Some ways to show that you don’t want to be touched through body language are; to twitch away, aqward smile or look, move slightly, loose eye contact. Now when I have to verbally say NO, I just politely say no thanks im fine and they always listen, I’ve never had a bad situation. Which relates to people who DO have bad situations, aka rape! What is a good way to stop rape at colleges? I don’t really think rape can be stopped because there’s so many men out there that need sex and cant get it. But I think that you should always limit your self when you drink because that’s most likely how you’ll get raped [more then 80% of people that get raped are drunk]. But then there was a college that tried a new system out to stop rape. The Antioch policy was before initiating a more intimate level, verbal consent is required. So you have to ask if it’s ok before sex, taking off clothes, etc. I do not think this is a good policy because number one, it ruins the moment. Number two; if someone’s raping you, the man is not going to ask you, is it ok if I rape you? I just think it’s a stupid policy.
I just think that over all the society creates “norms”. Like we try to distance our self on purpose because of the norms. Such as that if you’re not a virgin , you’re a slut/whore. It just teaches us to interact with people so differently. And because our culture is like this, I find my self-interacting with others less, and less intimate because im afraid others will think wrongly of me.