12.03.18
Are you a good communicator?
- At a very young age up until late high school, I struggled with my socialization skills & communicating with peers. Especially when it came to voicing my opinion, confrontations, debates, communicating my feelings/thoughts to others, etc. It wasn’t that I was anti-social or didn’t have any friends, I was very outgoing (still am) and had friends, but I was what most would probably consider “awkward”; Having a conversation with someone was harder due to my social anxiety — being a class clown all my life was my way of communicating and making friends, it seemed so much easier to find ways to make people laugh, than it was trying to talk to people in normal day to day conversations. I have many reasons as to why I feel as though I was struggling with this, mostly with other women vs men. I was a tomboy, so being one of the guys and hanging with my younger brother was my way of trying to fit in, vs hanging out with a bunch of girls from school. At a young age, I knew I was different, but it didn’t strike me as hard until I realized that maybe I had an attraction towards the same sex, and this just made communicating / socializing even harder at times. As I got older, I started to learn to open up to people more and had more conversation & my class clown acts weren’t as rapid, but after suffering from losing friends, and having to move to different states/change schools, my communication skills started to once again dwindle because of my social anxiety from not knowing anyone. At the same time I had a hard time communicating with my own parent, my mom wasn’t the easiest lady talking to growing up (still has her moments now) because she is both stubborn and stuck in her ways and she believes what she says, goes — so I didn’t really have the confidence to speak up to her about certain matters until later in life. I’d say now, my communication skills aren’t perfect & I still have social anxiety, but I am better at voicing my opinion to peers, better at communicating my feelings within relationships and with close friends & I have gotten better at trying to voice my thoughts to my mom (even when she doesn’t seem to want to hear about it), regardless, I am glad this is something I have learned to excel at, and having taken a communication class in college, helped me to be able to talk in front of others with less fear. The hardest thing is keeping in touch with people — I am not good at doing that.
Be the best version of you 