overcoming self-consciousness

October 1, 2023

Overcoming the Challenge of Conversation and Using It to Your Benefit

Our conversations with others aren’t always as easy as we wish. From the beginning, there can be misunderstanding and self-consciousness. To the good, our tools to enhance human contact include deeds and words. But we often forget two more: body language and silence.

Soundlessness fuels terror for some. Perhaps we don’t know what to say, which words to use, or when to voice them, and we fear appearing foolish. The clock ticks away, and the silent seconds stretch forever, like taffy or bubble gum.

Silence and patience are available to aid communication. I spoke about this with the redoubtable Wynne Leon and Dr. Victoria Atkinson on their podcast, Episode 37: The Waiting Game with Dr. Gerald Stein.

Waiting in a state of quiet calm permits events to unfold, creating a sense of power and control within the one who understands how to use it.

Think of a stalled dating dialogue. As those awkward moments continue without a topic for discussion, you might speak with your counterpart about times when the two of you enjoy stillness over sound.

It is vital to recognize that one of the goals of encountering new people is to find out if they are compatible with you, not vice versa.

Focusing on them — their manner of dress and way of sitting or standing, allows you to infer a lot. Note hand and arm movements, facial expressions, quality of voice, reaction to the shared surroundings, and apparent discomfort or ease — and you find out still more.

The Dalai Lama said,

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.”

I would add, watch while you concentrate on hearing the stranger. Rehearsing a short list of questions to be asked often helps take the focus off of you.

It might help you if you think of conversation as an experiment, a chance to learn and grow. A lifetime gives you endless possibilities, from chats with the checker at the grocery store to interaction with parents, siblings, people of unfamiliar cultures, teachers, therapists, and others.

The paralyzing date experience potentially feeds your evolution, helps accumulate confidence, and enables mastery of anxiety with each additional opportunity. Reminding oneself that the moment does not mean life or death tends to reduce a sense of catastrophe. Recalling that you have recovered from more devasting events in your past can do the same. A meditation practice might be stabilizing, as well.

The following comes from the Bright Way ZEN website:

The Buddha taught there are five things to consider before speaking. Is what you’re about to say

  1. Factual and true?
  2. Helpful, or beneficial?
  3. Spoken with kindness and good-will (that is, hoping for the best for all involved)?
  4. Endearing (that is, spoken gently, in a way the other person can hear)?
  5. Timely (occasionally something true, helpful, and kind will not be endearing, or easy for someone to hear, in which case we think carefully about when to say it)?

Kindness and gentleness do not require words. You can smile at the other, touch, and make eye contact. The above video of Marcel Marceau demonstrates a more comprehensive range of facial and bodily communication in two minutes than most of us use daily.

Sometimes, a question followed by your silence can produce surprising and beneficial consequences. In my podcast conversation, I spoke of a 15-year-old with ADHD whom I treated in a psychiatric hospital because of his reckless and uncontrolled misbehavior.

By the time of the interaction I described, I knew the young man well and asked him something important. His initial reaction displayed impulsivity and thoughtlessness. I then waited to find out if he might offer a more insightful response. He did, ending the moment’s stillness perhaps 30 seconds later. It proved to be the foundation upon which we built the treatment.

Think back to childhood; I suspect you recall your parents’ mood changes. They may have been able to convey their disapproval by facial expression alone, and you became adept at reading them.

Face-to-face time with a stranger reveals essential qualities in the other. Does he pay attention to you? Does he want to discover more about you? Does he cut you off as you speak or look at his watch or cell phone instead of you?

You might find that limiting your speech lets you determine whether you would care to know this woman or man better. New acquaintances must prove to you that future time with them can be worthwhile. Your time holds value.

To gather more about the teenage psychiatric hospital patient I treated, a funny dating story, and much else, I hope you listen to Episode 37: The Waiting Game with Dr. Gerald Stein.

As WFMT Radio’s legendary Studs Terkel always ended his glorious interview show, “Take it easy, but take it.”

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The image after the Marcel Marceau YouTube video includes Ronit Alkabats and Yonat Segal in the episode Blind Meeting from Stories from Late Night. It is the work of the Snowman.

The bottom photo shows Two Disabled People on a Date, by Chona Kasinger for Disabled and Here.

July 8, 2018

In Which Part of Life Do You Live: Past, Present, or Future?

How much is well-being or its absence – depression and anxiety – dependent on what you pay attention to? I mean the present moment, the past, or your future? Does one best way to focus your attention exist?

Let’s look at each of these three possible orientations to time. Today I’ll start where your body is, even if your mind isn’t:

THE PRESENT

Philosophers remind us that the present is all we really have. The past is gone and the future might not come.

At least three paths allow us to live within the fleeting instant:

1. MINDFULNESS BASED ON MEDITATION PRACTICE:

Much effort is needed to develop and maintain this kind of “in the moment” way of being; daily meditation practice for the rest of your days. In doing so you can train the mind to stay in the present and refocus whenever attention begins to move toward a distraction, worry, preoccupation, memory, or anything else but your being within one second at a time. No before or after. No holding on to feelings. You observe the world rather than dwell on it. Thus, for example, pain is less fraught because you do not obsess about it. A benign sense of detachment comes to master meditators. They notice everything, but don’t pile meaning and intense emotion on everything, thus freighting the bad into something worse. Research suggests these are the most contented people on earth.

2. EMOTIONAL OPENNESS TO THE PRESENT AND WHATEVER LIFE OFFERS IN THE NOW:

Unlike the meditation experts, those in this group lead intense lives. Their openness allows for much joy, as it does for sorrow. At their best they are unguarded and brave. I am not speaking here of people with ADHD, who risk being caught in a whirlwind of thoughtless and impulsive action, untroubled by the past or future. Rather, I refer to those who are free with themselves, not self-consciously governed by what others might say or see. They are quite natural, unaffected, and spontaneous. Their self (and self-consciousness) is lost.

Such lives are not full of rigid angles and rectangular shapes. They don’t always conform themselves to boundaries drawn on hard surfaces, as one must in formal sporting events, with perimeters decisively marked as fair or foul, in or out. Think ocean or sky, not ground, when you behold them: creatures who swim or fly. Theirs is a life of discovery and bright eyes. They wish to play, not keep score; celebrate while the sun still shines.

These gifted people (whether by nature or choice) don’t achieve the dispassionate serenity of meditation gurus, but they are more “alive.”

As William Blake wrote in Auguries of Innocence,  the talented few are able

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour.

3. ACHIEVING “FLOW:”

This is a cousin of #2, but applies best to work, competitive play, and hobbies. Here the path is not so much social or relational, but the singular focus on a task. In the case of elite athletes, for example, their concentration is extraordinary: They have been known to so “tune out” the sound of the crowd, that overwhelming cheers (when they finally do break through) can startle them, bringing them back to the amphitheater from the smaller arena of man against man. They had lost awareness of a stadium full of 60,000 observers. The psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi tells us, “this is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by … great absorption, engagement, fulfillment, and skill … during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored. The ego falls away. Time flies … and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

The mastery and experience within you is matched to the challenge at hand. You won’t get this often watching TV (only seven to eight percent of the time). Neither will relaxation transport you into “flow.” You must do something. Csíkszentmihályi would have us believe ecstacy is possible in the “flow.”

Some suggest, however, we be careful of too much “in the now” living as defined by the first two paths. Isaiah Berlin, the philosopher and social/political historian, thought the detachment achieved in a Buddhist type meditation (Category #1) could be a cheat of life experience, a kind of defense mechanism against injury; valuable, but missing the full essence of life.

Those taken by the moment (Category #2) also risk some of the avoidable misfortunes that those who spend more time looking ahead might dodge. Members of this group would push back, however, claiming the reward of emotional and behavioral vulnerability is worth the risk. Take opportunity on, they might say: this life is the performance and not the rehearsal.

Nor should we forget, people suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are characterized as living in painful extremity too often. They can miss or discount the notion that nearly everything they are feeling at this instant is temporary, therefore potentially succumbing to passing emotional catastrophe. For them “the now” seems endlessly excruciating.

Want some homework? Ask yourself which “time zone” you usually occupy and which makes you happiest.

Stay tuned. One of my upcoming posts will deal with living in the past, which also has its ups and downs. An essay on future orientation will follow, along with some thoughts about the three types of time-focus and how to manage them.

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The second image is Macaca fuscata in Jigokudani Monkey Park – Nagano, Japan, by Daisuke Tashiro. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.