music, books, love and kindness

via findyourfeet.com

More than one website has a pie chart showing that personal communication is broken down this way: 7 percent speaking, 38 tone and 55 body language. This makes perfect sense to me and sometimes not in a good way. Some charts are labelled "effective communication;" others (interestingly enough) are titled "believability."

For better or worse, I tend to be talkative (more than I'd like to be) but when I'm around this one person, let's call her X, I pretty much shut down. I am not proud of this nor do I think it's the proper way to react, but there it is. 

She is genuinely a nice person, but still...I get the sense that she'd rather talk to anyone else but me. Her words are always pleasant, but her tone can verge on icy and her body language even more so (can body language be icy?)


That "please stay away from me" vibe has gotten stronger in time, not less and it's so bad sometimes I either feel like fleeing or I shut up completely. It's very hard having to be around someone you are convinced doesn't like you, more so when they don't know you feel this way. Sometimes (emotional self-defense, fear you'll start babbling away in the midst of all that silence, whatever) you can retreat into yourself feeling frustrated, wishing you could change how they feel about you, but knowing it's absolutely pointless to even go there.


This article has some good advice on how to be okay with being disliked:


http://tinybuddha.com/blog/10-reasons-to-be-okay-with-being-disliked/