Awkward Communication

An important part of developing your abilities and talents is to recognize when you have struggles or shortcomings, and be able to talk about those difficulties to others who might be able to help you either overcome or compensate for those difficulties.  If you want to discern your God given vocation, you need to be able to discern what you can do on your own power, and what you need the talents and virtues of other people to make up for or supplement your own abilities.

I personally just became more aware of the fact that I have a really hard time talking with people, and communicating in general.  I try to contact someone, and I find myself having a real difficult time figuring out what words to say, or sometimes I know the words I want to say and I cannot physically get myself to speak them clearly or at all.  It is like I have a block somewhere  that is preventing me from verbally speaking what words I have on my mind to say.  Now that I am more cognizant of this difficulty, I can communicate this difficulty with other people, such as my therapist, and be able to better understand what is causing this trouble, and how to work on the problem or develop tools to compensate for it.

I titled this entry “Awkward Communication” because due to the fact that I have a hard time coming up with words and other expressions to communicate or talk about what I am thinking or feeling or whatever, I sometimes have to settle for words and sentences that aren’t exactly what I want to say, and either I have to use those “awkward” ways of communicating, or I just don’t say anything at all.  My progress in writing and speaking, I have had to settle for less than perfect, because before I did that, I frequently said or wrote nothing.  I wanted what I said to be perfect, and because I couldn’t make it perfect, I would say or write nothing.  I had a lot of trouble in school with writing projects or any project because if what I was thinking was not perfect in my head first, I would do nothing.  I had to learn later that writing or saying something, even if it is not perfect, is better than writing or saying nothing.  You can always improve or refine or develop what you say or write at first.  At least you have something to work with and build upon.  Whereas if you wait for the perfect words, the perfect sentences, the perfect paragraphs before you say or write anything, you are constantly in a state of having to explain everything at length from scratch, and that is an exhausting situation to be in.

If you have struggles with something, take some time or talk to someone about what they are.  IF you have a therapist or counselor, talk about what sort of difficulties you encounter and try to work on them.  Sometimes you have a talent that goes unused or undeveloped because of another deficiency or incapacity you have.  And but for that one deficiency which is getting in the way, should you work on that little detail, you might unleash some of your latent talents that are being dammed up by your difficulties.