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Yes, that answers the question. Thanks. Sounds like you would sometimes.. not always.. like to be somewhat more focussed on the audience getting what you're trying to say, but haven't yet figured out how to make that happen. If that's it, it is for all of us.. a work in progress. That takes constant work, IMHO.

i never thought others would understand or had done that. interesting.

apparently, being raised and married to Ns , it is how i learned unconciously to keep the peace. and your post crystallized it for me. thank you!

because i dont know anyone who ever wanted communication in a actual 2 way process, i value it a LOT. i value anyone who will talk to me, share with me, explain things to me. listen to me. that kind of thing.

Ash is the opposite. she wants things condensed, short, etc. i wish i could do that but i cant do it easily, and not often at all. and i want the opposite, so that was a clash of wants waiting to happen.

i hear her words as wanting me to shut up and get on with it. like my wants arent important as her time is. she hears me as rambling on at the mouth saying nothing.

interesting.

I could be wrong Jody, but I dont' know if it's that Ash doesn't think your needs are important. I think it's just that everyone has a different style. I know for me, if a post is too long and rambling, and goes into too much detail - "he said this, I said that, we did this, etc." I'll usually lose interest, especially if I can't follow it. Sometimes it's easier to just spit out what you want to say and get on with it. But that doesn't mean your needs are any less than someone else's. It just means that you do things differently. You like to spell things out so you can go over them and re-read them and gain knowledge from them. I see nothing wrong with that - it's just not everyone's style.

And again, we all post for different reasons. I think, from my time here, I see that I will either ask a question and want a clear-cut answer, or I will write about a situation, usually with my H or a friend, and ask advice. So it seems that I like to get advice from the board. I will gain knowledge (hopefully) from the replies I receive and will often have an "aha" moment. But I don't see myself writing and writing so I can pick apart what I have written to gain knowledge. But I do see others doing that here and that's just their style. We all have different needs. I guess we just have to figure out what we want from the board and how best to get our needs met while honoring other's styles and have respect for everybody.

I re-read my post and realized that I will do the "he said this, she said that" thing when I describe various situations. But I try to be brief. I haven't gotten any negative feedback about it, so I hope it's okay.

Hello Jody, I'm pretty sure we've met before. I'm Ash and I write a LOT. I can put up a 2,000 word post without a moment's hesitation. I wrote a book. I'm baffled by your interpretation that I want things condensed and short.

Let me try one more time to convey the message I've been trying to get across:

- for working on yourself, let it all out, dig around in it, figure it out, examine it, play with it, ramble, rant, rave, moan, cry, whine, whatever it takes to get the thoughts and feelings out so that you can examine them & learn from them.

- for communicating with others, stay focused, narrow scope is better, less likely to get all screwed up, more clear communication, everyone's focused on the same thing.

Many people - myself included - will post something that may have started out as "here's what I'm feeling" but then leads into "communicating with others" and that's where things go sideways.

"Here's what I'm feeling" can cover a LOT of ground because we're complex people. I might touch on twenty-seven things during a post like that.

When I want to communicate with other people, though, it's best if I keep things focused on one, two or three things. The less details, the better because the discussion will remain focused on those three things, not what I meant when I used the word "cheese" or whatever.

Jody, I do think you are prone to pulling everything and anything into a discussion and I think that characteristic confuses people, distracts them from the core stuff, leads people off into tangents about what this word means or what that action implied and I think that's been a huge part of your issues over the past few years. I think those distraction techniques have worked too well for you. I think you've spent a lot more time working on getting people to stop focusing on what you meant by this random sentence or that phrase than you've spent working on actual healthy, happy living stuff.

I see quite a few people do that here, not just Jody - pulling everything and anything into a discussion. Then they pick words apart and pick apart what others say and it gets all convoluted. That's how posts get off-track. I may be guilty of doing that too. We all need to be careful about that.

yeah, BG, communicating is not easy to learn. thanks for your thoughts on it. its all a work in progress, isnt it?

Jody. My thoughts, question and answer in this little exchange had nothing to do with anything anyone else (Ash) might have thought or written. It was about Jody's thoughts. And about my thoughts. Please don't use my thoughts to apply to your disagreements or debates with someone else. If they want or need to know what I think about their reasoning, they can ask and I will tell them. Thanks.

no problem, but i didnt think i was doing that. i was talking about my thoughts.....i thought.

sorry....

Thanks for considering my viewpoint. I appreciate it.

I just want to add that I grew up in a home with poor communication. Today, 50 years later, my sister will call me to relay a message to my son. No matter how many times I give her his phone number she calls me. My point is that what little I do know about healthy communication I learned as an adult from self-help books. Two that come to mind are, Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus, and You Just Don't Understand. There are other books but these stand out. Many of us (through no fault of our own) did not learn healthy things as children and we keep making the same mistakes. I am on a mission to make up for that and learn now. This is why I am on this board.

np, ibf. its all cool. i hope you understood what i meant. i should have worded that post differently. i see that now.

rainbow, now that you mention that,,,my kids still try that and so does my H. "tell so and so...." i say we all speak the same language, go tell em yourself. talk about how far apart people are in my family, they dont even think to speak to the other but to go thru me. my mom did that,,,,she always called my dad "your father",. not his first name or anything but "your father". lol.

thanks for sharing!

I thought my 'communication style' was a problem when I first arrived here. It frustrated me when people seemed to not get what I 'intended' to say by the words I used, etc..

At one point, Ash said to me [paraphrased]:

This has turned out to be largely true.

For example, I used to twist myself into a pretzel, (linguistically speaking), in order to try to anticipate what others (the readers) would feel, etc., and then write so as to not try to hurt anybody's feelings. In the process, my message would often get lost.

That's not to say that I don't still try to remain thoughtful about the way in which I present my thoughts, etc., but I also try to remain focused on effectively relaying what I am trying to get across.

This was very confusing when I started. :-)

To be more succinct: Communication isn't always about communicating ... How's that? Directed at no one in particular. :-)

P.S.: I'm still waayyyy too verbose, obviously :-).

PPS: This is mean't to be somewhat similar to some of the points Jody has made, but it may not have come out that way.

For example, I always had to try to appease and not state my own opinions if they would be disagreeable with the prevailing winds, (in my childhood), but as I've worked through that, I've gotten a little more direct in conveying my message, (these posts potentially notwithstanding :-) ).