Conversational Conundrums

There is no method to this madness.

Talking is taxing enough on its’ own but having conversations is hard, mostly because there are so many unspoken rules to it and none that we are familiar with.

For me it’s always a little tricky to navigate the conversational channels, mostly because I end up tipping over the boat with my awkwardness. This is usually due to the reason that my brain to mouth filter stops responding at the most crucial times or sometimes I feel it doesn’t even exist.

There’s also this amazing experience where I feel my tongue has decided to permanently attach itself to the roof of my mouth and I am only able to make weird whistling noises interspersed with occasional squeaks.

I have been told multiple times that this isn’t how normal humans communicate, but are we so sure about that? This is me trying to understand how to English good with people.

After much mental processing – please don’t trust these facts, much of it happened when I was sleep deprived at 3 am- I was able to categorize the speech pattern that my mind followed during various situations.

1. The Panicked Verbal Diarrhea

The most painful conversations that I’ve ever had was when I was panicked, either about the situation or about the person. This takes me back to when I had an important interview for this job that I absolutely loved, it went something like:

“Hello! Good morning…how are you?”

“Uh um…great good afternoon to you too. I am so happy to be here! Such a wonderful place!”

“Uh Ok.”

I spent the next hour questioning…. Afternoon…? Why? Just why?

And it doesn’t get better, mostly because the aftermath of this awkward conversation managed to stay with me quite happily. I spend the remainder of the day cringing, which in turn leads to more verbal diarrhea.

Let me tell you, that interview did not end well, also I am pretty sure the interviewer was also cringing at the end of it. Also why do we sweat? I mean it’s hard enough that our mouth doesn’t listen to us, add in disobedient sweat glands, and well isn’t this a sad tale.

2. The Am I Being Rude?

Very rare are the times where I call myself verbose and the moments that I do, I end up feeling rude. This is because there’s always this voice that goes like, “Oh no. I said too much, I bet they are judging me. “, this in turn leads to the verbal diarrhea and then the pattern begins again.

This is the point where I thought, “Ok. I am overthinking, what I said was perfectly fine.”

Then I ended up feeling guilty for thinking this, and well the cycle restarts. Then I began to notice others doing the same, they spoke, they regretted, and they stuttered. Not an exactly fun experience.

But there were exceptions to this. There were so many who rarely regretted what they spoke. They just spoke and kept on going. What was their secret? Is it just that they could measure their words way better than I could?

Confidence does play a big part in this but then so does the ability to keep speaking. Whenever I noticed someone who spoke well, I sensed it was because they kept speaking, not in the verbal diarrhea way, in such a way that they made you forget that they spoke something wrong.

Basically, they painted over the misspoken words with well-spoken words.

3. The Angry Cry Speaking

This has to be one of my most annoying modes of communication. Becoming angry is inevitable but trying to speak while angry is a pain. Mostly because I end up crying because I am angry and then my words disappear into an unintelligible gargle.

This is not a fun experience. English is such an expressive language, there are words basically for everything, some you won’t even believe. Yet when I get angry, I manage to lose all these words and end up searching in frustration.

Sometimes I believe the brain focuses on the emotions more than the containment part of it. It processes on the angry rather than the why am I angry part.

The easiest way I have tackled this is by doing the “gasp and walk” method. I gasp because I am offended and then I walk so that I can actually return and formulate actual sentences, I cannot guarantee whether or not the person actually remains when you come back.

4. The Shower Speeches

The best speeches that I have ever given are within the safe confines of my shower, where no one was listening. I could have led nations with my amazing speeches, won every sort of argument and probably even conquered other galaxies, but sadly no one can hear them.

This then led me to believe that I could definitely speak well, I just had to make sure that no one was listening. Well, this doesn’t seem right.

So, I spent trying to come up with various ideas to make this work, do I close my eyes? Do I imagine them away?

I remember, once I was in the 6^th grade, we had an elocution competition, I was so nervous that I just stared at a random wall and spoke everything without once stopping. I won the consolation prize. For little ole’ nervous me, it meant everything.

The Point Where All Conundrums Meet

So then how do we solve this? We can’t imagine people away, nor can we plan a speech. All Google told me was to practice in front of the mirror. I can’t carry a mirror everywhere and the whole take a deep breath method just led to coughing.

The point is we will always be in stressful or nerve-wracking situations so we can’t avoid them. The only thing that works for me is, stop talking. Ok this seems opposite to English good but it works, time to time.

Just press pause, smile, and use those precious few seconds to come up with something that doesn’t cause you to curl up in shame.

For me writing has always been easier than speaking, the words flow but when I have person in front of me, the river dries up. This is the way my mind juggles through the complications of speech and silence. It is not foolproof, but it has saved me from quite a few panicked verbal battles.