Ineffective Expression of Emotions

One concept I found interesting in this chapter was "The Ineffective Expression of Emotions". There are three main types of ineffective ways to express emotions: speaking in generalities, not owning feelings, and counterfeit emotional language.
Speaking in generalities is when we describe how we're feeling with overly broad or general terms such as "I'm sad," or "I'm angry." This is an ineffective way of communicating how we feel because it expresses an emotional state but it remains so broad that it prevents others from getting a clear understanding of what exactly we mean. Sometimes we do this because we don't know how to describe how we feel more thoroughly, and sometimes it is because we lack the vocabulary to express our feelings more clearly.
Not owning our feelings refers to when we state our feelings "in a way that disowns personal responsibility for the feeling" (pg. 181). In other words not owning our feelings is when we, in a sense, blame others for the way we are feeling. Saying "You make me so mad!" relies on you language, implying that they are the one responsible for your feelings, not you. While it is true that others impact how we feel, we are the ones interpreting what their actions mean to us and we are the ones responsible for our feelings.
The third ineffective way of expressing emotion is using counterfeit emotional language, which means that we appear to be expressing our emotions but we don't actually convey the emotion accurately. The book gives the example of the phrase "Why can't you leave me alone?" which can mean many things and therefore doesn't accurately express the emotion(s) the person is feeling. Sometimes we also say, "That's just how I feel," which isn't helpful because then the person you're communicating with doesn't know how you're feeling or what you want them to do about it. Often times we just don't know how to describe what we're feeling in these types of situations, but it's up to us to know how to convey our feelings if we're going to choose to try to express them.
I found this topic particularly interesting because my boyfriend often uses the phrase "That's just how I feel," or if I ask him why he feels a certain way he just says, "I don't know." This used to frustrate me a lot until I read this section of the text and realized that it's common to not know how to clearly express why we feel a certain way, especially since in American culture men aren't expected to show a lot of their emotions, much less know how to describe them.

Fallacies

There are six different fallacies listed in our book. First is perfectionism, then there's the obsession with shoulds, next is overgeneralization, followed by taking responsibility for others, helplessness, and finally, fear of catastrophic failure.
I personally find that the fallacy that I encounter most often is perfectionism. I often set unrealistically high goals for myself and am constantly dissatisfied with myself. Sometimes it's my appearance that I obsess about, other times it's school, or it's even when I'm doing extracurricular things like sports, creative writing, drawing, etc.
I also catch myself obsessing with shoulds, which I think ties in with the perfectionism. "I should be getting all A's," "I should have worked out harder," "I should be able to do better than this," and so on and so forth.
More often that not, these fallacies lead to me feeling pretty low and majorly lacking in self esteem. But the book says the best way to deal with this is to "identify and challenge debilitating ways of thinking about our emotions, and, by extension, ourselves" (pg. 186). The text explains that we can turn around this negativity and challenge it by using self-talk to counter our fallacies.

Influences on Emotions

Our book describes three different influences on emotions: physiological, perceptual, and social influences. While I do agree to a certain extent with all of these influences, I agree most strongly with the idea of perceptual influences. The book describes the perceptual view of emotions as a view that "asserts that subjective perceptions shape what external phenomena mean to us." This basically means that the way we perceive an event or act shapes what that event or act means to us. For example, if I see a clown running towards me I'll probably perceive it one of two ways: I'd feel threatened if I perceive clowns as scary, or I'd feel joyful if I perceive clowns as friendly.
I agree the most with this perceptual view of emotions because it suggests that we have some control over how we feel about different things. But because it is more accurate, I agree even more with the "cognitive labeling view of emotions". The best example I have of this is a personal experience of mine. A few years ago I was dating this guy who I perceived to be very cool, laid back, and smooth. He always seemed to say the right things at exactly the right time and made me feel like he really cared about me. But then as time passed I got to know more of his friends and I eventually found out from them that he had been talking to multiple girls the same way he had been talking to me and had even hooked up with some of them behind my back. This completely changed my perception of him. Instead of labeling him as a smooth, sweet guy I now labeled him as a player and a liar.
The cognitive labeling view of emotions gives me more insight into emotions than the other views because it helps explain that what we feel can be shaped by how we label external phenomena and our responses, which is something I've thought about before but had never really been able to put into words that clearly.

10 Part Skill

  Listening as a 10 Part Skill was an interesting read. I liked that they took the issues people typically have when listening and broke them down into manageable, simple paragraphs. I particularly liked "Find an area of interest", "Listen for ideas", and "Keep an open mind". I often find that if I can somehow relate what somebody is saying to something interesting then what they say tends to stick in my brain a little better, so I definitely agree with "Find an area of interest". "Listen for ideas" stood out to me because I realized I'm the type of person that gets hung up on trying to remember specifics and as a result I end up missing out on large portions of the rest of what the person is saying. Lastly, "Keep an open mind" was one of my favorites because I personally come across a plethora of people with this problem of not being able to set aside their own opinions in order to listen to others' opinions.

On a side note, I thought the pictures that went with each part were cute and painted a nice picture of each of the listening problems. :)

Nonlistening

  I tend to engage in pseudolistening and selective listening. I often find my self having a conversation with a friend and realizing that I've been going through all the motions of the conversation (nodding my head, the occasional "mhmm") but not actually paying attention to any of what she was saying. I would end up fading back into the conversation not remembering anything about what she was talking about, and my friend would be staring at me waiting for my response to a question she must have asked. I just end up staring back with nothing to say until she realizes that I wasn't really listening, leaving us both dissatisfied with my listening.
Other times I end up being a selective listener. This happens most often with my mom, and results in her upset with me later for not remembering to clean the litter box, my absolute least favorite activity, because I never really heard her say that she wanted me to in the first place.
The best way for me to solve these problems would probably be to mindful and listen actively, as our text suggests at the end of the chapter.

Hate Speech

One thing I didn't know about hate speech was that there are bans on it in certain countries. I felt kind of silly not realizing it, because obviously not every country is exactly like us, but it still took me by surprise. Especially the fact that Canada has a ban on gay and lesbian speech.
Personally, I think it would be wrong to put limits on our freedom of speech. While it does get out of hand sometimes, hate speech being a great example, it would still be fundamentally wrong since it violates our constitutional rights. Bans on hate speech could lead to people trying to find loop-holes in other people's expressions of opinion by calling it hate speech. And who are we if we can't communicate our ideas and opinions? 
I think the best, most effective way to try to get rid of hate speech would be to put a stigma on it. We, as a whole, react to the opinion of the generalized other. So, if it were a known fact that hate speech was socially disgraceful, I think the amount of hate speech would significantly decrease. However this could not be a small stigma. I believe people would have to demonstrate utter disgust and repulsion for hate speech to really go away.

Metaphors in American Society

My fifth grade teacher always talked to us about how "this country isn't a big melting pot." For a while I was confused about why she was so frustrated by this phrase. In all honesty I'm pretty sure I didn't even know what the phrase meant until she spelled it out.
"They shouldn't call it a big melting pot," she said, "we're not melting into each other, we're all unique. Nobody should feel like they have to look or act a certain way to fit in here. If you ask me, we're a giant salad bowl. Because in a salad the ingredients and their flavors don't just blend into one taste, they combine and compliment each other. Each bite is a little different, unique every time."
At such a young age I still didn't fully grasp what my teacher was trying to say, but I knew that what she was saying hit home with me somehow. Looking back, I'm inspired by her words and the truth that they hold. Because of my teacher I grew up seeing the world as a salad bowl, not expecting everyone to be just like me, and hoping that no one would expect me to be just like them.