Communication Insights

                

                                                    WOW!!

                I chose my husband and my twin sister to evaluate me this week.  I chose my husband because he is the one person that has lived with me for the past 15 years so he knows me really well.  I picked my twin sister because we are identical twins and so we have always shared a special bond.  She now lives 5 hours away from me and so we no longer see each other like we used to.  I thought it would be interesting to see how she would evaluate me because of the closeness that we share. 

                The one thing that surprised me in their evaluations was the difference that we had in the communication anxiety assessment.  I scored myself at a moderate level meaning that in some situations I am anxious about communication.  My husband scored me as mild meaning that I do not really get anxious when communicating.  My twin scored me as elevated meaning that I often get anxious in communication situations.  I found it surprising first of all because they see me differently than I see myself and also that their evaluations were the exact opposite.  When I asked them about it, my husband said he answered the questions by thinking of me in our small group settings in our church.  I also sing with our worship team and he said that in both situations I seem very calm and comfortable in communicating.  My sister on the other hand said that because she is not around me that often anymore she thought about me when we were younger and that is why she answered the items the way that she did.  She also said that she thought at times she was thinking of herself and because we are so much alike, that is the way I would answer.  I think that if I would have thought of myself when I was younger,   I would have definitely scored myself the same way that she scored me – as being anxious in almost all communication situations.  Now that I am older I have become more comfortable with who I am and so I find my anxiety more situational now. 

                One insight that I gained about communication this week is the way in which our self- perception is directly linked to our communication.  I don’t think that I have ever had a very strong self-concept and that is why I get anxious in communication situations.  I am always worried about what someone else is going to think of me or if I am saying the “right thing”.  I know that when I was in high school this was really a problem for me and I would rarely speak in small group settings and if I had to I found it horrible.  As I have grown my self-concept has gotten a little better and now I don’t think about it as much and I am more comfortable with myself so I’m not as concerned about how others see me. 

                Another insight that I gained this week is that the way we see ourselves can be completely different than the way someone else sees us.  For me this was really eye-opening because I really liked knowing that my husband sees me as someone who does not have a problem at all communicating with other people.  It is not physically obvious that I am nervous in front of other people in certain situations and this makes me feel more confident in my communication skills.  I think that because I feel more comfortable I will now be more willing to speak in front of large and small groups.  We are sometimes so hard on ourselves and so busy being our own worst critics, that it is nice to see that someone else might actually shed a new light on the person that is portrayed to others.