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By Andrea Lanier, Group Facilitator next page
Four decades ago, I grew up at the end of a dirt road near the North Sea coast of Germany. For a long time, no other people lived nearby. My only sister was much older than I and didn't want anything to do with me. My father didn't have much time for me, over-worked, trying to make a better living for his wife and kids. And my mother was kind of "absent," too. She had to rest a lot, and I had to be quiet a lot. I spent time by my mother's bedside, trying to make her feel better. But mostly, what I just described here made me one real good self-entertainer, and so creative, you wouldn't believe it.
Unfortunately, I wasn't creative enough to educate myself on how to learn social and interpersonal skills. And questions that I used to have early-on, were anything but encouraged. It took decades before I relearned to formulate and ask questions. By the time other kids did move into the neighborhood, and when it was time to go to school, I had become so used to being on my own that it was much too complicated and too scary to play and to make friends with other kids my age. But I did get along all right, interacting with others only fleetingly and superficially. Happy alone, I mostly stayed that way until I met my husband.
So there you have it; that's how it all started. I went on with my life, getting by OK, because I did not know that I was avoiding some of what "made me feel uncomfortable," and I held my breath and pushed myself to do the things that I had to do. But living like that took a lot of energy. Eventually, I couldn't go on without breathing (sufficiently) anymore. I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, same as my mother, only back then with my mother they didn't know what to call it exactly and how to really help her.
However, the good news is that today there's lots of help. And what's even more important, you can help yourself. I have come a long way since the day where I ran out of breath. One of the greatest things I have since undertaken is to get a college education. As a whole, so much of what I learned there has made me feel more confident, and it has allowed me to enjoy my life. This education has helped me to see color where there was only black and white; it has guided me from what now seems to have been deaf and blind to being able to see and hear just fine. And not only that. I have learned how to appropriately and effectively express myself and interact with others. This education has not given me the answer to everything that I'll ever want and need to know, but it has shown me that I can deal with anything that will confront me and how to go about it. Yet more specifically, and here's my point, I learned about communication and interpersonal relationships.
Since my discomfort has always been so great whenever I had to interact with people - some call this social anxiety - I thought it would be best to learn as much about communication as I could. I do very much like to be around people at least some of the time, but I had become more and more despaired about how it made me feel. Every time, my husband and I had made plans to get together with some people, I had been exited and had looked forward to it. But then, afterwards, I've always tormented myself about how I shouldn't have said this or that. Eventually, I had come to hate myself.
I am very happy now that I have learned how to communicate and interact with others much more effectively. The first class I enrolled in at Kalamazoo Valley Community College was "Interpersonal Communication." Among many other useful things, this class taught me what my rights and responsibilities are in talking with other people. The reason I say "rights" and not just responsibilities is because I used to make the entire process of a conversation, or dialogue, my personal responsibility. And it is called DI-alogue; that means two people are talking and listening. Among other things, for me this meant that anytime there was quiet I was so nervous that I thought I had to fill the quiet with talk myself.
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