When everything else is stripped away.
In the 1960s, a researcher named Albert Mehrabian performed several studies concerning emotional communication between people, and how verbal, extraverbal, and nonverbal forms of communication can impact someone's interpretation of a message. One of his main conclusions was that in situations where someone is communicating about their feelings and emotions, if their words (verbal) appear to be incongruous with the way they are speaking (extraverbal) and what their body language is saying (nonverbal), people are much more likely to believe what your body and tone are saying, rather than the precise words you have chosen to deliver your message. The perpetually perfect example: sarcasm. If someone tells you they are so excited to be here, but they say it with venom in their voice and a sneer on their face, you are unlikely to conclude that they are, in fact, excited.
One can extrapolate from this, to a certain degree, that the way in which we say something, and what we say through our faces and bodies, can certainly impact someone else's perception of our message (maybe a little, maybe a lot), especially when the message concerns our emotions. This presents an issue inherent to text-only communication, because there are no vocal or facial cues as to how the person is actually feeling - they may be telling us with their words how they are feeling, but if they are not being entirely honest, or do not address how they are feeling at all, we are forced to imagine those factors and open ourselves up to misinterpretations. When everything else is stripped away, and all you have are the words, you sometimes have too little information to truly receive the message that the person sending it wanted you to receive.
This is why when it comes to discussions of how we feel, especially if those feelings are negative, it can be critical to have those conversations in person, face-to-face. That is what sets people up to have truly productive and meaningful communication, because we have all the information we can possibly have: the words, the voice, the face. I advise people at work on a daily basis to embrace the power of just talking to someone, one-on-one, and calmly sharing your emotions in an honest and respectful way. So much can be accomplished through such conversations. I tell them that if they can't get together, at least get on the phone. Literally anything that allows for more complete communication than words alone can provide in such charged situations.
Because I have spent so much time receiving and giving training on all the information above, and have spent years practicing how to have conversations about my feelings, and how to receive information from others on how they are feeling, I get very disappointed and frustrated with things like using email or text message to convey emotional information. One of my biggest pet peeves is "rejection by text" as I call it.
I have received two RBTs in recent weeks. In addition to being a medium of communication which has been stripped of the bulk of cues I need to accurately interpret the message, text messaging is an inherently ambiguous form of communication. Has the other person received your message yet? No way to know. Have they not responded to you because they are busy, or because they don't want to talk to you? No way to know. Unless messages are responded to at the same approximate pace as talking to someone face to face, text messaging is not truly set up to be an ideal form of two-way communication - at least, not for emotional information.
This all sends very negative messages to the person who is receiving the RBT. Some of the things it says to me: I don't want to give you the opportunity to really converse about this; I want this communication to be more one-sided. You don't matter enough to me to devote the time, energy, or emotions it would take to have an honest conversation about whatever might be going on, whatever you might be feeling. I'd rather avoid talking to you, so I don't have to deal with your emotions. I don't care about you, or how you feel, or what you think.
The worst possible thing someone can do to me is simply choose to not communicate at all, and the RBT comes dangerously close to an absence of communication. A singular, one-sided, text-only emotional communication is barely a communication at all, but meets the technical definition. I would truly rather hear someone telling me I've hurt them versus experience them just disappearing into silence, never having given me the opportunity to even tell them I'm sorry (because I truly hate the thought of hurting others, especially people I like). It feels so horribly disrespectful, so unnecessarily silencing, almost an implication that it is assumed my response would be out of control. When all I want is to be able to talk to and understand the people around me, it cuts me deeply to feel that someone I connected with has decided to utterly disconnect from me, and simply retreat into nothingness. The different times I have experienced an RBT, I have felt things such as devalued, disrespected, stripped of my voice, and to a certain extent (because this is always a core factor of my hurt), worthless. Because if I had worth, then surely they'd extend the courtesy of at least having a conversation with me before releasing me. But I must not, because they didn't.
The actions I can control are only my own, and because I know how awful it can make me feel to not be afforded the chance to speak, I am committed to always giving others the opportunity to be heard. Anything less and I wouldn't think of myself as a person of integrity, because I expect to be offered nothing less from the people in my life. The ones who stay a part of my life, anyway.
One can extrapolate from this, to a certain degree, that the way in which we say something, and what we say through our faces and bodies, can certainly impact someone else's perception of our message (maybe a little, maybe a lot), especially when the message concerns our emotions. This presents an issue inherent to text-only communication, because there are no vocal or facial cues as to how the person is actually feeling - they may be telling us with their words how they are feeling, but if they are not being entirely honest, or do not address how they are feeling at all, we are forced to imagine those factors and open ourselves up to misinterpretations. When everything else is stripped away, and all you have are the words, you sometimes have too little information to truly receive the message that the person sending it wanted you to receive.
This is why when it comes to discussions of how we feel, especially if those feelings are negative, it can be critical to have those conversations in person, face-to-face. That is what sets people up to have truly productive and meaningful communication, because we have all the information we can possibly have: the words, the voice, the face. I advise people at work on a daily basis to embrace the power of just talking to someone, one-on-one, and calmly sharing your emotions in an honest and respectful way. So much can be accomplished through such conversations. I tell them that if they can't get together, at least get on the phone. Literally anything that allows for more complete communication than words alone can provide in such charged situations.
Because I have spent so much time receiving and giving training on all the information above, and have spent years practicing how to have conversations about my feelings, and how to receive information from others on how they are feeling, I get very disappointed and frustrated with things like using email or text message to convey emotional information. One of my biggest pet peeves is "rejection by text" as I call it.
I have received two RBTs in recent weeks. In addition to being a medium of communication which has been stripped of the bulk of cues I need to accurately interpret the message, text messaging is an inherently ambiguous form of communication. Has the other person received your message yet? No way to know. Have they not responded to you because they are busy, or because they don't want to talk to you? No way to know. Unless messages are responded to at the same approximate pace as talking to someone face to face, text messaging is not truly set up to be an ideal form of two-way communication - at least, not for emotional information.
This all sends very negative messages to the person who is receiving the RBT. Some of the things it says to me: I don't want to give you the opportunity to really converse about this; I want this communication to be more one-sided. You don't matter enough to me to devote the time, energy, or emotions it would take to have an honest conversation about whatever might be going on, whatever you might be feeling. I'd rather avoid talking to you, so I don't have to deal with your emotions. I don't care about you, or how you feel, or what you think.
The worst possible thing someone can do to me is simply choose to not communicate at all, and the RBT comes dangerously close to an absence of communication. A singular, one-sided, text-only emotional communication is barely a communication at all, but meets the technical definition. I would truly rather hear someone telling me I've hurt them versus experience them just disappearing into silence, never having given me the opportunity to even tell them I'm sorry (because I truly hate the thought of hurting others, especially people I like). It feels so horribly disrespectful, so unnecessarily silencing, almost an implication that it is assumed my response would be out of control. When all I want is to be able to talk to and understand the people around me, it cuts me deeply to feel that someone I connected with has decided to utterly disconnect from me, and simply retreat into nothingness. The different times I have experienced an RBT, I have felt things such as devalued, disrespected, stripped of my voice, and to a certain extent (because this is always a core factor of my hurt), worthless. Because if I had worth, then surely they'd extend the courtesy of at least having a conversation with me before releasing me. But I must not, because they didn't.
The actions I can control are only my own, and because I know how awful it can make me feel to not be afforded the chance to speak, I am committed to always giving others the opportunity to be heard. Anything less and I wouldn't think of myself as a person of integrity, because I expect to be offered nothing less from the people in my life. The ones who stay a part of my life, anyway.