Communication skills do not come easily and I know this through experience. When I was a little girl I was extremely shy. I had a fear of speaking up for myself and ordering my own food when I would go out to eat with my mom and sister. I witnessed a lot of abuse in my home when I was little and I think it grew a fear of communicating because I would witness speaking, speaking turning into yelling, yelling turning into breaking things, then breaking things turning into physical violence. In my mind communication started confrontation which is something I wanted to stay away from. My mom started to recognize my shyness getting out of hand then taught me a valuable lesson which was the power of speaking up for yourself. I am now 20 years old and I am proud to say that I am way better at communicating and speaking up for myself. As a makeup artist I communicate on a regular basis with clients I do not know on a personal level which has begun to feel natural to me. Even though I am fantastic with communicating with makeup clients, I still struggle with communication. Since I had such a rough childhood I have built up a wall around the pain and have issues of expressing my emotions towards that subject. My best friend will ask questions about my past and I find myself not wanting to talk about it and coming off as being “cold”. I am not the type of person who likes to talk about emotional or personal things because I don’t like feeling vulnerable or negative. I have noticed that with me being this way people won’t want to talk to me about their problems or feel as if I don’t care about their problems. Even if I do not like to talk about my childhood problems I don’t want to be seen as someone that their friends cannot approach with those certain subjects. I want people to feel comfortable around me and be able to vent their issues to me. I think communication studies are fully capable of helping me learn a way to better communicate my feelings and thoughts about my personal life in such a way where I feel comfortable and not awkward.
I think its great that you want people to be able to talk to you about their problems, but don't be afraid to talk to people your close to about things you're going through, either. Don't let past experiences make you block out emotion, because sometimes it's a good thing to feel vulnerable and emotional. Feeling those things can only improve your communication skills. But from what I have seen in class, it seems you have lost most of that shyness from your childhood. It's really admirable that you have overcome your personal issues with communication and it appears that you have great self-confidence and can easily speak in front of people.
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