Confirmation

This chapter was very helpful in acknowledging the different types of confirmation. Recognition is the lowest form of confirmation and basically means that you just acknowledge that the other person is alive. The next form is acknowledgement which means that one acknowledges other people’s feelings and thoughts. The highest form of confirmation is endorsement which occurs when someone not only acknowledges someone else’s feelings and thoughts but also accepts them. These three ideas can be used to describe people or ideas. You confirm a person but not endorse a particular idea they believe in or you cannot confirm a person but endorse a certain idea they have. I have found it difficult to confirm people that I disagree with in the past. I have been looking back at certain situations I have been put in and realized that I have not confirmed certain people because I disagree with them on some level. I feel like moving forward I will be able to distinguish between the person and idea.

Feeling Rules

I thought the concept of feeling rules was particularly interesting one to me this week. I had never really thought about how the way people feel would change from culture to culture. People in the United States view what is right to feel in a different way than say people in Germany. You could go even further and say that people in different parts of the United States feel differently. I never really thought about this until I read this section. I never really thought about if you grew up in a culture where individualism is valued you would act and feel differently than if you grew up in a culture that values overall community. I also thought it was interesting how much feeling rules affect our social structures. Feeling rules really enforce our social values and expression of negative values. Feeling rules also include deep acting and surface acting, which parents have a huge part in molding. Deep acting is how we feel about things whereas surface acting is how we outwardly express those feelings. For example, when a child receives a compliment, how they feel about it would be the deep acting and what they say as a result would be the surface acting.

Feelings and Fallacies

There are many ways that people do not communicate their feelings in an effective way. One way is by expressing their feelings in a very general way. This would be like saying you feel bad about something when you are really feeling a more specific feeling. Another way is not taking ownership for what you are truly feeling. This is basically blaming other people for what you are feeling. Instead of say that something someone did cause you to feel angry, you would say they make you feel angry. The last ineffective way to express feelings is to say things that make it sound like you are expressing emotion, but you are not actually saying how you feel. I think I am a victim of expressing my feelings in very general terms and saying things that sound like they express feeling but really do not. I am always saying I feel bad about something or I am happy about something, but I am never more specific than that. I also tend to say things like “can you please leave me alone.” I think that I could definitely fix both of these things. As far as being more specific goes, I think if I were to just make sure I am not using broad words like bad or happy I could be more specific and fix this problem. I think saying exactly what I am feeling is going to be more difficult because when I am flustered or frustrated or irritated I have a hard time expressing that.