I decided to initially try this exercise on my grandfather, but he was extremely morbid and after half an hour all I had accomplished was getting cursed at and a lowered self-esteem. So, I came to the conclusion that in order to actually complete this assignment I needed actual material, and I eventually decided to talk to my mom. Going into this conversation, I already knew how it would play out, but I let her lead and started off by asking her how she was feeling lately. I moved out about a month ago for my own sake, and I know it’s been really hard on her.
I managed to work in five of the seven interactive responses.
Open-ended: How have you been feeling lately?
Open-ended feeling: What else has been making you sad?
Closed-ended: Do you
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My mother and I bonded on a level that we haven’t in a long time. Upon completion, I had her judge me on the ten required areas, given I had to explain a lot of them to her. We’re both female, so she admired a lot of my nonverbals. She loved my eye contact because it’s not often that we actually sit down and have a serious conversation. She said that it made her feel like I was paying full attention to her and it made her feel like I really cared. The fact that I was facing her completely made her feel really comfortable and at ease. Overall my physical input made her confident, knowing she wasn’t fighting for my …show more content…
I didn’t tell her ahead of time that this was anything more than just a conversation so that she would be completely open with me. She was really impressed that I did it so nonchalantly and that it appeared normal and effortless. Though, she was a little critical that I missed two, because we were talking for a long time and, well, she’s my mom. She does not like participatory listenership. She actually got mad at me for interrupting.
My mom looks for listener noise, when we talked about it in class I automatically thought of her. I grew up with her telling me she needs me to comment to know that I’m listening, and if I was too quiet she’d make me repeat everything she said. She needs it in order to encourage her to continue talking, and she really enjoyed it. We roleplayed a short conversation in which I didn’t make any noises so she could see the difference and she hated