My interpersonal communication skills or lack there of.

 Mind Reading : assuming we understand what another person thinks, feels or perceives. ( chpt 3 pg 84). The concept of mind reading is when a reader assumes what a person is thinking by the "readee's" reaction or lack of reaction. Mind reading isn't limited to the "readee's" reaction, the reader can assume they know what their "readee" wants or feels without actual confirmation and make actions based upon these assumptions. This perceptual action can be detrimental to any kind of relationship.
To relate it to my own experience; I assumed whenever my boyfriend  was silent there was something wrong. I would ask him repeatedly "Are you okay?" and he would reply yes and leave it at that. It was hard for me to comprehend that when he was silent there was the possibility of there actually being nothing wrong. But in my favor, the majority of our previous arguments revealed that whenever he did feel conflicted about something he tended to keep silent and let it simmer to a boil within the barracks of his cranium. I thought I could prevent future confrontation by seeking out the demons that possessed his once loving mind. Instead my constant chase lead him on a run...away from me.

Ex1: I feel the lyrics to Jack Johnson's "Wasting time" are a good example to the concept of Mind Reading.
"now please don't pretend to know what's on my mind
If we already knew everything that everybody knows
We would have nothing to learn tonight
And we would have nothing to show tonight
Oh but everybody thinks
That everybody knows
About everybody else
Nobody knows
Anything about themselves
Cause their all worried about everybody else
"
Waste of Time


 This leads to my next concept of choice : The Demand-Withdrawal Pattern: a pattern  where one person tries to create closeness with personal talk,  and the other strives to maintain autonomy by avoiding intimate discussion ( Chpt 4, pg 102).   
 The concept of the Demand-Withdrawal pattern is a cruel cycle. The more one person tries create an intimate inquiry the other runs further away. The first person just wants to bond with the other but their effort is creating a counter-effort of pushing them away. Cruel cycle. I experienced this all first hand. The more I asked what was wrong the more the boyfriend didn't want to tell me. Then my constant asking pushed him so far down the rabbit hole of withdrawal that I don't see him anymore. Although in his own testament he argued that by my always asking whats wrong made him feel like he wasn't making me happy and the frustration of assuming (his mind reading) I was never happy made him disappear.

Ex2: The song "Anything Anything" by Dramarama (lol)
In this song the singer is trying to figure out whats wrong with the person and is attempting to make the other person happy by offering her everything, like "candy, diamonds, pills, hundred dollar bills..."(oh those crazy punks). but in the end it fails him.
Anything Anything

My final concept of choice for this blog of inter-personal reflection is Self-fulfilling prophecy : Acting in a way that embodies expectations or judgements about us (chpt 2, pg 46). 
This concept is where somebody believes in the expectations or judgements of someone else, whether they are good or bad, that they become that expectation. I judged him as unhappy because he was quiet which led to my constant asking and because of my constant asking about his happiness... he became unhappy.

Ex3: courtesy of www.polyn.com