foot in mouth – Yellywelly

Selective mutism

20 Oct 2023 Yelly

It is a real thing. It is an anxiety disorder where the person is unable to speak in certain social situations.

This is going to be a snarky post.

Loquaciousness is an admirable trait, but not everyone is blessed with it. Because there are people who seem to have something to say in every situation. EVERY bloody situation. Even when the situation calls for, oh, I don”t know, sensitivity and reflection, they always have something to say – most of the time something off the cuff and inappropriately insensitive.

I understand that it is all about them and the insecurity they feel. It is a defense mechanism. Silence can be uncomfortable and it takes a relatively mature and secure person to sit in silence, to not have to voice an opinion. It might be that they learned that they wouldn’t be overlooked or taken for granted if they said something. It also takes a relatively sensitive person to know what is appropriate and inappropriate to say. But really, if you just say something for the sake of saying something, aren’t you just an empty clanging bell, or an annoyingly noisy cymbal?

I am fully aware that these feelings may just be unique to me and how I feel about certain situations. These are probably just my idiosyncrasies. I’ve been in situations where I’ve opened my mouth and promptly inserted my foot in it. I’ve been in environments where you’ve had to learn when you should or shouldn’t say something. I’ve been in circumstances when your ability to convey information was important for understanding. Not everyone has the opportunity to be in those teaching environments.

I think I need to follow my own advice. Not every situation that makes me want to shout “Can you just shut up?” requires it. You can teach people vocabulary, but you can’t necessarily teach people eloquence and utterance. Sensitivity is learned through experience. Also, it takes a certain humility and openness to want to know.

Okay, feelings expressed. I’m getting off my soapbox now.

Yelly Writes

When you know…you see the cues!

9 Jul 2023 Yelly

It’s certainly been an interesting few weeks for me. Interesting is probably a tepid way of describing the last few days. But it’ll do for now.

I’ve always valued telling it like it is, but at the same time, I’ve always erred on the side of very polite, very cautionary, socially accepted discourse. I am, after all, the daughter of my mother, who has always had the gift of utterance – she always knew how to say things in a way that fit the situation. She never failed to try to teach her children the value of saying the right things at the right time, in the right way so that the intended message was delivered correctly (she often wrote speechers for government officials – even for the president of the Philippines once, so yeah, she knew what she was doing!).

I remember having a no-holds-barred conversation with a friend (who sadly is no longer a close friend) and I let it rip – I said exactly what I thought, in exactly the way I thought I should say it. And I hurt them. I know our friendship was never the same after that and we never recovered. I learned a valuable lesson that day – gauge your audience and adjust. It’s the sensible, sensitive, and considerate thing to do.

It’s also such a limiting way to live your life. But it’s living within the social mores. The adult way of colouring within the lines.

My communication style in relationships has also fallen into rhythms in pretty much the same way. Especially in the most important of my relationships. I had to adjust how I said things so that the people I was speaking to understood what I was saying. I know you’re meant to be able to say what you want how you want to say it to the people who are meant to know you best. But it wasn’t exactly how it worked out for me. I found myself walking on eggshells and walking the emotionally-charged verbal tightrope with my most important relationship. I know that relationships are two-way streets and it should always be a bipartisan effort but let’s be honest, it’s not always a 50-50 work split in relationships. Someone always does more work, is more considerate, bends backward more, and it’s not usually the person who thinks they’re the ones who do this. My fault is that I do jump with two feet into relationships – I love (or become involved) so completely that I put everything of myself in relationships and I fully immerse myself into being who they need (because maybe I subconsciously hope they’re doing the same for me). I wrap myself around the person and be who they want me to be because I want to make them happy in the way they make me happy. In healthy relationships, the other person will want you to be who you are, they will see who you really are and not who they want you to be, and they want you to show them who you are so that you grow together. I don’t think all my relationships were necessarily healthy. Or more specifically, some of the people I was in relationships with weren’t necessarily in a space to contribute to a healthy relationship, or want to work on having a healthy, well-rounded relationship. But there you go. Hindsight is always 20-20.

I’ve been reacquainting myself with who I am again…or at least who I was before this last relationship imploded. Whether correctly or incorrectly, I’ve decided that my case of arrested development stems from my being involved in this relationship – I stopped being who I was and growing into the person I was meant to be because I became the person that I thought this relationship needed me to be. But that’s all changed now, I think. I’m relearning to say no when it serves me, when I think I need to say no because whatever is happening doesn’t sit well with me. I’m relearning the boundaries that I actually have and I’m reassessing whether they are actually where they need to be or whether I can stretch them. I’m actually having fun reacquainting myself with who I am.

And because I am getting to know myself again, I am (re)learning my quirks. I am still polite, I will always try to be diplomatic about things, and I will probably always try to be what people need me to be in relationships – because that’s who I am. But I think at the same time. I have actually started to take steps back when things aren’t right for me. I’ve actually said no several times when my hard limits were reached. I’ve also learned to not give too much of myself now. I used to overcompensate but now I think I’m learning to match the energy that I’m being served. It’s all a work in progress and I’m all about the WIP these days.

What hasn’t changed though is my overthinking. It’s exhausting and I know it’s something I need to work on. I still think it’s a superpower (yes, probably flawed reasoning!) because I know it’s protected me from a lot of situations – I’ve been able to mentally prepare myself for heartache and disappointment because I’ve overthought situations to death or it’s allowed me to be good at my job because I’ve considered every possible scenario, or it’s just allowed me to think of permutations so I’m prepared for most things (yes, I accept that overthinking is not good, but I think I’ve survived well on this planet because of this, so this will be difficult to manage!).

So trust me, I may smile, I may pretend to be confused or ditsy or inept (and to be fair, with the brain fog that I go through some days, this might be more genuine than you think!), I may say the polite thing and say okay, but I know when I’m being managed, because I’ve overthought everything (twice!).

I would rather hear the truth, receive the critique, be told off than dance the polite dance and get platitudes. It doesn’t serve anyone.

Yelly Writes

It’s a bank holiday!

26 Aug 2022 Yelly

I’m not quite sure who else has “bank holidays” in the world. I certainly didn’t know about bank holidays until I moved to the UK. As far as I was concerned, when I read the phrase in books I was reading, it was just that, a bank holiday, a day when the bank is closed. In the UK, it’s not quite as straightforward. Yes, it’s a day when banks are closed and yes, it’s a public holiday as well.

Sir John Lubbock drafted a piece of legislation which became known as the Bank Holiday Bill as it passed through the UK Parliament. The bill proposed for banks to be closed on certain days. Banks would be closed to the public and consumers and no financial transactions were allowed on these days. Initially it was just banks and financial institutions that would close. That’s as far as I remember. I can’t remember when they included public holidays (of which there are usually 8 in total, in the UK). I think there’s more information on this in the Life In the UK Test reviewer books (it’s a test that you need to pass if you want to qualify to live in the UK permanently or become a British citizen). But I took my Life In the UK test (and passed) in 2010 and I don’t remember most of the things I faithfully reviewed then!

I don’t necessarily have any plans for the bank holiday but I find that I want to go out out! But at the same time, I feel all peopled out this week and just the idea of getting up, getting ready and pasting a smile on my face and being sociable is exhausting me! It makes me want to hide under the duvet!

It is actually the last bank holiday until Christmas and I kind of feel like I have to do something…although strictly speaking, I don’t think Christmas day is a bank holiday…?

Sometimes I think all this working-from-home flexibility is bad for my socialising skills. I probably need to flex my socialising muscles more but sometimes it feels like so much hard work. I’d much rather stay in bed and read a book (or five) or binge-watch a TV series. Or catch up with friends and family, either in the Philippines or somewhere else in the world. Although it’s not to say I’m not up to seeing friends…just certain friends…! Yeah I’ll stop talking about that as it does make me sound like a horrible grinch of a person.

Then there is that minefield of sharing the same language game as the people you have to talk to. I tend to have two conversations going on: the one where I say socially accepted things out loud and contribute to the conversation, and the one in my head where I say things like “Oh my gawd! Really? You actually said that out loud?” or my favourite “Yeah, you know EVERYTHING!” It also helps if I look away as I do tend to roll my eyes or raise an eyebrow. I also tend to bite my tongue a lot to keep myself from letting the internal conversations come out in a torrent of verbal diarrhoea because then I will pretty much become the social pariah that I am also afraid of becoming. I tend to have a very caustic tongue if I let myself actually say the things I want to say. I’ve learned to my detriment that my editorial button needs to be activated all the time. The world isn’t necessarily ready for the pure version of Yelly sarcasm or forthrightness.

So, what are your plans for the bank holiday weekend, then?

Yelly Writes

Foot-in-mouth-disease

20 Aug 201720 Aug 2017 Yelly

Sometimes my irritation and annoyance just gets the better on me. I open my mouth and out comes a snarky comment.

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” ― Benjamin Franklin

My Lola always said tactful is as tactful does, and I’ve always tried to follow my granny’s advice. But it has been difficult to learn this particular lesson. I think because my parents encouraged us to speak our mind. My parents encouraged us to state our opinions and to verbalise our reasons for feeling the way we feel. I am finding out that verbal diarrhoea whilst very Bridget Jonesy is never good.

In the same way I’ve tried (and more than often failed) to always have my verbal edit button available and thought before I spoke, I must learn to learn to pause before my hands start typing! 🙊 Because these days, it’s difficult to take it back what you release in the internet ether because whilst there is a delete button, as we all know, the delete button on the internet isn’t really a delete button because somehow, somewhere whatever you put out is still out there!