Chapter 9

· Go to the website http://psychologytoday.psychtests.com/tests/self_disclosure_general_access.html

Take the self-disclosure test. Did your score surprise you? Why is it important to understand the how you self-disclose?

I actually did surprise myself with my score. My results said that I scored 48 out of 100, which was higher than I expected. I realize that my levels of self-disclosure are much lower than they probably should be. I suppose that the cause of my higher-than-expected score is that when I do become very close with someone, I tend to self-disclose exponentially more than I do with other people. In the end, I suppose it averages out.

I believe it is important to understand how you self-disclose so that you can be aware of areas in your life that may require more or less self-disclosure than you currently give. For example, I know that when meeting new people, I should not be as reluctant to self-disclose as I usually am. On the other hand, it is just as important to know when “enough is enough”, and you should not disclose as much as you think might be necessary for the situation!

· Go to the website http://www.web-research-design.net/cgi-bin/crq/crq.pl

What is your attachment style / intimacy style? Did you find your results surprising? Why or why not?

My attachment-related anxiety score was 5.70 out of 7. My attachment-related avoidance score was 3.70 out of 7. These results combined produced the overall result of a “preoccupied” attachment/intimacy style. According to the description, people who fall into the preoccupied style feel comfortable expressing emotions, but also have a great deal of negative emotions, which causes conflicting relationships.

According to this definition, I am not very surprised by my results. Looking back on past relationships, as well as current relationships, once I become comfortable with the person I am usually really open with them. It usually does result in conflicts, however, because I tend to struggle with a lot of negative emotions. When you are willing to talk about your emotions, but most of those emotions are negative, it will almost always cause a strain on the relationship!

· Go to the website http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/siukaice/openness.htm

Take the openness quiz. Are you more open or closed? Do agree with the results? Why or why not?

According to my results, I am “getting there but will still have to work at being more open”. I agree with these results. In high school, I was a very closed person. Upon coming to college, however, I have found the importance of being an open person. I have worked throughout the past three years to change my thinking into that of a more open personality. I think that being more open will allow me to be more successful, not only in school, but in life in general. This is because it will help me to see things from others’ points of view, and learn to improve upon my mistakes.

Chapter 8

· Go to the website http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Hartwell1.html http://www.austincc.edu/colangelo/1311/relationalcommtest.htm

Take the relationship quiz (if not currently in a relationship base answers on past relationship). Also, take the relational communication quiz.

Do you believe the results are accurate? What do you think about relationship quizzes?

I thought that both of these tests were almost amusing to take. This is mostly because it has been 11 months since my ex and I broke up, after dating for almost 2 years! Both of the quizzes did, however, shed some light on my relationship with him. It also makes me wish I had taken them about 1 ½ - 2 years ago, to save me some trouble!

In the first quiz, I scored a 32, which landed under the “Caution” category. I couldn’t help but laugh at the parts where it said “your long-term success is in question now. It's time to work on those respect and communication issues.” As I said before, if only I had taken this quiz a few years ago, when I might have been able to apply what I was learning!

On the second quiz, I scored a 26 out of 60. This, again, would place me into the middle category, or barely into the “good” category. My biggest problem areas were supportiveness, positiveness, confidence, and expressiveness. Looking back, I would agree with these results. It will be interesting to see how I can apply what I’m learning to any future relationships!

· Go to the website http://valueprep.com/relationship-maintenance.html

Read the article on relationship maintenance. What is your opinion of this article? How do you feel about your ability to maintain relationships?

This article makes several good points about relationship maintenance. One thing that I thought was really important was to invest more time into maintaining your family relationships, and then have an understanding with all other relationships. I think that this is so important, because your family should be a constant in your life, and you should be a constant in their life. If you are being pulled away by other relationships, however, it puts a huge strain on your relationship with your family. I have had a lot of experience with this problem since I came to college, and have found the incredible importance of family over friendships. Friendships come and go, but family is for forever.

Now, just because I have come to realize and recognize this important fact about relationship management does not necessarily mean that I have come to master it! Even to this day, after struggling with this issue for three years, I still have problems managing relationships! I am constantly battling with myself and others over how much time and effort to invest in each relationship.

It has become even more complicated this year with the addition of my new “best friend”. This truly makes things even harder than before, because I have to figure out how to give Ashley and Josh equal time and attention, but still give them more than I do my casual friends. And of course, all of this must be done in light of the time and attention that my family requires. With the recent circumstances in Haiti, and with my family moving from Haiti to Mississippi, and then on to Alabama, my time has been almost completely consumed by just my family!

It is sad to say, but I have not done a very good job of maintaining any of my relationships this past school year. I know for a fact that there were times where I chose one person over another, when it should have been the other way around. Or when I should have gone “home”, but chose to stay and be with my friends instead. I am hoping that I can use my newfound knowledge of relationship maintenance to help me juggle my many relationships in the years to come!

· Go to the website http://www.oaktreecounseling.com/giver%20or%20taker.htm

Take the quiz. Are you a giver or a taker? Did you anticipate the results? Why or why not?

Well. Thanks to the lovely William Carey Internet system, I was unable to access this quiz. The results I was anticipating to find were certainly not fulfilled when my computer told me my access was denied because the website was categorized as “porn”!

On the other hand, the result I WAS expecting to find was that I am a giver~ In most situations, I have been generally known to give twice as quickly as I am to take. Most of my joy in life comes from giving to other people, in various ways. For instance, seeing Josh’s face light up when he realized I made him a CD of all of his favorite songs for his birthday was the highlight of my week, last Friday. Another example would be that my coworkers have always known if they needed someone to cover for them, whether it be for a few minutes or a whole shift, to call me! As I said before, most of my joy in life comes from doings things for people to make their day just a little bit better! J

Chapter 7

· Go to the website http://www.stresscure.com/relation/7keys.html

Discuss what you think about the suggestions offered on this website.

I thought that this article was very relevant! It was a good reminder of the important aspects of listening. Each of the tips had a valid point, and I found them to be very helpful in improving my listening skills.

#1 reminded me that “listening is not a passive activity”, and that it requires me doing my part as well!

#2 listed specific things to listen for when taking part in a conversation. It pointed out certain things that people tend to say in a conversation without ever putting them into words!

#3 reminded me that “listening requires wisdom” in order to understand the people you are listening to.

#4 reminded me to give people the respect and validity they deserve in a conversation. In other words, to always find validity in what they are saying, even when it all appears to be negative.

#5 reminded me to keep my mind clear and open whenever I am listening. Since reading this tip, I have noticed just how often I spend most of my “listening” time actually formulating my response, instead of actually listening to what the other person has to say!

#6 reminded me to “listen for tell-tale signs of impending trouble”. This means listening for signs of what the other person is too afraid to tell you straight out.

#7 once again reminded me to “listen with optimism and positive human regard”. This tip is very similar to tip #4, in that it reminds us to not view the conversation as negative or a waste of time, despite how much you may feel that way.

Overall, this article helped me recognize areas in my listening skills that needed serious work! It was also very helpful in showing me exactly how to fix those weak areas in my communication skills!

· Go to the website http://www.taft.cc.ca.us/lrc/class/assignments/actlisten.html

Learning to be an Active Listener is difficult. Discuss what you learned from the website.

This website was very helpful by showing different skills that are required for being an active listener. It listed the various body language aspects to remember, including posture and eye contact. It also taught me the different types of checks that can be used to reinforce what I am hearing. These include clarifying and perception checking. It also includes processes such as summarizing and paraphrasing. While all of these processes are similar, the website broke them down individually and provided definitions and examples for each of them. This helped me to understand each process apart from the others so that I can apply them to my own life.

Chapter 6

· Go to the website http://www.dotolearn.com/games/facialexpressions/

Play with the demonstration. How could this simulation be beneficial?

-This demonstration was really cool! It was interesting to see how changing one simple thing has the potential to change the facial expression altogether. It was very beneficial, because it helps me to be more cautious with my facial expressions, because I could unknowingly be giving a negative expression when I mean to be positive!

· Watch an episode of the TV series Lie to Me

What did you learn? How could this show be useful to you in the future?

-I learned that you can learn a lot about a person by watching their body language closely. It is amazing how the slightest movements can give away emotions that we think we hide so well! This show could definitely be useful in the future by helping me recognize what people are actually thinking and feeling, versus what they are saying. This could be very useful when working with youth, especially, and trying to find out important information about them, and what is going on in their lives. As a social worker, it is so important to be able to recognize when people are not telling you the whole truth about a situation! I think that I should get school credit for watching this show whenever I start working on my MSW! J

· Go to the website http://www.esl-lab.com/para.htm

How did you do? Oftentimes we do not think about paralanguage. After taking this quiz, what role does paralanguage play in your life? If you misunderstand paralanguage, how might this negatively impact communication?

I did pretty well on the Paralanguage quiz. My score was 9 out of 10. I think that paralanguage is fairly important in my life. I have been known to use more paralanguage in the mornings than in the afternoons, but overall I tend to use it a lot. Paralanguage has also been known to be an issue with me when people misunderstand it. It negatively effects communication when people misunderstand paralanguage because they react according to how they understood what they heard. But if they misunderstand, it results in a confusion of the conversation, and may cause the conversation to go in a direction that was not originally intended. It also negatively effects communication when people have different meanings for paralanguage. It results in a similar situation as a general misunderstanding of paralanguage; causing the conversation to become confused.

· Go to the website http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/langloislab/

Describe what the research suggests. Do you agree or disagree with this website? Why or why not?

The research presented on this website suggests that beauty is measured not necessarily by personal preference, but by comparing each person’s face to an “average”. The researchers took pictures people who are considered to be attractive, and found that they all have very similar facial features. In essence, the beautiful people are those who do not have abnormal facial features. Their research also suggests that a person’s image does in fact affect how they are judged by others.

I am not sure whether I agree with the research and results of this website or not. I think that their findings are logical, and I can see how they would have reached their results. I’m not sure, though, whether I agree with the implications of their research. If what they say is true, any person that I find attractive, I would only find attractive because they have the perfect, or mostly “average”. Based on my past, however, most of the people I found attractive are not necessarily considered attractive by other people. In fact, most of them have been quite opposite than the “normal” attractive people! But maybe the reason for that is because my brain really truly is backwards. :-/