I can think of numerous times where I felt disconfirmed and defensive at the same time. One specific instance in my mind at the moment was when my father was putting me down about my grades back in high school. Saying that i would never amount to anything or be anyone without the grades. Of course I was disconfirmed because my dad was essentially telling me I’m an idiot. Now I see he was only doing it to pushing me to strive to be everything I can be. What he said still disconfirmed me but I noticed some of Gibbs defensiveness producing communication behaviors was throughout our whole conversation. Evaluation was a big one throughout because of how my father was judging me based on my grades at the time. Controlling communication was also present in the quarrel since I felt as if my dad was trying to control every move in my life. Evaluation and controlling communication were the most prevalent and they could have been changed by description and problem orientation.
Hey Petey,
ReplyDeleteI can definitely relate to you when people try to push you to do better, but do so by disconfirming communication. Whenever that happens, it makes me feel down, but now I know that they were only trying to make me try harder, realize my potential, so I can do better in life than they did. They evaluate us and then try to control us. By using description and problem orientation climates, conversations like that could've been confirming and still produced the same results, if not better. Positive encouragement always produces better results than negative discouragement. Negative discouragement could have drastic impacts, which could be the opposite of what you hoped for.
I had a similar experience with my friends in high school. I felt disconfirmed around them because they would occasionally tease me about something I was doing wrong or how I shouldn’t have said something. Back then, I thought they just liked making me feel bad about myself. It wasn’t until later that I realized how they had actually pushed me to become the best version of myself. They pointed out a lot of the mistakes that I was too ignorant, or perhaps arrogant, to see for myself. They made me want to be the best possible version of myself
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