The Limitations and Challenges of Text Communication T_T

I have had some very bad arguments with my Therapist over this issue of words. That I took as negative and she did not intend it the way I took it. I have just got out of another bad episode with the Therapist for her misunderstanding something that I said and She called Protective Services on me. This text communication does kind of suck. Some words she uses I interpret them differently than she does. So we have had to go back and forth to understand the intent and tone of what is being said.

I think more emojis is a great idea they don't have that in the one on one rooms which they should

I used to be in a long distance relationship, and one of the big challenges of text communication, for me at least, was that I couldn't type fast enough to get all my thoughts gathered articulately, so only half of my point would get made and I'd end up twice as frustrated. Another issue was not being able to tell what tone he was using in his responses.

@Laura I absolutely love this! :) T_T T_T T_T T_T I find it hard to communicate over text all the time!

@Laura

Thanks for this discussion. As we see in your posting the lack of context can lead to misinterpretation. T_T for example can be interpreted as an emoji. In emoji context it's a crying face. The T represents the teary eyes. The dash is the mouth.

I think despite acknowledging text communication has it's limits, it might be also important to think about how we can deal with this mediums limits.

And I'll name just one since I think it's the most important and key for succesfull communication;

Give people the benefit of the doubt.

Most often we don't know how that person is feeling at the moment and how they receive your message. Do they think your message is meant to be friendly, neutral, angry, sad, hostile.... We simply don't know, we most often assume it.

It's often good to take a step back and ask yuurdejf : if I write this message how might the other one feel about it. If I think they might lack context, I add context to it. If I'm not sure how they interpreted it, I ask about it. It's okay to ask. It helps to resolve conflict easier.

If you can try not to let messages get under your skin. Understand how you are feeling at that very moment and try to empathize with your communication partners.

If you're not in the right mindset to continue the chat in a productive way ask your communication partner to agree on continuing the chat another time. It's advisable to schedule it.

Well I had some miscommunications here yes and I understood there was something going wrong and I started I felt there was some misunderstanding and we tried to resolve the misunderstanding by setting up a non-judgmental stance.

It worked well until now.

Failure of expression. Misunderstanding tone, feelings and emotions. Unsure about the seriousness, attention and interest of the other where one may be eagerly waiting and the other may be taking it forgranted and unattentive. Most of the people take it as a play off, attending multiple users, texting unattentively while being with their own routines when someone is really in need of your attention and waiting glaring the screen.

I request people out here to kindly realize this and dedicate fully or just leave. Dont play around with peoples emotions.

One most disadvantage I feel is like people getting more comfortable in this virtual strange world and getting cut off from the real world. They are getting used to unknown identity and fear to identify themselves in the real world. This is not good. Stranger identity to the extend that you can open up easily is good but the fear factor of hiding yourself is completely insane.

You become helpless even when your intentions are right and things need to be addressed in a more real world way.

No place of communication can be bound to the peoples feelings and attachments. Its natural one cannot control it, especially when you dont even have a reason to.

I believe if we somehow evaluate the parcentage of real improvement and degradation here. There is no doubt the latter will be more here.

I know many would like to flood with their comments on this but its just the TRUTH.

@Laura

T_T

Yes of course! Without body language or voice tone it is harder!

Thumbs up for trying to always clarify, ask for more questions to be sure we are understanding well and yes, cultural differences play a role too. For example I noticed american listeners could tell me "what do you want" after my questions and in my country it sounds so rude to say, so I felt when I read it, but I've learned these words are a request of clarification themself! Another exampke is the "you have to" way of speech use, in my country it has an explicative sound about what it is needed to do, not rude at all but maybe in english it sounds like a "command" so I need to be careful in using it! So ya, basically the learning approach can help us and I am still in this process. Will do my best!

And isn't it awesome that we are from different countries and it does not stop us to be here willing to communicate one another? I believe more in this will to approach others in communication than in being able to comform ourself into a perfect english use. Our differencies are not a limit if we are able to look at them in a positive way!

@Laura Thankies for bring this up, Laura! c: We often feel misinterpreted or misunderstood because of how we communicate through texting. There are times that we're not aware if there are underlying meanings or thoughts they would want to express with the utilization of their words or with how their sentences are constructed and structured. It's really a struggle to distinguish the tone, the intentions and the things they mean because it's limited. Yes, we could rely with emojis, emoticons, gestures like *hugs* but we can't deny that we would still have a hard time learning if they're being true to their words.

I'm not that confident either with my English skills, it makes me anxious. I admit that there are times that I'm struggling with expressing what I really wanted to say or understanding the message that people wanted to convey since there would be always the barrier hindering us to have a better connection. Though I make sure I ask for clarifications to help me be enlightened with what they meant and wouldn't make assumptions that would leave confusions to both sides. On the other hand, my english vocabulary isn't that wide either and that makes me use repetitive and overused words which would make me feel like I sound like a robot *crossed fingers* (hopefully not!)

It's just so frustrating. T_T cri

@Laura

T_T ..... It's a crying face .... Like this .... (T_T)

Why is everyone crying for a cry face? T_T It's like ;_; but longer tears.

Great post! 😊

I am new here but it happened already, we couldn't understand each other and I said like let's start from the beginning, step by step and we made a great conversation.

We need more emojis here, definitely 😁