I’ve noticed that I often struggle to express what I actually mean during discussions.
Sometimes my main point gets lost because I phrase it poorly, use a weak example, or realize later that I misunderstood what the other person was saying. I often leave conversations thinking, “That wasn’t what I was trying to say.” or “I am not being taken serious.”
For those of you who used to have this problem:
How did you get better at expressing your thoughts? Did you practice in a specific way? How do you make sure you’re responding to someone’s actual point instead of what you think they mean? Or is it really just keeping your mouth shut if you aren’t knowledgeable about something.
It has gotten to the point that I find myself just not wanting to jump into the discussion, because I feel like that it’s more about who is right , than understanding and being understood.
I’d love to hear any advice or habits that helped you become a clearer communicator. Book recommendations are also welcome.
Lemmy doens’t have Social Skills community(that i can find) or anything so sorry for posting this in AskLemmy.
Reflections so far:
Be curious. Socratic method; phrase your statements as questions. It helps soften your dialogue quite a bit and makes the conversation a quest for discovery.
Try to formulate things simple. The simpler u can explain something, the better u understand it and the less words to be confused about for both parties.
Rhetorical Triangle: Ethos, Pathos and Logos
Write more. It forces u to think critical about things. And gives u the opportunity to reflect on your own opinions.
Don’t take yourself, or other people too serious.
Awesome, just wanted to rule out that potential experience vector.
Honestly, the best way to learn is to ask the person who misunderstood you what it was that made them draw that conclusion. It might not always work, but people like me are more than happy to explain their thought process. It’s good to emphasize that you’re not being argumentative, but that you want to understand where the miscommunication is. But that only works on people who are having a real discussion.
But one thing you have to remember is that many people don’t argue in good faith. A strawman argument is when someone intentionally misrepresents your argument to more easily refute it. The only real action against that is to clearly contradict their misrepresentation.
If they continue the strawman or move the goalposts after that, you’re wasting your energy and are better off disengaging. Maybe reading a book on logical fallacies would be beneficial so you can more easily identify them.
Being a devil’s advocate is a great way to practice, because being able to make a good argument in favor of something you disagree with helps a lot with knowing how to refute it.
But practice makes perfect, so feel free to tag me and start arguments with me when you see me pop up. I have you tagged as “debate practice” so I respond appropriately.
That’s really kind of you. Alas my communications problems are really more face to face IRL. You are really kind for offering that tho, all the grace to you <3
You’re welcome! I wish there was more genuine debate on this platform, but it seems to quickly devolve into personal attacks each time.
I made an edit that might have been after your comment about playing devil’s advocate.
One way around the “in person” issue might be to use text to speech with a local LLM (or a lemmy user), although you’d need to heavily prompt the LLM to disagree with you and understand that it’ll be more agreeable than a person. Or argue in front of a mirror and work on playing both roles. Say what comes to your mind, then analyze your statement for holes.