I have come to the conclusion that I am either king of self-fullfilling prophecies or that my "mind-reading" is pretty accurate sometimes. Why do I say this? Well, I think that this can be calculated through some deductive reasoning. The bottom line is that I generally am very, very good at knowing what people are thinking during conversations (whether they be face-to-face, email, text, etc.). A lot of times, if I say something or inquire about a reaction, I am generally told that I am incorrect if the question implies some negative or potential point of contention. Likewise, I am told I am correct, sometimes with some surprise, when I have identified a positive reaction. I know that probably 100% of the world's current adult population feels that they are the same way. But here is where I think I fall into a smaller class of people: 99% of the time I am correct about someone's personality and trustworthiness within one minute of meeting them. This doesn't mean that I decide to trust or not trust within that period, only that I recognize if the person is someone that WILL be trustworthy should I give them the option.
Where am I going with this??? Well, I have done a LOT of self-reflection recently and a ton of examining of my current relationships (work, home, play). It hasn't been an easy task nor a neccesarily fun one...although neccesary nonetheless. By doing this, I think I have developed an ad hoc scale on which to judge my own "mind-reading" of those I am dealing with in most situations. This, along with "Pluck," I think will go a long way in helping me get over this very strong problematic behavior.
So how does my scale work? Not sure that it can be quantified. However, it can be based upon varying degrees of individual trust and on situational trust. What do I mean by this? I THINK that I mean that once I meet someone, and especially after some conversation, I quickly learn if they are trustworthy. Then, as I learn more about them, I learn to recognize "what situations" I can hope to reliably trust them in. For instance, a friend (Named CJ) I had in highschool was a pathological liar...I would guess anyway. I couldn't stand it, but I learned to deal with it, and even used it to my advantage some times (although this usually involved chics, alchohol, money, or other substances). I knew that CJ would lie about anything that made him look bad so that he would appear in a better light to whomever he was speaking. However, I also learned that CJ could be counted on when the situations got shitty.
I take the thought of how I learned CJ and his mannerisms and attitudes, and I translated this into a varying scale of trust of how I dealt with CJ. It ended up working out very good for a long time and we stayed friends across the country for many more years. It wasn't until he disrespected my current wife and abused some help we were providing that I just decided to stop talking to him (in a rather agressive way). Of course, now that I think about, my friendship with CJ may have been one of the very few that really meant something to me and that I am actually sad it ended. His ability to be realistic about strange or tough situations and to be there when I needed I buddy, that's what counted and that's what let me look past everything else (especially the lying), until he crossed a line with my current wife.
Anyway, the lessons I learned from being friends with someone like CJ, and from being paranoid and watching people for a long, long time, are lessons that have served me well later in life. Sort of like providing me with that gut feeling about people. This has been rather important to me for a long time but has become something that I have bastardized into an uber-paranoid level of mindreading. However, when I take a step back and revist actions and conversations/exchanges, the general truth is available to me and I have found that I have been doing more mind-reading than making actual educated decisions about people and what they say/express. This week has for some reason been especially hard for this. It hasn't helped that I am completely out of my painkillers and have NO idea when to expect more since the VA system sucks ass!!!
This week, and a lot today for some reason, I had some realizations about the things that some people have said to me by "not saying" something. A person can communicate so much more in non-verbal than verbal ways, I believe. Subsequently, I have also realized that my mind-reading, although not far off in some of these situations, has definitely been wrong overall. My mind-reading has also gotten worse..to the point that it seems like I do with everyone, inlcuding my kids. Most importantly, I have also been able to identify when "NOT" to ask questions that I don't want the answer to or that I feel will be over some line. The only problem with this is that I am not always cognizant of what is "over the line" depending on whom I am talking with.
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