No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
One thing I've learned, is to be comfortable with some silence, and taking a moment to think. I'll even announce "hang on, I need to put my words together right" and then just internally monologue my thoughts into order while the other person waits for me to speak again.
Usually, there is no rush, we just imagine others to be impatient and feel pressure for no real reason. But really, there's no reason a conversation requires words be spoken non-stop. In fact I've found that when I force these breaks, the other people participating use the time to do some silent thinking, too, and come back with more thought out things to say when the conversation resumes.
Especially if you find yourself more comfortable with texting, where you can lay out your sentences and edit them until they feel right, you might just need to learn to do the same thing face to face.
Yes I think you're right - sometimes I'll feel like I need to fill a silence, and end up spewing out nonsense. Then I'll feel embarrassed and struggle with the rest of the conversation. It's quite hard to un-learn that feeling of silence being uncomfortable, but it would definitely give time to help me think.
I used to do that exact thing. Feel pressured to speak, then rather not have done it at all when I do.
Awkward silences are only awkward because we feel like they are supposed to be. Silence typically means a conversation is over, but when it feels like it should have continued, the silence feels "wrong". The solution is to remember that silence doesn't have to mean that the conversation is over. Pauses feel out of place because practised talkers don't need them.
Don't get too comfy with it though, I've become so immune to awkward silences, that I sometimes completely fail to notice when someone is uncomfortable while I'm just chillin and thinking about what to say next. When you stop speaking, people's imaginations take over for what you're thinking, and especially for anxious people those 30 seconds of silence wondering what you're thinking can be hell. I used to be that anxious person.
Hence I started announcing why I'm being quiet. It lets their thought-spiral of worry calm because you're essentially saying "don't worry, I wasn't offended or turned off by what you said, I will tell you what I'm thinking, I just need a moment".
It's also useful with people who aren't anxious, because they won't then try to take over and fill the pause you need to think. People will try to "help" by filling silences with idle talk, but sometimes they can talk over someone's silence, the same way one can talk over someone's speech.
Thanks for the insight - I hadn't considered that announcing the silence in that way could be useful, but I see what you mean.