Throughout my life, I have focused on self improvement and have come a long way. One trait that I am yet to overcome is my condescending and intimidating behaviour. This has cost me countless relationship in my life, across various paths of life. A lot of people have told me they enjoy talking to me (because I am a good and an active listener (I have worked on building this skill/trait)). Many have also said that I am respectful and polite in my behaviour. However, eventually many have drifted apart and now I know why. I really want to improve and overcome this trait of mine. I believe this c ..read more

I am really struggling apologizing to my older sister about a "heated" conversation that happened earlier this year. We have a 13 year age difference and during a debate about celebrity icons being imprisoned she felt disrespected by our opposing opinions. Specifically, I asked her if being sympathetic to them makes her feel better. She thought it was too cheeky. I immediately tried to explain that I meant no offense by my phrasing, apologized, and re-established the type of visit and relationship I wanted to have with her. Ultimately, both of our voices were raised. (Me trying to deescalate ..read more

submitted by /u/IgnorantBanshee [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

I have good communicating skills and have no problem to talk or anything, I am even praised by my skills. but when it comes to talking on phone, which I do a lot because of my job, I melt down. I cant even say anything without it being akward and its absolutery terrible (only calls when I dont see face, I don't have problem with facetime). What are some tips to improve communication on phone. submitted by /u/tornikekv [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

It's a common occurrence that someone will send me an email stating, "I'll have this to you by Friday." Usually I mentally acknowledge this and then wait to see if they send it by Friday. If they don't, I follow up on Monday. Is this wrong to do? Should I be immediately responding something like, "Understood! Looking forward to seeing it Friday!" ??? I've always tried to avoid sending people unnecessary emails but maybe this type of email isn't actually unnecessary? I'm just wondering because I find myself constantly having to follow up with people who don't deliver when they said they would ..read more

I am liaising with a third party developer as part of a project at my company. Multiple times in the last several weeks I've received an email from the third party PM to the tune of, "We'll have an update by Friday!" Friday comes and there's no update. I follow up, asking if they have any questions, no questions. Though there's technically a due date in the contract, this project is low priority and is not urgent. So it doesn't really matter if it's late, generally speaking. However, I'm struggling with how to appropriately follow up without being rude about it. I'm asking in particular becau ..read more

These are text exchanges that I (24M) have had with my mother (55F) going back to March 2023. Her texts from March 2023 are shown in shown in pink, whereas mine are shown in grey. Her texts from December 2023 to now are in green and mine are the same. We don't have a typical relationship. She was in my life as a noncustodial parent but has not been a part of my life since I was 2, the same year my parents got divorced on US soil. Before they were living with my Dad's parents in a foreign country. They remained in the US after going their separate ways, but It was my paternal Grandma who c ..read more

submitted by /u/lumpkin2013 [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

I'm in a team of 4 and we're supposed to work on a project together. Everyone except my teamleader is new since all other people have left the company. As a result, nobody except my teamleader has any knowledge about the organisation, so she centralized most of our tasks around herself. This obviously made her very stressed. Side effect is that she has no bandwidth to actually be there for the team and 99% of her energy goes towards the tasks she took upon herself. I have a talk with her this week and I want to communicate to her that I feel very lonely in the team since we all work from home ..read more

This is a relatively minor problem but I figured it might make sense to reach out to others and get their feelings on it. I tend to get really annoyed when I get interrupted while explaining something or telling a story. For example, my wife and I play lots of board games. It always falls on me to explain because I'm the one who has actually read the rules. If we have friends over I'll be explaining the rules in a structured way that makes sense for me, and she will interrupt in the middle to mention some aspect of the game that I haven't gotten to yet. I feel this is 1) confusing to my frien ..read more