How My World Is Constructed Through Interpersonal Communication?

Our world is constructed through communication of many different levels with different perspectives. We live and communicate within traditions of communication. A constructionist perspective invites us to: feel liberated - not needing to fight over what is "right", "real", or "absolute" - creatively explore the "taken-for-granted" - be curious about multiple views, positions, and values - search for new ways of talking that lead to other possibilities. There are many rules we live by, either if they are known or just subconscious such as social ghosts, language games, social positioning, social surviving and reframing.

There are language games that we all generally follow which have social-scripts that we use intently or unintendly to express ourselves or/and to get things done. For so long, I have thought the concept of language game was a bad thing via playing games with people mentally and emotionally ‘til now, after learning it's true meaning. It was more of the opposite, violating the rules of language games. So, we tend to reframe our conversations to avoid breaking the rules of language games for many reasons, whether we did it on purpose or not. We listen to verbal/non-verbal communication and to our social ghosts in our subconscious. All are for us to communicate with each other daily, with people we see daily, people we know nearby or at distance, new people we meet and/or strangers. Communication is how we all survive as in social-surviving by how we get something across in a culture where we don't know their language or getting by with something, either mentally or emotionally.

For social ghosts, they are voices within us. On the positive side, Jesus Christ, our Savior is the one that's my daily spiritual guide and my husband's mother as my mother-in-law is my inner-emotional support. She also is my encourager and who I respect in many ways. On the negative side, my mother as a perfectionist, is the one who had been dominating my low self-esteem for many years that I felt I would never meet her too high standards such as I didn't believe I would make it to college and graduate at all while I knew I could but for some reason, I believed her for soo long ‘til I met my husband and his mother. At times of low points, I still hear her saying "See, I told you - you can't make or handle it" or "You are very lucky to make it this far, but I doubt you'll make it to graduation". She actually said that at my junior high graduation. I don't talk with her anymore as she never calls me, but I do try to keep in touch with her once or twice a year. She still thinks that I am lucky to be here, but it doesn't hurt me as bad as before. I used to feel those are the worse words that would put me down and give-up easily, but now after I have been through the worse and since I have learned that all those things she said to me in the past weren't true so I put aside her comments. Now, I listen to my mother-in-law and other people around me that have been and seen me around more often than my mother. They know me more than her so I feel much better about myself, and push myself to do the hardest I can. I do believe that I will graduate from Gallaudet University, with all the support from close friends and in-laws. Just like the bible says "You can do all things through Christ who strengthens me". ?

My husband and his mother are the key people whose opinions and advices I value in my daily life. Both are deaf, from deaf families. My husband has been in my life daily for 15 years, still is, and continues for many more years to come. There have been a lot of rocky roads leading to emotional roller coasters from time to time, which now is getting a lot better since I have learned some tips on improving my listening and communication skills. Those listening and communication skills I have learned are mostly how to reframe, listen better, and less repeating comments via Unwanted Repetitive Patterns (URPs).

The most URPs I believe we all have today are related to our phones via texts and Instant Messages (IMs) in the matter of not responding right away. That's exactly the same for my husband and me, such as "Why didn't you respond my IMs earlier today? What did you do at that time?" then it's up to us to believe or not. The longer the time no response, the more emotional we women tend to be. Men don't think of it as a big deal ‘til we don't respond them in the same matter, they get more upset about it – even if it's the same thing, isn't that ironic? So, over the time with learning about URPs – I have learned to accept because it's the same thing both ways, especially here at Gallaudet. Plus, it's a good way to build trust and humor by saying things like "Ohh,