By analyzing the importance of communication and behaviors in our lives, I realize that many aspects of communication affect interpersonal situations and relationships. My mother is someone I know more than anyone who has aspects to her self and character that are due to different forms of the communicative experience. I will look at self-concept issues, and social interactions through communication, to find causes and explanations for her actions and feelings. In this class I have learned that communication is everywhere and constant in our lives and we develop interpersonal situations and a self through all.
What is most relevant to my mother is how communication strongly forms her identity, and this affects her interpersonal situations at certain times. We form concepts of ourselves, as we develop who we are through communicating with others, and so my communication with my mother is really relevant. The development of our self-concepts is generative rather than reflective. Her self-concept is my mother’s major issue in terms of not only she as a person, but the influence it has on her relationships and communicative interactions. A lot of her self-concept comes from various interactions she has with significant others, and strangers.
I know that interactions with his mother bring happiness and love, but also uncertainty, and insecurity. Relating to Cooley’s Looking Glass Self, where we see ourselves through what others see us as, his relationship with mother is substantial in the creation of his self and identity. On the one hand, he can have love, complete understanding and a coordinated state of synchrony with his mother. They move in a direct relationship to each other’s communication as they hold a discussion, and they talk about how beautiful the day was with his little cousins and his mother’s niece.
They laugh and joke about little Erin’s “fart noises” and are comfortably nodding heads and in sync with each other, as only they two could be in the world at that moment. But I know, on the other hand, he has great confusion, disappointment, and a sense of rejection through his mother’s communicative self-reinforcing cycle issue. The concern is that I know of occasions when mother has told son that she does not approve of his sport ruling his life, and that she would rather see him not care so much about it, and just concern himself with academics, the present and common daily values and topics.
His sport is his life, and it has brought a lot of anger, upset, and frustration over the years, but it has also brought many positives that outweigh the bad, because he still loves his game. Due to mother rejecting his passion, it brings non-validation, and so this arguably provides the negativity he feels with himself and towards his performances in his sport. Aspects of the self get validated, confirmed, or rejected through communication from others, especially significant ones, and who is more significant than mother?
Out of the self-reinforcing cycle we build a detailed model of the self, then we begin to shape our behavior, as we come to be what others see us to be, specifically significant ones. And so whenever son has interaction and communicative experience with mother on the self-aspect that he loves, but she does not validate, it unconstructively affects the communication expectations. What he expects is his mother to be negative or unsympathetic to his passion, and so this causes uncertainty in his passion, and talking about it with the person he loves more than anyone, in conjunction with his father and brother.
Charles Horton Cooley was a social psychologist whose studies were greatly related to the communicative experience and how it affects behavior. His adage to the self-concept issue was significant: Each to each a looking-glass Reflects the other that doth pass. 1 And so the social self does not exist prior to social interaction, selves arise in process of communication, and what self arises depends on what is being communicated. Relative to the topic with mother, the relationship overwhelms the content, and we are extremely sensitive to the approval and disapproval of others.
Another social psychologist, George H. Mead summarized Cooley’s theory that pertains to the communicative behavior experience: By placing both phases of this social process in the same consciousness, by regarding the self as the ideas entertained by others of the self, and the other as the ideas entertained of him by the self, the action of the others upon the self and of the self upon the others becomes simply the interaction of ideas upon each other within mind. 2
Looking at his interpersonal relationship with another person, who affects his life, is his Coach. Having suffered serious injuries that kept him out of action for eight months, and needed two surgeries, he was obviously concerned about his happiness in his sport, and the views of an important subject in all of this: the Coach. There is an intimidating presence between the two, as the Coach has the power to take him out of the game he loves, diminish his scholarship, or rate him in the self-reinforcing cycle.
It is all affirmed through the Coach, and having gone through heartbreaking injuries, that he played through his first season, and resulted in the two surgeries in the early middle parts of the year, he felt intense pressure to recuperate quickly for his love of the game, and also the pressure of the Coach’s will to have him back to his best. The situation strained the communication between the two parties and the communication coordination dwindled from greater to lesser emphasis. To an extent where, the Coach knew he wasn’t at his best, and he knew the Coach wasn’t satisfied, he felt almost alone, a sense of involuntary aloneness.
The Coach, although not a great friend, is someone who has a big influence on his life. Relating to Cooley, and this topic, we come to be as others want or see us as. And he got involved in a vicious cycle of negativity, as he was affected by the Coach’s lesser view of him. He came to be pessimistic and unlike his true self, his performance dwindled, because the self that was arising was the one that came from the communicative experience with the other- the Coach. Emotions surfaced that contributed to the communicative behavior state. He found himself very angry and frustrated a lot, due to his situation.
Although they were automatic and involuntary his facial expressions were consistently communicative of anger and sadness. But I understand that they provided an automatic program to the response to his environment of poor play, and surrounded by his peer players, and coaches. Due to his facial expressions of stern brows, and unhappy faces, the Coach received facial feedback. And, so he in return produced similar emotions in return, that functioned within the interpersonal system of the Coach’s individual lack of receptivity to the situation.