Assumption — A miscommunication by-product?
I tend to assume a lot, a bane I guess, a large portion of my overthinking goes into this department. I have an “assumption” that it is the byproduct of miscommunication. Have you ever thought like this and added to your overthinking? Welcome to my clouds.
Miscommunication when I say it, is the lack of any exchange of ideas, thoughts, or emotions and you tend to understand the situation driven by your thoughts. As they popularly say, thoughts aren't real, but they tend to cause real stuff. With this assumption, you tend to take some decisions, which could be quite opposite to what could be done if we communicate and understand both parties and proceed.
This assumption could be in a situation when you are managing the anger of your parent, and the parent in question hasn't expressed it in words. The only expression is a very stern face and no words put to what they feel, what they want to be done. Now first you detect that there is an awkward situation, your guards are ON, and you tend to walk on eggshells or not even walk, withdraw to a space where you are starting to make your cloud of thoughts. Now from the stern expression, you realize that you have done something to upset the person for sure. You put up at least 10 mind clouds -parallelly, to analyze what action could have caused it and another 10 mind clouds what could have been done right so that you could have been in a better place. But with no correct information as to why it is so, all these clouds combined and spawned many more which is a big ball of assumptions.
Now you have mastered the art of overthinking, you can walk around with a lot of mind clouds and parallel processing them and be akin to it.
You have a pattern now not to express when upset and clouding your face with emotions is the strategy. You know that the other person in the equation would do the needful here. You operate like this with your partner, to realize that no one here is a mind reader or rather he doesn't want to be one, why was I one? He needs to be told why and what upset you and more than that he doesn't have to assume and be in another set of clouds. But before you understand this important facet of interaction, you have already “assumed” that the person doesn't understand you and you need to deal with this yourself. And thus the door to communication is well shut and your capability to exercise communication is also not used. By this, there is no control over what you have uploaded to your clouds
Now you are dealing with assumptions made for your kid in different situations of his growing up years. We both are in the same tussle which is like the pattern which is learnt many years ago. But the kid chose another path, and thanks to him, he started pointing out in his irritation and his inability to float in the cloud, that I could be assuming some things. To defend myself, I would spurt out, and some of my assumptions tumbled out and which got him fuming about “how you could assume so!”. This got me thinking “Wow, so this is not how everybody thinks, there is another way as well”. Now you would go to any extent to communicate with your kid, you start to unlearn, you start to express, and voila clouds on which I am floating are busted and you are “grounded”. Groundedness and knowing about a situation without assumptions is bliss. No mind games, and no intertwined clouds to float around.
To better the art of posing questions instead of assuming is on the works.
Note: All creatives used are from pinterest.
