One of the things I truly enjoy about meeting new people is getting into random discussions about things I don’t get to talk about very often and today was a day full of those. One of the things that came up – and I don’t know why it gets brought up a lot in Social Service situations but I digress – is human behavior and having to pay attention to microaggressions and microexpressions when discerning someone’s true intent with what they’re doing or saying.
If you read my post earlier this month called What I Hate Most – https://catchmeonaramble.com/2019/01/12/i-remember-everything-what-i-hate-most/ – you’ll probably remember that analyzing human behavior comes with my territory quite a bit and discussing the complexities, or not complexities as it would be, of behavior is one of my favorite things to do.
So..as this new group of people I’ve found myself part of and I start talking back and forth about being aware of patterns of speech and use of words along with facial expressions and hand gestures, I got reminded again that people make watching the behavior of others WAY more complicated than it actually is. It’s true, people will SHOW you who they really are. They won’t tell you, or at least very rarely. If you’re lucky, the show and tell portions match up but they frequently don’t.
We aren’t complicated creatures when it comes to our behavior and how we show how we feel or what’s going on with us. Generally speaking, unless a mental illness or something else that changes brain chemistry is present, most people will stay consistent with their behaviors and attitudes.
I tell you that to tell you this: If someone suddenly switches gears on you for no apparent reason in any situation? Pay attention to the 2nd set of behaviors more than the first. The 2nd set of behaviors and attitudes are going to be the true ones. Now, I’m talking about situations where there appears to be no antecedent to the behaviors changing. I hear people complain about this in relationships all the time.
Think about it. How often do you hear someone say: “Omg ,I don’t know what happened. One day she was this super sweet person and the next she was a total bitch!” or “I feel like I go through whiplash with him. One minute he’s super invested, the next – cold as ice”.
Make no mistake about it: Unless there was a huge shift in the dynamics of your interpersonal connections, that person was actually a bitch and that guy was already cold as ice LONG before you noticed it. Trust me on this. You teach people how to treat you, yes, but you have very little control over how a person actually is.
So the next time you think you stumbled upon a Jackyl and Hyde story…remember that Hyde was there under the surface the whole time. That’s all you need to know about discerning behavior.
