upworthy

socializing

Joy

15 conversation prompts to connect on a deeper level without making it weird

These "reflective" topics are meaningful but not overly personal.

Photo credit: Canva

It's not always easy to have good conversations in groups.

When family and friends gather together, conversations can go a few ways. If you’re genuinely close and used to sharing openly, conversation may flow naturally with no need for assistance. If you’re getting together with people you rarely see, don’t know very well, or struggle to connect with, however, conversations can feel mundane, stilted or awkward. Even with family, a 50-year-old trying to talk to a 15-year-old extended relative can be difficult without knowing what questions to ask.

Whether we’re getting together with people we know or people we are meeting for the first time, it’s nice to be able to go a little deeper than talking about the weather or pop culture. Politics is a minefield, now more than ever, and not everyone wants to share the nitty gritty details of their personal lives, so it can be hard to figure out how to have meaningful conversations without making it weird.

Ordinary & Happy offers a list of “reflective topics” that can help improve conversations with anyone of any age. Here are some examples of questions based on their suggestions and some reasons they're so effective.

Looking back

What’s something you learned this past year?

Who was an influential person in your life last year?

What’s something you accomplished this year that surprised you?

The good thing about looking back over the past year is that the experiences are fairly fresh. A year is a good amount of time to think about because it’s short enough to not be overwhelming but long enough to have had some interesting experiences and learnings.

Looking again

What’s something you rediscovered a love for?

What’s something or someone you’ve reconnected after a long time?

What’s a place you’ve visited that you really enjoyed?

A twist on reflection, adding a “re” element by asking someone about something they might have forgotten about or disconnected from but found again can be a fun way to think about the previous year a little bit differently. And of course, places we’ve enjoyed visiting is always a solid topic.

Looking ahead

What’s something you want to improve on next year?

What’s a goal you have for next year?

What’s something you’re looking forward to next year?

It can be a little tricky to ask people about the future, especially young people who often feel a lot of pressure to have their futures figured out. But on a personal level, we all have things we’re looking forward to as well as intentions for our future, even if we don’t know how it’s all going to play out.

Looking inside

How has your perception of time changed?

Have your values shifted or changed and what prompted it?

What’s something you learned about yourself this year?

These questions offer a way to get to know someone without asking about too-personal topics. Values might be considered personal, but there are a lot of ways to ask people about how the way they see the world or themselves has changed.

man and woman talking over coffeeThese prompts can work in a group or one-on-one conversations.Photo credit: Canva

Looking at being human

What do you believe is a key to good communication?

What do you believe is one of the best ways to build trust?

What do you believe the last year taught you about life?

Broadening the questions to more general human experiences rather than focusing them on an individual is a good way to pivot if people seem to feel uncomfortable talking about themselves. The adage “People love to talk about themselves” isn’t always true, but most people will weigh in on a light philosophical question like “What do you think makes someone a good friend?” or “What do you think the world needs more of?”

Anyone can come up with these kinds of reflective questions. A few tips to keep in mind, though:

- Try to avoid words like “favorite” or “best” unless you preface it with “one of.” You don’t want to force people to sort through their thoughts and put them in a particular order. Some people may have one favorite place or memory, but more often than not there are many things that could compete for that title and trying to narrow down one makes people freeze up.

- Stick to universal human experiences. We’ve all discovering things about ourselves and the world all the time, but we’re not all into the same things. “What’s a place that makes you feel peaceful?” works better than “What’s your favorite place to vacation?” Keep questions broad and focused on human characteristics instead of niche experiences people may or may not have had.

- Put questions into your own words. You might not say, "What's one thing you learned this year?" For you, it might be, "Hey, tell me about an interesting learning experience you had this year. What stands out to you?" The more natural the question in your own voice, the better. It's the topic that matters, not the wording.

Happy conversating!

From Your Site Articles
communication
Joy

Making friends as an adult is hard. These five tips from an expert can help.

Friendships never stop being important.

Canva

Making friends is hard. But maybe it doens't have to be THAT hard.

Making friends as an adult is definitely not like making friends as a kid.

Remember how easy it was to make a new friend when you were young? Five minutes sharing a slide and suddenly you're bonded for life.

But as we grow older, making friends can become much harder. So hard, in fact, that some people equate having a large group of close friends to a miracle.

Friendships are an important part of life at any age.

Most everyone wants and needs friends, and research shows that friendships can have a huge effect on our physical and mental health. There's not much we can do about friendships that diminish and change as we age — people move, start families and new careers, and shift to new social circles — but it's important to keep forming meaningful, long-lasting connections with people throughout life, whether you're 25 or 80.

It's something that affects us all.

"Making friends is hard for everyone," says Ellen Hendriksen, clinical psychologist and author of "How to Be Yourself," a guide on learning to tame social anxiety. "It's not just you." But knowing you're not alone isn't going to get you the friend circle you want.

Here are five tips to getting into the mindset of making friends — and then going out and doing it.

1. Relax (aka the hardest step).

In college, my abnormal psychology professor told us about a guy who wanted to make friends — five friends (because we all seem have an arbitrary number of pals we think is appropriate). He went to a party and met five people he liked and got their numbers. This guy was so excited that he started calling his new friends immediately, asking them to do things and inviting them for coffee nearly every day.

Of course, his overexcitement became clingy, his new acquaintances suddenly started making excuses, and he ended up being a negative example for a group of undergrads learning about problems in human behavior.

"You can't make friends like a poacher," Hendriksen says. "Focus on being open and curious and thoughtful. Ask questions, listen when others respond, be friendly, and when you slowly inch into the mix, be intentional."

Allow yourself to be in the moment and ask questions that come up naturally. If someone says they're having a hard week at work, ask them about it. If someone tells you they've recently been on a trip, commit to asking something more than just "how was it?" Be interested.

shared interest, making friends, dog park, group involvement

Make friends through shared interests like a dog park.

Photo by Carol Magalhães on Unsplash

2. Repetition is key.

Most articles about how to make friends suggest that people find a hobby, join a group, or volunteer. But Hendriksen says that's not a fail-safe solution.

Ultimately, it's not the activity that matters — although it should be something you enjoy — it's the fact that you're finding a place where other people can get to know you over time. In fact, since more and more research shows that making friends takes longer than previously thought, it's important to give it some time; Hendriksen suggests giving it a season.

You don't have to join an official group or club. Hendriksen once turned an acquaintance into a good friend when the two bonded over their mission to try every Mexican restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The key is to engage in something that allows you to get to know other people and lets them to get to know you.

"You can go to the same dog park every morning," Hendriksen says. "You can join an Ultimate Frisbee team. You can walk your kids to the bus stop every day and chat with the other parents. Or you can start something with repetition. Have a weekly viewing party for your favorite TV show, start a writer's group, start a new mom's playgroup or a boozy book club."

Really, whatever works for you as long as other people are involved.

3. Disclose, but don’t confess.

Imagine you're meeting someone for the first time. You ask them how they're doing, and they say "fine." There's not much to work with because the other person hasn't disclosed anything. What else is there to say?

Now imagine a different person. You ask them how they're doing and their response is one of sheer distress: "Nothing is going right in my life. Parking was hell, my job kills me, and I'm still not over my ex." I imagine your response to this diatribe wouldn't be particularly positive.

And why should it be? These are things you'd tell to a very close friend, not just someone you've met at your new book club.

This doesn't mean we can never say anything negative — after all, we all have bad days. But your goal is to keep the connection on even footing. Sharing a little bit about yourself is fine, but the goal is to lead to further conversation rather than a deep emotional connection right off the bat.

Why doesn't confession work? Because it's too much, too soon. The goal of confession can be to foster a sense of kinship, but when that strong emotional connection has new acquaintances wondering whether you're looking for a friend or a therapist, the relationship is already off balance. You can get closer, but give it time first.

"Don't let them see all of the mess right away," Hendriksen says, "but let them see a little peek at the mess. What do you do? How do you spend your time? What do you think about? What are you like? Where are you from? What's your story?"

She notes that disclosing things about yourself may feel weird and even "selfish" at first, but it's just because you’re not used to it. Keep trying.

movies, specific day, concrete timeline, new friends

Suggesting a specific activity is better than 'let's hang out sometime.'

Photo by Simon Ray on Unsplash

4. Don’t fear the follow-through.

All of this meeting new people and sharing interests is leading somewhere, right? You also want to make more lasting connections with some of your new acquaintances.

To do that, you must initiate a plan and then follow through.

Sometimes, you'll be lucky and someone will ask you to do something first. But most people are a little bit terrified about stepping outside their comfort zone. And that means making the plans and following through can be tricky — for everyone.

The key is to be specific. "Do you want to hang out sometime?" seems like a nice, safe question that gets to whether someone wants to spend more time together, but it doesn't work. Even if the person says yes, you have no concrete timeline in place. You've thrown the ball into their court and are now at the whim of their schedule.

"Do you want to go see a movie on Saturday?" for instance, or "do you want to take a hike with me on Sunday?" are both great options to feel out if someone's interested in a specific activity on a specific day. If they say yes, then you're good to go.

If they say no? Well, they might come up with an alternative activity.

5. Allow yourself to be anxious. And then go for it anyway.

We've all been there: Someone invites you to an event, and you get excited, but when the day of the event comes, you'd rather be doing anything else. After all, comfort zones are ... well, comfortable.

Although the urge to cancel may be strong, recognizing that these feelings are normal is the first step to overcoming them.

Your brain, Hendriksen says, comes up with worst-case scenarios — What if you say something foolish? What if the other person is only doing it to be nice? What if you have nothing in common? — to keep you safe. "But really, it's a false alarm."

Remember when you were terrified about that presentation in class or that important meeting you were leading at work? Did it end up going OK, even if it was hard? Then why shouldn't this? After all, if you don't try, you'll never be ready.

Though most of us would rather, as Hendriksen says, cocoon ourselves away and hope that we'll emerge as beautiful social butterflies, the truth is that experience is the only way we can get there. So keep moving forward. You just have to take the first step.

This article originally appeared on 07.05.18

From Your Site Articles
advice
Family

These 3 stories show how we're subconsciously teaching children to be fatphobic.

I was The Fat Girl™ growing up.

Nearly every school and class has one because fatphobia is about normalizing hierarchy and social control. No matter what the relative weight or size spread of the group, there's always a biggest kid.

Recently I was talking to a group of teenage girls for their high school's Women of Color Speakers Series. I talked a lot about what it was like being TFG.

Fatphobia shows up in a lot of different ways, and those ways change over a person's lifetime. Most people only think of stigma as the "moment of impact" — the moment when one person treats another person in a cruel or violent way because of who they are. But stigma is never just those moments; it can happen without the conscious intent of another person and can often seem harmless.

Children in particular are encouraged to assimilate into our ways of knowing and doing, which aren't always awesome — especially when it comes to fatphobia.

Here are some examples of fatphobia that occur in childhood to help illuminate the nuance of it:

1. Exclusively casting fat children as elders, foils, or villains in plays and productions.

Every fall from age 5 to 12, it came time to rehearse the Christmas play at my Pentecostal church. Each year, the plot was a little different but often included a beautiful girl, a boy hero, and a lesson about humility or the true meaning of Christmas. Every year, I, like most of my friends, really wanted a lead part. As hard as I tried, practiced, rehearsed, or memorized, I knew I wasn't the kind of kid who could ever be cast as a lead — because I was fat.

That didn't stop me from wishing, but each time it fell through, I kicked myself for having wanted something so unattainable.

The last time I was in the Christmas pageant, I was cast as Monica, a third-wheel loser who went around chasing the hottest boy in church as he barely tolerated my advances. I was proud of this role because, unlike previous years, I got several lines. For some reason, I was also dressed like a huge bell the entire time. I liked that I made people laugh, but I didn't have the intellectual tools to understand that they were laughing at the familiarity of the insulting trope.

When fat children are consistently cast as the same type of character, we are sending them (and everyone else) a message about what is possible, who deserves to be visible, what heroes (and villains) look like, and who is worthy of positive representation and outcomes.

2. Monitoring how fat children eat.

Science says that children are often hungry. They like the stuff they've seen popularized on television. They like sugar and starchy stuff because it's delicious but also because they're growing. As a child, I was on the receiving end of differential treatment in both directions — sometimes being encouraged to eat less than my smaller peers or being served twice or three times the amount of food without any indication from me that I wanted that.

It's important to recognize that no matter the size of a child, they have the right to have judgment-free eating experiences.

3. Asking fat children to ignore hateful language and behavior.

Children can understand notions like justice and community and are natural self-advocates.

We teach marginalized children to be disempowered. This is facilitated by adults' and peers' sense that certain types of anti-social behavior are normal. Because of our own cultural education, we don't see certain manifestations of sexism ("boys will be boys," especially if they're white boys), fatphobia, and ableism, for example, as a "big deal."

Furthermore, we are sometimes unknowingly committed to the hierarchies that are maintained through anti-social behavior because we see them play out in our own lives.

At school, it is the targeted child's job to self-resolve hateful language and behavior. This sets up the victim-blaming mentality that fat children carry into adulthood. It's never OK when someone targets someone because of their body size. Older children, peers, and adults can help develop easy-to-remember scripts and create communities of accountability where adults and teachers are not the only people capable of mediation or resolution.

There’s this belief that bigger children are more adult-like and can therefore withstand more emotionally or physically.

This is dehumanization and stigma, plain and simple. Childhood is not determined by how small or large a child is. Children — no matter what their size or what they've been taught about their size — deserve to be treated with care and responsibility, free from the stigma we grew up knowing.

This story originally appeared on Ravishly and is reprinted here with permission. More from Ravishly:

More

There’s a surprising science behind making friends, and this psychologist is teaching it.

True
UCLA Optimists

Imagine if someone jumped into your conversation at a party without an introduction, interrupting you mid-sentence.

That might strike you as odd or rude. But when we give someone the simple advice to "just go up and introduce yourself," we're skipping many of the nonverbal steps important to making a good impression.

For most, connecting with other people relies on intuition. However,social interactions of all sorts — from just saying "hello" to a new acquaintance to interviewing for a new job — can be challenging. For people with autism, it can be even more difficult to know how to strike up that first conversation.

Image via iStock.

That’s why UCLA psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson made it her mission to help.

Through her work at the Semel Institute and her work with Fred Frankel in 2005, she created a program that helps young adults with social challenges, such as those on the autism spectrum, make and keep friends by breaking down social interactions into easy-to-follow steps.

This program, called the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS), teaches them how tolisten, interact, and communicate with others.  

Photo from UCLA PEERS via AP.

"We want to teach to the way that [people with autism] think. What works? Concrete rules and steps," Laugeson explains.

Most people pick up on social cues, like body language and facial expressions, quite naturally. But many people with autism struggle with abstract thinking. Concrete communication works best for many, according to the Indiana Research Center for Autism.

That's why, Laugeson explains, the first step is actually about learning to listen before jumping in.

"The first step is that you’d watch the conversation and kind of listen to the conversation," she explains.

Image via iStock.

Some of us might use a prop, like a cellphone, to look distracted while listening to a conversation we’re thinking about joining. We’ll spend this time eavesdropping for a common interest.

Next, we might move closer to the conversation, waiting for a pause to jump in with something on topic. Of course, this process involves assessing whether the person or group is interested in talking to us.

Introductions usually don’t come until mid-conversation, Laugeson says. This is why "just go up and say hello" may not the best advice, especially for people who struggle to pick up on subtle cues.

There are social nuances that go beyond first interactions, too, and the curriculum at PEERS addresses many of them.

UCLA PEERS also teaches students how to deal with conflict and bullying, for example.

Individuals with autism are especially vulnerable to bullying. The Interactive Autism Network found in a study that 63% of children ages 6 to 15 with autism spectrum disorder have experienced bullying.

Image via iStock.

This is another area where neurotypical people may give ineffective advice. People usually suggest dealing with teasing in one of three ways: ignore the bully, walk away, or tell an adult. But these strategies don’t always work, Laugeson says.

"These responses often make it worse for the victim and not better," she explains.

During a bullying situation, a neurotypical person will usually respond with a short, dismissive comeback. A casual "whatever" or "Is that supposed to be funny?" can make the aggressor’s comments seem boring.

This is a great way to show the ability to stand up for one’s self while diffusing the situation and avoiding more confrontation. Laugeson teaches this tactic in PEERS to her students, helping them deal with teasing in a way others might naturally react.

Image via iStock.

These are just a few ways that PEERS helps students who struggle socially.

Since 2005, PEERS has expanded from UCLA to locations across the country and throughout the world.

The PEERS method can also help preschoolers, adolescents, and young adults with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and other socio-emotional problems too.

And it’s more accessible than ever, thanks to her book, "The Science of Making Friends," and an app called FriendMaker, which acts as a virtual coach for social situations and includes role-playing exercises for making and keeping friends.

Friendship is a critical part of mental health, though it’s easy to take this for granted.

This is why programs like UCLA PEERS are so important, particularly for individuals who can't easily navigate social situations.

According to the Mayo Clinic, friendships can boost happiness, encourage a healthy lifestyle, reduce stress, improve self-confidence, help in coping with trauma, and much more.

Laugeson teaching social skills at a PEERS group. Image from UCLA PEERS via AP.

Laugeson shared a story of a student who had been in and out of psychiatric units with a long history of mental health issues. The young man had tried many medications by the time he joined PEERS.

"This was a kid who had been highly medicated over the years. He came to me at graduation and he told me friendship was the best medicine for him," Laugeson recounted. "It absolutely can change a life to have a friend."

PEERS has helped numerous students like him, not only in making friends, but in attending college, getting jobs, and even embarking on romantic relationships.

For the past 12 years, the skills taught at PEERS have helped improve the lives of thousands of people all over the world. For a skill set that’s so rarely taught, it’s transformative to make the art of friendship a little more accessible for those who need it.

From Your Site Articles
Trending Stories