I Dont Hate You how I chose to express empathy instead
[Applause]
so
i’ve noticed that i’ve miscommunicated
with
a lot of people in my life
and i realized that that was unfair to
them and unfair to me
hi i’m damian gold and i’ve been through
a lot of really bad friendships
and today i want to talk about
my story of communication in hopes that
i inspire
empathy or a new sense of communication
in someone else
so to set the stage for who i was
more than a year ago i was very
assertive
as a person i enforced a lot of
boundaries
that kind of kept a wall around me and
kept me closed off from the outside
world
i would go so far as to say that i was
aggressive
even i was the one who would dominate
group projects
i would shut down anybody who disagreed
with me with no hesitation
and i never left room for my ideas to
not be heard
uh i was also the one that had
expectations for people
i never said anything about them i had a
friend in
recent years who never made plans to go
out and see anybody
but i expected them to and i never said
that
out loud but i got mad when they didn’t
make plans with me
and it was frustrating because i felt
like i wasn’t being understood
and it was frustrating on their end
because i wasn’t saying anything about
it i never got to sit down
and have a conversation where we reached
an agreement or mutual understanding
about things as simple setting
plans and i would also be the person who
perceived everything
as an attack and i think that that came
from a fear
of not being an established person in my
social surroundings
i was scared that if i did something
wrong that i was a bad person
i was wrong and i would never fit in so
i would take things like criticism
as an attack on my character as
disrespect
and i would i would perceive everything
as a personal
vendetta against damian so i didn’t get
text back after a couple of days from
one of my friends and i would think that
i was being ignored
these interactions shaped how
people viewed me and i still live
through the repercussions of the the
myth of
aggressive demon gold today
people have told me that i am a control
freak i’m
aggressive and it it’s all based on
me coming off aggressively and asserting
myself so
after a lot of failed friendships i
realized that i was the common
denominator
in all of them and i should reassess how
i’m interacting with people
and over time i also had a growing need
to be
understood because i felt like since i
wasn’t communicating
properly no one understood who i was and
what i wanted
and what i was feeling and these two
reasons really motivated me to set out
to learn
about healthy friendships and
communication and empathy
so i’m late to the party so what am i
doing
now to communicate better
with the people around me i expanded my
language to include a sense of self so i
started talking about my feelings and
needs more
marshall b rosenberg a psychologist who
wrote the book
nonviolent communication a way of life
outlines
four main things that we should be
communicating with the people around us
and that is
non-judgmental observations feelings
our needs and a request that would
enrich our lives and that looks like an
i statement so
i feel blank when blank happens because
i need blank
i would like blank in the future using
this
framework really helped me to connect
with other people about what i was
feeling
and needing so for example with the
friend that i discussed previously i
could have
and said sat with them and said i feel
lonely when you don’t respond to my text
after a couple of days
because i’m really needing communication
with the people around me
and i would like us to talk more often
over the phone or via text
i also expanded
my ability to listen to other people’s
feelings and needs and that really just
looks like asking people what they’re
feeling and asking what they’re needing
so i could have said are you feeling
frustrated
when i don’t communicate properly about
my expectations because
you’re needing communication also
another thing that i did that really
improved my friendships over time was
trusting
in myself and having faith in myself
so i was really scared of being
vulnerable of being hurt
and i think that not only did i throw
preemptive strikes at people because of
that
it also made me scared of communicating
because i thought that i would be
betrayed
if i showed a sign of vulnerability or
weakness
but i i’ll never know if someone’s going
to betray me that’s an uncertainty that
i have to accept
in life i just like i’ll never know i
wake up tomorrow or i’ll never know
if i’ll never know anything in like the
next year
it’s all uncertain and not set and sewn
yet
but what i do know for certain is that
i’m trying my best today
to communicate and to show empathy
and to listen out for others and
i can trust that i’ll be okay no matter
what happens because i’m learning tools
to love myself and accept myself
and accept the world of uncertainty
around me so
where has this gotten me um
i am in a better state
mentally i would say that grounding
myself
in the present and being able to
accept what i can and cannot control
has been really beneficial
to my mental health i was able to
rekindle a lot of the friendships
in the past where i’ve hurt somebody by
not being able to communicate properly
and that makes me the happiest person in
the world right now
um and i’m also able to understand
people who aren’t my friends
it helps in situations where i have a
shared responsibility with my peers
like in group projects i’m a better
communicator
to my teachers my family
so these skills aren’t limited to
friendship
they’re pretty universal
another way that this has improved me is
i’m able to
[Music]
i’m able to connect with people who i
don’t know yet and under like
i’m able to understand
where people of different backgrounds
are coming from because
if i if i can have that empathy for
people around me and understand
how situations can cause complex
feelings and needs for other people
i can totally see how situations i’ve
never heard
of the situations i’ll never experience
can cause stress
or anxiety or frustration for people
who live across the world and it’s
helped me become
a better person at least in
understanding global conflict
in creating this ted talk speech
i realized that a lot of the team
thought i hated them and so they were
very
unsure about putting me in a speaker
position
and i realized that there are probably
more people
who were affected by my lack of good
communication and so
to those people and to the team i’m
sorry
um i’ve been working on
being a better communicator and
understanding really understanding other
people’s feelings and needs as well as
talking about my own
and making sure that the end goal of
conflict resolution for me
has been meeting both of our like
everybody’s needs
and i’m really excited to have
accomplished that
and to be able to get stand up here
today and talk about my story because i
hope that it inspires a new sense of
global awareness or awareness of other
people’s
like complex realities
and an understanding of self too and and
the trusting of self
for the first time in the longest time
i’m able to look at people like people
both figuratively and literally by
learning how to communicate better
i’m more confident in myself i can make
more eye contact with people and so i’m
literally seeing people’s faces for the
first time
and i’m also seeing people as more
complex
than i think i myopically thought they
were in the beginning
i’m seeing that they have their own life
stories and their own complex
needs and feelings and being able to
understand that
has really not like has really just
improved my
friendships and so i hope that
if anyone out there is anyone like me
and that they
were scared of communicating before i i
hope that i
inspire somebody to step out of that
cycle
and start talking about
your feelings and needs and listen for
others because
i can honestly say that i’m so much
happier in
my interactions with people now i’ve
started doing that
thank you that’s all i have