Convo With Mulan
Talked about a lot of interesting things. Recording this the day after, as suggested by Write Down Notes Immediately After Talks 202007112350
- We started the convo by talking about our friends and how it doesn’t feel like we have friends we can go to when we feel vulnerable or need help with something. Mulan mentioned that she feels like Hannah doesn’t cherish their relationship, which is why it feels hard to try to maintain the relationship with her. She also brought up the fact that both of us are vulnerable in a closed way in our relationships. We don’t like people who are outwardly emotional and deal with their emotions in a not calm way. Mulan also mentioned that she has attracted a bunch of people who are all independent enough to have their social circles and don’t feel like they are dependent on you because that’s what she admires in people. However, because of this, she doesn’t feel like she has a tight social group that she can depend on and is not dealing with the repercussions of this. I mentioned that it’s essential to know that you have friends who care about or think about you, even when you’re not saying anything to them. It’s a bit of a selfish way of looking at it (what are they doing for me), but I think it does give you a sense of the people who genuinely care about you.
- Next, we talked about our respective relationships with our sisters. I started by saying that sometimes I don’t know how to communicate with her. Our communication styles are pretty different; I feel her communication style is mostly different from the rest of the family’s, and she doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it. This is weird because Mulan is just as emotionally sensitive, and when she gets vulnerable, she talks about her emotions openly (which is what I feel like I don’t know how to respond to the best). However, Mulan brought up that for Mulan, I can sort of get away with not responding the best because she knows me and all of our shared history, but for Trisha, I need to enter that vulnerability zone and try to respond appropriately, which is difficult for me. For Mulan, I had a lot of shared context with her that made it easier for me to help her when she needed it, but for Trisha, I don’t have that shared context, which means that I have to try to talk to her just based on what I know about her and my own convo responding skills, which becomes difficult for me. Another big issue for me when talking to her is the fact that I used to always talk to her in Hindi, and talking to her in an American accent feels weird for some reason. But I feel like we both really grew into ourselves when talking with our friends in an American accent, so talking to her in an Indian accent feels like we’re not actually talking with the most open, confident versions of ourselves. I initially thought this was kind of stupid, but mulan said she’s felt something similar with her sister. The fact that she was able to talk to my sister with a fresh start made it so that it was a lot easier to talk to her as an adult, and probably when I talk to Lilian it’ll the be same way, and be easier for me.
- Finally, Mulan asked why it seems like she’s the “Khattar family whisperer” and, in general, why it’s so seemingly easy for people to be vulnerable with her. I mentioned that I think there are multiple reasons:
- she’s an excellent listener
- she’s very empathetic
- she’s very insightful
- extremely important - she doesn’t interrupt you when you’re talking 202212311202. She gives you the space to finish what you’re saying. I think I’m also pretty good at this, and in general, we realized this is an extremely underrated skill. Both of us wish that we had more friend that were like this, but for me at least, I realized that I should really treasure the ones that are like this.
- Hannah is like this at times, other times she’s not. Both Arjun and Japjot are not like this, unfortunately.
uid: 202212310158 tags: #relationships #talks