Zoning out is rude, insensitive, and frankly detrimental to your own health. The human sub conscious is scary, and carries on functioning even when your brain has decided to switch off. Like right now, I just zoned out while typing this sentence, but some part of my brain knew I had to google the word detrimental to make sure it existed and was not something I had made up, like I often do in Word With Friends which is why my mother has stopped playing with me. So I zoned out and googled the word health instead, and I have since confirmed both the words detrimental and health exist. Good progress today, word-wise.
I zone out a lot, which is not very good because I also talk a lot, which means I think a lot about a lot of things, which means I am not the best listener sometimes. I do admit when people are talking to me I horribly start thinking about the next thing I am going to say mid conversation, and end up missing out on what the person just said. I had adopted the nasty habit of interrupting my friends' stories by giving them a patronizing smile and gently saying, "Shh, Anoushka is talking now!" which has caused some difficulties in the past. As a result, I have been making a conscious effort to not talk as much and try to listen more, which means when I do talk now, my stories are strange and ill received by the general public, because I have somehow forgotten how to make conversation. Here is a classic example of how I have been telling stories recently:
Me: "Hey, remember that one thing I vaguely mentioned three weeks ago that I saw that time in that place?"
Pal: ????? "Okay."
Me: "I saw it again today."
Pal: "Oh."
Me: "Indeed."
The 'stories' usually end in an awkward silence and then I start apologising for telling a bad story and making things awkward which makes thing even more awkward and is followed by further silence. I don't understand why I am like this but I am working on it.
Other side-effects of zoning out include me saying 'yes' to a lot of things. This is not always bad; what is life without a little risk and adventure and being open to new experiences? Although it becomes a bit of a problem when the person who is talking to me isn't asking me a yes or no question, or if I blankly say 'yes' without any context whatsoever. Last week my friend told me to message our other friend to tell her we had reached her place, and I responded by looking into the far off distance with a faint smile on my face and just said yes very quietly, because I was probably thinking about something else by that point, which alarmed my friend a great deal. All in all, it just makes the people around me question my sanity and logical skills.
Like the whole horse therapy thing. Damn the whole horse therapy thing.
I am a psychology-economics major which basically means I spend 87% of my time worrying if I'll be able to cope with honours next year/what I'll do after uni (and the other 13% sobbing). I am pretty sure I want to be a counsellor but when I was 14 I was pretty sure I wanted to be a badminton player by day and rogue-singer-slash-rockstar by night, so who knows what my sinful heart will want in two years time. My course friend, who loves horses (and has like 27 billion of them), and I were discussing what we think we'll do once uni ends, and she mentioned something called 'Equine Therapy', more commonly known as horse therapy. My friend was talking about getting into this, but the only words I caught were 'horse therapy', and unfortunately I must admit my mind drifted off just a little bit the first time my friend actually explained what this therapy is about. She talked about it a lot subsequently, and I listened with great attention, because even I'm not mean enough to not listen when my friend is genuinely talking about something she cares about, albeit I didn't quite understand what it was she cared about. It did seem really interesting, even though I didn't exactly remember what horse therapy was. My simple minded brain assured me that it was probably therapy for horses, right? HORSE + THERAPY = THERAPY FOR HORSEYS????? Here is an accurate visual representation of how my brain probably processed the information:
So I naturally assumed my friend wanted to counsel horses. I imagined a horse lying on a couch neighing about his or her problems, while my friend patiently listened. My eyes filled with tears and my heart swelled with love. I finally decided to speak up and let her know how proud I was of her. I told her, "I am proud of you. Helping depressed horses is a very noble path." I further went on to ask exactly why the horses felt depressed. Interesting, isn't it, I continued, we are so wrapped up in our own problems we forget about the fact that horses can also feel depressed. I wanted her to know she had my full support with regard to equine therapy, i.e. therapy where the patients are horses. She calmly listened to me ramble on about depressed horses before gently asking me if I know what equine therapy was. I admittedly felt a stab of pain at this blatant accusation, before she changed my life:
"Anoushka, you do know equine therapy isn't for the horse, right?"
TL;DR: Horse therapy isn't for horses. It is for human patients. The human interacts with horses. The horse isn't depressed. Probably (unconfirmed).
I zone out a lot, which is not very good because I also talk a lot, which means I think a lot about a lot of things, which means I am not the best listener sometimes. I do admit when people are talking to me I horribly start thinking about the next thing I am going to say mid conversation, and end up missing out on what the person just said. I had adopted the nasty habit of interrupting my friends' stories by giving them a patronizing smile and gently saying, "Shh, Anoushka is talking now!" which has caused some difficulties in the past. As a result, I have been making a conscious effort to not talk as much and try to listen more, which means when I do talk now, my stories are strange and ill received by the general public, because I have somehow forgotten how to make conversation. Here is a classic example of how I have been telling stories recently:
Me: "Hey, remember that one thing I vaguely mentioned three weeks ago that I saw that time in that place?"
Pal: ????? "Okay."
Me: "I saw it again today."
Pal: "Oh."
Me: "Indeed."
The 'stories' usually end in an awkward silence and then I start apologising for telling a bad story and making things awkward which makes thing even more awkward and is followed by further silence. I don't understand why I am like this but I am working on it.
Other side-effects of zoning out include me saying 'yes' to a lot of things. This is not always bad; what is life without a little risk and adventure and being open to new experiences? Although it becomes a bit of a problem when the person who is talking to me isn't asking me a yes or no question, or if I blankly say 'yes' without any context whatsoever. Last week my friend told me to message our other friend to tell her we had reached her place, and I responded by looking into the far off distance with a faint smile on my face and just said yes very quietly, because I was probably thinking about something else by that point, which alarmed my friend a great deal. All in all, it just makes the people around me question my sanity and logical skills.
Like the whole horse therapy thing. Damn the whole horse therapy thing.
I am a psychology-economics major which basically means I spend 87% of my time worrying if I'll be able to cope with honours next year/what I'll do after uni (and the other 13% sobbing). I am pretty sure I want to be a counsellor but when I was 14 I was pretty sure I wanted to be a badminton player by day and rogue-singer-slash-rockstar by night, so who knows what my sinful heart will want in two years time. My course friend, who loves horses (and has like 27 billion of them), and I were discussing what we think we'll do once uni ends, and she mentioned something called 'Equine Therapy', more commonly known as horse therapy. My friend was talking about getting into this, but the only words I caught were 'horse therapy', and unfortunately I must admit my mind drifted off just a little bit the first time my friend actually explained what this therapy is about. She talked about it a lot subsequently, and I listened with great attention, because even I'm not mean enough to not listen when my friend is genuinely talking about something she cares about, albeit I didn't quite understand what it was she cared about. It did seem really interesting, even though I didn't exactly remember what horse therapy was. My simple minded brain assured me that it was probably therapy for horses, right? HORSE + THERAPY = THERAPY FOR HORSEYS????? Here is an accurate visual representation of how my brain probably processed the information:
So I naturally assumed my friend wanted to counsel horses. I imagined a horse lying on a couch neighing about his or her problems, while my friend patiently listened. My eyes filled with tears and my heart swelled with love. I finally decided to speak up and let her know how proud I was of her. I told her, "I am proud of you. Helping depressed horses is a very noble path." I further went on to ask exactly why the horses felt depressed. Interesting, isn't it, I continued, we are so wrapped up in our own problems we forget about the fact that horses can also feel depressed. I wanted her to know she had my full support with regard to equine therapy, i.e. therapy where the patients are horses. She calmly listened to me ramble on about depressed horses before gently asking me if I know what equine therapy was. I admittedly felt a stab of pain at this blatant accusation, before she changed my life:
"Anoushka, you do know equine therapy isn't for the horse, right?"
TL;DR: Horse therapy isn't for horses. It is for human patients. The human interacts with horses. The horse isn't depressed. Probably (unconfirmed).
