Where To Start

Dear Tony,

To start, work on one thing. Only one.

Look at yourself honestly and figure out something you can do. It may not be what you most need. I need to emphasize that: Start with what you can do, not what you most need.

For me, I needed to learn to communicate. For most of my life I could not express myself in a way that people could understand. I could not figure out the rhythms. I would explain too little, and people would misunderstand. I would say too much, and people would not be able to follow along. To converse, you need to tailor what you say to the other person. You need to follow cues about what s/he is thinking and feeling. All of that was way ahead of me. Like many people with mental illness, I had difficulty making friends. Even more important, more than once I was seriously harrassed and could not report it because I could not communicate.

To improve my communication skills I needed to focus on just putting my thoughts into words. Only that. Not eye contact. Not my volume or tone of voice. Not my body language. I needed to go back and work on the basics of communication.

That was the only thing that worked for me. After a while I was able to work on eye contact and my other issues. It took a while to reach that point. But I did learn to communicate better.