Today's Human Relations exercise was about nonverbal communication. We centered on touch as a nonverbal communication and took a little test. I wasn't happy with the way a couple of the questions were worded. One of them stated "I am comfortable putting my arm around same sex friends." The answer options were Strongly Agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. I'm not comfortable putting my arm around anyone, that's just not what I do. So this raised my "same sex touch avoidance" score.
I'm uncomfortable with any touch from any person unless they're a close friend. Even then, I'm still learning to accept "good touches". I have major personal space issues that have nothing to do with societal conditioning and everything to do with a lot of "bad touches" growing up.
I think what annoys me about the exercise we did today was being put in someone else's box and having my behaviors defined by someone else's terms. One thing I did learn from this assignment is that there is no one catch-all label for everyone. Keep an open mind.
