16 Jul 2011, 9:54 pm
16 Jul 2011, 10:52 pm
Yeah. I'm like this to an extreme, in that if me and another person are alone in a quiet room and they're trying to tell me something I hear nothing and only hearthe musicality oftheir voice and see their face, what their eyes are doing, the expressions they make, the color of their eyes, anything but what they're saying.
If I am not talking one-on-one and instead observing silently as part of a large audience I don't have this deer-in-the-headlights feeling quite so much and it is possible for me to pay attention then but only if I concentrate. I have to feel that whatever they're saying is the most important thing in the world, like it's going to help me on my ultimate quest of discovering the meaning of life, so I just have the philosophy that everything that happens gives you new insight into the meaning of life, including people talking at length, and sometimes this helps me focus.
Dogs barking are impossible for me to ignore though. I don't know how to help you on that. Well I do but I don't like the idea. You can "turn off" your empathy for the dog and make yourself not care about why the dog might be barking and if it's in some sort of discomfort but I've done it a few times and it's soul-destroying. I don't want to be someone who thinks potential dog abuse (however slight) is none of my business, or who buys into the notion that dogs belong to people and aren't the concern of anyone they don't belong to. Ownership is imaginary and ownership of another being is just absurd. So I don't recommend becoming cold to the barking of dogs. It doesn't happen often enough for me anyway for it to be a major distraction from things I do.
That's the best advice I can offer! Sorry, it's pretty bad as advice goes! 
16 Jul 2011, 11:34 pm
Tamsin
Deinonychus
Joined: 18 Jun 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 308
Location: Somewhere over the rainbow
18 Jul 2011, 6:02 am
