Answer to T's 1st question

as I've already mentioned somewhere, just before my T's holidays I got an e-mail from her, which I could read over and over again and which was supposed to "calm me down and keep me connected"... As this e-mail consisted only of many questions, it just made me anxious... In addition, all these questions were "only rhetorical questions for your use"... As, I don't find them very rhetorical, I thought that maybe I could post here my answers to each of them every Tuesday when I normally have a session... I guess, at the end, I'll print my posts and bring them to the next session...

All comments are of course welcome and as the first question is about emojis, maybe you know why you use them or hate using them? Or if you have any extraordinary way to communicate your "inner world" to your T if you work on it?

PS. Has anyone an idea what "J" at the end of these T's questions might mean? This letter is quite far away from the question mark on the keyboard...

T's questions for today:
"Will you let me see the smileys that you used in some Emails? Is it a special program that I have to open on my PC?
I am wondering what you were showing me in these little pictures? Maybe we could use them to communicate with the inner world???? J"

My answer:
"As I have already mentioned, I just copied a part of my own post from the online forum which I use into the e-mail addressed to you. That's why you didn't see the smileys and I didn't use any specific software to create them. However, I do not use the smileys to let you know (or someone else) about something which I cannot put into words, so I am not sure how it could work for communicating my "inner world" (yes, I still hate this phrase). I use smileys in writing because I am aware that when people talk in person, we look also at the body language, we can hear the tone and feel the atmosphere, while in writing it is more difficult to catch if something is serious or just a joke, so we have to be much more precised in writing than in talking. When I use smileys is just to give you (or others) the sign that I am not very serious or that I am really serious, for instance I could write the same sentence:

"We didn't have a session today"
"We didn't have a session today "
"We didn't have a session today "
"We didn't have a session today "

And this one sentence with different smileys can mean something completely different, so I use them in order to avoid misunderstandings and to make clear that you will understand what I really mean "

If she is using Outlook to send email, and you're receiving it in Gmail or something like that, the "J" sometimes comes through in text instead of as a Smiley. Her "J" looked like a smiliey on her end.

Your explanation agrees with what most people would say, according to an extensive body of research. (I used to do research on online communication, not specifically on emoticons, but since those tend to crop up in many different kinds of online communication there's a lot of research on it, so I have read quite a bit about the subject.)

As for the "J", that usually means that the sender used a smiley in MS Outlook. The proprietary format used by Microsoft doesn't translate to other email software, so Outlook smileys are translated to a "J".

Yes, I agree that my explanation is probably quite common
As you've read quite a bit about this topics do you maybe remember other explanations? I know that emoticons are pretty annoying for some people but I still didn't find a better way to express myself clearly (especially taking into consideration my poor English )...

oooooh i'm so glad someone asked about the J. i've known it was an outlook quirk but i was never able to figure out what that quirk was. i probably could have googled it but i usually forgot three seconds after i closed the email

sounds like this might be a good exercise for you!

How I feel about about them: I don't use them, I rarely know what they stand for, and to me they interfere with the flow of words. The blinky kind irritate me more because they are also disrupting. If I think I am being unclear, I simply write it. For example I would simply write to the therapist-" I am being serious here" Or "I feel frustrated and angry with your wily ways."

I'm glad that you posted here. I think, somewhere I've read that you are not the biggest fan of emoticons so I actually try to avoid them in responses to your posts (I guess that's when I realize how often I actually want to use them).

But last time when I wrote something silly about you being a spy who learns all Ts' tricks to be able to teach afterwards your students about them, I would normally add an emoticon "" to be sure that you'd know that I'm just kidding and not thinking that you are a terrible person who just fakes the whole therapy to be able to use it against all Ts or whatever (we never know how crazy one's thinking might be). Instead, I just had to add one sentence that I didn't want to offend you anyhow, which actually I also find a bit ridiculous as I imagine that you can get my weird sense of humor and might find it weird that I explain everything - I'm over-analyzing, huh?

Thus, could you let me know, if I should add this one sentence whenever I'm kidding, you would prefer if I'm not kidding with respect to your person/posts or can I assume that you already know that my sense of humor might be "extraordinary" to not say it poor?

I understood you. When I want to make sure I am not misunderstood - I add (I am kidding) at the end. Sometimes I check "are you playing with me?"
Kidding is good.

In many cases, the emoticon/emoji/smiley is marked - it is not the default, it stands out in some way. (Wikipedia's article "Markedness" gives a reasonably good overview of what "marked" means here.) But in some cases, use of emoticon is almost formalised - in certain groups of people, certain online communities, not using a smiley or other emoticon is a bit like not saying "please" or "thank you". So in those contexts, the absence of the emoticon is marked, like when I ordered a cup of tea in Paris a couple of weeks ago, and I was so preoccuppied with how to pronounce the word for "tea" in French that I forgot the "s'il vous plait", and the barrista gave me a brief lecture in politeness. I think this contrast between perceiving the smiley as marked, or seeing its absence as marked, is at heart of a lot of misunderstandings over emoticon usage, and a lot of the irritation.

I would guess that since your T used a smiley in her email, she would not be bothered or annoyed by your emoticons, and I think your explanation is perfectly fine. Different people use emojis for different reasons, even though there are some general trends (and it's those trends that researchers can investigate).

Btw, one reason why some people use "lol" and similar abbreviations instead of emoticons is the fact that the emoticons have become so commonplace as to lose some of their meaning. (That is one reason - there are other reasons as well.)

Hmm, I think I had another thought about this as well when I started writing, but it's fallen out of my brain - I'll get back to you if it comes back to me.

Thank you, it was very interesting to read your post and I'm looking forward to reading more about your thoughts concerning this topic