Yeah I am married to an autistic person and they think that they are being explicit and clear but are absolutely not. It harms their relationships all over the place and they are constantly thinking less of other people over it.
When you have this problem communicating with everyone, you’re the problem.
Yeah it’s super easy (autistic or not) to think you’re being very clear when you have the full idea in your head, but you’re actually not. It’s like if you’re trying to describe a purple elephant and say “the thing that moves around and is purple and has a trunk”. Those words clearly describe a purple elephant if you already have the concept at the forefront of your mind, but for somebody without a purple elephant in mind, you could just as well be describing a purple car or a guy from the purple equivalent of the blue man group carrying around a big chest of clothes or a purple tree that can move around.
You’ve just described the entire language of Toki Pona. The same string of words can mean “bear” or “elephant”, and I copied a phrase someone used to mean “tiger trap” and it was read as “bamboo arch”.
You should look up the double empathy problem. Its been shown that autistic people don’t struggle to communicate or be understood by other autistic people. Its only between autistic and non autistic people where the issues arise but only one side gets all the blame when the failure is both ways.
If non-autistic people are constantly misunderstanding autistic people maybe there should be some meeting in the middle instead of broadly declaring neurodivergent people to be the problem.
They did not in any way “declare neuro divergent people to be the problem.”
If you go around your day and are constantly being misheard, it’s more likely that you’re mumbling than it is that every other person just has bad hearing.
Their comments are making broad statements about autistic people and putting the onus of understanding solely on them, when communication is a two way street.
“Everyone” doesn’t have trouble understanding autistic people; other autistic people are more able to socialize with autistic people than neurotypical people are. Being a minority just means the people who are able to socialize well with autistic people are outnumbered by people who can’t/don’t/won’t.
Wow thank you for sharing. That’s a great starting resource
Removed by mod
I don’t have a horse in this race, but this is untrue really, majority does not imply correctness, occam’s razor just does not apply to hundreds of individuals with their own possibly independent complex motivations and circumstances. There are plenty of things most people are just wrong about and a select few are correct about etc.
Sounds like the person you’re married to is kind of a dick, honestly. Thinking less of other people for not understanding your own unclear language just shows a massive lack of introspection. As a local autism, though, I definitely disagree with the last point, as a significant difference between someone who has autism and someone who doesn’t is that language is understood differently (I would know), and that means you can both understand and be understood incorrectly very easily. This post is kind of deliberately divisive anyway, but I believe the point of saying something and being misunderstood, despite your best efforts (hopefully), still stands.
Isn’t that what the meme is saying but from the perspective of what it’s like to experience autism
When you have this problem communicating with everyone, you’re the problem.
Not really, when you’re in the minority of course you’re going to be outnumbered. But autistic people tend to have an easy time getting their point across to each other, compared to neurotypicals trying to have a mutual understanding. Neurotypicals tend to be very performative in conversation and don’t really say things they actually intend to contribute to the conversation half the time (small talk is a form of this that has gone way too far). They’re also usually evasive & implicitness-oriented, the cultural nuances/expectations/perceptions of the “right” and “wrong” way to convey something tend to get in the way of understanding very straightforward and mostly objective things. They’re generally pretty condescending when you don’t converse how they expect you to, and they judge a lot about your character, emotions, intentions, etc. based on how you speak, and will speak to you very differently based on outside factors. You can take 100 almost-strangers, and neurotypicals will speak in noticeably different ways with different amounts of honesty and indirection for each person in the otherwise same context.
Instead of just saying what they mean and listening to what you say, they throw in a bunch of random culture-dependent social cues and context irrelevant to the conversation that you’re supposed to subconsciously/naturally pick up on to interpret their speech in a different way. And you’re basically just supposed to guess whether something is socially significant indirection or not.
Neurotypicals basically just have the urge make simple conversation unnecessarily complex and care a lot about invisible or implied stuff affecting the conversation. It’s not their fault of course, they were just born that way.
I don’t have ASD but I can’t keep count of the amount of times I will say something very plainly and the other person will try to find some hidden meaning in it or make egregious misinterpretations/false dichotomies based on a statement (basically the “i like pancakes” “so you hate waffles”? tweet), so I can relate. Autistic people are usually far more direct in conversations in my experience, and don’t use nearly as much fluff/unnecessary performative conversation. Of course that’s not to say Autistic people are just flat out better socially than neurotypicals, there are many things I personally find difficult to understand about friends with ASD that can make conversation hard (mainly people who have both ASD and ADHD though, not a fun combo for having conversations, getting ultra-fixated on random irrelevant stuff and just flat out omitting important things frequently even worse than neurotypicals do), it’s just that they’re usually very straightforward.
how’s this thing having so many upvotes when it clearly demonizes neurodivergent people from a generalized statement from a specific case?
*explains concept normally*
“Why are you being so vague?”
*explains concept thoroughly and precisely*
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot!”Oh my fucking god, this. Why are people like this?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about”
to
“Why are you mansplaining??” In 6 seconds…
People can, and will be dicks, who get embarrassed about not understanding shit and try to find blame elsewhere for their embarrassment.
Still, there is an important skill when teaching someone something, of understanding approximately how much they know, and telling them approximately the parts they don’t, leaving them to ask you questions to fill the gaps afterwards. Makes teaching really fast when done right.
Well now you tell me… ;)
Not to get meta, but I don’t understand the implied joke 🙃
I had something like this when I was working retail during the pandemic.
Customer: Why are you wearing a mask???
M: It’s policy. And I like having my face covered because I’m trans.
C: *visibly confused* …what? Nobody else is wearing one.
M: Right, but I’m trans, so I like having the masculine parts of my face obscured by a mask.
C: …wha- I don’t care!?
##then why did you ask 🙂
I always try to ask people if they’re familiar with X. Then, if they lie to me, they can only come clean or nod along
Or if I really want to talk about the topic, I ask how much they know about X
Also the “I think A”
“Oh so you think B?”
…no?
Had a whole argument once about capitalism v/s socialism only because I stated that, while neither is desireable, if I HAD to choose, I would rather live in the States than in Russia. Somehow that must have meant that I love the US and it is doing nothing wrong in my view but they are wrong because capitalism etc etc and I was just standing there like “…I literally did NOT say anything to do with that.” And then they had the gall to claim that I am the one blowing up arguments. Yeah right.
I had a lot of that interaction with my mother before I figured out her algorithm. She’d ask about her cooking, “do you prefer food-A or food-B?” and if I gave a straight answer, I wouldn’t see the other option for years. Then when someone brought it up later, she’d go “I thought you didn’t like it”.
Later on I learned to explain my preference as a ratio between A and B. I know she meant well, but bless her heart, she’s neurotypical.
“How dare you teach me things against my will.”
Explicit meaning gang.
All my homies hate the astral hidden meaning shenanigans gang.
I still have difficulty accepting this concept from time to time. It’s a real relationship issue, I’m talking in the bedroom. I’m trying to be a gentleman and my wife is telling me please just be straightforward and boring. Be literal. Do not be suggestive. Do not imply. I don’t want to imagine I don’t want creativity. Now, every relationship is different, but I can’t help but feel it unceremonious when she uses the example of ordering at a drive-through as her ideal vision for how the evening should go.
Makes me a bit paranoid but does genuinely seem to be what makes her happy in our case.
spoiler
asdfasfasfasfas
Which, funny enough, is exactly what she doesn’t want to do 😄
Given how she wants direct and straight forward communication, he should probably ask her instead of making any inference in this case.
If just telling her what you want isn’t enough for you to feel like you’re communicating effectively, try asking her if you could add to it by telling her how you want it, and then maybe expand to how you’re desiring to feel about it.
E.g. not just “I would like oral” but instead, “I would like oral, and I’d love to hear that you’re enjoying it, however you want to express it.” <- This is a request that is direct and specific but doesn’t feel robotic or unceremonious IMHO.
I have ASD and my wife doesn’t, so we’ve established that it often makes the most sense when we just explicitly just ask one another, “what can I do for you tonight?” Which leads to very specific answers about what we’re wanting to get out of it and how we can best achieve that together. “I’ve been thinking about you in this way” or “I’d like to know what it looks/feels/tastes/sounds like when you …” Followed by describing whatever action would best fulfill the desire, followed by any specifics and how we’re feeling about it now. “Now that we’ve talked about it I’m definitely excited to see that” and such.
Dunno if that’s helpful but there might be ways to make it feel more special while still being explicit and direct! Just talk about the how and why and how you feel about it.
Verbose gang 😎
Concise gang is where it’s at, 100% best top #1 gang. Why use many words when one word does the trick‽ The concise gang is the best gang.
This is, ironically, a very esoteric post.
SO: my head hurts
Me: (pick any1) Where in the head? Any reason why? Did you hit something? Anything that might have caused it so we can buy some medicine or I can cook you something or whatever?
SO: idk, it just hurts, imma lie down.SO: I’m cold, I’m gonna take a hot shower.
Me: have you tried wearing bulkier clothes? A blanket?
SO: no. takes the third shower of the day $$
Me (later that day or in another day): force them to wear more clothes and throw a blanket at them in their chair
SO: oh, this is nice uses the blanket every day nowMe: How was your day?
SO: Bad.
Me: Anything out of the ordinary that you want to share to share the pain?
SO: No, its just bad.
Me: Do you want to watch anything, eat anything special?
SO: imma lie down.Sorry but no, i know that they aren’t vague intentionally but they are not clear at all when expressing their needs.
If they don’t feel well, they might not want to answer comprehensive questions. Just reading that feels like an interrogation.
Of course that it seems an interrogation of you imagine me saying all those questions one after each other. That’s just how I phrased the question. The problem is that they simply used to not express their needs and wants before they got to the point where they just couldn’t do it. Mind you, this was way before they started going to therapy and they are getting way better at expressing their needs and wants now so that they don’t break down too often.
Nah how about y’all just explain yourselves when asked it’s very easy. /s
On a serious note, I have ADHD so if you ask me “what’s wrong” I could go on for hours, giving you a list of symptoms, root cause analysis, contributing historical factors, short term suggestions, future suggestions to avoid the state and bias analysis of my own analysis for hours and hours entirely off the cuff.
It’s so hard with people who can’t, my brain often defaults to the assumption that they are just NPCs who simply lack the level of constant self-evaluation and internal monologue (which constitutes the abstraction of soul to me) and I have to fight it. At any given time I know exactly how I feel, it’s very natural to me to assume others must do as well, or their feelings just aren’t as deep.
Sometimes they are too exhausted to express their emotions and it’s not worth it for them, so they’d rather just deal with it on their own
This wording bothers me. Friends / partners who think that it’s “not worth it” to tell a minimal amount of detail about what is wrong/what happened so that I can possibly provide help or compassion, stabs me in the heart. I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU DUMBASS NOW TALK SHAKES THEM VIOLENTLY
It not being worth it has nothing to do with you. It’s because of how hard it can be to speak sometimes. When you’re saying “just talk to me!” you might as well be saying “just juggle on a unicycle while pedaling up a mountain!” If the person in question already knows what needs to be done or there’s no way you can help, then having a conversation with you about it just becomes one more performance they’re expected to do before being allowed to be chill in their own space.
I dunno, I feel like this is a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ trap. “why don’t you ever support me” being at the other end, when I stop bothering you because you never want to elaborate on what’s going on.
Not that I have any experience with this or anything… grumbles under my breath about exs
That’s the real communication chasm, because for me - not talking is way way harder. When my S.O. isn’t open with me I assume they’re making a deliberate choice to withhold information to hurt me or appear strong. Either way they’re excluding me from their life, which means they’re ready to move on and don’t love me anymore.
A state of being in which you find it harder to talk than not to talk is so alien to me it’s beyond imagination anyone could exist in such a manner.
If it helps any I can try to describe what it’s like for me when I’m approaching meltdown territory and can’t speak easily:
My skin feels like it’s being electrocuted, with shocking/crawling sensations, especially in my limbs. It feels like I have to pull each thought and word out of molasses to form a coherent sentence, it’s slow and requires a lot of effort. The sound and sensation of my own voice reverberating in my head, even when I speak quietly, is so intense that I only want to use the minimum words possible. My entire body is heavily fatigued, as if I worked out very hard the day before and haven’t rested properly. That’s not even going into ‘normal’ masking stuff that also takes effort, like making sure my tone is right, using an appropriate expression, etc.
When I’m in that state the only thing that’s good for me is a dark room and a weighted blanket. After that (sometimes hours, sometimes a day or more) I’m good to talk about it… if there’s even anything to talk about! Sometimes it’s literally just “I heard too many car horns today” or something like that.
That sounds horrible!
Yeah, it’s pretty unfun! Masking (trying to act non-autistic) also makes it worse for a lot of people. Fortunately I’ve learned a lot of ways I can delay or deal with sensory overload, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.
I had to teach my girlfriend to stop asking so many questions when I’m upset. We made a game out of it so she could have fun learning it.
Sorry if I implied I asked all those questions at once. It’s more of a menu where I sometimes asked one or the other. My point was that they just communicated nothing once they broke down.
Alongside teaching them not to flood you with questions when you can’t deal with them, remember to communicate what you can to them before you break down so that they don’t feel helpless watching you break down without even being able to help or know what’s going on.
As I answered in other comments, this happened mostly before my SO got diagnosed and didn’t know how to deal with it, now with therapy we both deal better with it so I don’t flood them and they don’t leave me out of the loop of their needs and wants.
I’m perfectly capable of solving my own problems when I’m upset, I’m just not capable of communicating unless the stakes are serious. If the problem is a person, then I can dissociate and deal with the person as a threat while neglecting my own feelings. It’s toxic, but it gets the job done even when I want to go nonverbal. But I don’t want to treat my girlfriend like a threat and dissociate with her. That’s not right. And when she’s asking questions while I’m upset, the only way to answer them is to dissociate.
That’s the thing, communicating stuff before you become upset. For example, my SO used to come from work exausted and used to lie down in the sofa, slept until night, then maybe grabbed some dinner or just slept straight until the next morning. Sometimes we didn’t speak at all in 2 to 3 days because they woke up earlier than me, they then went to work in a hurry, no talking in work because work takes 200% of focus, and then come back home to their date with the sofa, and end up sleeping again before I finish my work.
Now we chat about our day at lunch even if we are not together and they vent about it whenever they can so that when they come back, I can make some time for them, and they also manage work stress way better than before so they don’t come back utterly exhausted every day. Learning that they could not work in the field they were working and live to tell the tale and taking the time to change fields with my support helped a lot too. The situation mentioned above was before they were diagnosed and they just bruteforced the workday in a super toxic way for them and those around them (me).
Why not just say what’s on your mind? Why disassociate instead of just chatting about it? How does disassociating deal with a thing instead of just postponing the issue until it’s talked about and your feelings are therefore addressed?
In those situations processing emotions, let alone finding the words to describe them, can be as difficult as imagining a new colour. It’s just not going to happen and trying to get them to open up will just build frustration/anger/anguish as they are unable to mentally deal with either their emotions or the questions.
Removed by mod
Because I’m literally on the edge of going nonverbal unless I dissociate. It’s called having a disability. Autism, to be precise. I can’t “just chat about it” any more than I can “just run a marathon” or “just beat up a mugger”. There’s people in the world who can do all three of those things, but they aren’t me.
I just want to understand the mechanics of it, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as telling a blind man to just see 😅
Like for example, what is non-verbal? How does that occur?
Nonverbal is when the cognitive effort required to form words into sentences is too much to bear. Conversation is effortful even for neurotypicals at the best of times. Have you ever had a thrilling 3 hour conversation about philosophy with a friend and felt exhausted afterwards? For autistic people, the baseline effort is higher, and complicating factors are worse . Which topics are a minefield? What are the other person’s triggers? What idioms don’t mean what they seem to mean? How much introspection do I need to do to answer a simple ‘how are you’? Why does everything sound so loud? Do I have to answer questions right now? What’s the answer? How do I find out???
When I’m having a meltdown, there is nothing left in the tank that I can remove without compromising my ability to do things like “exist in the presence of light bulbs” or “not be upset by the fact I have hair”. I can either go to the effort of finding answers for my girlfriend when I’m exhausted, or I can just barely manage to not want to kill myself to escape the pressures of existence. Because every second of my life, the task of being okay with existing in the real world does take effort. Not much, but sometimes it’s the only thing I have energy left to do. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to do it.
Honestly I’m not on the spectrum at all (that I know of) and your SO’s half of those exchanges sounds utterly exhausting.
Like, in their shoes, I’d probably just start sharing less and less about how I feel, especially when I’m not feeling well, specifically because I wouldn’t want to have to play 20 questions every time until you finally gave up on the analysis.
Like, I totally get that you’re just trying to help because you love them…but maybe you could simplify the process (and cut to the chase and give them some more agency) simply by saying something like “Ugh, I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. Is there anything I can do for you?”
That lets them express their own thoughts/feelings/desires without having to pass a gauntlet of questions.
Again, I totally get that you mean well (I end up on your side of this exchange whenever my own SO isn’t feeling well…you just want to fix it for them), but I’ve also learned by time and experience that often my best move is to offer help, and if the answer is just needing some time and quiet, I just tell my SO what I’ll be doing nearby (but not up in their business) and if they need anything at all, just let me know and I’m happy to help.
Is there anything I can do for you?
That’s usually on the menu of stuff that I said, and before they went to therapy it had no effect. You see, autistic people usually don’t express how they feel because they themselves don’t even realise it, and the only realise that they feel bad when they break down. My SO had to go to therapy to learn to identify cues and to learn how to express themselves a bit so that they could vent or ask for help before breaking down.
We’ve been together for a while so I usually know what they need or they tell me they feel bad way before breaking down, but let me tell you, it was a struggle early on sometimes. It’s hard to see someone you love struggling, but not doing anything to improve because they don’t realise they are hurting before it’s too late, day by day, week by week. We didn’t know they were on the spectrum either early in the relationship so… yeah.
I was just taking a jab to the meme because that tale of them expressing themselves correctly is not true at all. xD The amount of stuff my SO used to describe as “thing”, multiple times in the same sentence, and assume that I would understand what they meant because of the 5 mental leaps they did in their head that gave them and them only the context needed to know what those "things"s were, and since they understood that meant that I did, obviously… It was quite funny at times.
One person isn’t the whole. They may just want to vent and aren’t wanting solutions. While that may be frustrating to you, it can be just as frustrating to your SO to want to vent and get solutions they don’t want
Of course I’m just some rando online I don’t know your relationship. I have a BA in Human Communication and this is just one of the most common arguments that happens in relationships
And that’s okay, but that’s not what has been described here. Being the vent ear is cool too, the point where it gets frustrating is when their vent method is to just be completely exhausted and lie down in the sofa until tomorrow when they get exhausted again and repeat… I have to force down some healthier avenues for them to vent and prepare themselves so that they don’t get perma exhausted in work, it just takes some work and some guessing of what they need from my part, because they sure don’t communicate when tired.
Sometimes others aren’t looking to express their needs in order to find a solution to a problem… sometimes they just need to let those feelings out - they need to feel heard, and that’s plenty.
It’s hard to feel heard when all you communicate is “It hurts”, that doesn’t really qualify and venting or letting the feelings out.
It’s quite curious the amount of comments I’ve gotten about people telling me that they just wanting to vent, no shit. Venting usually means… talking, me putting the ear so the other person can talk and vent. I didn’t summarise what they said when they complained in my comment, that was literally it.
After going to therapy they have gotten much better at expressing their complaints so that they can let out their frustrations. The thing is, autistic people have a hard time knowing how they feel, so venting is actually hard for them, that’s why I was asking questions to help them identify why they felt how they felt and help them know which kind of emotions they should let out. Don’t worry, if I’m going overboard they have no issue in telling me to stop now. It’s been a long journey but after all this time, I usually end up telling them how they feel so they can vent because I do know them well after these years 😅.
my god this would drive me nuts. have you ever experienced pain?? why would your want to be bombarded with questions? give em a hug and leave be jeeeeez
I’d argue your SO might not be displaying neurotypical behavior.
Between 50-85% of autistic spectrum people (plus a significant portion of people with PTSD or depression) experience Alexithymia, or significant difficulty in recognizing and analyzing their emotional state.
When I’m feeling bad, my SO frequently assumes I’m withholding the reason from him in some sort of passive-aggressive mindgame, and I have to remind him that I barely know what my mood is, let alone what’s causing it.
I’m getting better at it, but it’s a lot of work and I still regularly mistake stomachaches for anxiety.
I wrote basically this in another comment, they had a hard time recognising their emotional state and held until bursting out. This was way before they were diagnosed though, after a lot of therapy they are much better at identifying their state, or simply they try to keep in touch a lot more so that I can be there for them before they burn out.
As the neurotypical person in the relationship, my advice is to try to keep in tough more regularly so that your SO can detect if you are halfway through burning out so that they can help you before you become completely unavailable.
My SO also has generalised anxiety and ADHD, so I usually tell them that when they keep burning out for weeks it’s really painful for me because I feel very left out, which resonates a lot with them. I guess that this helps them to do the effort of keeping me up to date so that I can let them vent, hug them, ask which kind of food they would like to uplift their spirits… and all that stuff before they burn out.
Being autistic is taking a normal interaction every human experiences and pretending it is unique to you and your autistic peers.
Trivializing is taking very real and major struggles that certain humans experience to much greater degree than others and pretending it has the same gravity as minor annoyances that a wide range of people experience.
If your comment is a joke or otherwise intended to be lighthearted, I apologize, but people saying in earnest what you said is a pretty major pet peeve of mine.
Real “Chronic depression doesn’t exist because everyone feels sad sometimes” energy.
Some people experience some things more than others. I believe that’s how they place you on the spectrum
Is getting bullied for walking a certain way and talking in a “funny way” for their whole lifetime every human experience? Cause I didn’t experience any of those yet I’ve seen my friends go through it. Are you suggesting autism is not real? You must be living in a whole new world.
Charitably I am fairly certain they are making fun of this particular meme and not in general. This meme is certainly something many people experience autism or not, though there are reasons toys experience might stick out for those with autism.
I was, yeah. Thanks for not instantly assuming the worst of me. People like yourself make social media a better environment than it otherwise would be.
No, he is obviously suggesting that this horribly generalistic shit take in the pic has nothing to do about autism
Removed by mod
Everyone has a different social perspective. Misunderstandings are very common in human discourse and they are often repeated. When this happens it is not solely because the speaker is autistic; there are many things that can contribute to our struggle to communicate with one another.
Removed by mod
This is why I learned to use metaphors. People love hearing about something if it was similar to something else. And not some dumb simile shit, like actual comparative metaphors.
“Why yes, the Internet IS a series of tubes. And the water pressure is bandwidth, the ability to move a volume of data in a set time. And each sprinkler is a user who may have individual restrictions but ultimately gets the same water as everyone else. That’s what the Internet is Grandpa.”
Dude. A+
Exactly this. I hate metaphores because they easily corrupt a message, or make nonsense seem sensical. I only use it with NT’s because it helps getting something concise across…
all speech is metaphor.
and it’s abundantly clear from this thread that so many of you are acting like self-righteous, arrogant jerks who do not understand that. “so it must be wrong, if someone as smart as ME doesn’t understand it, with my perfectly accurate speech!”
Get off your high horse and tell me where I implied that.
What I stated was disliking the use of metaphores. That I use it because it helps fascillitate communication with NT people over what I personally prefer.
so apparently from this thread i’m figuring out that if i just repeat myself, i am communicating well and i can blame you for not understanding. let’s give it a go: All speech is metaphor.
This is why learning how to write/speak for your audience is so helpful. People literally perceive what they expect rather than what exists. If the ideas aren’t presented in the way they expect or are beyond the sort of ideas they’re used to dealing with, they’ll apply their preconceived notions of what they think you would say.
Even if you do make sense to someone with the right expertise or experience, people will apply their worldview to everything. Neurotypical people intuitively pick up on cultural ways of thinking and communicating, while autistic people have to consciously think about it more.
The most useful fixation of mine has been understanding how people think so I can speak to be understood. I’m probably better than average at talking to people with different worldviews as a result.
OK but you’ll have to forgive me if the idea of playing the douchebag genie game every time I say something on the Internet doesn’t really appeal
Not just every time you talk on the internet, but every time you communicate in general. It becomes more intuitive over time, but it is something I always need to do. I often understand what I’m trying to describe better as a result of trying to translate it. There’s satisfaction in challenging myself as well as finally being understood.
However, I sometimes start typing a comment only to give up on the original idea in favor of something short and easy. Sometimes I give up on the comment entirely if it seems like too much effort. Having to explain a second time is more work than trying to get it right the first time. I rarely see info dumping as an option. If I don’t care enough to put in effort, then it can’t be that important in the first place.
If all else fails, I tell them that they aren’t understanding me correctly, but make it clear that I don’t feel like talking about it anymore. If a conversation isn’t going anywhere, ending it is the best option.
Damn that’s a lot of people declaring that THEY’RE the ones who speak clearly and THE OTHERS only think they’re speaking clearly.
Brains are fairly unique to the individual. When you have an idea, this represents a unique neural activation pattern no one else has.
Being a social species, we often need to communicate these ideas to other people. This means we need to get that unique neural activation pattern into the other person’s brain. That’s where language comes in.
Language is a massive part of the brain that we work on our entire lives. The entire purpose of language is too make that part of our brain as close to identical as everyone else’s. This way we take our idea, convert it into a neural pattern in our language center, transfer that pattern using words and non-verbal communication, then the other person receives it hopefully without massive transmission loss. They’re now able to recreate the unique idea you have.
One of the defining features of autism is that the language part of the brain develops very differently in autistic people than neurotypicals. This means that neurotypicals can communicate well together. Autistic people can communicate well together. But communication between autists and NTs will be poor because of that difference.
Many people are arguing about who should change their communication to adapt to others. I don’t think this is a useful question because the answer is unique to the individual and is based entirely on need. If you’re an NT who needs to communicate to many people with autism, or have someone very close to you with autism, you will likely make an effort to build an autistic language map in your brain. If you’re autistic and need to communicate with NTs, you’ll likely build an NT language map in your brain. I can see these mapping strategies like using metaphors etc… in this very thread.
Unfortunately since autism is in the minority, there are more people in the latter group than the former. This means the pressure is felt by autistic people more than NTs. This is a natural consequence of the need to communicate in society, not an ethical dilemma. One natural consequence is that autistic people will prefer to have autistic friends to ease their communication burden.
Everyone accepts that there are people that they can’t communicate well with. People who speak a different language, people with a different culture, people who have a very different life experience, people whose brassica develop differently. All these groups will have a different language sector of the brain and communication will suffer. It’s not efficient for everyone to try to be able to communicate perfectly with everyone else. The goal is to be able to communicate very well with your friends and partners, communicate work concepts with colleagues, communicate basic concepts with most strangers, and avoid unintentionally making enemies with everyone else as best as you can. The onus is on each person to achieve theses goals for themselves.
There isn’t really a right or wrong in this situation.
I study linguistics and a lot of different languages, and what you said made me think of how the difficulty in learning a second language depends on how different it is to our native tongue, or how accents within our own language are difficult to understand depending on how different and unfamiliar they are to us. Yet people tend to insist that certain languages are ‘simply’ hard, and insist that unfamiliar grammar or pronunciation ‘make no sense’, no matter how many millions of people use them naturally since childhood. I think it’s very difficult to imagine things which are instinctive to us being anything other than immanent truths about the universe, and anything contradicting those instincts feels wrong. What is familiar feels simple and obvious, difference feels complicated and somehow malicious; it’s ‘unnatural’. What is natural is ourself, everything else is crazy.
I’m not about to read all of that but I agree I actually saw this in a teacher I had he refused to explain again, explain differently his mind couldn’t wrap around the fact that some persons couldn’t understand
TL;DR: effective communication requires that the language part of the brain of both people map VERY closely. It’s no surprise autistic people and NTs don’t communicate well together, but communicate very well within their own groups. How much you need to adjust your communication depends mostly on how important it is to get your message across, which if you’re a teacher should be a lot. It’s your job to communicate effectively lol. Your teacher was shitty!
Honestly I’m mostly replying to the “I’m not reading that but I agree”. That made me chuckle. Like I could have had “Aurora_TheFirstLight sucks” in the middle of that and you’re all “It’s cool I agree lol”
Removed by mod
This is actually a well studied phenomenon in research as autistic people have been shown not to have worse social communication or empathy but differently structured kinds that are sometimes incompatible with neurotypical people (I’d go find some papers but im typically this from bed in the morning)
Also if you’re looking for resources on how to best support and work with neurodivergent people I highly suggest you pick up The Canary Code by Dr. Ludmila Praslova, it’s probably the best text on the subject to date: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/742858/the-canary-code-by-ludmila-n-praslova-phd/
If you read what he talks about further down, you’ve built out that communication mapping for autistic-nt communication due to your circumstances (manager of autistic people). You can easily understand them. As a husband of an autistic wife though, I would say that it seems like nt people have a dramatically easier time building out that autistic-nt map than autistic people have building it. She still regularly misunderstands me and other people (unless I’m talking to her directly) but I understand her very easily even when she’s talking to her autistic friends.
This means that neurotypicals can communicate well together. Autistic people can communicate well together.
I have a question. I don’t know much about this subject, so that is why I’m asking. Doesn’t this statement imply that the differences between brains from neurotypical and neurodivergent people are overall consistent? As afaik that’s not true, because autism is a spectrum, right?
The answer is they are not but it’s more about proximity and shared experience. No two neurodivergent people are the same and those with different divergences sometimes horribly clash in terms of communication styles. However two autistic people may have more in common in terms of communication styles and shared experience to communicate far more easily than with a neurotypical person.
Thanks for answering
I find it interesting that with ASD, there is (apparently, from this discussion), a tendency to be concise to the point of meaning being potentially lost but explains as quickly as possible, while with ADHD (which I have), there is a tendency to over-explain and be too verbose. With ADHD, we tend to worry that our thoughts aren’t clear enough for others and go to great lengths to make sure our meaning is understood, which has its own problems (like people getting exhausted with us for our long windedness).
I have diagnosed ADHD and maybe a little spicy hint of ASD but who knows. I end up somewhere in the middle, I explain things very quickly in lots of words and communicate almost nothing.
I get exhausted with my long-windedness while I am still talking. Still, a lot of my friends either don’t mind it, or use my explicitly given permission to just interrupt me if it’s an issue.
i feel like this is my default state.
I still don’t know how i feel about it. Am i a dumbass who can’t communicate? Are others just fucking stupid? Who knows!
Neither. They expect us to figure out and speak in the flowery language and codes that they use, and get upset when we can’t, when I feel like it would be easier for them to just -listen- to what we’re saying, because it’s usually in black and white.
Even as a neurotypical person, I ain’t got time for that shit. Don’t be using code phrases or softened language around me. If you have something you want to communicate, it’s on you to meet sure your understood. It’s not on me to infer your meaning.
it’s on you to meet sure your understood
ಠ_ಠ
Haha! Yes! You found my Easter egg! Good job!
~God fucking damn it~
Removed by mod
Not when you’re speaking in code…
nuance kinda important tbh
Removed by mod
Not 100% sure what you’re asking, but I think it’s about the flowery language and “code”?
Removed by mod
I’m just really direct, and get told I need to consider how I say things… The only example coming to mind is something I don’t really want to talk about openly on Lemmy. I’ll give a vague represantation though
(My statements are verbatim, the replies are paraphrased)
I’ll say “You didn’t do XYZ.” - They say “But I have done X”
Next time I try “Have you done XYor Z?” - Then I hear “Why are you interrogating me?”
“What have you done?” - “Why are you being accusatory?”
Those are all plain and simple black and white questions. I have yet to figure out the code I was supposed to speak.
Those examples are from the same person, but I get this reaction from most people when I ask simple questions
Removed by mod
Thanks for the insight. It’ll be something to keep in mind going forward.
The place I experienced this the worst was a job where I was in a leadership position, lol. (I have since come to the conclusion that I’m not the leader type)
when I feel like it would be easier for them to just -listen- to what we’re saying, because it’s usually in black and white.
i find i often just make sure people understand the thing that im talking about, so that it’s hard to misunderstand what im about to talk about. The side effect is that they learn about something that they may not have intended to, but are going to.
Both, I think. The fact that you’re here on lemmy tells me that you probably care about how shit works, which makes you an outlier, and it’s likely others who are stupid relative to you. On the other hand, you’re probably a dumbass who talks with people like peers and doesn’t know how to communicate with stupid people, or how to manage your expectations as stupid people will always misunderstand things no matter how good your communication skills are.
Or maybe people have varying degrees of how they take interest in something and semantics are just semantics according to interest.
For example: I have three relatives who are obsessed with the things they are interested in. One is into hoses…like really into hoses. and they have a computer and a car they use but they don’t like these two things nearly as much as they like their hoses. The other, while they use hoses and computers are really into cars. And a third who is super into computers while they have a hose and a car, they just don’t find the same interest in these other two things as they do with their computer.
None of them like each other.
Guess why.
Cuz like Fine. Go be a ‘fanboy’ about your one thing but people aren’t just dumb because they aren’t as obsessed as you are about your one thing. And they aren’t the problem here when you feel you’ve expressed your obsession language to their ordinary language about it. Cuz They get it. You like the thing. They just aren’t wanting to go deep like you do about it. But it gets annoying and old real fast if you’re so obsessed you’re pushing it on them. Their time and energy is worthwhile too.
…hoses? Like the kind you use outside with a water spigot?
I definitely read “horses” until I got to the part where all three of them have “horses” even though only one of them was interested in them, and that’s when I realized my brain had added in the “r” because horse people obviously exist, but hose people?
Hose guy named Hosea
… I will fuck myself off
Yup. Hose people exist. They usually refer to themselves as ‘gardeners’ though.
What exactly does this have to do with Autism? I might be misinterpreting what you mean, but Autism isn’t just having an interest or talking about an interest in great detail, and this Twitter post is DEFINITELY not about that situation. The way you say this definitely makes me think you’re seeing “Autism” as “hyperfixation with an object” since the OP didn’t even mention anything you just said…
And it’s like they try to get mad at you :(
I would laugh if it wasn’t so painfully true.
Removed by mod
Both things can be true at the same time. E.g. people sometimes are worked up thinking about some strawman they are discussing against in their head. So when I don’t virtue signal enough that I’m on their team or at least not against entirely against every single thing they stand for, those people sometimes take a very clear and to the point thing I say or ask and misconstrue it into meaning some horrific, morally objectionable thing.
Like, when people say that burning kittens on BBQs is a huge problem that we need to band together against, and I reply that I doubt that this is a widespread enough or well enough organized phenomenon that banding together would be effective, they take it as me admitting that I’m pro kitten-burning.
Sure, I failed to coddle them and front my opinion with how abhorrent those kitten burners are, but also nothing I said implied that in the slightest. I just thought that didn’t need mentioning, why say something so obvious?
being autistic is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result???
