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 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.
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.
*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.
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.
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 now
Me: 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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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
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 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 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.
nuance kinda important tbh
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?
And it's like they try to get mad at you :(
I would laugh if it wasn't so painfully true.
being autistic is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result???
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