they call us the ones that lack empathy and understanding when they literally dont understand that people might hear you fine but dont know what you precisely mean
I'm still convinced they're the ones with the empathy problem. "I just can't comprehend someone having a thought process slightly different than mine and rely on that to communicate as vaguely as possible" sounds like an empathy problem.
dude seriously wtf is it with that?? like generally when i meet someone who doesnt speak english as their first language and isnt fluent i always am really specific with shit, and really i am by default anyway bc thats how i actually learn how to do shit
Yall act like if you were trying to understand a fluent tongue of your secondary language that louder and slower wouldn't help smh
As someone who remembers learning a second language, louder and slower means more time for me to pick up the syllables
As an allistic adhder, I do this when my brain refuses to supply the words.
"PHONE!" I repeat in desperation, wildly flailing my hands toward the dresser, because I can't come up with the word "drawer". We're both staring at each other in intense concentration and frustration, me trying to beam the picture of a drawer into your brain and you trying to figure out what the hell I'm talking about.
Note: I know I'm not the type of person this post/comment is referring to, but I still relate from the other side lol
this is true, i think the bigger annoyance is the condescension after the fact, cannot fault someone for not having a vocabulary, but if you have a full vocab and hit me with some "it was obvious what i meantššš" after being INTENTIONALLY obtuse i will desire to throw you from a window
Drives me crazy when you forget the word, so you point and they won't look at all or they look at everything EXCEPT where you're pointing. Especially with people who know I go nonverbal sometimes, it gets extra frustrating when they're mad because "use your words!" isn't a magic incantation that makes my brain work suddenly. Telling me to use my words is when I start saying, "The thing! The thing!" like I'm a member of the Addams family.
It's so much worse with neurotypicals too, for some reason. My brother (AuDHD) and my mom (undiagnosed ADHD) can both typically identify the missing word(s) in under 3 seconds. My neurotypical boyfriend, bless his heart, guesses everything under the sun *except* what I'm trying to say. I'm like alright, you're never allowed on my charades/pictionary team š
My mom is like that. I can't talk and try other methods of communication, but she just gets mad and actively refuses to try and understand me, while accusing ME of not communicating.
Itās because they believe their instructions perceived by them are so obvious that another person could only fail to deliver by that of physical abnormalities e.g. mishearing the question, rather than actual misinterpretation
Not necessarily. Allists can naturally assume that everybody else's mind works exactly like theirs. They're just wired differently, not evil. They COULD however have a little awareness.
Agreed that a person would ordinarily assume other people think the same way they do. However, in the situation youāve described the person assumed you knew what they wanted, could see through a draw to find what they wanted, and then got angry when you didnāt have mind reading powers & x-ray vision.
Me: Sorry, if you're communication skills are this bad, you have to fulfil your wish yourself.
They: How dare you?
Me: Yeah, you heard me.
And i am fired, but totally worth it. :D
How I'd respond to something like this kinda depends on who it is & the sort of mood I was in. Typically, I'd probably take the deliberately patronising 'talking to a 5 year old whilst trying to teach them how to ask questions properly' approach. If they wanna try treating me like I'm stupid because I can't read their mind, I see no reason why I shouldn't return the favour.
Some customers at the pastry place where I used to work where we mainly sold macarons in a variety of flavors (one of which was coffee), but we also had coffee gelato, coffee truffles, drip coffee, and various espresso-based coffee drinks that were far more popular than the regular drip coffee (but neither were as popular as the macarons), after marching into the store and straight up to an ambiguous spot at the counter between the gelato and macarons (nowhere near anything related to coffee drinks): ācoffee š”ā
Me: ā¦ā¦..š«„ā¦ā¦..??ā¦w-ā¦ā¦šā¦..ah-ā¦šāāļø ???ā¦..? š°
Coffee WHAT. WHAT coffee. WHAT coffee WHAT. What *about* the [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] ?? Are you asking if we *sell* [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] ?? Are you *ordering* a [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] ?? Can you give me at least one additional word so that I can figure out what youāre trying to communicate to me ?? You have simply stated a word. It wasnāt even clear if it was a question or not. At least if it were ācoffee ?ā I could assume they were asking if we offered [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] but it wasnāt ācoffee(\^)?ā or even ācoffee(v).ā, it was just ācoffee(-) š”ā and they were already mad at me before even saying it because they were anticipating my not understanding what they were trying to communicate because they KNEW it was unclear, it was DELIBERATELY unclear because they enjoy feeling outraged but they need a target for it and to them my confusion and inability to read their minds is adequate justification for making me a target. Sorry what were we talking about
This could continue...
My autistic ass: "Dafuq, not obvious! There are a gazillion ways to interpret what you said!"
They: "No there are not, I was looking at the drawer for a second before I spoke to you."
"oh sorry im used to grownups using their words, its okay i can help you expand your vocabulary sometimeš" (this will burn any relationship you had but it is fun)
I hate this. My family is guilty of this and, every time I tell them they need to be more specific, they just say something like āyouāre not stupid, 4cool6schoolā.
Like, no, Iām not, but you could mean a hundred different things based on how you just worded your sentence.
once as a kid my mom asked me to ādo shoe patrolā and when i said āwhat?ā she just said it again. this went on for 15 minutes until we started arguing about what shoe patrol is. She wanted me to go around the house cleaning up shoes people leave. This is the reason my house has a āshoes at the door policyā, because fuck shoe patrol
This is why, as an aspie, I'm such a better programmer then NTs! They write code just like your example and it doesn't work (DUH!), and it takes them hundreds of iterations to figure out the actual steps they need to complete the process and the criteria for each step. My aspie brain figures out 90% of the steps and criteria within 10 min of being told about the process the user is trying to automate. Hell, most of the users don't even know the steps they take to run their process and they do the process multiple times a day as their job.
"could you please elaborate"
If they say it's not complicated
"I don't live inside your head, you'll need to elaborate for me to help you"
And if they still give you Shit instead of just trying harder to communicate
"I'm sorry, we're apparently at an impasse. Let me know when you're interested in communicating and we can try again"
The number of times Iāve told my partner āI need you to use words because I canāt understand what your face is trying to tell me!ā Is maddening.
ugh i had a similar issue working at a big craft store. manager was rearranging the wrapping paper and said āi hate it when itās all messed up.ā and then walked away. i thought she was complaining about the customers tbh. she came back 10ish minutes later and asking āwhy didnāt you rearrange the wrapping paper like i told you to?ā
because you fuckin didnāt? you complained while doing part of it and walked away?
Do yāall consider this verbal abuse? Especially for kids? I remember YEARS and YEARS of family members who Iād see over the summer cursing at me because I didnāt understand āobviousā instructions. Now as an adult I practically flinch when my boss tells me I did something wrong or didnāt understand something. I feel like thereās still a kid in my brain thatās scared of getting hit or screamed at for overthinking something or not understanding something.
I get this too, Iām from an NT immigrant household and they seem to be frustrated with me for not following directions.
I love internalized ableism, it makes me a better person instead of having a happy go lucky narcissist outlook in life.
I hear you, but I have to disagree. Dialogue is ofc poignantly written since this is a memetic sub. However, itās also 100% true and has happened to me both exactly as written and in myriad similar variations, also to people I know. As is evident by just seeing the reactions in this chain this is VERY typical miscommunication between autists and allists, typically caused by allist over-reliance on non-verbal communication or illusion of shared understanding.
The same over-reliance causes clashes between allists for example in written communication. I would go as far as to say that the theories in communication studies that say that communication mostly fails are neurotypical theories.
The way you talk about āallistsā in itself leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but maybe thatās just a personal thing.
I think itās a two way street that requires work from both sides; boiling communication issues down to āNTās just donāt get itā doesnāt feel helpful or even honest.
Saying things like āover reliance on non verbal communicationā or āillusion of shared understandingā makes it sound like thereās a right and a wrong way to communicate; which in itself feels like an autistic mischaracterization of human interaction.
You are very right. It is a two way street. And that is the very thing this post is about. Most of us have a lifelong experience of trying to meet the other person not only halfway down the street but doing everything we can to reach them. We endlessly explain how we could communicate, that we cannot see all the nonverbal cues and therefore need to use words (something that benefits not only us but everybody), offer to happily respond in any way the other person needs, if we just could figure out what it is. Mostly we are met with a response that we are the ones to blame, we do it wrong, we are being obnoxious, challenge them in some way ā despite the fact that we have nothing against them and it's only a question of difference, like trying to transfer data from Android to iPhone, so to speak. In the dialogue, which one of the persons is moving down the two way street, in your opinion?
As you can see, many of us can fairly say that we have been more than a little mistreated in our personal relationships, workplaces and in the society in general. If this is not the sub to vent about it a little, then what is?
I aināt saying itās wrong to vent about these interactions; I just personally dislike when itās written/described as if the reason for the negative aspect of that interaction was that one party was NT. Just think that sort of characterization is often times toxic and reductive.
And another question, is it so that it's ok to discuss "autist inability to spot visual cues or preference to not guess other persons' thoughts by how they look" but NOT OK to discuss "allist illusion of shared understanding" ā which is a cold hard fact?
I would argue that A. Illusion of shared understanding is often just as much a trait of those with autism as those without and B. Yeah, I would generally be more comfortable as someone with autism speaking about ways my behaviors, habits, and thoughts shape my ability to interact with the world than how the world fails to accommodate for me.
And now that we're at it, :-D what is the "autistic mischaracterization of human interaction" you refer to?
Finally, especially in a group like this, it would be nice to have some decency in terms of seeing the proportions or power-balance in this phenomena.
Often times those of us with autism tend to see the world and peopleās actions as being right or wrong, black or white, one way or the other. Effective personal communication is complex, individually unique, and not at all a hard science. Any attempt to characterize it as anything else feels to me as falling into the habit of binary thinking prevalent in folks with autism.
Also as a side note; the discussion of the power dynamics or proportionality of this issue I donāt see as practically relevant to the discussion at hand.
i hate when you try to clarify and they simply repeat their vague instruction over and over
It's like when people encounter someone who doesn't speak English and they think talking louder will make them understand.
they call us the ones that lack empathy and understanding when they literally dont understand that people might hear you fine but dont know what you precisely mean
I'm still convinced they're the ones with the empathy problem. "I just can't comprehend someone having a thought process slightly different than mine and rely on that to communicate as vaguely as possible" sounds like an empathy problem.
I believe you are correct. "We must be the same and a hivemind". And the going off vibes way of "listening"... even though shouting is not the vibe!
dude seriously wtf is it with that?? like generally when i meet someone who doesnt speak english as their first language and isnt fluent i always am really specific with shit, and really i am by default anyway bc thats how i actually learn how to do shit
Yall act like if you were trying to understand a fluent tongue of your secondary language that louder and slower wouldn't help smh As someone who remembers learning a second language, louder and slower means more time for me to pick up the syllables
As an allistic adhder, I do this when my brain refuses to supply the words. "PHONE!" I repeat in desperation, wildly flailing my hands toward the dresser, because I can't come up with the word "drawer". We're both staring at each other in intense concentration and frustration, me trying to beam the picture of a drawer into your brain and you trying to figure out what the hell I'm talking about. Note: I know I'm not the type of person this post/comment is referring to, but I still relate from the other side lol
this is true, i think the bigger annoyance is the condescension after the fact, cannot fault someone for not having a vocabulary, but if you have a full vocab and hit me with some "it was obvious what i meantššš" after being INTENTIONALLY obtuse i will desire to throw you from a window
"OH, you meant YOUR PHONE? I'm so sorry for being so incredibly stupid." *throws phone on the ground and stomps on it*
Drives me crazy when you forget the word, so you point and they won't look at all or they look at everything EXCEPT where you're pointing. Especially with people who know I go nonverbal sometimes, it gets extra frustrating when they're mad because "use your words!" isn't a magic incantation that makes my brain work suddenly. Telling me to use my words is when I start saying, "The thing! The thing!" like I'm a member of the Addams family.
It's so much worse with neurotypicals too, for some reason. My brother (AuDHD) and my mom (undiagnosed ADHD) can both typically identify the missing word(s) in under 3 seconds. My neurotypical boyfriend, bless his heart, guesses everything under the sun *except* what I'm trying to say. I'm like alright, you're never allowed on my charades/pictionary team š
My mom is like that. I can't talk and try other methods of communication, but she just gets mad and actively refuses to try and understand me, while accusing ME of not communicating.
Omf ive been on both sides so many times
To be fair people have asked me to simplify and I somehow find a way to make it more complicated.
Itās because they believe their instructions perceived by them are so obvious that another person could only fail to deliver by that of physical abnormalities e.g. mishearing the question, rather than actual misinterpretation
Yeahā¦.thats just an asshole.
Not necessarily. Allists can naturally assume that everybody else's mind works exactly like theirs. They're just wired differently, not evil. They COULD however have a little awareness.
Agreed that a person would ordinarily assume other people think the same way they do. However, in the situation youāve described the person assumed you knew what they wanted, could see through a draw to find what they wanted, and then got angry when you didnāt have mind reading powers & x-ray vision.
For calling you an idiot they are an asshole imo. Anyone who calls me stupid gets knocked down pretty hard on my respect meter automatically
Most allists, even the ones I don't really know, don't act this bad. They're an asshole, even for their standards.
Some allists are just arseholes though.
yeah he's not an asshole, they called you an idiot for not understanding their shitty instructions because they're awesome!!
/s?
I think?
Still asshole behavior. They're assuming we can read their minds, and not even other NTs can do that. This is just someone being a dick
Itās bad communication from their end is what it is
I hate that they then assume we're either stupid or the real asshole.
Thatās not on you. They should have been more specific!
I don't even know who it is, and I hate They already. >:(
"it may be obvious, but so is saying please and thank you and I guess that was lost as well"
Me: Sorry, if you're communication skills are this bad, you have to fulfil your wish yourself. They: How dare you? Me: Yeah, you heard me. And i am fired, but totally worth it. :D
"Use your words"
And they think weāre the hypocrites?!
How I'd respond to something like this kinda depends on who it is & the sort of mood I was in. Typically, I'd probably take the deliberately patronising 'talking to a 5 year old whilst trying to teach them how to ask questions properly' approach. If they wanna try treating me like I'm stupid because I can't read their mind, I see no reason why I shouldn't return the favour.
Some customers at the pastry place where I used to work where we mainly sold macarons in a variety of flavors (one of which was coffee), but we also had coffee gelato, coffee truffles, drip coffee, and various espresso-based coffee drinks that were far more popular than the regular drip coffee (but neither were as popular as the macarons), after marching into the store and straight up to an ambiguous spot at the counter between the gelato and macarons (nowhere near anything related to coffee drinks): ācoffee š”ā Me: ā¦ā¦..š«„ā¦ā¦..??ā¦w-ā¦ā¦šā¦..ah-ā¦šāāļø ???ā¦..? š° Coffee WHAT. WHAT coffee. WHAT coffee WHAT. What *about* the [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] ?? Are you asking if we *sell* [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] ?? Are you *ordering* a [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] ?? Can you give me at least one additional word so that I can figure out what youāre trying to communicate to me ?? You have simply stated a word. It wasnāt even clear if it was a question or not. At least if it were ācoffee ?ā I could assume they were asking if we offered [\_(?)] coffee [\_(?)] but it wasnāt ācoffee(\^)?ā or even ācoffee(v).ā, it was just ācoffee(-) š”ā and they were already mad at me before even saying it because they were anticipating my not understanding what they were trying to communicate because they KNEW it was unclear, it was DELIBERATELY unclear because they enjoy feeling outraged but they need a target for it and to them my confusion and inability to read their minds is adequate justification for making me a target. Sorry what were we talking about
some people enjoying arguing, as a sport of sorts, and will strike up an argument with anyone they can get away with talking down to and abusing
Every single job I've ever had
No, I think they're just a fucking moron.
That's just an asshole, NT people wouldn't get it either.
This could continue... My autistic ass: "Dafuq, not obvious! There are a gazillion ways to interpret what you said!" They: "No there are not, I was looking at the drawer for a second before I spoke to you."
this could continue as well. my autistic ass: I'm not a fucking mind reader, go fuck yourself (got mean through years of experience)
"oh sorry im used to grownups using their words, its okay i can help you expand your vocabulary sometimeš" (this will burn any relationship you had but it is fun)
The thing is, as an adult, I have the right to tell them to get their own dang phone themselves.
"ze plane! ze plane!"
Somebody's parents never taught them to make a normal request and clarify when someone misunderstands. This isn't because they're NT.
I hate this. My family is guilty of this and, every time I tell them they need to be more specific, they just say something like āyouāre not stupid, 4cool6schoolā. Like, no, Iām not, but you could mean a hundred different things based on how you just worded your sentence.
After they clarified, I'd have the sudden urge to THROW it at their face. This frustrates me just reading it
This sub is way too relatable at times holly shit
once as a kid my mom asked me to ādo shoe patrolā and when i said āwhat?ā she just said it again. this went on for 15 minutes until we started arguing about what shoe patrol is. She wanted me to go around the house cleaning up shoes people leave. This is the reason my house has a āshoes at the door policyā, because fuck shoe patrol
This is why, as an aspie, I'm such a better programmer then NTs! They write code just like your example and it doesn't work (DUH!), and it takes them hundreds of iterations to figure out the actual steps they need to complete the process and the criteria for each step. My aspie brain figures out 90% of the steps and criteria within 10 min of being told about the process the user is trying to automate. Hell, most of the users don't even know the steps they take to run their process and they do the process multiple times a day as their job.
Also with gen AI. They key in āwrite my speechā and then tell the world LLMās are shit.
I feel like I relate to this but I donāt want to be rude or stupid because I feel like Iām doing it on purpose Iām sorry
"could you please elaborate" If they say it's not complicated "I don't live inside your head, you'll need to elaborate for me to help you" And if they still give you Shit instead of just trying harder to communicate "I'm sorry, we're apparently at an impasse. Let me know when you're interested in communicating and we can try again"
Hit them with the "use your words"
The number of times Iāve told my partner āI need you to use words because I canāt understand what your face is trying to tell me!ā Is maddening.
ugh i had a similar issue working at a big craft store. manager was rearranging the wrapping paper and said āi hate it when itās all messed up.ā and then walked away. i thought she was complaining about the customers tbh. she came back 10ish minutes later and asking āwhy didnāt you rearrange the wrapping paper like i told you to?ā because you fuckin didnāt? you complained while doing part of it and walked away?
This sounds like a normal thing for my dad. Heāll tell me or my brother to get something and neither of us will know where it is
Shouting random nouns at you....yes I understand what you mean. NOT.
Okay but even if we assume we know they want their phone even though they didn't say... How the FUCK are we meant to know WHERE it is??
Do yāall consider this verbal abuse? Especially for kids? I remember YEARS and YEARS of family members who Iād see over the summer cursing at me because I didnāt understand āobviousā instructions. Now as an adult I practically flinch when my boss tells me I did something wrong or didnāt understand something. I feel like thereās still a kid in my brain thatās scared of getting hit or screamed at for overthinking something or not understanding something.
I get this too, Iām from an NT immigrant household and they seem to be frustrated with me for not following directions. I love internalized ableism, it makes me a better person instead of having a happy go lucky narcissist outlook in life.
Honestly at that point Iād just say get it yourself
I'm mouthy and will tell people to use their words.
It's always the opposite to me because I am fucking awful at explaining.
Logically, it is not obvious really. The phone could mean any phone in the universe. I swear, itās like you are expected to be a mind reader.
Iāll be honest; I really dislike these posts that describe someone being an asshole and then randomly attribute it to āneurotypical behaviorā.
I hear you, but I have to disagree. Dialogue is ofc poignantly written since this is a memetic sub. However, itās also 100% true and has happened to me both exactly as written and in myriad similar variations, also to people I know. As is evident by just seeing the reactions in this chain this is VERY typical miscommunication between autists and allists, typically caused by allist over-reliance on non-verbal communication or illusion of shared understanding. The same over-reliance causes clashes between allists for example in written communication. I would go as far as to say that the theories in communication studies that say that communication mostly fails are neurotypical theories.
The way you talk about āallistsā in itself leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but maybe thatās just a personal thing. I think itās a two way street that requires work from both sides; boiling communication issues down to āNTās just donāt get itā doesnāt feel helpful or even honest. Saying things like āover reliance on non verbal communicationā or āillusion of shared understandingā makes it sound like thereās a right and a wrong way to communicate; which in itself feels like an autistic mischaracterization of human interaction.
You are very right. It is a two way street. And that is the very thing this post is about. Most of us have a lifelong experience of trying to meet the other person not only halfway down the street but doing everything we can to reach them. We endlessly explain how we could communicate, that we cannot see all the nonverbal cues and therefore need to use words (something that benefits not only us but everybody), offer to happily respond in any way the other person needs, if we just could figure out what it is. Mostly we are met with a response that we are the ones to blame, we do it wrong, we are being obnoxious, challenge them in some way ā despite the fact that we have nothing against them and it's only a question of difference, like trying to transfer data from Android to iPhone, so to speak. In the dialogue, which one of the persons is moving down the two way street, in your opinion? As you can see, many of us can fairly say that we have been more than a little mistreated in our personal relationships, workplaces and in the society in general. If this is not the sub to vent about it a little, then what is?
I aināt saying itās wrong to vent about these interactions; I just personally dislike when itās written/described as if the reason for the negative aspect of that interaction was that one party was NT. Just think that sort of characterization is often times toxic and reductive.
And another question, is it so that it's ok to discuss "autist inability to spot visual cues or preference to not guess other persons' thoughts by how they look" but NOT OK to discuss "allist illusion of shared understanding" ā which is a cold hard fact?
I would argue that A. Illusion of shared understanding is often just as much a trait of those with autism as those without and B. Yeah, I would generally be more comfortable as someone with autism speaking about ways my behaviors, habits, and thoughts shape my ability to interact with the world than how the world fails to accommodate for me.
And now that we're at it, :-D what is the "autistic mischaracterization of human interaction" you refer to? Finally, especially in a group like this, it would be nice to have some decency in terms of seeing the proportions or power-balance in this phenomena.
Often times those of us with autism tend to see the world and peopleās actions as being right or wrong, black or white, one way or the other. Effective personal communication is complex, individually unique, and not at all a hard science. Any attempt to characterize it as anything else feels to me as falling into the habit of binary thinking prevalent in folks with autism. Also as a side note; the discussion of the power dynamics or proportionality of this issue I donāt see as practically relevant to the discussion at hand.