Struggling with communication

[RYOUNG78]

When I talk with friends / work colleagues I always seem to come out with inappropriate comments as a result of not thinking things through first. I realise this is probably part of the condition and something I need to work on. Has anybody else had experience of this / suggestions how I can modify my behaviour to stop it?

[LancsLad]

I think an important element here is understanding that this is a shared issue. Communication is a two way process and as such both sides have to take some responsibility. An example here is if I am asked a question and tell the truth/answer it honestly and the person I am speaking too does not like what I say do my comments become inappropriate? We have to very carefull as individuals with ASD conditions that we do not load all responsibility onto ourselves, after all we are supposed to have the weakness here.

 

To give an example at university on a social night out in a group of peers I was asked what did I think of a certain individual in the group and their work. Suddenly everyone is hanging on my answer. In this scenario I said "that in my opinion the individual was very talented and had a lot of potential but at times they played safe with their ideas and they could be a bit boring, self concious and risk averse". This comment was blue touch paper to this persons so called friends, who I have heard really slagging them off behind their back, and resulted in a verbal barage directed at me which led to a panic attack on my part in a corner of a bar, and being manhadled and thrown out of the building whilst hyperventilating. The result was for a week or so I didn't want to return to my course because I felt I had blown it. Some time later when I talked this through I found out that the heated conversation in the bar had carried on in my absence, that the majority felt whilst I might have picked my words differently, what did people expect I was always honest and that many found my approach to be refreshing, and that if people were not prepared to accept what I had to say they should know better and not ask me in the first place for my opinion.

 

I use this example to highlight we often load things up on ourselves and not everyone might see things as we do. We have to be carefull that we do not become afraid to say what we think if fear of offending someone. In my experience a lot of NT's have very little of interest to say, and a lot of their language is about social courship and posturising. A lot of this social contact is about playing games and to be honest I am not very good at nor am I interested in the rules. My strategy has kind of been to sit well back and let the 'small talk' take place, a lot of people need time for that sort of thing, and then take the lead and get down to business, even in social scenarios. As a consequence most people see me as being very professional, organised and having leadership qualities. I am also confident in that I know that I never lie, I am always honest, I respect other people never really take a dislike to anyone etc... even if I might be a bit clumsy with my words the sentiment is always on a solid foundation and will stand up to scrutiny. As such I beleive I have integrity and as a result deserve a voice.

 

It is when I try to play other peoples social games that I get in a mess. If someone said for example "try to be really nice to this person they can be a bit sensitive their partenr died recently" I wouldn't have a clue about how to approach it. Fortunatly I do not work as a funeral director and so anything I am going to talk about should not be too much of a problem, and so I get on which what needs to be done.

 

In my experience people get used to you and if they can't accept individuals being themselves then it is their problem and not yours. Some situations are a bit more tricky than others and this is where we need to be aware of the context. I have a habit in unfamiliar company of putting a pause button on to give myself thinking time, which is not that problematic as you tend to simply come across as thoughtful which is not a bad thing. Sometimes this pause period is not long enough to think things through which usually means one thing and that my answer is going to be subjective, in other words if I am not sure if I have the right words, because I know what I think, but I am not too sure if the person in front of me will want to here what I think. In this instance my get out of jail response is "do you really want to know what I think". It is very unlikely that they say no, because this shows they were bored and prepared to waste your time, so they say yes. In my experience whatever you say even if they do not like it you can always go back to "well you asked me to tell you what I thought".

 

I tend to fing that if you are confident and consistent things tend to work out reasonably well and this gives you more confidence to carry on. As an individual I am never going to be first choice for a group social at a lunch time Starbucks session. Instead I might sit on my own and distance myself for uneccessary conversation. In reality however people often come and ask can I join you and have a chat. I am not a first choice for parties, but do get invited into small group activities. When at university as a mature 44 year old I was worried about the social side. On a few occasions I went for a day out with one other individual because I can handle that, the feedback from other students was that the individuals had a brilliant time and really got to know a bit more about me. When it comes to work groups I always find I am in big demand because at the end of the day people want to achieve things and direct approaches work well in such scenarios. I think what I am saying is be yourself, in some situations I am carefull and a bit self concious as I know my radar has to be on and I play conversation very carefully but you can over do this. In many other situations I think as ASD individuals we can really excell, but it takes time for people to build up the levels of respect needed to operate in this manner and as such we have to be patient.

 

At times we might offend others with a misplaced comment, if we are big enough to appologise and say I stand by the sentiments of what I said but I am sure I could have put it across a bit better I think that is all we can do. What I would not do is try and retract what we feel in respect to an answer rather only retract the words. In my experience the people who take offence easily are normally the ones who can really dish it out and be very offensive to others. Taking offence easily being a possible sign of social immaturity, you could therefore say if you live by the sword you die by the sword and its part of the territory after all honesty is a sharp edged sword we weild well.

 

I would be very concious about trying to modify your behaviour to the extent you are starting to supress your own personality. Just because I have a condition called AS does not make me a second class citizen. We live in a nation which expounds the notion of free speech and we should remeber this. If we get misinterperated and people take things the wrong way I know deep down that a lot of it was their mistake, and this is where I go back to my first point communication is a shared process. I can take the lead in this and say I believe 'you' misinterperated what I said, I do have AS and sometimes my language can be a bit direct so let me rephrase what I meant. If this can not get you out of a situation then to be honest the problem completelty lies with them.

 

Just a few thoughts.

[darkshine]

When I talk with friends / work colleagues I always seem to come out with inappropriate comments as a result of not thinking things through first. I realise this is probably part of the condition and something I need to work on. Has anybody else had experience of this / suggestions how I can modify my behaviour to stop it?

 

Short of never ever forgetting to screen everything you say in a million ways before even speaking for the rest of your life... Not really.

 

I've thought about this so many times and there aren't concrete rules to it. I've said things to some people and they've totally over-reacted, when in my opinion the misunderstanding was mild and totally blown out of proportion,

 

Then again, I've said things that I know for a fact are shocking/wrong and I've had people laugh or start a open debate.

 

So what do I do?

 

A lot of the time I don't bother speaking (an anti-social solution) or I minimise what I say (in situations with neighbours or acquaintances) so as to reduce the likelihood of issues - and with friends and family I can talk more freely depending on the topic of conversation.

 

Most of the time I have a massive database of experiences in my head from which I attempt to judge what is ok and what isn't - some times I'm pretty sure, but other times I'm totally guessing which is worse when I guess incorrectly because I could have decided the other way and not got a negative response.

 

The older I get the less bothered I am by the people who over-react - I just say something generally placative and move on with life - whereas only a couple of years ago I'd keep rerunning bad interactions over and over in my head until I virtually went nuts at the inability to resolve anything (not that I'm successful at it now - I'm just less likely to get so bothered by every mistake as I once did), plus the database is bigger

 

This is just my experience though... someone else may have more practical suggestions, I do tend to over think things

 

Best

 

Darkshine

 

PS - the truth is that I barely ever talk how I'd want to talk because to be quite frank, it drives people nuts because my mind is just relentless, jumping from topic to topic with ease, I've definitely learned that in most situations it is best not to just say everything that comes into my mind (especially when people are watching tv, reading something, or talking about a totally different topic) as such learning about what things to say or not has been a major source of focus for me throughout my life.

[RYOUNG78]

Hi. Thanks for the advice. My biggest problem is that I have a tendency to overthink things and worr too much.y

[A-S warrior]

one thing ive always done is take on different personas, i.e at home im my normal self, at work or collage i go into character. think of yourself as a very calm person and a person that goes with the flow in convosations. yes you are acting, but being yourself as much as possible and eliminating the part of you that makes inappropriate comments. going into character by almost mimicking the average person is a very good tactic that ive utilised many times over the years. observe pepole but dont stair! and take on board there mannerisums and habits when in convosation and try to apply some of those to your communication skills.

[amberzak]

Hey.

 

I do the same thing. Thing is, my friends know that about me, and accept it. Like, they had a party the other month and I was nervous about going. When I got there, I saw a friend who is also an Aspie, and without thinking, I blurted out 'oh great, you're here. Intellectual conversation.' But they know me and they know I didn't mean it.

 

In fact, in the past I have offended people, but I think it's a case of them getting to know I don't mean it.

 

I learn by my mistakes. I tell people to let me know if I offend them, or upset them, or if I talk to much etc. I point out that I can't tell body language or hints. My friends are all really helpful and supportive in this.

[darkshine]

Hi. Thanks for the advice. My biggest problem is that I have a tendency to overthink things and worr too much.y

Join the club and be happy cuz eventually you'll work things out - by comparison, if you didn't think about it so much it might take longer to work out

 

I still consider myself on a learning curve with communication - but I know that I have improved in some way every year that I live so maybe one day it will all seem comparatively easy (I hope anyway).

 

A-S warrior's and Amberzak's replies contain examples of things I do too - it helps me to separate blocks of life into situations that require different reactions and responses. I also have some people in my life that are similar to how Amberzak describes her friends and this helps too so that you don't always have to be making so much effort with important people in your life (by effort I mean total and complete effort of communication and not being thoughtless and inconsiderate on purpose lol).

 

We all learn by our mistakes I think - its just that some mistakes may take longer to learn from as the answers aren't always instantly clear