Do people think you don't say what you mean?

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I'm usually so overly articulate and detailed when I talk that people become impatient trying to anticipate what I might say, and consequently interrupt asking me to get to the point. I think people just don't like to listen, or at least in my case that's been the feeling I get.

Sometimes people think I don't say what I mean. I think it's because they, themselves, don't typically say what they mean.

I'm wondering if it is trying to strictly verbalize rather than the usual combined usage with the nonverbal, i.e.. compensating with subtext for 'more precision,' but the listener isn't getting or connecting with theory of mind.... Is 'common emotional ground' absent and cannot be bridged as stemming from the nonverbal?

With myself I have a strong suspicion this the problem. I've put some pieces together after later discovering that I conveyed something else with intonation or lack thereof, and body language. I'm a matter of fact communicator and no matter how well it can be explained I can come up short and am often misconstrued.

Whatever is happening here,and whichever way one looks at it; it all distills down to ToM between the conversants.

I'm not sure what you're getting at - this happens online and off, and online there is no intonation or body language.

I am not sure how theory of mind fits into this, although having had people model their version of my mind and try to sell it to me as reality, you are probably onto something.

I do have a hunch that's the 'real time' face to face problem with spectrum folk.

Lets see if i got this right: With text communication you mentioned as in writing a book you do better with this, but there isn't enough room in forum chat posters to convey a good understanding.
Everything you've written here on WP I've read it once and I got it. And is it here btw? If in other forums maybe it's a just a higher IQ and not AS?

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that one wouldn't have as near the real time communication problems or with text with the high IQ'd.

I can't say what I mean, basically because I can't get the words together in my head.

If you asked me to 'say what I mean' about any topic, all you would get is a big "err..."

Ask me to write it down, though, and you would get an essay!

Last edited by SakeGirl on 20 Mar 2011, 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, yes, that makes sense. If not the problem, at least one of them.



I run into it a lot less here because it seems like - mostly, with some exceptions - people are more likely here to take things at face value and not read into them. Elsewhere, misinterpretations of what I write, while not consistent, can cause some arguments where I try to clarify my intended meaning and I am being told what I really meant to say.

A lot of my writing is understood, though. I'm not saying it's constant, it's that the misunderstandings themselves cause a lot of stress and frustration on my part because I feel like I have to make the same point a second or third time, except now the person I'm trying to explain it to thinks I am argumentative or defensive or angry or trolling or flaming them when I am just trying to state my opinion.

I have problems with face to face communication, although they are not always the same. My problems are that I am inconsistent in my ability to read facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice and that other people have difficulties reading my facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. With my family this is rarely an issue because our interactions are almost ritualized because we interact a lot, thus people know the scripts and thus realize that I am joking when I make a joke, but outside of that context, it is more difficult.

I also have a lot of sensory issues related to communication difficulties, as in I can get easily overloaded in some social situations and it becomes difficult to focus on anything or participate because the noises or light or smells effectively overload my brain with "static." Throw in high emotion, which feels like bombardment if I'm not on my guard, and yeah, too much input to pick things out.

Also, my ability to express myself verbally is more limited than my ability to express myself in text. For whatever reason, if I have not already gone over material in some other way (reading, writing it out, doing it kinesthetically), then it tends to be fairly disorganized in my brain, which means that I can at best discuss it piecemeal. I can't even really discuss autism coherently as a thing, I have to discuss it in terms of say, social difficulties, sensory difficulties, cognition, and so on, and while these can cross over into one another, if someone asked me "what makes you think you're autistic?" I'd probably get lost trying to find a starting point.

But if I have gone over material in some way, it is much easier for me to organize it in the way I have already gone over it. I could explain the same concepts in this post all over again verbally, but I don't think I could have easily done so before I wrote it.

I hope that made sense.