My therapist misunderstands literal interpretations.

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I am pretty sure I don't want a life coach. The very idea makes me shudder. Maybe I'm prejudiced, or maybe I just hate the idea of someone whose purpose is to encourage me to change a lot of things.

I'm not sure what your idiom means, so I'll leave that alone. But yes, you're right - I was specifically asking for the metaphor's meaning, not an elaboration on the metaphor itself.



It wasn't very therapeutic. Part of it is that she has a tendency to frame things as if I'm coping and managing with my daily situation, which I am really not. I barely have enough energy or focus to engage in my interests or really do much more than read forums on some days, and I have shutdowns every 1-2 days. I'm not managing, but I can't ever get past that particular wall with her.



Exactly. Would just prefer to avoid them, mostly.



There's a lot of context here that both my therapist and friend are aware of that I didn't get into in this thread - I really am barely managing to function. I manage to eat, get my cats fed, and often don't really do much else other than get stuck on the internet (and if I didn't get stuck on the internet, it would be something else). The problem is that I'm in a constant state of excessive sensory overload due to noise levels here, and coping with that is taking my capacity to do other things away from me. She may not have meant "barely," but it fits.



Next time I'll have to be explicit that she's not being clear. I was unprepared for an answer like that, so I didn't really know what to say, so I dropped it.



I've studied Spanish and French in some depth, actually. I found learning the languages to be about as easy (or difficult) as anything else I've tried. Maybe we didn't quite get to those expressions.

MindWithoutWalls,

I love books like that. I used to read the first two Books of Lists over and over again.

No, I don't think you were over-analyzing. That is the point of this thread.



Sorry, I don't agree. The idiom clearly has a negative connotation. It clearly means you are just barely functioning. It is synonymous with the idiom "I've had it up to here with this!" (which includes the hand gesture near the neck). Anyway the more important point is that when a metaphor is not immediately understood, it should be explained a different way.



True, people do talk this way a lot. Consider the following phrases:
In over my head
Drowning in debt

The more important point here is that giving cryptic answers is not therapeutic. For example, if I were there, the conversation would have unhelpfully veered off on a tangent about idioms, just like this thread.



This is probably what people mean when they say something is "lost in translation".

Don't NTs understand idioms because they were "taught" what it meant at one time (or they *might* have figured it out), and then whenever they hear it again, they automatically recall the associated meaning? If this so, how could it fail in autistics? Are the ones who "don't" get it impoverished in associative memory or something?

For example, when my 2nd grade teacher was talking about "There was this guy from India and he didn't know the idioms of this country like a "Bounced check"" and I pretty much had to have it explained to me, because I obviously didn't know enough about how checks worked to "figure it out", but once it was explained, I understood what it means whenever I read/hear of it because it was explained at one time and I remember it. It's just an associated memory -- there's little to no 'reasoning' or 'intuition' needed to understand idioms. Now, if I get to a new idiom, I almost always need to look it up, although I can sometimes make a good guess.

Yeah, that is an excellent question. I don't get it either. At some point growing up, idioms have to be expressly taught. I don't understand why an NT person would find this easier than an AS person.

Sometimes I can figure out what an idiom means and other times I have a hard time with it. I know they don't mean that but I still don't know what they mean. But if they explain it to me in a literal way, then I get it and I will try and remember what that idiom means. Some I have had troubles grasping. It's all about rote learning. Memorization. It baffles me if an autistic can't do this.

It took me a while to understand "You are slower than molasses in January" then all of a sudden the simple meaning of it meant "You are too slow." Then I got it. Just that short sentence would have helped me understood what the phrase meant than going into a monologue about it because that just confused me and I couldn't grasp it. I kept wondering why were people using that phrase if we were still going faster than molasses in January because we couldn't be going that slow since molasses drips out of the jar a lot slower in that month than us.

Okay just give the damn autistics the simple meaning of an idiom, don't get on the fricken soapbox about it explaining where the idiom comes from to explain what it means like the way the doctor tried to with verdandi. (no you, swbluto, people in general when they wish to explain an idiom to us).

Oh, it seems you were making a direct physical comparison between yourself and the molasses and that's what the issue was? I wonder if this "physical interpretation" is what the problem is? It seems like verdandi had a problem with the statement "You're still staying above water" because she could only associate it with the physical interpretation of "you're not physically drowning". So, it seems to be more an issue of not associating metaphorical meanings with the physical one.

I wonder why that is...

I wonder if you guys would tend to do well on analogical reasoning tests, since it seems to be related to that? Or maybe it's a matter of generating the possible associations that's the problem, not necessarily "Not understanding" the association? Like "associative creativity" or some such?

I tend to take things literal and I've been told I have literal thinking. Sure I can use phrases and sarcasm. I can do jokes. I can hear phrases and I still see the literal images like if someone were to say it's raining cats and dogs, I picture cats and dogs falling out of the sky even though I know that is not what it means. I know it means it's raining very hard. Slower than molasses in January, it just means going very slow. It has nothing to do with it going slower than molasses flows out of the jar in January. Just the simple meaning "It just means you are going very slow" would have helped me understood the phrase just like how Verdani's friend had to tell her the simple meaning of "staying above water."

Someone here related their personal story about a therapist experience - but damn if I remember who, when or where - but it sums up the therapist experience nicely.

Basically - you tell a therapist 'I don't understand.' They think you are conveying all kinds of other messages - you're ducking a subject, expressing frustration, registering your disagreement with an idea... Rarely do they interpret it as 'I do not understand the context/idiom/association of what you just said in relation to our conversation'.

When words do not mean what the dictionary says they mean how exactly are people supposed to communicate? Why, when a doctor meets a new patient from a foreign country and they question words/contexts/idioms they can explain it clearly and succinctly using dictionary meanings but, in ASD, they think they are doing you a favor by making you 'work it out'? If you could 'work it out' you wouldn't be disabled...

This reminds me when I was 17, my shrink got this expression on his face and I asked him why he did that and he instead started doing what Verdandi's therapist did. Started asking me questions about why he could have done it than telling me why he did it. It was very frustrating. He did this quite often in other stuff too so after a while I just stopped asking him what he meant or what his facial expression meant and what other people meant or what their reactions meant. he had to make everything so difficult. Now I wonder if that was his way of trying to get me to improve.

They don't do this with just idioms, they do this with body language, facial expressions, etc.

I hate it how therapists or psychologists or psychiatrists try to convince you you're actually managing when you know you're not. Friends and family can try to reassure you, it's a therapists job to understand you're having problems and work out ways to deal with them.

Next month is the first time I see my psychiatrist alone. I like him but there's been things I can't say in front of him because my mum was there. I'm just going to be completely upfront with him. At least he wants to keep me on disability. I'm going to tell him why I agree.

Why is it that therapists often have such poor communication skills?
It is like they often try to find hidden meaning when it is not there. The best ones are like talking to a good friend and the worst ones are like chatterbot, except more argumentative.

If the client says there is a problem, then there is a problem! It is a stated fact that should not be argued with.
If the client says "I don't understand", then explain it different way. Don't assume your client is lying to you (why do they do that?).

I am just amazed. One would think that being a therapist would require excellent communication skills, but personal experience shows otherwise.

Yeah, I do not get why she gets "but you're managing" when I say "Life at home is a living hell of excessive noise."



It's about time you get to see him alone, at least.



I actually wrote a post about how my associative memory often fails me. This is one thing that sometimes makes it hard for me to generalize what I know to different situations - such as learning how to drive a manual transmission on a tractor, but forgetting I'd ever touched one when learning to drive a car. I can make associations, but they sometimes don't take properly, and I have to make them again and again until, eventually, some do take. Some actually take right away, others don't. Sometimes I form convoluted associations that I have to retrace to remember.

It's interesting to me that many people (even other people on the spectrum) seem to say that knowing something (having it explained) means always knowing something, or that being able to explain something after it happens is the same skill as being able to understand it while it's happening. When I'm in a social interaction, a lot of information and related associations may be completely unavailable to me, because I am focusing so much on the conversation (I think) that I don't have the resources to make complex inquiries into my own brain, or I even forget that such inquiries are possible.

I've heard the idiom before. It was even used once on this forum in response to me, although at the time I didn't ask about it because I was focused on something else.



Most idioms I've heard the literal meaning for, I can use appropriately. I can even use idioms in the correct context when I don't know what they mean - when I catch myself using anything like this these days I look it up on google to be sure, because I've been misled by context in the past.

But last month, a psychologist asked me "What does 'living in a glass house' mean?" and I had heard it used countless times. I knew the correct context in which it would be used, but I did not know what it actually meant. I was able to work it out, but not very quickly, or in much detail. It's an idiom used to describe people who are being hypocritical. Now, I have no idea why "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" references hypocrisy. Obviously, one shouldn't throw stones in a glass house (and glass houses do exist) , but what does that have to do with being hypocritical?

The thing with idioms is that they all originated from somewhere. I'm interested in knowing where and sometimes try to work it out myself. On QI it's often brought up and explained.

I'm lost at the hypocrisy one though. It reminds me of a scripture: he who is without sin cast the first stone. Since we're born into sin no one really can unless they've repented from their sins. And isn't a hypocrite someone who judges people for something they do themselves?
I probably got that scripture all wrong but I think it could be interpreted in many ways. I haven't read my Bible in years and haven't been in a church for longer.

I think it would be better to be referred to as 'mirrored houses' so you can see your hypocrisy.

I find a lot of sayings to be stupid. For example, "quiet as a mouse". I've had pet mice and wild mice both as pets and living in the walls of my home. They are not quiet at all with all the running in the wheel and chewing and stuff. "Eats like a bird". Birds actually eat a lot for their body size. "Safe as houses". Maybe it's because I'm not British but I heard that many times on tv and I'd never have any idea what it meant if I couldn't look it up on the internet.

I had a probation officer get angry with me when I was 14 because she asked me if I "ever took a hit off a joint" and I didn't know what she meant because she used unfamiliar slang. People need to realize just because you know what some obscure saying means doesn't mean everyone else knows what it means or even heard it before.

We just don't pick it up. Even if we socialise a lot our brain isn't as adaptable as NT's at understanding it.
Understanding sarcasm and idioms is part of executive functioning which we have problems in. People that damage their frontal lobes have problems with it too, and impulsive behaviour, lack of emotional control, short term memory loss.

I'm actually really good at making up my own analogies which is associative thinking, right?

If I recall correctly, that was my therapist experience. I could be mistaken but I do recall having a conversation with you about that and how my therapist likes to say things like "I think most people have trouble with that."