League_Girl wrote:
If someone isn't going to let me think about it, I don't want their business so I will say no instead. This is good to use on sales people since many of them don't want you to think about it. They just want a black and white answer. If that is how they are going to be, don't give them their business. That is a rule I made up.
This is a good rule, and I will borrow it liberally.
As for the OP:
I prefer answers like "I will think about this" to "maybe" because the former at least implies concrete action. In my experience, the answer isn't
always no, at least with some people. My mother, for example, will say something like that and actually mean it.
As far as it goes, some things require more processing time for me to work through and produce an answer - like your post, or ThDude's post about mourning. I can't just answer them immediately, although given a few hours or a few days, I can produce a fairly complete answer to my own satisfaction,
sometimes. There have been times when I have tried to rush that answer and it can push me toward a meltdown because I'm trying to push my brain to produce something I may not fully understand and almost certainly will not accurately represent what I would want to say if I did fully understand it.
I hate being pressured to answer immediately. It puts me on the defensive, and I sometimes find I can't answer at all - and so often, other people who are not themselves autistic (but not always NT) will assume this inability to answer - this
freeze - means "no" when it really means "my brain is jammed up and I can't process this." Even if I say, "I need a moment to get my thoughts in order" that is often treated as if I plan to refuse, or I am lying. It's frustrating, and leaves me agreeing to things I don't agree with, or disagreeing with things I do agree with far more often than it should.
This is one of the reasons I have a lot of trouble with face to face conversation. I only process much of the information well after the fact and realize that I feel like I was pushed into something I don't agree with because all of my immediate reactions are taken as meaning something that they do not mean.
I would rather read something and reply once I can properly explain myself than be put on the spot to consider all the details and facts about something and supply an answer in a matter of moments.
The other day, someone asked me for my "gut reaction" to something, and I didn't have a gut reaction. I still had to figure out what I thought about what I read, and explain it. But she said "gut reaction, yes or no." When I explained my problem, she did apologize. I seriously do not function that way in most circumstances.
Last edited by Verdandi on 18 Jan 2012, 3:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
17 Jan 2012, 10:43 pm
