Is mindblindness a problem for everybody on the spectrum?

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I have Autism and, for me, I find it really difficult to read another persons body language or facial expressions. I just ask them bluntly what emotions they're feeling or if I'm boring them. It seems rude at first but people get used to it after awhile.

The only emotions I can recognise are;

Sadness - They have to be crying though.
Happiness - If someone's smiling I assume they're happy.

... That's it.

I also have a lot of trouble recognising my own emotions so I try to describe what I'm feeling (like you would describe a headache or something) to people in the hopes they'd know what I'm talking about.

B19, what the expert is telling them is not to make assumptions based on subjective prejudice - this is all in the intellectual realm. The expert is not by any means telling them to disregard their intuition.

For people I know really well, I've adapted. Though I still say "how are you doing, or what's up" a lot. But for people I don't know, unless they're expressing super extreme emotions like shouting or crying, it's hard to read them. Often times when my mom is upset (usually with my dad), I apologize profusely. She always says I'm not the problem and I have nothing to apologize for, but I do misread her body language a lot. It's not that I don't have an idea that she's upset of frustrated, I just almost always assume it's something I've done when she's never upset with me and has said so. I can't seem to get it through my head.

I'm good at reading body language and facial expressions when I'm looking, but I can't look at people when I'm talking about anything remotely serious, because seeing their expressions is too distracting. I've noticed that when I'm looking at someone's face while I talk, they tend to react to my facial expression more than my words, which makes me realize my face might not match my words, and then I get self conscious and try to control my expression, which makes coherent speech almost impossible.

Also, I tend to over-read people's emotions if I watch for nonverbal cues in conversation. I mean, for example, that I might see anger in someone's mannerisms and think that I made the person angry, not realizing that they're just in a bad mood and not mad at me or even really reacting to me or what I said at all.

I can see how this might look like "mindblindness," but I think it's really the opposite.

I think he is trying to ask about or define or is trying to refer to

Theory Of Mind.

Actual mindblindness means someone is unable to attribute mental states to anyone, and it's complete BS made up by people who don't know what they are talking about, and it continues to plague the community. Meanwhile, "mindblindness", the lack of intuition into mental states leading to difficulty in assigning emotions, is more real.

That's interesting. Especially as mind blindness is a concept that is usually used referring to the minds of others.

As it's so common to have trouble identifying ones own feelings, this starts to seem like a mistake. Maybe it just takes longer to think through someone's state of mind, rather than knowing intuitively, even if it's your own.

Last edited by Waterfalls on 09 Jul 2014, 5:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, I have seen that kind of double standard many times.

It's not black and white.
"Other people" are not just "other people", not to NTs either. It also depends on how well you know (or even like) the other person, and how similar the other person is to yourself.
Roughly said: maybe NTs tend to think they can read minds, and spectrum people tend to know they can't?