is body language the same thing as talking to NT's?

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I agree.
I think we aspies either serve it up plain or make mistakes like serving up a piece of cake covered in pepper.
-That is we may mean the best of intentions, but the NT perceives some alternate intention due to some extra word or the way in which it was delivered.

I think that making so many mistakes in delivery conditions us to become more and more specific in wording and more and more bland in delivery.

Being misinterpreted is a way of life.

No. I am saying I interrupt them whenever I get confused.

For example a few days ago my uncle was explaining me some technical thing: "So, you take the cylinder and roll it like this..." (*he used Polish word "przetoczyć", which means "roll an solid, round thing" or "pump a liquid to different container" depending of context) while using his hands to stage a weird move. I interrupted and said: "What? I can't imagine it. How do I roll it like that? What for?". Then he said: "Wait till I finish talking and you will understand.".

So I waited but I couldn't understand the rest of message because I tried to imagine how to make sense of rolling the cylinder in this specific context.
When he finished I said "I don't get it." so he started again and I heard the "... and then you roll it by 3cm..." and I seen the weird move for second time.
"I don't get it. How I can roll it like this? It doesn't make sense." - I said and then he yelled at me (calling ME rude) for interrupting him and continued "... so, once you roll it, you...".
I raised my hand like kids at school and waited. He looked funny at me but stopped talking and told me to speak. I told him I don't get what he means by rolling. He said "DO I SPEAK ALIEN LANGUAGE? ROLLING MEANS THIS:" and showed me the weird move again. "It seems like cutting. Do you mean cut it, not roll?" - I asked and then he continued "YES. So once you roll it...", "You mean cut..." - I interrupted again... Then he got really angry and called me ret*d.

In the end the whole thing was not hard - once I got that he means cut, not roll I could imagine the outcome so clearly I was able to draw it in 3d, including the spot where the cylinder should be cut.

I didn't get it for so long only because I couldn't understand he means "cut" when he says "roll". And when I tried to clear the confusion as soon as possible I got yelled at for interrupting...
He wasted a half of hour by explaining the whole thing over and over although it was generally easy - I just couldn't understand one single word. If he stopped and explained me what he means when I interrupted him it could be over in 5 mins.

Now I kinda get why he used the word - he was probably imagining a specific machine that changes the size of cylinders. Knowing the "roll=cut" now I can guess it works by rolling the cylinder and scraping it, round by round till it gets right size. "Roll" was a mental shortcut that was clear for him(he works with many machines) but not for me. I never seen such machine working so I can only suppose it works this way. Even now its still a guess - I still try to understand the connection between "roll" and "cut" and a machine like this seems like a logical explanation.

I had to LOL.
Yes this thing happens to me often enough as well.
I focus on the exact words being used, and sometimes miss the real message.
I see it as their fault for using the wrong words. Of course they see it as my fault, like how it happened in your case.
I do not interrupt people so much while they are talking, but when I attempt to clarify, as in correct them in their wording, they automatically get angry.

Last edited by olympiadis on 08 Nov 2014, 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not ignoring your whole story. I've been in that situation and it's frustrating. I asked you a question that you were able to answer in eleven words and I want to focus on that.

You said that you don't interrupt people because you want to show them you understand? The reason I asked is because I'm under the impression that's what NTs do. I'm not NT so I don't know. I'm just wondering if when we do the same things we're really doing them for the same reasons.

I don't understand the question.
Are you saying NTs stay silent in order to show they understand or you say they interrupt in order to show they understand?

Anyway, I would say they do both. Just as everyone do.

Don't you sometimes stay silent because you don't want to make an idiot of yourself?

Don't you sometimes interrupt someone who talks too much by saying "Yeah, I got it." in order for him to stop explaining?(he will once he sees you understand what he means)

No, I have this done often to me though.
In at least 90% of these cases when I test the other person's understanding of what I'm explaining they fail the test.
They were completely ignoring the content of my message, and had every intention of continuing to ignore the content.

What they got was some alternate message that was completely unintended by me.

Yes, especially extroverted people have this tendency to jump to conclusions. Neurotypicals easily become overconfident in their ability to "understand" others because they are used to reading body language, and neglect the importance of explicit verbal content.

For such people reaching a "conclusion" or an "understanding" is pure intuition and not a conscious reasoning process. They fail to explicitly validate their conclusions/understanding with the person they are interacting with. In the worst case, they try to convince you that their understanding is "deeper" than yours, because "obviously" you can't read your own body language. Assuming that what they see from the outside provides an undistorted lens onto what you are "really" thinking inside, they conclude that you are probably "out of touch" with your own emotions.

Yep. One of the worst case scenarios is when a man thinks "her mouth says no but her body is saying yes."



I've had ^this happen to me online too, where no one could see my body language or facial expressions, or hear my tone of voice. Even when they only have words to rely on, they seem to ignore the actual meaning of the words and imagine a lot of non-verbal communication that isn't actually there.

I think NTs are overconfident in their ability to read others...no matter what kind of input they are getting, verbal, non-verbal, or both, they simply don't question their own assumptions.

If communication is all about body language how do we communicate online?

If I may, since the thread you are questioning is a year old (and Kiriae, please correct me if I'm wrong)? I believe that statement was specifically explaining face to face "verbal" communication. I put verbal in quotes because obviously it's not all verbal, but rather a secret mix of verbal and non-verbal communication.