Autistics who can read body language well

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I know body language from reading about it but when it comes time to talk with people I don't tend to notice it. It could be all the different sounds and smells around me or that I just don't remember to look for it.

Thanks Ksea

Reading DW blog on this subject was deeply interesting for me.

I too am a therapist. I work with poor and marginalized people. I listen to their concerns, fears and dreams.

I often feel in-between worlds. On one hand I can read well the soul or essence of another, which in turn links me to humanity, and yet because of my autistic tendency to be overwhelmed I often feel unable to join in.

My ability to understand the feeling world, puts me at the centre of things, often leaving me so close but so far from humanity.

In aspies groups I feel more often than not completely alienated amidst the literal mindedness and emotionally challenged members. In contrast the non-autistic world is like a foreign land that I am passing through.

I feel most at home within the artistic/ /autistic community.

My supersonic ability to read other people - I have a reputation for it, everyone marvels at my "psychic powers" - is the one thing that kept me from believing I was Aspie for a long time. I was told one of the main traits was socially blundering through missed cues of other people's feelings and reactions, along with the inability to manipulate or adjust to the tone of an interaction. I'm just the opposite.

Except in two instances. I am often blind to when people are making a joke with a straight face, and I often miss social cues from women. Several times I've been really wounded because I thought I had a friendly conversation with a woman and then later I found out she badmouthed me because I didn't show enough enthusiasm about her new shoes or her engagement ring, etc. That always leaves me with an unsettled feeling because I didn't pick up on the displeasure at the time.

Interestingly........

I would not say I have 'special powers' of insight, but I do know that growing up in a home environment which was very abusive taught me adaptive skills that very soon became 2nd nature.......i learned to 'play out of my skin' in order to survive.

Being adopted at a very young age was traumatic too, and unconsciously I learned to attune myself to the needs of others in order to not Re-experience the deeply overwhelming feelings of abandonment i carried within my soul.
All the above has made me hyper-attuned to the needs of others. I learned to not only make all the right noises, but deep down felt a deep resonance with the lonely, dispossessed and fearful.

I've become so good at it, as a result of my childhood, that I can tell right away if someone is looking for an excuse to

explode just by the stiff way they hold their body. I think that's what it is. It almost feels like vibes. I actually did not

suffer as much as others, it's just that I was (am) hypersensitive to loud sudden noises and when dad would explode

over some triviality he didn't even notice the day before it became necessary to know an potential explosion was

building when I couldn't predict what the trigger would be.

Those things usually seem to teach how to look for body language 'leaks'. Those are signals that people give out unintentionally that reveal emotions that they don't want people to see, they aren't the main ones that are given out freely or even purposefully, like humour or sympathy. Some of them are very subtle and don't occur in places where NTs are inclined to look when very focused on someone, e.g. feet movement. Many if not most people do pick up on many of these in my experience, when they happen to be looking in the right place, but subconsciously or subverbally. They sense that the person is feeling anxious or annoyed etc., but can't explain how they know, to themselves or others, and are therefore likely to forget or dismiss this sense later. That's where knowing what to look for and what exactly you might be noticing comes in useful.

I'm more of the 'notice-but-does-not-know-what-to-do' type when it comes to body language. Though, I register negative feedback right away while friendliness might go amiss with me. Especially if it's expressed by showing off and being over-friendly, I interpret those as agression and back away or - if I am very annoyed - retaliate.
I have read about a ton of books about body language long before I suspected I was an Aspie, so I guess I felt that I was not very good at it from the start.

That is a great explanation.
Intentional body language as a learnt thing - yes that is what I mean by superficial, although perhaps I should have said overlayed, or not intrinsic.
I read Charles Darwin's book 'The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals' which made a lot of sense to me, since it refers to the intrinsic subconscious emotional language. Well I can read cat body language quite well, so I probably can read the equivalent in people quite well too. Whether I take any notice is a different matter.

I've definitely had some good and some tricky experiences in the past, because I related to other people based on what I perceived - oblivious to the fact that they were unaware 'how' I did it. I thought everyone saw people the same way I did, since I had no way of knowing differently.

Sometimes people are pleased and touched if you relate to their 'inner self', other people become angry or defensive. I can't see the facades that I'm supposed to be able to, apart from the fact that sometimes it's like two different views of the same person. In some ways it's easier to just ignore people, rather than get bad reactions.

I think I'm quite sensitive to tone of voice, since it's not much different to musical interpretation, and I listen more than I look most of the time. I think people reveal quite a lot in the rhythm of their speech, pauses and emphases, but sometimes I forget to hear what they are actually saying. And I think it's possible to be aware of muscle tension etc, although perhaps even that is related to subtle sounds.

You're right, most people probably were unaware of the subconscious leaks. I think what annoys me is the way that what was subconscious has now become intentional. So that, for example, unconscious mirroring of posture has now been adopted as a conscious thing - intentionally mirroring in order to show others that you 'value' them. So you have social skills training (which reminded me at times of dog training classes - good boy fido) which presents the idea that, even for casual small-talk conversations, a whole array of body language is expected, whereas most of this language is the unintentional (and therefore once meaningful) subconscious stuff that most people were unaware of.

That's what I mean by over-hyped - most of this language was not a natural part of everyday conversations, but it has been incorporated into the fake feel-goodery that now passes for social interaction. Not so long ago the only people who 'faked' were salesmen, dodgy pick-up artists and politicians - now there is an expectation that even if you have a brief conversation with someone at a bus-stop or on a supermarket till, you are expected to 'make them feel good about themselves'.

Before my Dx with HFA I trained to be a teacher of the Alexander Technique.

My reasons for doing so at the time was that I wanted to be "more in the world and less consumed by it."

The AlexanderTechnique helps people to use themselves with greater fluidityand mindfulness in everyday life activities. Much emphasis is placed upon posture and learning to put a space between a thought and a reaction and hense giving birth to a more thought out response to stimuli.

I was not aware of it at the time of my training, but in hindsight I now know that unconsciously was attempting to use these principles in order to refine my adaptive skills and develop even more complex tricks of concealing my social awkwardness.

My desire to be "more in the world and less consumed by it." was well enough...........adapting has it's place. Surviving has it's place in a world that is so overwhelming. However, now I am learning to live life disarmed of my overadaptive self that has camouflaged me well over the years.

The following is a cut and paste from the link which I mentioned when starting this thread.

It is a conversation between Donna Williams and Nancy Bethor on the subject of how many people in the spectrum have highly attuned sensing abilities and thus great abilities in understanding NVC (Non-Verbal Communication)




NANCY BEKHOR:

Is the Aspie‘s path toward sensing therefore as barred as those with typically developed neurology?
It has been said by various philosophers that anyone is barred access (to sensing) due to over reliance on linear thought, verbal communication and mental focus. Further that there is something of great value to humanity in this realm of sensing but unfortunately people ‘do not know what they do not know’.

DONNA WILLIAMS
Yes, I have tended to find many Aspies are not strong at sensing. BUT I have found that some who were diagnosed with autism and then developed speech by mid-late childhood could appear to have Aspie features but were still highly sensing. By contrast, I have met a far higher percentage of those with autism who are functionally non-verbal, even great type-speakers, who were highly sensing. In other words I don’t think its set in stone but there’s some general observations that those limited to linear thought, mental focus and verbalising tend to be more ‘interpretive’ and less sensing. Saying that, if I need my computer fixed I’d need an Aspie If I need a navigator for my soul, I need someone who is good at sensing.

I also think that non-linear thought is common in certain personality traits… like the idiosyncratic-schizotypal pattern, the exhuberant-cyclothymic pattern, where the conscientious-obsessive/compulsive personality trait pattern is a more linear thinker as is the somewhat ‘paint by numbers’ Sensitive-Avoidance and those two are more commonly diagnosed with Aspergers.

So the degree to which one is sensing versus interpretive would be influenced by personality, neurological integration, the presence of sensory-perceptual deficits etc.

NANCY BEKHOR:

Could the different autism focus that is referred to above be simply a parallel to the common human traits of being mathematical or artistic. Some type of right or left brain dominance to which these differences are ascribed?

DONNA WILLIAMS:

Not sure about the right/left brain side as people can develop traditionally ‘right brain’ functions in areas of the left hemisphere etc. Equally, there are linear and non-linear thinkers who are logical/mathematical and I’m a systematician but I can sense systems, so I can combine the two wonderfully. I’m also have a strong idiosyncratic trait which is very non-linear in its thinking which is probably why. But there will be those who are more OCPD in their style, and more linear, who will also be logical/mathematical and will be analytical but not sensing.

Similarly there are those who do quite constrained, quite ‘linear’ art and really struggle to let go, explore, feel the art. So it really depends where the art or logical-mathematical styles come from… what personality and neurology package they’re in.

NANCY BEKHOR:

Are we really talking about a problem with the word ‘autism’ having 2 different meanings? and this is not helpfully described by the word ‘spectrum’. Or are the 2 types interwoven?

DONNA WILLIAMS:

Hmm. Well I think we can talk about one form of autism as relating to over reliance on intellect, linear thinking, verbal communication skills at the expense of sensing and another form of autism involving significant obstacles to traditional intellect, yet with often intact emotional intelligence and intuition, and tendency toward non-linear thinking but all at the expense of smoother executive functioning and verbal communication skills.

As for the use of the word ‘spectrum’ there, that gets confusing because from this angle is is not really a spectrum at all, no more than a pear and a cabbage both being carbs, they are not as similar as a pear and apple.

And then, saying that, there are those from the autistic end who acquired enough language skills and executive functioning to be presumed ‘Aspie’… which is really more about our stereotypes (that all verbal autistic people must be Aspie and all non-verbal one’s Autie).

So, all clear as mud

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com

posted under Autism, Donna Williams, Uncategorized, autism politics, interviews, psychology, sociology
One Comment to
“Autism and Sensing”

Interesting. My own theory is that the divide between the "sensing" type and the "linear" type is something that's already present outside of any autistic abnormality, yet autism can widen the gap between the two. In other words, autistic people tend to be more towards the extreme end of one or the other. If the "linear" type is already more common in the general population, in terms of bulk statistics, the autistic population will be skewed towards "linear" even though a sizable minority are strongly on the "sensing" end.

I share your theory ......

"Someone with Asperger’s really is like you, just more extreme." -
Dr Winnie Dunn

I can read it in movies (they're designed to put across the right body language), but I can't in person. :/

It doesn't make sense, unless viewing a 2D image is different to a 3D one in regards to visual processing, or something....

Bingo. That would describe me.

Good observations. I think people were always coached on how to make a good impression though, the difference is that people are making money from it now, whereas it used to be people's parents who told them to sit up straight and smile more etc. There didn't used to be places people could go to learn it all in one sitting if they wanted to.