How do you know when you are confused about something?

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So if we tend to get confused about things by having executive functioning problems or missing social cues - at least for me, I can sometimes figure out that I got something wrong by people's reactions and listening to them. But sometimes they just seem to me like they are being jerks. So how do we figure out when we are wrong and they are right?

An example of this is that I live in an apartment and yesterday I cleaned a bunch of stuff out of my kitchen and took 4 bags of garbage down. My super saw it and started screaming at me because the garbage guy wouldn't be back until Monday. It was all in big black bags and sealed. I am confused, I put garbage where garbage goes, contained the way it's supposed to be contained. It's not like I dump bags and bags of garbage every time I see the truck leave!

That's just on example - stuff like that happens to me a lot. Is there a way to make a mental checklist to figure out things?

My guess is the landlord got mad at you for it because you had four bags of trash, big ones and he didn't want the dumpster to fill up so quickly but Monday was three days away so I guess he didn't want the dumpster to be too full and get overfilled before trash day. I speak from experience when my ex boyfriend told me we couldn't throw out everything at once when we were cleaning out the guestroom his sister left and her kids and her boyfriend. he kicked them out and they left all their things in the bedroom and it had so much stuff in it, you couldn't even get around in there. We took it to Goodwill and some stuff I kept and the rest that was garbage we tossed out but we couldn't toss it all out at once or the landlord wouldn't like it. So maybe that is what happened with you.

What I do is ask questions, ask my husband about it or my mom or argue with the person about it lol and I get my answers that way. but good question about how do we know when we're wrong. We either think we're wrong or right. There is never a between. Most people would know when they are wrong and when they are right and NTs also get confused sometimes about if they were in the wrong or not because they go online and post about it asking for opinions. Before internet, I am sure they would go to their friends or neighbors or family and talk about it or in their groups too they would go to. Now that internet is common, pretty much everyone goes online and asks a bunch of strangers for their opinion. If we are ever confused about something, just ask someone we trust and take their word for it. If that person says we were in the wrong, then we were in the wrong. If they say we were right and that person was wrong, okay we didn't do anything wrong then.

"How do you know when you're confused about something?" You know you're confused about something when you don't know. If you don't know what you think then you are confused. So I guess we're confused all the time, because I'm told it's a typical symptom of those on the spectrum when they don't know how they feel or think about something. It's hard enough to gauge the feelings of someone else, but lots of times I don't even know how I feel. People expect a response from me, especially when they are upset with me, and not only do I not know what they want but most times I don't even know what I want.

when I cant make sense of it...though sometimes not so sure I know what sense is.

Haha, what I meant is - in circumstances where there is a disagreement and you think you are right, how do you identify when you are actually wrong? Is there a checklist or something like that that can be used to figure out incorrect thinking?

I would say most of the time if a person is screaming at you, they are wrong, even if they are right about the issue. There is no need to scream about a mistake, unless someone is getting hurt or about to get hurt.

I don't see how 4 bags of garbage could be such a problem when trash pick up is only two days away.

Maybe this is just a difference of opinion on how something is supposed to be done, instead of one person being right and the other wrong. Like you said, if you dumped the trash all over, that would be wrong. If you decided to set the bags on fire to burn the trash, that would be wrong. But the day you took the bags out, just sounds like his opinion instead of it being wrong. He sounds ridiculous to me.

I think he might be really mad at me because of something that happened a while ago. In the fall our landlord turned our hot water off, so it was just hot for like 2 minutes, then coldish. Hard to bathe. So I told the super I'd give him $200 for a Christmas bonus if he turned it back on, with the condition that it stayed on. Right around Christmas, it went cold again.

Now I'm not about to give him the money and I explicitly stated I wouldn't if the water didn't stay hot, but I haven't discussed it with him either. I just don't want the hassle and stress because I know he'll yet at me about that too. And it makes me angry that the water is cold and I have to live like this and probably will forever since the city won't do anything about it even though I filed a complaint. Record breaking snow this year and we have barely any hot water. On really cold days, NO hot water.

He probably just sees it as me gypping him.

But I still wish I had a checklist.

I've been told that for neurotypicals, it is mostly about the process, rather than the facts. And giving in or going along or being sympathetic even when things don't make sense because that's what people expect, and they'll behave better if getting what they expect.

It's true people are nicer if I do go along, not quite to where I can do it, though, fine line between that and being taken advantage of.

Wow. This guy is a jerk. He has no reason to be mad at you, or to think you cheated him. He is cheating you and the other tenants by withholding hot water. You shouldn't have to bribe him for it by offering a bonus. He has no legitimate reason to expect you to give him that money, regardless of whether you offered it or not, and I'm sure he knows it.

I have to side with the super on these two examples:

In the first, it is not good building etiquette to take a lot of garbage to the garbage bin unless it's garbage day. The same applies to laundry - you don't want to take up all the washers at once.

In the second, you insulted him by offering him money. There is a reason why the hot water is off and you giving him money is not going to change that. By offering you are suggesting that he isn't doing his job properly.

Hi Ann, I don't want to get into an argument (or even long discussion) about the amount of garbage, you haven't convinced me I'm wrong, but I'm still not sure if I'm right either - I think that considering I don't do it often and the other option was to leave it in my apt for three days, it wasn't the crime of the century even if I was wrong. But considering what I've seen of your posts so far, I value your opinion. (I wasn't planning on doing it again anyway.)

But regarding your point about bribing him - I don't want to give out too much personal info (even though I've probably told half the members of the forum where I live via pm, and this may be an obvious hint anyway) - where I live, it is the norm to bribe the supers to get what you want. Sometimes you have to bribe them to get simple work on your apt done. I have also often paid him to do things like carry heavy things down for me. I assure, on this matter, he was FAR FROM INSULTED.

WEll thanks for the support, but it was the landlord who put the temp control on the water heater, not him. This landlord is notorious for doing this all over the city as they own many buildings. THe thing is he adjusted it once, I don't know why it went back down after he adjusted it. It might have been him or might have been out of his control. But either way, the money was to keep the water hot and it's cold now.

Often don't
find it hard to recognise which feelings are which
which results in arguments

Well, the garbage thing could go either way. Myself, I only take one bag at a time if I can. Sometimes I have a lot of recyclables which I take down on separately.

The necessity of bribery is disturbing . . . it must be difficult to navigate this environment. If it were me I try to move.
Plus your super sounds a bit mean if he's yelling about things.

He had to go away on medical leave once and got his friend to take over for him. We still had to bribe the other guy, but he so much nicer. IF you did something he didn't want you to do, he would tell you in a friendly way. This guy seems to really hate his job, whereas his friend loved it!