Mindblindness

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Hi guys. It said on my report that I seem to have mind blindness to some degree. I'm not sure I totally agree. Is mind blindness about other people having different thoughts, intentions and ideas than you? Have any of you guys been told you have it also? The thing is even though I'm on the spectrum nobody can tell unless they're family or caught me at a bad time or something.

I actually think that a lot of the way we perceive things is not wrong or disordered at all, just different. The stigma about being different is a form of control. Those who aren't sheep are called weird or crazy but they're often the most sane as they can look beyond temporary social constructs. Don't trust all you're told.

What do you think?

Mind-blindness means that you lack mental awareness of others meaning that you are unable to understand emotions and intentions. It is when you cannot answer: "Why does someone react emotionally?" "Why does someone have a particular emotion at the moment?" and "Why are emotions suddenly directed at me?" It commonly then happens that you do not know why people become angry at you or whether people have good intentions or not. I haven't been told that I have mind-blindness but rather just a difficulty reading emotions while having a certain lack of them myself.

NTs and people on the spectrum don't get along well unless the person on the spectrum is only affected lightly or if both sides are aware of each others differences. It can be seen as a difference at a time but can also be seen as a disorder at other times. It all depends on the context of the irregularities.

Now don't consider it as a form of control, because that is how conspiracy theories start up. It only affects people who feel they have the need to be a part of a group. If you give in to peer pressure, then you seem to have a desire to conform. Personally, I do not want to conform as I feel fine for who I am, plus I have the feeling that every third person I meet is not uneducated, irrational or heavily biased (I avoided the word idiot as it would indicate a personal attack on someones intelligence rather than the factors that contribute to the ignorance of the person.)

I've never been told directly that I have mind blindness but I know that I do in certain areas. Thinking back over my life I remember several incidents that make me realize that I was incorrectly interpreting someone's intentions or I was completely missing the point all together.

All people with autism have an impaired theory of mind aka mind-blindness to a certain degree. In fact it is a core trait of all functioning levels of autism and explains a lot of why those with autism are impaired socially. Even those who are quite intelligent cognitively can still have a pretty sh***y theory of mind.

Theory of mind involves being able to put yourself in other peoples shoes and know how they feel. It's kind of like a mini version of mind-reading. Someone with an impaired theory of mind has difficulty understanding how their actions will make other people feel and it also involves difficulty reading the thoughts and intentions of others.

Like an example would be walking up to a girl you don't even know and asking for her phone number right away and then texting her like 10 times later that night. (based on a true story of a kid I knew it wasn't me) and not realizing that you are being creepy nor realizing that she is giving you hints to stop texting her. Or another example would be giving blunt honest anwsers and people think you're an as*hole but you don't see you're doing anything wrong as you're just telling the truth.


Like I have pretty bad social skills in general. I have problems understanding certain things and i'm not a very good conversationalist in general. Now I compensate for my social shortcomings by being nice and having a sense of humour which both of these thankfully mask some of my difficulties with social communication. But i'm never going to master it, I just have to find ways to impress people and make friends in different unorthodox ways such as doing something active, or if its something we're both interested in. Like world domination!

Hmm I feel my social skills aren't too bad but I've been told often that I should be more tactful and I'm too blunt. Most of the time it's not that I don't know how they'll react, but it's that I don't care to sugar coat what I'm saying; I won't be listened to if im too polite about something important that people must be told straight lol. Also I sometimes mix my words up when I'm speaking so I prefer to say it simply.

Thats great I think you can't go wrong if you are nice and have a good sense of humor. You can probably get away with more.

I took some sort of social skills IQ test during my senior year of high school. I believe it was called pragmatic language test. There were sub-categories like identifying facial expressions which I did pitiful at, like I can't look at a picture and distinguish between feeling guilty or grieving, I just look at someone and be like hey they're upset or they're happy. And one was how to respond to social situations like one of the questions was some guy walks up to me and spreads a rumor that a girl is pregnant. I think I just responded with okay. I scored like 75 with 100 being the average in pretty much all of them.

The only one I actually scored normal on was identifying when someone was being ironic or joking. Which isn't so surprising because i'm an ironic person in nature and I like to joke. The problem is, people often think i'm being serious because I have such an off-beat sense of humor. If you understand my humor, I automatically like you 10 times more.

I also took that same test where you read eyes and must guess at the emotions they show. I got 100% multiple times. :-/

No one has ever told me I had it but I look back and realized I had my moments where I did. Not understanding that someone doesn't like what I like, not even realizing how I was coming off as or a comment I made would be interpreted as, not realizing why someone isn't being nice to me so I assumed they were just being mean, not realizing why kids would avoid me or not want me around so I assumed they were being mean. I also remember the time when I was in high school I tried to get my first boyfriend and he kept saying he was too old for me. I didn't realize he was rejecting me and I thought he was thinking he couldn't be with me because I was 17 and he was 18 and we were only nine months apart. So I reassured him and then I thought he was thinking we would have sex so I told him I didn't want that, I just want a boyfriend and kids started laughing. My aide told me a week later at my IEP meeting I needed to work on my social skills and my mom just laughed at the story when she told it to her what I did in home mec. And my therapist thought I didn't have mindblindness. Then what is all this?

I wasn't tested, but based on my behavior as a kid, I'm pretty sure I got first & second order ToM on time.

It's more the easy, effortless recognition of nonverbal cues I've had trouble with, as well as just plain thinking differently from others. I can easily imagine how I'd feel in another person's circumstances, but so often how they actually feel is totally different from how I'd feel, and I struggle to pick up on the cues that would tell me directly what they're feeling. (At least in real-time - on tests where I have as much time as I want to answer I do fine.)

I have never had trouble understanding how my own mind worked or how things would look to someone else if their mind worked like mine. I've never had much trouble understanding that someone else might not know something I knew, or vice versa. It's when they react in a completely different way to how I'd react in their situation that I get confused.

My attention problems make this sort of thing hard, but otherwise I believe I am rather bright when it comes to picking up on hints. If people are lying to me or don't want me to know something, they've got to be really excellent at making it really casual, otherwise I can cotton on and pick up hints from their tone of voice or the types of things they are saying and stuff, and I can think ''wait a minute, you know something I don't know...'' That's where people get caught out with me. They think that just because I am an Aspie, I can't pick up on any hints. I'm really good with picking up on hints like that.

On the other hand, I find it hard to listen to people in other ways, and fail to get what they're saying. Like when my boyfriend was driving the bus yesterday, I needed to get off at the bus station, which was the next right turning, but he wasn't going right, he was going straight on. So he said ''I will drop you off down the bottom of the hill here''. I heard him say that, but for some reason it didn't sink in, maybe because I was standing up trying to hold on and was worrying about the time and was trying to remember what I had to do when I got off the bus and stuff. So he stopped and opened the bus doors, and he said ''quickly, while the traffic lights are still red'', and I got into a bit of a fluster and said ''oh, I'm getting off already?'' Then it clicked; we were now at the bottom of the hill where he said he was going to let me off. It was just a lack of attention thing.

But when interactions involve emotions or other complex stuff like lying or secrets or jokes, etc etc etc, I can relate, cotton on, pick up quickly, without no trouble. But when something's more logical, it seems I find it hard to pay attention to the plan.