Any communication over bear minimum = weakness?

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I don't know if it's just me or my current job but I've had the sense for a long time that you just don't say anything that you don't absolutely have to, either to coworkers or to clients. It's one thing to guard yourself against accidentally saying something that goes off the rails or shares something that the client shouldn't know (that makes obvious sense for its own CYA reasons), but there's a whole other layer to it - a bit like if you voluntarily share anything that isn't absolutely critical that's it's interpreted as obsequious, weak, cloying, etc..

It could vary by environment, I'm not even sure this is an 'NT vs AS' thing, I get the impression it's more general.

Also it's not that I'm actually falling into this trap constantly, it's just one of the heuristics I'm always having to run in my head before I fire off a text or email - ie. 'Will this make me appear 'weak' while also not actually solving any problems?'. My problem generally isn't fear, it's desire to be helpful but I constantly have to run my desire to be helpful (for its own sake) through this filter to avoid voluntary damage. While I don't have William's Syndrome I can only imagine what they go through in terms of environmental mismatch of will and intention. I can even have information that I think would be useful for other people to consider, but even thinking ahead, on it's own, is more of that scared, cloying, weak, defeated behavior.

I got to thinking - to even have to worry about this is just further evidence, in my mind, most people really don't grow up. If they did this kind of thing wouldn't even be on my radar.

I don't personally see it as a weakness, I see 'just the fact's ma'am' as being efficient, the bare minimum is how I have all types of communications.

The navy has a saying "loose lips sink ships"

If you talk too much about irrelevant things, you might sound less professional or you might unintentionally say something you later regret

If you don't talk enough about irrelevant things, you might sound aloof and calloused

On the other hand, it is good to fit in with what your coworkers are doing. Some coworkers are more talkative than others

There is something wrong with everything

The speaker has only one definition

All other definitions are misunderstandings

That's something I am pretty bad at

When someone else wants to talk to me sometimes I don't want to talk

When I want to talk sometimes they don't want me to talk to me

Or we don't want to discuss the same things




As an autistic, my worthless corpse is almost always outnumbered overpowered and outsmarted

Funnily enough as a woman I have to re-read my emails before sending them to double check I don't sound too aggressive.

But I think I know what you mean OP. You don't want to look like you're trying to ingratiate yourself.

Yeah, I guess all of it depends on what sort of group you're around. Once again - go to family events and rediscover that it's not the same everywhere.

Seems like you get called to varying extremes depending on where you're at, which can over or undershoot the balance of your personality in so many different ways, and the the ground rules are - whatever the ground rules are where you're at.