When do you use Theory of Mind?

Post Reply New Topic

On a normal day when might you look at things from another person's perspective? Feel free to give examples.

e.g. As you try to fall asleep, you replay conversations from earlier that day and try to imagine things from their point of view.

All the time.

When someone reacts to something and i had said something at that point in time. Were they insulted or did i say something inappropriate?

When i had a meeting during the day and replay the whole thing in my mind at night, think of facial reactions they did during the meeting (i have idetic memory - i.e. a digital camcorder in my head) and think of if they got what i was saying.

When i talk to my friends. When they don't call me for a while. If i call them and they are busy, have i done something so they say that they are "busy" and don't want to talk to me - or are they just busy?

Constant assessment of situations in life.

I try to undertand another person's point of view particularly when a conversation gets confusing or I feel that although there is talking, no actual communication is happening. So basically when I find I'm having communication difficulties I try to understand the other person's point of view. Usually it takes a couple of days and some input from a friend who's not autistic for me to understand what was really happening. But each time I do this this I remember the pattern and I can use the informaiton in the future if the same thing happens again.

You have to use it all the time, unless you're totally isolated 24 hours a day.

Even if you're isolated, you have to use it on yourself.

Mentalizing is the process by which we make sense of each other and ourselves, implicitly and explicitly, in terms of subjective states and mental processes. It is a profoundly social construct in the sense that we are attentive to the mental states of those we are with, physically or psychologically.

This is a necessary life skill and should be used during all social activity

When my parents are arguing I focus on figuring out why my dad is so pissed again.

For example yesterday he got mute when me and mom returned from shop. I figured it is because we we at shop for a long time(3hours) and he thought we are just going to grocery and will be back in half of hour. Change of plan.
And other time he got angry after we got out from a shop that always gives me sensory overload. I was overloaded and I knew I could get angry easily so I tried my best not to get angry yet he argued with mom over small things so I figured he is overloaded too but he has no idea it is the case so he thinks his poor mood is moms fault.
He is not diagnosed but I am and I am very similar to him and even more to his mentally handicapped older sister so I suppose he is in the spectrum too, although he refuses the idea(he refuses my diagnosis too because that kind of issues are common in his family).

I also try to figure out what mom is thinking when her facial expression says she is sad/angry/passive-aggressive/offended (she stays there with expressionless face and doesn't speak although she is usually chatty). But I usually fail to understand whats wrong and end up asking her. A few times in row - because first tries end up in "Nothing. Everything is fine. <face and behavior says otherwise>".

Aside from that - I don't really bother. I am pretty sure if someone wants anything from me they have mouths and can say it so I don't have to play mind reading.

Small kids and animals are different matter though. And I am pretty good in figuring out their needs. Because they are not complex. It is usually enough to play with them and show them you are interested and they are happy and love you. It changes at age 6 or so, when they become little bullies. But they are still easier to figure out than adults and especially teenagers.

I don't really do so well with small children, for some reason. I just don't understand them too well.

My best facility with theory of mind now happens in things like death, loss, someone's tragedy and how they might be feeling. I wasn't always tuned into those things, but I think something in me got a circuit switched on when my parents died and I was completely devastated. As the years went on from there, I found myself being more sensitive than I used to be to anyone whom I could see was being as badly impacted as I was by a death of their own loved ones, and I even got more sensitive when seeing news items about accidents, shootings, war deaths.

It wasn't always like that -- I used to fail to connect emotionally even though I realized cognitively that it was awful. But nowadays I get very affected seeing that a hospital was bombed, a ship sank, a fire killed people, someone shot twenty innocent people, or just things like a friend's dog died, parent died, friend committed suicide. I feel this stuff deep down and I think that only started when I got my own really big losses that were profoundly hard for me.

Before that it wasn't that I didn't care -- I just couldn't access my caring or express it or even connect fully to feeling it. I can't explain that very well, or the change.

I wasn't very good with grieving people until I grieved myself.

Yes, that's it.

That's fascinating - we you born this way or did you develop it? How far back does the ability to recall and repeat information span? Is it verbatim perfect?
I was tested for perfect recall and was almost there for sound. I don't see very well but my sound sensitivity makes me very attentive to hat I hear and I can recall this well. I highly doubt flawlessly and reliably though which would be brilliant! Do you enjoy this skill?
As for theory of mind I never understood it, but haven't bothered to research it in much (read - any) depth. I find it almost impossible to understand what another is thinking or feeling until told. I just navigate by an ethical structure.

All the time I'm with people I have some kind of notion about how they might be feeling, and sometimes later on when I'm alone I'll ponder about the same thing, if there seems to be anything worth pondering. I don't personally find "theory of mind" a very useful term, because I've been well aware for many decades that other people have different perspectives, thoughts and feelings to my own, so to me, trying to imagine where they're at is just something I normally do. Some of their feelings might not be obvious to me, but the fact that they have feelings certainly is.

People seem to be getting ToM mixed up with empathy and other things.

Let's say you hate the bus and love to walk, you get into work and someone is complaining that the bus was late and they had to walk. ToM allows you to recognise that other people have a view on the word that is different from your own, and that just because you like walking doesn't mean everyone does.

Or let's say you find some money on the floor at school and, being an honest person, you decide to hand it in to a teacher. Someone comes up to you and says; "I'm on my way to the teacher now, I'll take that and hand it in for you." ToM allows you to recognise that other people's motivations may differ from yours, and just because you are motivated by ensuring the money is returned to its rightful owner, other people may have different motivations such as monetary gain and they won't take the money to the teacher but will keep it instead.

Just reading and listening to what people write online and trying to apply it to situations. Like I was accused of lying about autism a couple years back but after reading a recent thread here, I got a different perspective. The person could have said I was lying about it because I can drive, am married, have a job, maybe my writing is too good, and he could have a stereotype view about autism. Instead he said I just have mental issues. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. When I type in mental issues, a list of conditions and mental illnesses pop up like depression, anxiety, OCD, autism, ADHD, Bipolar, etc.


Also another example is when I got bad anxiety in high school, my parents started to get mad at me about it. Years later I looked back and saw we were moving house and because moving is stressful for lot of people, they didn't have room to handle my anxiety so they got mad at me about it.

Also my mom gets defensive when I question her about things so I figure she must feel really guilty about it and doesn't like to feel that way so she gets defensive to keep those feelings away. I also think that is why she gaslights too by pretending it never happened so she denies it ever did and that she never said that. I think she sometimes regrets the choices she has made so she denies she ever said it.

Chichikov, guilty as charged! I reviewed my post and I realize I posted more about an empathy experience and not actually a ToM experience. Oops. I guess I went toward a focus of posting about something where I realized other people had feelings at all, the way I knew I had feelings, rather than understanding those might be different feelings. Sorry for derailing!

Making sure that you look busy if the boss walks in the room. Thats using "theory of mind". Getting into the boss's head and realizing that he wants to see productivity. So you show what he wants to see: the appearance of productivity (whether you are actually getting anything done, or not).