Communication autistic to autistic

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One thing that's been bugging me a lot lately is communication with people on WP.

Given that autistics can have radically different sets of traits, how to communicate with autistics that are really different from yourself?

I'm one of the wordy aspies, and I do pretty well with spoken language as well as written language. I have trouble with spoken language in the sense that I often have trouble expressing my thoughts and feelings, but I've found that as long as I can keep up a steady stream of acceptable responses, most people won't notice. They wouldn't believe the truth if I told them.

I'm one of those who ended up being termed 'gifted' and spending years of my life in the company of over-achievers, and failing to keep up.

I mastered metaphor sometime in primary school. At first I was shocked and frustrated, really angry with my teacher for saying stuff like that existed Then I cottoned on, and I just never looked back. I'm a bit opposite of some people here who have a very concrete language; I often fail to find the correct word or expression, so I speak in pictures and use idiomatic expressions a lot.

Is this confusing to others on the spectrum? I wonder if I am making sense to some of the people on WP who struggle more with these expressions than I do. If so, what can I do to make my posts more easy to understand?

I don't understand how you are hard to understand. Can you give an example? A lot of people on this forum are rigid with their ideas and very certain about them, you don't mean that do you?

Well, I don't really think that you personally have any trouble understanding me. Certainly rigidity and black & white thinking can be an issue on WP, but what I was thinking about was literal interpretation, which is supposed to be an autistic thing. I have it to some extent; I have a lot of fun with metaphors and expression, because I tend to have picture flashes in my head, which makes expressions like 'raining cats and dogs' very entertaining. I'm like a five-year old sometimes

I just started thinking about this because part of my diagnostic assessment was a reading speed and comprehension test, and I basically exceeded the maximum reading speed in the test, so that the guy doing the assessment had to sit and calculate my results by hand, because I was outside the standard table. It brought home to me how I really have one of those 'aspie superpowers', and that not everybody is as language-oriented as me. I've noticed that sometimes on WP other people can take things very literally, although most people seem to say that they had trouble with metaphor and idioms as children, but learned when they got older.

I actually have the opposite problem of a lot of autistics; I speak in pictures and use a lot of idiomatic expressions, and I very often experience NTs taking me literally or not being familiar with the expressions I use. When I got familiar with my husband's language, I felt right at home because in his language people use metaphor much more, and they interpret my metaphors much more easily than my own countrymen, believe it or not!

So I guess I would like to hear from the autistics who really struggle with interpreting what others are saying, how they feel about it. I was sad the other day when someone who was clearly in denial about their diagnosis described it as 'lying in their assessment' and lots of people took that literally and really criticized the OP. But maybe people are not understanding that they are not understanding, the same way I have no idea whether I've offended someone or not, unless they start avoiding me.

Have you ever gone on to a thread, and the people there seem to be using language rules that don't make any sense to you? I sometimes feel like that here. At times, I see a bunch of users using similar sentence structures, or making similar grammatical mistakes, or using emoticons/ emojis as full stops, yet the people on the thread seem to all have a decent understanding of what the other is saying, and I just have no idea what's happening, which makes me feel like an idiot, until I take the time to reorder what they are saying in a word document, to try and gain any sense of what they mean.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... taxSpeaker

Also, I've noticed that a lot of threads seem to skip from one subject to another pretty randomly, sometimes I'll click on a thread and the most recent conversation on it is completely unrelated to what the title is. I'll admit I'm guilty of doing this (eh, if you can't beat them- join them I suppose) so I get the impression that conversation works on a completely different realm on this website. At least, it seems to.

I should probably mention that I don't personally think I'm autistic, I know that I show some symptoms but I consider the possibility to be unlikely. However, to me if wrong planet is any indication of how autistic people tend to communicate with one another, then it certainly seems to vary from typical allistic conversation. I remember seeing the following quote on TV tropes "The sarcasm recognition problems in the case of Aspies are usually based on the fact that recognisable sarcasm involves presenting a more or less ridiculous sentence, and Aspies are relatively probable to disagree with you whether a sentence is ridiculous or not. Interestingly, this even applies to Aspie-to-Aspie conversation, except that the speakers are usually more used to the whole disagreeing concept than an NT person" on their page about sarcasm-blindness. Make of that what you will.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SarcasmBlind

Last edited by Lost_dragon on 30 Sep 2017, 5:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Had to look up what allistic meant there. Didn't know it meant non-autistic.


Interesting that you observe that though. Honestly, other than that people seem to write lengthier posts here than on other forums, I hadn't really noticed a difference in the style of communication. I guess I'm not very observant...

Good greetings, underwater!

Before I knew I was autistic, I made up my own language in college
called "phoenixspoken babel" ... kebabele chamdy fer shurr, methinks!

I'm multi-lingual and can translate and/or review documentation in several languages.

I was also given the "gifted" label.
Academically I can learn fast.
Socially ... not so much.
I've been known to identify as "Q" from Star Trek,
hyper-intelligent but lacking social skills.

Do I take people literally?
Oh yeah, pretty much at work when people tell me things.
At best, it's comical.
At worst, it can create unfortunate misunderstandings.

Anyways, you seem pretty easy to understand to me, underwater!
You are definitely in the swim of things!

...

I talk fast, stutter, have a lisp, and use hobby jargon a lot.

I think I can relate. I live and die by my idiosyncratic metaphors and far out analogies. I think being autistic, to compensate for a deficiency in the natural ability to understand things, you can instead develop a system of understanding based on a framework of comparing like-things and recognizing patterns of similarities. And that's basically what metaphors and analogies are: Understanding one thing by way of another thing. And also, because they're fun and fall in line with the type of absurdist humour I think we kind of appreciate more.

Where I have trouble with NTs is that they don't have that much experience with these weird layers of understanding, so it all sounds like weird gibberish to them. And really, there's a lot of mental gymnastics and energy involved in untangling and understanding an unfamiliar idiom. Not many people would invest the time and energy to do that, they'd rather just not and think you're weird/funny and move on. So many times I try to paint a mental picture of something I'm trying to share, and the best reception I get is a nice verbal pat on the head and a "That's nice dear" like I've just thrown up glue paste and macaronis on construction paper.

I was talking to a friend a while back, and I said something like talking on the phone for me is like sitting on a two-legged stool, without the extra support of having visual feedback from a person, it all falls apart. And he asked me where I got that and all the other weird stuff I said from. Which, they're just funny pictures that I reach for when trying to explain things.

You sound like an artist, petalstatic.

That talking on the phone is like sitting on a stool with two legs metaphor really worked for me, petaltasic. Except that someone like me would ask if the stool originally had three or four legs. Because it would still fail to be a stool, it would just be a little different depending on which kind it was. I also tend to write really long posts and make no apologies for it. Because everything I want to say takes awhile to write. Not only that, but often I think of something else to write after I finish the previous sentence. I'm often pretty good at recognizing when something is being said sarcastically, but not always. I think it had to do with watching TV a lot while I was a child. Believe it or not, watching people on a screen interacting with each other helps a child with ASD figure out how to interact with others. Well, mostly. As for Autistic to Autistic, I think it really depends on how well both of them can use language and if they can understand what the other is saying. In a written form, Autistics will probably over clarify things so the other person has no chance in taking something the wrong way. Because they have a certain sense of humour and they don't want the other person to not get it. I think I do that sometimes. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'm not one, but thanks.



I did think about the stool leg formation with the metaphor. At the time, I was gesticulating wildly to my friend in order to better emphasise the lack of stability, which kinda gets lost a bit in written transcription. In my mind, two is that weird number for stool legs that could potentially, theoretically work, but not in any intuitively practical way regardless of whether it was originally a one, three, or four-legged one to begin with.

The cool thing about analogies is that you can draw them out and expand on them within the frame of itself and then travel back to the original thought with what you've found in that exploration to provide additional insight. So if you asked me how many legs the stool in this scenario had to begin with, I'd say it depends on the type of phone conversation. An important, emotional conversation is like going from 4 to 2 legs, you would have needed more legs to begin with and now you're making do with less. Making an appointment using a phone is like moving from a 3 to 2. You'd need less to begin with, but you're still missing some support that could lead to an awkward balancing act. If you're going from 1 to 2 though, I'd imagine it's like someone calling you up to say hello and just hello. Like, okay, that's interesting, not sure what's going on here, but alright I suppose. In my mind, I'm imagining a single-leg stool at a bar with another wooden stool leg duct taped to the side. Amusingly incongruent.



I like long posts, I like having more information rather than less. I think I fell in to that type of thinking/writing above with expanding on an analogy, so I get this too. I admire that you make no apologies for it. I can't stop apologising for my digressions.

And I completely agree about the tv watching. I would watch a marathon of tv and when I wasn't glued to the screen I was glued to a book. I think that's how I managed to develop my empathy, during the halcyon days of more morality-based tv-programming. I think also there is a lot of care when Autistics explain and write things because we have that lived experience of misunderstanding and being misunderstood so often. And we reason that the cause of these misunderstandings is a gap in knowledge, so we earnestly supply that in abundance in advance to prevent them.

I'm not sure I understood the bit about sarcasm, but I've sort of always had the attitude that people say so much weird stuff that you ought to just humor them anyway. It doesn't seem to work the other way, though.

As for the digressions......I'm horribly guilty of that. My mind goes off on tangents all the time. I'm a classic 'mad professor'. I'm trying to learn to stay on topic, but will probably have limited success with that.

I don't really see any threads I don't understand. Sometimes there are threads that don't make sense to me because they are about American things of which I have no knowledge, but the confusion doesn't seem related to language. But yours was exactly the sort of response I was looking for. What could people do to make things more understandable?

Greetings, comrade

I remember me and a friend in university used to make strange sounds to each other. One of those friendships that eventually went sour...but while it lasted, it was very fun.

Yes! I knew I had a twin somewhere!

Idiosyncratic metaphors and far out analogies, yes, that's it! For me everything is workarounds, I approach things sideways, if that makes sense. Yes about the framework of like-things! You know who I relate to? Miss Marple, who always compares people to someone she used to know.



Good Lord, yes to this too. My husband told me this morning that I keep talking to people about complex social phenomena, using lots of examples and going into great detail, and that nobody has the energy or interest to keep up with me, so they just nod politely and change the subject.



Well, when the metaphor works, it's a joy, and it helps with some of the communication issues we have. I don't have trouble with phone calls, though, except for a bit of trouble with timing. I usually laugh it off, and most people don't make a big affair out of it. In fact, I often prefer talking to people on the phone because it eliminates confusing body language issues. I trust my ears more than my eyes.

My understanding of the quote is that a NT person is likely to look at a sentence and if it’s ridiculous in the situation, they are likely to realise it’s sarcasm and treat it as such. However, for someone with autism they might look at a ridiculous sentence and assume that the person they are talking to doesn’t realise it’s ridiculous.

So, for example;

Person 1: Hey, has our classmate done that homework?

Person 2: Oh sure they have, and pigs can fly too!

Now, person 1 could reply to this in a few ways, one would be to realise that sarcasm is being used and reply appropriately.

Since what person 2 actually means is “No, it is highly unlikely that our classmate has done their homework since they probably have a reputation for slacking off, in fact it’s so unlikely that there’s a higher probability of pigs flying through the air, but since pigs can’t actually fly it’s actually technically more likely that our classmate has done their homework than a pig flying, and I’m actually just using this example of flying pigs for means of exaggeration to make a point about how much our classmate slacks off”.

Or, they could miss the sarcasm or ignore it, and reply “But, how do you know that they have anyway? Did you talk to them about it? Is that how you know? Also, pigs can’t fly and I don’t see what pigs have to do with anything, although I suppose if you put them in one of those chambers which blows air up then that’s pretty close to flying, or you could stick a pig on a plane…ect.”

That’s my interpterion of the quote anyway. My ability to detect sarcasm greatly varies. Sometimes I am able to pick up on it almost instantly, other times people can be sarcastic to me for two hours and I don’t realise. That happened to me once, I was on a Skype call and someone was being sarcastic to me, and this call had been going on for two whole hours until they suddenly yelled “DAMMIT I’M BEING SARCASTIC, I HAVE BEEN SARCASTIC THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION, STOP TAKING ME LITERALLY”. Haha.

But in comparison, there have been times where someone has been sarcastic and I’ve picked up on it quickly and treated it like sarcasm. I’m not completely blind to sarcasm, just partially sighted to it. If I’m unsure of whether it’s sarcasm, I usually ask (which can backfire if people say no sarcastically, dammit people) and my friends and family are used to me asking. I’m better at being sarcastic than picking up on other’s sarcasm. Apparently, I’m less literal than my mum is, according to my dad.



Haha, yeah I can relate. I find this is particularly true when I tell people a story, and definitely when I was younger. Since then though, I’ve learnt to focus and not digress as much, because I realise that most people have short attention spans, and aren’t interested in the more irrelevant details. Sometimes I’ll still digress for the means of humour, if I can think of a way to tie a joke in.

I’ve noticed a few people on this site using terms like “little professor” or “mad professor”, what exactly do they mean by this?



Ah, maybe I’m just strange then. :/ Personally, I dislike it when people put quotes underneath their response. So, say instead of;

Person 1: So, what do you think of what I just said? Person 2: I think… *insert response here*.

It’ll go like…

Person 2: I think…..*response*

Quote from person 1 asking them what they think.

This just seems like such an illogical sequence to me. I feel like quotes should read like a flowing conversation, the question/quote should go before the answer. Granted, that’s just me nit-picking.

Other times, it’ll be because people are using political or cultural terms that I don’t understand. Sometimes I see logic that seems so backwards to me that it’s difficult to even understand where they’re coming from with the point they are making. It’s just so wrong that it’s hard to know where to even start.

Then, there are times where someone will make a point, then go on a random tangent, then come back to their first point which can make it hard to follow. There’s certainly a lot of variation when it comes to the people who use this website, so you have to take into account things like different dialects and sociolects, and in some cases idiolects if a particular user uses certain unusual phrases.

I know I’ve seen posts of someone who uses “precious little” before they introduce a person in a paragraph. So, if they talk about their parents, they will say “precious little parents” and the same with their friends “my precious little friends”, and I’ve always found this a tad odd, and even asked what they mean by this. My confusion is caused by the fact that “precious little” to me sounds bitter and somewhat sarcastic, it sounds like they are saying they dislike their parents and friends, perhaps even that they feel superior to them.

But, it’s never really clarified what they mean. Do they actually treasure their parents and family, and are just saying that as a good thing? If so, why do they always put speech marks around precious little, as if to quote someone or not truly mean what they are saying? It confuses me a lot.

Then, there are the replies you see that don’t make any sense. Someone will say “I really like *insert topic here*” and someone else will directly reply “Today, this happened to me…*insert event*” even though the event seemingly has nothing to do with the topic that was brought up.

^ What I've started to understand is that I don't really 'get' context very much. If the sarcasm is more of the literal variety, I'm fine, but with people I don't know very well I don't really understand contextual sarcasm, because I don't really understand their context. Also, a lot of the time I'll have an inkling that something is not right, but I find it hard to believe that people can be so nasty. And honestly, a lot of the time, the vague unease I feel is due to something else, and the other person is entirely innocent of sarcasm. Literal interpretation is in this case less likely to cause offense.

Well, 'little professor' is a term connected with autism, because a lot of autistic children will use vocabularies that are far advanced for their age, and have a pedantic turn of phrase. 'Mad professor' is something else, it's just a tv & film trope.

Yes, I get lost when quote order is jumbled a lot. I tend to move on from posts with too many quotes.

As for the 'precious little', I think it's just sarcasm and a lot of bad feeling that got tangled with echolalia, but you'd have to ask that person.

As for the bit where people talk past each other, I think it just happens a lot because you'll have two people simultaneously answering an earlier post, and they just associate completely different things from that post. Then one post ends up after the other, but it has nothing to do with the above post.

Last edited by underwater on 01 Oct 2017, 12:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.