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Parallel vs. Emotionally Reciprocal Conversations

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MathGirl
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09 Aug 2014, 8:22 am

naturalplastic wrote:
The OP is urgently trying to kick-off an "emotionally reciprocal" dialogue to get affirmation for her hatred of "emotional reciprocal" conversations!



This whole thread is a total contradiction of itself!
Um ok? I opened this thread for responses, not for reciprocal conversation. I haven't made any personal statements/questions or expressed sympathy for anyone in this thread. I actually rarely do that; I just express my reactions to information or personal feelings sometimes but they're not other person-oriented.

Edit: Ah nevermind, the title question was about feelings (but that's it). Again, I don't mind some of it as long as it has a purpose. I made this thread because there was another thread where some people indicated they don't like when someone talks parallel to them instead of engaging with their intentions/emotions. Since I actually feel more comfortable when someone talks like that, I posted this thread to figure out why I feel like that and whether the people on here feel similarly about this.


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Leading a double life and loving it (but exhausted).

Likely ADHD instead of what I've been diagnosed with before.


dianthus
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09 Aug 2014, 10:23 am

MathGirl wrote:
I personally like parallel, concrete fact-only conversations. I tend to find questions about what I'm doing and how I'm feeling annoying in daily interactions, unless they are asked with some sort of a purpose, like when I go to see a therapist. Somehow, they feel intrusive and the emotions that people express along with these sympathetic statements are overwhelming. It's hard to carry those types of conversations for me, so they tend to hit a dead end quickly. I don't have PTSD or low self-esteem or anything, so I'm not sure why I'm this way exactly.

Anyone feel the same way?


I pretty much feel the same way...except when it comes to people I am close to, I want them to show more emotional understanding and sympathy. But with most people it makes me feel really uncomfortable if they talk to me that way. It feels really patronizing and overbearing.

On my end I struggle with both kinds of communication. The parallel thing only works when I actually have something parallel to talk about, but a lot of the time I don't. People talk about things I have no experience with, or that I have a negative opinion of, or things that I just don't relate to at all.

I kind of resent having to make sympathetic emotional statements to people I don't know very well, but I feel like it's expected. It's not that I don't feel any sympathy for them, but I just don't know what to say.



jk1
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09 Aug 2014, 11:04 am

I think most people, whether autistic or not, prefer the combination of both. If it's totally "parallel", you can't talk about the other person's life, issues or anything to do with the other person. And I'm sure most people wouldn't like that. The conversation would be rather pointless.

Person A: I had a car accident.
Person B: I've never had a car accident.
Person C: I had a burger for lunch.

However, people don't really often have a totally "emotionally reciprocal" conversation, either. Usually there are exchanges of facts and the courteous acknowledgment of the other person's statement in a "emotionally reciprocal" way.

Another thing is a "fact" could sometimes actually be just an opinion and it is sometimes not evident whether something is a fact or not. Some people are not really careful in differentiating between a fact and an opinion/speculation/guess/imagination etc. Or are the exchanges of opinions considered as a "parallel" conversation?



olympiadis
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09 Aug 2014, 11:52 pm

starkid wrote:
I definitely prefer the parallel conversations. Emotions can't adequately be expressed with words, so I don't usually see the point in people talking about how they feel except when it's in very crude terms, for example:

A: "Are you angry with me?"
B: "Yes."

or when they are talking about the concrete reasons for why they feel a certain way. Also, I consider emotions to be a private matter and typically don't feel the need to share them. For negative emotions, I would rather work on fixing whatever makes me feel bad. For positive emotions, well, I sort of used to try to share what was making me feel good (not the emotion itself), but I've learned that other people don't usually like the stuff I like, so I've mostly given up on that except to let out my excitement with some sort of physical affection if there is someone special nearby (which is never nowadays).


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You've been saving me a lot of typing lately.

Sharing real information (facts) makes me feel alive.
Emotional manipulations make me feel nauseous.



Malal
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10 Aug 2014, 3:52 am

The parallel conversation is I-centered, too - is that deliberate or accidental?



olympiadis
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10 Aug 2014, 12:59 pm

Malal wrote:
The parallel conversation is I-centered, too - is that deliberate or accidental?



I think it may be by convention, as it is sort of required for a communication to have a source.

If you get a voice in your head stating some sort of information, then you don't tell someone else that you just had this voice say something. You tell them "I think...."

We are conditioned for that.



Malal
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10 Aug 2014, 2:27 pm

olympiadis wrote:
Malal wrote:
The parallel conversation is I-centered, too - is that deliberate or accidental?



I think it may be by convention, as it is sort of required for a communication to have a source.

If you get a voice in your head stating some sort of information, then you don't tell someone else that you just had this voice say something. You tell them "I think...."

We are conditioned for that.


I have schizophrenia, which in my case often disturbs thought process - so i'm not very good at thought processes <- I would normally delete and retype that sentence, but it's a good example of it - it's just wonky, sometimes with metaphors.

As for the topic, it kind of intrigued me because i think i'm the opposite, i'm much better tuned to the person-focused conversations. The fact-focused conversations are difficult for me because i don't often think straight. With the person-focused conversation i can usually get my sentiment across in other ways. I'm okay at adapting. This is interesting to me, 'cause i haven't heard of this stuff until now.