Why do NT people not tell you how they feel?

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I once asked an aspie online if he was fat and he logged off. I figured it was an error internet connection he had or maybe he had a storm going on so it blew out his internet connection so I didn't think anything of it. But a week later he said online to me in one of the yahoo groups I was rude and he blocked me for asking him if he is fat or not.

Even though he was an aspie, he didn't even tell me until a week later. We did become friends again but we didn't talk much like we did before and things weren't the same between us. Last time I remember speaking to him was maybe in 2008. I was just too hurt he would think I would intentionally hurt him after we had been friends for a year. You would expect someone to know you that well after talking a lot and being friends for a while. Plus I was afraid of upsetting him again. Sometimes one time is enough.

I have no idea how often I offend people, I just feel too paranoid to talk to people these days because I am afraid they twist my words around and get offended. I have learned online people are not going to tell you you offended them so just because I don't get chewed out or scolded by strangers or people at work doesn't mean I don't ever offend them. If you don't talk to them, you are less likely to offend.

maybe to you that's what it means, but if you know someone in your life who has an ASD keep in mind that what you think you are seeing may not be accurate at all. it's important not to make assumptions. a lot of things could have worked out differently between me and other people if they had asked me anything instead of assuming based on their own rules of communication, but i didn't realize i was being misinterpreted. i didn't realize i was being interpreted at all.




they need to meet us halfway. it's not always us inadvertently offending other people. there's a lot more to the miscommunication than that.

but i understand what you're saying that it's not deliberate and they are just communicating as they would with each other, not to be confusing or misleading. but there are so many instances where someone says something and the truth of what they feel is something else entirely. it's well beyond the missing nonverbals and is a whole different set of rules for the communication. some of us are never going to learn it (or like it). we just need to learn when and how to explain it to people in our lives, that we will rely on their words and they must be explicit and honest. you're right about that.

i have in the past asked this of people before and it has rubbed them the wrong way. they take it as an attack or confrontation. so it's not as simple as that either - you can't tell just anyone that communicating with you is different than with other people. you can't just tell someone they need to be honest. some people aren't prepared for that or interested in that.

but if you had someone in your life who spoke another language, it would be only fair to learn some of their language instead of expecting them to abandon it for yours when it doesn't make any sense to them.



i've never heard this. what does it mean?

As a child I was told I needed to use words and tell people how I feel and tell them to stop. Now I couldn't understand why I was told to do this if people expect you to read their minds. My therapist told me in high school there are social cues people pick up on. But I am thinking maybe I was told to do this as a kid because my body language was hard to read?

Do all kids get told they must tell others how they feel or when they want others to stop doing something that is bothering them or is it something we get told?

Would you be willing to accept "I don't want to discuss my feelings" as a compromise of meeting halfway? The expectation that I should tell whoever asked what I was feeling would make me very uncomfortable, an invasion of privacy. The only person who gets that level of intimacy is my husband. Sometimes people aren't honest about their feelings because their feelings are private and they don't want to be obligated to share them with others. That happens very often with me. I could not be comfortable around somebody who wanted totally honesty from me (except my husband) unless they were willing to accept "I don't want to talk about it" as an answer when I felt like keeping my feelings private.

All kids get told this. It is meant to prevent violence and meltdowns. Kids are told to say things rather than hitting each other- specifically to say whatever it is they want resolved rather than lashing out or melting down. It does work sometimes, but it also often doesn't work. But it's meant to get the kids past the tantrum stage and into the negotiating stage.

All kids are told this as toddlers through elementary age. But adults stop saying it around middle school. At that point, kids who are in confrontations with each other generally are using words and those words are often swears and other angry things. Negotiation just doesn't seem to happen naturally.

Personally I think that "use your words" fails for this reason. The kids always eventually do use their words and that doesn't end the conflict. Kids need to learn how to handle conflict without hitting, melting down or swearing at the top of their lungs. Wish I knew how to do that.

You annoyed them, they annoyed you back, and quite successfully. Good old operant conditioning in action. Lather, rinse, repeat.



Explaining anything is just not a part of the conditioning process. Also, too much trouble. Also

Also



It is, basically.


Correction: expressing "weak" feelings is considered weak.


You mean prudent and socially savvy


Well, if I were living in Rome, I would've done my best to learn Italian

And I guess I took this too literal because I was saying how kids expect me to read their minds so it was all their fault because how am I supposed to know I am bugging them or something if they don't tell me and my shrink said it's social cues they pick up on so that's how they know. So I never learned to pick up any but I guess it's something everyone learns on their own and they figure out that rule doesn't apply anymore but with me I thought it was for life. Then all of a sudden the rules were different, it was like don't tell people how you feel, they can read your mind. So I started doing that and guess what, no one understood why I get so angry. I said they should know since my shrink says they can tell without me telling them. But my mom said I was taking him too literal and even he said how I take his words out of context.

But now it seems like a lie parents do to their kids but maybe they have that rule when they are little because they haven't developed that skill yet to read those social cues? But then when they get to middle school, they develop it so that no longer applies anymore.

well, when you put it like that it sounds pretty reasonable.

the reason for asking for bluntness is not to pry but to understand what otherwise is too confusing.

if there were jobs as NT / AS translators, Janissy, i would nominate you first for the job.

I still boggle at the old "communication is 80% nonverbal" thing. Okay, so someone can glean gobs of info from someone else without speaking. Is it then fair to assume that the thing you did not say is automatically understood? It's one thing to have gathered the information unconsciously, and they say that is how it is done, unconsciously. It is another thing to assume, notwithstanding being able to gather information thus, that the other person knows something you wanted them to know when you never bothered to say it. Is it not true that if a person wants to tell someone something, they do tell that someone? And how often do we hear people point that out, or say "I'm not a mind-reader for cryin' out loud!" Yet much is made of the failure of some to do just that.

No. And I don't believe communication is 80% nonverbal, unless we are talking about something like War and Peace containing several megabytes of information (txt format) and Transformers having several gygabytes (DVD).

Well I think NT's dont say what they think because it is less risky to talk in code where if the other person gets offended, the NT just says...you misunderstood...only said......
So that way there is an escape route if there is conflict. But people with AS totally dont get this subtle language and the NT thinks you said something other than what you meant.
Talking literal is very hard for an NT. They are always looking for the meaning rather than the content of what you are saying. This is where is gets hairy with AS/NT comunication.

example
AS: wow...that is alot of food on your plate
AS (thinks food looks good and plentiful)
NT: walks off...kinda offended
NT (thinks he called me a gluttonous pig)

as for the code goes...it goes like this:
two NT's size each other up
NT 1: What do you think about Christ church?
NT2: ohh they are such wonderful people and it is such a quaint little church
NT 1: they are...what church do you go to?
NT2: Ohh I belong to the first baptist in the center of town...it is great going to church with others like me.

You probably have no idea what this was all about...but there were some fighting words going on there benieth the surface.
NT to AS translator:
NT 1: So what do you think about people of my social class
NT2: I think you all are peabrained and insignificant
NT 1: so what makes you think you are so special
NT2: I only assocate with those who run this town

Now if NT 1 were to question her oppenents jab of a "quaint little church" then NT2 would insist that it was a mistake in NT 1 perception...therefore making it her own fault for feeling offended....and NT2 is off the hook

This code is mostly undetectable by people with AS and NT's assume that AS folks are using it when we, in fact are just meaning what we say.

ah, this is really interesting. i'm sure you're mostly right.

i do think though that those with AS can look for meaning inside people's statements if the statements don't follow logically .. (the assumed meaning just might be really different than the intention)

only example i can think of, some time ago a parent posted about AS son who was reacting really angrily to parents' questions meant to express interest or be encouraging. it was something like (flimsily reconstructed from what little i remember):

father - "wow! i didn't know you know such-and-such word. where did you hear that??"
kid - (angry) "dad, you know that i knew that word. we saw it in such-and-such video game"

.. and the parents were upset by this and other things, could not figure out how to interpret their child.

i guessed this (also clumsily paraphrased):
the kid can't figure out why dad would be asking something he already knew. so .. the kid starts thinking, why is dad so surprised i know this word? does he think i'm stupid?

i'm relating this story horribly. anyway i said something to that effect and the parent posting said it sounded right.

anyway i think any time someone comes up with a rule for asperger behavior, i think there are exceptions to it. this is one of those examples; yes, we are literal, but i think there can be layers added to our attempts at interpretation of others if the surface does not make sense, it just won't necessarily correlate at all with what they intended (call that an intellectual work around if you want). in that case above, the father's question was meant to be some kind of praise, and it was loaded with emotional content and not at all meant to be interpreted literally and in fact it was exactly that which made it difficult for the kid to understand, why would dad ask a question he already knows the answer to???

thus, in a way a language difference rather than just a deficit .. an opinion i adhere to ..

Wow, I didn't know telling someone that's a lot of food they have on their plate is offensive and what it implies. New lesson learned. My mom has made that comment to me when my food would come and I never took offense to it. But I doubt she was insulting me and it was just a comment and she meant what she exactly meant.

my mom gave a refirdgerator magnet with a poem on it about how she feels about me
oh really now. it was a nice gesture i guess, however I am such a emotional person that this isnt really my thing. I get emotion overload sometimes

My experience is what katzefrau describes in her first statement. I don't think that saying "I don't want to discuss my feelings" would work. The person would take it as a brush off, or, worse, assume that you think you're too good to talk to him/her. Perhaps someone who is skilled at expressing herself would be able to finesse it so that it didn't come off that way, but I know that I would not be able to.

I have found that even saying "I don't understand" is seen as an insult. The reaction is the same as when someone says "I don't know what you're talking about," which is often a defensive/aggressive statement that implies the other person is accusing you of something. If I don't understand what someone has said (not that I just didn't hear them, but that I heard their words but don't understand what they meant) I have never been able to get them to explain what they meant, because they only get defensive and feel insulted. It's like I'm supposed to get their subtext, and if I don't, then I'm intentionally being obtuse just to ignore what they've said or to disagree or put them in their place.

I'll do my best here therefore, I feel in many ways the skills of expressing & interacting in regards to emotional scenarios tends to be one where most not all people sometimes naturally believe the other individual can naturally understand and interpret the cues as such.. Also, I'd say it the way people approach things as some people tend to be more expressive in their emotional illustration than others so, it's not easy to simply know the feelings of others.
I'll admit that I don't pick up on non-verbal cues as well verbal ones too so, I have to constantly look for the signs.