Do you ever take things literally or too seriously?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm always told at work that I take things too personally...In highschool and throughout college my friends would tell me stories and then laugh because I believed everything they said...They thought I was naive...

Assuming I do have AS, I don’t think I’m as bad at this as most people with AS. I have a really good sense of humor (although people at work kind of good naturedly used to make fun of me by saying something and knowing I’d take it literally for awhile-they don't seem to do that as much now though).

My boss got sort of mad at me one time, saying “that’s not acceptable…” when I couldn’t give her an estimate for how long something was going to take (I just said something like “I’m not sure”). I guess in my mind I needed to know EXACTLY, and that it wouldn’t be possible to figure it out down to the minute or whatever, and really she just wanted to know generally when.

So stuff happens sometimes, but generally I don’t think I’m like this, and I think I have as good or better sense of humor than most people. And NOT the verbal type-word play, that sort of thing. I don’t really go for that, and I always see that mentioned in the context of “people with asperger’s have poor senses of humor, but may enjoy word play and puns”…and I’m the opposite of that.

Yeah that reminds me of something that happened to me when I was working at a private club house dining hall. This old woman gave me the remains of her meal and said "the rest can be fed to the gerbils" or something like that. Apparently that meant that I can just get rid of it. Has anyone even heard of a saying like that?? I really thought that she was going to feed it to her gerbils so I packaged it for her and she made fun of me after Like all the other ungreatful wealthy bastards who went there.[/quote]

I've never heard of that saying, and wouldn't have known what to do with it. If I was thinking on my feet, I would probably ask "would you like this packaged up for you" or something, but probably I'd forget to ask that until I was away, and then panic over what I was supposed to do with it, whether she had gerbils she wanted to feed it to when she got home, or whether it was some kind of strange expression.

But wouldn't anyone, NT or not, have that same reaction? Maybe not, but I mean how is anyone supposed to know what "feed the gerbils" means if they've never heard it before?

My Mum keeps teasing me in order to "train me for real life". I take teasing extremely personally and she hurts me deep inside every day with her teasing. I just cannot take it. She also corrects me a lot with things that I do in a wrong manner, but to me it is a "telling off", and I keep thinking that she is "shouting at me", when she tells me she is not.
If someone's voice is loud, it is shouting.
According to my Mum, it is not so.

I always get when people are joking, but I do find that when people are having a light conversation, I always pick up on the academic stuff, and turn the conversation sharply serious, which I can tell annoys them sometimes if I don't catch myself. For example, my roommate will talk about visiting her boyfriend at his college, and whereas everyone else wants relationship details and details about partying and people she met, I focus in on facts like "how was the food? how big was it? does he like his classes?" I tend to focus on the academic side of the story, not the personal side.

It seems like I probably do that too, although I can't think of examples right now.

yeah my girlfriend at the time told me to call her back until she woke up so that we can got to her friends dinner....when its finally time for her to get up i call her and she doesnt answer, so i call her again....5-7 calls later i stop and assume she doesnt want to go out since she didnt pick up...a few minutes later to my suprise she calls me asking why i called her so much and she was on her way....i felt like an idiot but what can you do??? not literally

my reaction is a dynamic catalyst, somedays I take it in stride - others I am highly offended, makes life hard, imho.

I get jokes pretty quick though, but can't come back with those quick snarky one-liners.

Yeah, I don't deal with social details either. 8-(

Steelmaiden,

My interaction with my folks was much the same. People have also argued with me that they weren't yelling. I never ONCE thought that was any genetic predisposition, but it turns out it IS a symptom of AS! NOW, if only I could better approximate the math ability YOU spoke about....

I'm the opposite with yelling. My mom sometimes says I am, when I'm not really, I'm just loud naturally, and my voice sometimes gets even louder when I'm excited about something. Although I'm probably only like that at home.

That is ALSO an AS symptom! I have THAT also! Sometimes my voice will go from booming to a whisper when I am just trying to talk.

I often take things literally and seriously. But it's something I'm working on, and getting better at knowing what to take literally and seriously.

People tell me I take things way too seriously. For example, I remember on my first day of kindergarten, my mom told me not to take my coat off and when the teacher told us to put our coats away, I didn't comply at first because I thought my mom would be mad at me if I did (she had only meant 'don't take it off when you're outside').

yeaa.. take things rather seriously, although not wanting to offend anyone, but more in wanting to head in the direction of having a sense of "priority" over smth or someone, and showing that you care.
but we seem to just go along not really knowing where the balance is..
where to "chill-out", when to get back in the zone with the rest when the mood swiftly changes,
and ppl seem to think we're blur or daft.. or just ignorant. i hate that.. i hate being called ignorant or stupid.. or slow.. - now thinking back n reminiscing.

but the past is the past and, gotta move on with life. no one said it was easy.. but we have to push on and be strong no matter what.

Yeah I do this a lot. Just a few weeks ago I was on the phone with my aunt and she was talking about how my Grammy was doing better after her surgery. She said, "She's not doing tap-dancing classes but she's getting around okay."

I thought she meant my Grammy had been taking tap dancing classes prior to the surgery, and when I asked her about it, she laughed. She was just joking and I totally did not pick up on it at all.

It happens to me at least once every few days.

Yeah, I have that trait too to some degree.

Quite often, I rely on logic to determine whether someone's serious or not, but since logical reasoning takes more time than trusting on your instincts, I often get those "ahah!"-moments too late and I surpress reacting in order to avoid coming across as slow-witted.

Heh, and with the "back in 5 minutes"...I have that too. I no longer act as much on it, since I know those 5 minutes are only estimates, but I still feel tense when someone's delayed whether I like it or not. Likewise, whenever I promise someone else I'll be back in 5 minutes, I tend to feel upset whenever circumstances force me to be later. I feel like a liar.

Which is kind of ironic, since you're having to use intellect to process it!

Last edited by Wolfpup on 24 Oct 2007, 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.