First time in history!! !! The NT/AS open hotline ! !! !! !

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I think you're talking about two different things. The first thing is the practice of medicine. If a doctor opts not to perform an operation on someone, he is saying he is not capable of performing the operation successfully. That's hard for anyone to admit, and it's good to accept their stance. You do not want to have a doctor operating on a case he thinks will have a poor outcome. It might be the doctor, or it might be the actual circumstances of your father's medical history that presents the risk. You determine that by getting a second opinion.

The other thing you're both talking about is that actual words and all the other stuff that goes along with communcation -- tone, body language, etc. That's tough, because if you don't hear tone or read body language, the words themselves can mean a million different things. I like the idea, though, of asking someone trusted who witnesses the conversation. I imagaine you can always record converstations for later interpretation by an NT, if recording is legal in your state.

Hope this helps.

As I said, it's not for medical reasons.

I could be missing something in what you said. Why do you think the doctor rejected your father as a patient, except for age? Age has a lot to do sometimes in making a medical decision. I realize doctors can be arrogant. Perhaps you can tell doctors you have Asperger's so they can adjust the way they speak to help make communications less ambiguous or less confusing to you?

Hi TheHaywire Its difficult to answer your question "What am I missing" without knowing about a specific situation, because there is so much potential information that you could be missing, including non-verbal cues, tone of voice, innuendoes, facial expressions, and sarcasm.

Yes, of course you can learn how to catch and interpret these alternative forms of communication. It takes a coach or teacher, and lots of practice. There might be some good books on the subject you can learn from too, though I do not know any off the top of my head. I have seen many discussion threads on WP regarding how to interpret non-verbal communication, so one suggestion is to start browsing the various topics and threads. Maybe someone who has been a member here (Greentea?) can point you to a relevant thread and save a little time. Other suggestions that I have read include: (1) practice reading body language by going to a mall and people watching, perhaps bring an NT friend with you to get a reality check about what you are seeing; (2) watch TV with the sound off, maybe the news or commentary, and try to "read" the message from body language, again might be helpful to have an NT friend nearby to discuss what you're seeing; (3) have an NT friend with you during these social encounters that you can check with later on. I'm sure there are more strategies out there, and you are in the right place to find them. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Yes, the part about the CV.

Ah, you wrote: " He refused to operate, because my father is old and it might be a bad spot in his immaculate CV. But since surgeons are forbidden to refuse when there's no medical reason to"

I understand that doctors who have stellar reputations may make them by selecting on which patients they choose to operate, but if this doctor thinks your father might be the one who tarnishes his CV, do you really want him/her operating on your father?

From my blog:

One thing I learned while working with a young ASD friend of mine, he sometimes thinks I am angry based on my tone of voice when I am in fact not angry. I think that he has difficulty distinguishing subtle differences in my tone of voice and lumps them all under "angry." For example, my voice takes on different "serious" tones when I am in a hurry, preoccupied with something else, or concentrating intently on solving a problem. I don't think my friend can tell the difference between these activities based on my tone of voice, and it all just comes out as "angry."

Fortunately, my friend was able to communicate to me that he thought I was angry, and was wondering why. My reaction was to adjust my tone of voice to sound more at ease, and then I took the time to talk with my friend and explain to him that I was not angry with him, but I was in a hurry for reasons that had nothing to do with him. As a result, I have learned to be more sensitive to how my voice sounds from someone else's perspective, and to regulate my tone of voice better, and overall to try not to sound angry from my friend's perspective. Additionally, I think my friend understands me a little better, I hope he has learned a little about subtle differences in tone of voice, and we continue to work together.

These are all really good suggestions. Another is to have an NT use one word and listen to the many ways that inflection, tone, body language, etc., can affect the meaning of that word. A good word to use is "No." For example, No! (Don't do that), No! (Can you believe that?), and on and on. Make a game of it. See how many points you can score!

Yes, I do. I don't care in the least whose CV he tarnishes. He's going blind, and he's already deaf and paralized legs and arms. It's no way to live.

So sorry to hear this. I hope you are able to find an excellent doctor who would be willing to operate and who feels optimistic of getting a positive outcome.

Are you sure this is a problem of interpretation and not a problem of over-internalization? By over-internalization I’m saying that your friend could be reacting more strongly internally to any kind of 'edge' in your voice, more than an NT reacts. Basically what I'm saying is that your friend might not be correctly processing the anxiety he feels when your response is abrupt/short/terse. The anxiety you inadvertently cause leads to him thinking you're angry with him.

I know I have a problem with this sometimes. When someone has any kind of sharpness to their voice it feels like a slight punch in the gut to me. Since my emotions are reacting strongly and involuntarily to the tone of voice my instinct is to immediately assume that the tone is directed at me. I have to catch myself and intellectually rationalize the situation to stop myself from overreacting.

Good point. I agree that I cannot be sure about my interpretation. Which is one reason I posted this out here, to try and get some feedback. Yours has been most excellent, and gives me a different and probably more accurate perspective. Many thanks!

I can't be positive that my interpretation is more accurate than yours either but I just felt like sharing my own perspective on this phenomenon. I know I've read about it before here on WP and it seems to be a common aspie trait.

I actually think the issue may be related to the whole "Theory of Mind" thing. I think our tendency to over-internalize things that we perceive and feel can prevent us from seeing things from another persons perspective. Our whole conscious experience is based strongly on what we are directly perceiving and this perception can be so intense that it's hard to break out of ourselves and see a situation from a more detached/outside perspective. This is my theory anyways.

Hi,

I have discovered so much on WP in just the past few days. I’m learning things that explain a lot of what has been baffling me for YEARS about my closest friend. We’re both very verbal, have many intereast in common, but we don’t “relate” the same way. It’s taken me until now to have the “Ahaaa” realization that this is probably because he has some (mild) autism-spectrum traits. I don’t.

We met over 14 years ago. We were strongly attracted to each other, but our differences made us both wary. We kept each other off balance. One of the things that would happen periodically was that he’d go silent for long periods of time. When he was depressed over things going on in his professional life, or stressed out about a serious threat to his status, he withdrew from contact. Once he got sick and felt really bad. He stared out of contact for weeks!

In my experience those are very dramatic messages; “I don’t like you” messages. They left me feeling very hurt. I thought he wanted me to feel bad. It felt like he wanted me to be punished by feeling bad, or to go away. It felt like he was making sure I din’t feel wanted or needed.

When he felt communicative again, I told him how much he had hurt my feelings by withdrawing. How cold that was of him. I hoped he would offer an apology so that I could accept it and forgive him for hurting my feelings, and we could heal the damage that this breach had caused.

He did not apologize. Instead, he gave me a brief EXPLANATION: he said he had felt bad.

An explanation is not the same as an apology, but he seemed to feel that was all that was needed. I could take it or leave it. I felt insulted and slighted. I wrote him long emails asking him things like if he EVER felt he did anything that would call for an apology. I got angry, because the lack of any response just amplified the insult. The reason I get angry if I’m being insulted is that it is a defense against accepting being treated badly and accepting it, which is bad for self-respect.

I had no idea how different a personal “culture” he had. But now I have been at WP reading the stories of some romances (or somehting like that) that seem to stretch out over very long gaps, silences that might go on for months, and the people discussing them seem so serene about the time intervals where no communication at all takes place.

Wow.

I won’t say I’m an NT because I have way to many weird things (want to see my Clutter Mountain?) (My friend thinks I’M the one with “problems” because when we met I was taking antidepressants. ) (He now thinks I’m even more deranged because I told him 3 days ago that I think I finally figured out what’s so strange to me about some of his behavior. He won’t even consider taking in new information because he already ‘knows’ the same stereotyped stuff I did last week.)

To me, being non-Aspergers, the casualness about absense over (to me) long periods of time, the tenuousness of connections, the VAGUENESS seems strange. And just as strange, perhaps, is the feeling that many of the AS/AS relatiosnhips DO continue, or pick up again, even when long intervals of non-communicative time have passed.

I’m only up to page 8 on this thread, but this post I really wanted to respond to.

Back to reading!

Nt's are using AS and autism to boost their own careers, ego's and bank balances - we seem to have become a steppping stone to ther's happiness!

Oh, Aspies are doing it equally, believe me and don't go far looking for one good example of a career sucking up to NTs.