Autistics who can read body language well

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I don't have any problems at all with reading body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, ect ect. I don't get how it can be a problem (or perhaps I'm saying this because I find it easy).

For all you Aspies who find it hard to understand body language, is it where you see someone crying and you think they're laughing? Is it similiar to that?

http://www.mastersinpsychology.net/20-l ... -they-send

This is the same for me. I can get the info in but not out right.

I'm average with facial expressions, above average with tone of voice and a tad below average with body language. My parents actually get mad at me because I know when they are grumpy just by their voice and face.

I have always been very good at "reading" people. I find the way that people represent themselves/interact socially to be interesting and it is something that has fascinated me my whole life. Because I have so much trouble actually responding to and interacting with others, I more often than not play the role of silent observer. However, I can immediately tell when I walk into a room what type of mood people are in, whether or not something is wrong, etc. When people talk, I can sort of see beyond what they say and come to know things about their personality, motivation, etc...very rarely am i actually surprised by a person's actions. For example, I might find out that a distant family member broke up with a significant other, wants to quit a job, came out of the closet, found out they weren't the biological father of a kid, etc...and I'm like "well yeah, i could have told you that was going to happen" even though i only see that person once a year. and some of my NT relatives seem to be genuinely surprised by some of these "revelations". i am also rather good at predicting how tv shows or movies will end (ex: i might watch the first 10 minutes and know who did what and why). I know "reading" actors isn't the same as reading genuine interactions, but these scripts are written by NTs for NTs, so it's not totally different either. So yeah, I think that's part of the reason it took me so long to recognize my AS- I thought I was almost too perceptive at times. But I've learned that perception means nothing if you can't respond properly-in fact, it only makes things all the more frustrating!

I don't think I'd mistake laughing for crying, but I might not empathize, and will often miss more subtle signals entirely. It is pretty much hit or miss - I'm often too distracted to notice things that can be obvious if I'm open to them. I used to think I was pretty good at reading non-verbal cues as well a intonation, etc. Now, I just think I'm better at reading others than they are at knowing me, while they read their fellow NTs better than I do. They get lots of practice at that, whereas every Aspie is unique. That may be why St Francis recommended knowing rather than being known. It is lonely, though.

I am really grateful and so pleased that this thread is still interesting people enough to respond.

I started it because I feel acutely the alienation and loneliness of being in-between the autistic and non-autistic worlds.

My ability to read and understand others is extremely advanced yet is in such great contrast with my ability to initiate and communicate with others.

I feel I have studied the human condition and yet not allowed nor been able to be human.

At times I feel I am taken to a well that I cannot drink. Often left feeling that I ache for what I am able to bare (connection) Feeling with such intensity a world that still remains an enigma and beyond me.

I have developed a theory that those of us in the spectrum who have this ability to sense and understand the emotional world, have a very strong artistic, creative and non-literal way of seeing the world.......would this be true for those here who have expressed their ability to understand non-verbal communication?

I'm artistic and creative, but not in the ways of viewing the world. I'm an extremely logical thinker. Most things are black and white in my eyes. I'm not into abstract thoughts or theories, myself.

I am fairly good at reading body language now, but only because I have consciously studied it, rather than instinctually understood it.

I get vibes, does that count?

I also read too so that also helped. I also go by patterns.

I'm the same way. I rely more on the feelings people are giving off. I can understand body language okay if I pay attention, too. But my own body language doesn't make sense to other people most of the time, even if it makes sense to me. It's never been that big of a problem, but I find it interesting to see how other people are with body language or "feeling moods".

Hi League Girl........i think vibes count here. As vibes are the bit that come before the body expresses itself.

I really relate here to others who say they can read body language but not communicate it. However, I think some clever people can feel my vibes, even though this does not progress beyond the intellectual expression into the non-verbal expression.

Often I feel I need to 'ACT out' the very genuinely held emotion I feel. As there have been times I have not been treated in hospitals when in great pain because staff dont take MY words as seriously as they take body language.

Vibes definitely count

You're welcome.


I feel the same way, though I'm not really sure it's that I'm "in between" autistic and non-autistic. I feel more like I'm set off in an entirely different dimension. I have so many unique "me'isms" that it seems highly unlikely that I'll ever find anyone truly comparable to myself.


It's hard to say whether I'm "advanced". I find that without a lot of interaction I have no real objective way of verifying my knowledge of others. I do however have an advantage over others in the sense that I tend to see people at face value. I'm not good at the art of self-deception for my own psychological well-being. I sometimes wonder if this is a source for my depression. The world saddens me. The way people distort thier mental perception of reality to suit their own agenda at the expense of true empathy and moral/ethical consideration really disturbs me. Being emotionally perceptive makes one intensely vulnerable in this often cut-throat amoral world we live in.


Same here. I find it a struggle not to succumb to despair and sour grapes type thinking. It's too easy for me to see the superficiality and hypocrisy in human relationships.


I'm not sure whether I can be truly creative. I find that I'm not entirely comfortable with myself and get frustrated with my inadequacy in terms of self-expression. My anxieties and executive functioning issues tend to get in the way of me accomplishing anything truly creative. I do crave some kind of outlet though.

This is exactly what I've been trying to talk about in other threads. I grew up with severe receptive language problems, and 'sensing' of the type she describes has always been second nature to me. I resonate with other people, also with objects, nonhuman animals, etc. The world that I live in is very much about sensory information and the patterns it forms, not about ideas, categories, what she calls 'interpreting'. (And when I do have to go into idea-land or 'interpreting mode' it distances me from 'sensing' and makes me feel really disconnected and it's highly unpleasant for me to stay there long. Fortunately my brain won't let me stay there long.)

This is a blog post I wrote on the same topic pretty much:

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=642

That kind of understanding of the world, that's my home, that's where I live, that's where I'm comfortable. Because I've used it for so many years, I'm often the inverse of stereotypes about autism: Instead of relying on words and logic to understand people, I rely largely on the rhythms and patterns of their movement, the tonality of their speech, etc. And I perceive many things that nonautistic people don't perceive (because rather than dealing directly with sensed information, their 'empathy' relies more on shared neurological similarity with the people they're empathizing with, it's more a form of projection than anything else). And when I have to understand words, it feels like I'm climbing a cliff with my fingernails. Let go for an instant and all the language and ideas fall apart again and I'm back to where I started (and I'm tempted to say, where I belong). Language for me is something I learned in order to communicate important things to other people, but it loses so much compared to 'sensing' that it feels like a form of death to me to stay there long. When I'm stuck in language/idealand, I have many of the same 'deficits' that are stereotypical for autistic people.

But unlike a lot of autistic people who either started out in idealand or moved there permanently, I seem to firmly stay in sensedland instead, even if I put all my effort into language. I believe this is one of the reasons that my attempts at being really thinking-ish and doing well in school and stuff all fell apart after a certain age. I think my brain was saying "No, this is not for you, this is not who you should be, and I am going to force the matter if you don't quit trying to be someone you're not." This is why I don't like it when people refer to what happened to me in adolescence as a 'regression'. I think it was more like a restoration of who I always was underneath, and who I was meant to be. And instead of developing skills for dealing with ideas, my skills developed in this other direction that's far more useful to me, and continue to develop in this direction. The problem is that most people value the idea-skills more, and they see the kind of skills I have now as nonexistent, they see this rich and full world as if it is merely emptiness, because they don't share it, or don't think they do. For more on that topic:

http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/1052/1238

I also feel like my artwork has allowed me to express more of this side of me. Language is something that developed out of necessity, and though I have gained a lot of recognition as a writer, it doesn't feel like an expression of who I am, it feels like a mask that I put on in order to communicate with people who don't communicate the way I'm most familiar with. And while that has its place, it's not who I am. And painting has given me a way to express how I really view the world. Here are some examples:











These do a reasonably good job of portraying how the world seems to me. The backgrounds usually have several layers of color, which is a lot like the depth and richness of the different sensory impressions that happen (as well as the fact that visually I mostly see things as not objects but just color and shape and texture, and the world just seems like a swirl of sensation), and then the people or cats are at least my attempt to capture my sense of their movement patterns. It's hard to represent the many other senses that this takes place in, but I do my best. I also don't normally set out to paint any particular thing, they just happen as I'm painting (and even when I have some idea, like one of the paintings above was inspired by a photo of a Japanese temple cat, I still don't have any idea how it will turn out on paper, I just let my fingers move on their own).

Anyway, all this is what I talk about frequently when I say there's autistic people who perceive things in a way that's both very different from the norm, and very different from stereotypes about autism. The trouble is that the stereotypes are formed based on what people who use a lot of words say about themselves (combined with what "experts" come up with to explain us, which does influence what some of us say about ourselves as well). And while some of us who use a lot of words experience the world in this 'sensing' sort of way, it's far more likely in people who have spent a large portion of their lives without even the concept of language. (Which includes some of us, like me, who do learn to use words to communicate rather than just repeat whatever we think we've got to say. But a lot of autistic people who have receptive language issues don't learn to use words like I do. And even I had trouble articulating this kind of thing for a very long time, because I still struggle a lot more with language than it can look like from my writing.) I'm glad other people are starting to talk about this.

It is painful. I have a great many autistic traits but I have an NT's capacity to read people and situations. I miss the wider social rules but in movies tv etc I find that I perceive that "x dislikes y" rather fluently and unconsciously.