How do you avoid being misunderstood?

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I've just recently realized I'm AS. So the failure to communicate properly with the right signs, gestures and eye contact is unsurpassable. That just explains so much! Like why my boss was so uncomfortable with me. Why I'm so polite in my local grocers and they don't seem to like me. Why the nursery teacher was "so" friendly in the beginning and now there's an awkward feeling in the air? And everything else...

So is there any point in trying? Do you have any techniques to act normal and get away with it?

How do you look people in the eyes and not send the wrong message?

How do you follow up on people's conversation and not tend to be to formal or technical?

This is a funny episode: A few weeks ago I looked up a food and health advisor who happens to be aquainted with my wife. After about an hour in her office discussing what I needed she took me to the door and we kissed goodbye (in Portugal we do cheek kissing). But at this point she closed her eyes and slightly opened her lips... I kissed her cheeks, smiled and walked away. But if my brain didn't "get it", my heart was pounding like he knew. I wondered for days what happened. Was I going mad. Who would expect me to make that kind of move in a business meating? She´s divorced but has a boyfriend, and has several common friends with my wife! Do I really think I'm a hotshot?! Or, dear mercy, did we have a parallel dialogue that I was totally unaware of but said so plenty?

For the first time in my life instead of looking back and wanting to erase half of my life, I'm actually having a laugh at it.

A point in trying? There's very little. I've been telling things to my parents which have been met by responses that confuse and frustrate the hell out of me. This has been going on since I was able to talk. I actually just decided to give up and spend the time I would normally would use retrospecting about it to instead study chemistry and Latin. Problem isn't necessarily solved but I can instead do something I'm actually proficient at.

Look people in the eyes? Don't. If you persist long enough they may understand you're overall problem and then alter their expectations, which means they start viewing you as an Aspie and wont try and get the wrong message from it. This has never happened to me but honestly I'll let presumptuous judgment be their problem, not mine.

Conversations? Be as technical as possible. Honestly if formality is your true character just let it out there. Most likely people will see this as a strong point. If they see it as strange you really shouldn't have anything to do with them. I don't know what the worst case scenario here is but it shouldn't be too bad. Don't do this during a job interview however as the person may think you're smarter than them (and you probably are) which I've heard makes them intimidated.

I keep my mouth shut?

I prefer to do most communication with others in writing. I hate places that would rather have me call in and talk, because so much happens in spoken conversation you lose track of what was and was not said. It's also too easy to say something you shouldn't and then it's really embarrassing.

Face to face, if I don't know the other person well enough, I'm careful about how I chose to say things. It helps....a little bit.

You don't - a lot of it depends on what's going on in the head of the listener or reader.

Best you can do is to do your best to see if you can understand how they phrase things and then try to adjust your presentation to sort-of "speak in their language".

Sometimes there have to be several questions back and forth before both parties are on the same track.

People need to accept that it's okay to ask for repetition or clarification.

Redhorizon, I sympathise with your feelings. Teenage times were my worst nightmare. But now that I recognize my own condition I've suddenly gained a whole new understanding of myself. I've lived all my life trying to fit in and please others but never knowing at what point everything kept blowing up. Now I know that I just don´t speak the same language and strangely as it seems it's given me an added inner serenity. I know I'm from another planet now but how far can I go in pretending like "The Great Pretender"?

Ms Overstood topic

Simple. I over explain, and then people are overwhelmed.

It's only recently that I figured out (through this site) that I have many AS traits. And I've realized that what I have been doing is sort of following behavior rules in my head. It had never occurred to me that some people just "get it" and automatically know how to act. Unfortunately, I don't have techniques as such, except...



With men, I don't make much eye contact. I focus on whatever we're talking about (TV, gaming table, computer monitor, etc.). Or I look up at the ceiling when thinking.

With women, I force myself to make more eye contact so I don't stare at their chests. (What can I say - men are visual creatures.) Otherwise same rules as with men.



I used to worry about this and to edit what I said to use shorter words, etc. I still do this at work pretty often, when talking with managers or non-technical people. With computer geek colleagues or gamer friends, I don't usually worry about it. My wife has an excellent vocabulary (and she's used to me by now ), so there also I don't worry about it.

I'm doing that alot more often now...the shutting my mouth part, I mean, cause everytime I say something it actually becomes a nonsensical statement that guys will laugh at for 5 minutes and then call me cute

One thing I also learned is to not bother communicating with people you personally know online. If you're talking with people you've never met, it's good because any arguments and misunderstandings you have with other forum members dont have any damaging effects outside.

This is kinda why I dont bother with sh*t like Facebook, Aim, or the forum for the old sketch comedy show I used to be on anymore.

Sorry, my first reply wasn't actually that serious or insightful. Personally I can look back just three years ago when I started high school and see that I generally had the same issue I had now that makes me feel like the place you're in. That issue isn't easy to put into words, most likely because it's not really one problem on its own and is just a bunch of confounding factors. Even if I were to explain it I never know if anyone would interpret it in the way that I mean to convey it. Frustrating.

Anyways the problem I notice is that even though I'm able to do high level intellectual tasks I never seemed to be able to work with people and have things go the way I planned. This almost always resulted in people not getting what I talk about, or not understanding the feelings or opinions I'm trying to convey, unless it was very literal (This still happens and it drives me crazy). In fewer cases it caused me to get into trouble at school, and for a geeky character I had some serious conflicts with teachers. This never seemed to result from what I would think of as misunderstanding, on my part or the other person's, or even as explicit confusion, but as having an outrageous record of just never having people react in the way I expected. No matter what. I always receive reactions from people that were totally unexpected and it seemed I could never change the outcomes. The only reason that things have gotten easier for me is that I interact with fewer people and in fewer and more predictable ways. More linear interactions, if that makes any sense. I hate to say that my solution is becoming reclusive because that's not necessarily it; rather I became less hyper and put myself into the interaction danger-zone less often, which has spared me a lot of the embarrassment I used to endure.

You're not kidding about teenage years being bad. I never would have predicted that anyone even goes through anything similar actually. But I hope my input offers something for comparison even if it's not a straightforward answer by any means.

Tl;dr

Now imagine the ‘too long; not listening’ look that I get from others when trying to explain myself.

I usually keep quiet, unless I’m directly asked a question.



Umm... Don't stare? Apparently I stare at people and it makes them extremely uncomfortable.

So... now I'm up to... I'll stare at you and over explain things. Are you uncomfortable yet?



What's wrong with being formal and technical? It confuses the hell out of people.

Awesome; now that I've freaked everyone out with my odd behavior, I can spend the rest of my day in peace. They don't call me Creepy Christal for no particular reason.

If at all possible, the way I try to avoid being misunderstood is to write to the person I'm going to communicate with, rather than talk to them. In both writing, & actual speaking, I use a LOT of details. I feel like if I give every single detail to a person, they'll better understand me & it will cause less confusion & make it easier for me to talk to the person. I panic when I'm not being understood. Most of the time in real life communications, though, people will not allow me to get all the details out & because of that, they assume things that are not true. I guess another reason I use so many details when talking to someone else is because I wish they would do that with me. I rarely understand what's going on or what's expected of me because people don't give me enough detail, or direction. They don't explain things well enough & I'm left lost, trying to figure out what's going on & what I'm supposed to do. That's what makes so many social situations horrible for me. People get mad because they expect me to know what they're alluding to & I don't know.

I've figured out someting I do when comunicating face to face that is probably responsable for some misunderstandings. Especially when talking to girls in which I tend to show better self-confidence than with guys, and because I can't look into the eyes for long, I'm looking all over her face trying to read her facial signals, I suppose. If I look at just one point of the face like say between the eyes, that's all I'll see - just between the eyes and miss out everything else! So I'm looking all over her face and that probably sends out an intimate message because you're looking at the lips, then the cheeks, then the eyes... When you can keep your eyes that high! With guys I'll do different mostly but I can recall now why a friend asked me some years ago if I was gay. I thought he asked because I had no girlfriends but I'm not sure anymore.

i do not propose any idea in my mind to anyone in real time conversation.

I am very hermit-like, and the people I choose to be around generally are accustomed to miscommunications with me. I try really, really hard to avoid worrying about it, or else I'd never talk to anyone, ever.

All I can do is hope to hell that I'm learning from my mistakes, however slowly. It helps that my best friend/ex boyfriend/roommate knows me so well that we are able to talk about the miscommunications after the fact and see where things went wrong.

I have CBT'd being misunderstood

So if I am I just think either the person is stupid,
or laugh at the misunderstanding.