Has anyone ever told you how you really come across?

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There are those rare moments when someone will be really honest about how we come across, even brutally so.

For example, I know that I'm doing something wrong in social situations - on a very rare occasion someone has given me honest feedback on a subtle mistake or even a general impression.

As much as it hurts, I appreciate constructive feedback. I've also gotten feedback that was 'interesting' - appreciated it because it required guts to be that specific. Insults, no. But well-intentioned and good-natured, though critical, it was sometimes tolerable...

"You seem very high-strung - I just get this sense that you have a lot of internal anger." (This was news to me, as I rarely get angry, but my face has an angry look sometimes, naturally)

Honest feedback can hit to the core of who we really are, or it can be completely off the mark. It is eye-opening nonetheless. It can be a shock to find out how we really come across, whether we are intending to or not.

Has anyone ever told you how you come across, whether in person or in writing; if so what did they say and how did you feel afterward?

I like honest feedback about specific things. I've been told I talk too much or too little, and I don't pay enough attention, and other things. I can't change all of these things but being conscious of them helps a great deal.

But then there's times when people seem to want to give feedback but they can't seem to articulate it. I don't know if they're struggling to find a polite way to say something or if they genuinely can't find words to express it. I get the impression this is about something positive that they like, though.

For me, it depends on who it is coming from and if I believe they have my best interest at heart, which of course isn't always the case, no matter how "polite" it may be stated.

They've called me weird because I refer to myself in the 3rd person when speaking.

I've been called cold because I don't cry and mournful events don't phase me it seems.

I've been called intense for the focus I can have with certain subjects.

Mainly I've been called crazy because I'm so uncategorizable and odd.

People often tell me I come across as angry or depressed, even when those emotions are the farthest thing from my mind at the moment. I agree that it depends on the source. Sometimes people are honestly telling you something, and other times they're messing with you or trying to make you angry. My grandma always told me to consider the source.

I frequently get grossly incorrect unsolicited comments about my facial expressions mostly from complete strangers and I don't appreciate it. I hate it when I'm having a good day and I'm in the grocery store trying to pick out a loaf of bread and the shopper next to me feels compelled to tell me "cheer up, SMILE it can't be that bad!" Or back when I had a job the numerous times I've had a customer complain to my boss that I'm rude because they didn't think I smiled at them right!

Yes and it hurt every time. Sometimes I don't even care.

In undergrad school I was told that I remind someone of Hank Hill, and that I seem excessively angry. I was surprised to hear that, and I didn't think I seemed angry at the time. Later in graduate school I went to a gathering for other graduate students who received the same fellowship I did. One of them hinted that my anger was because of the wrong direction taken by the development of energy, thus implying that I seemed angry. I had a lot of trouble with simply being around people during that time, even people that I categorized as liking me, and I was facing employment uncertainty, which didn't help. I dunno, maybe I really was angry. Maybe I should be angry. Maybe all of you should be angry, too.

One time my mom and I were having one of our many discussions about my Asperger's and she told me that during birthdays and Christmas growing up, I would never express any excitement over the gifts. She said it made her feel disappointed every time. I do feel excitement, but it's often difficult for me to express it unless I feel it very intensely. I had no idea that I was secretly hurting my mom's feelings every year with my lack of enthusiasm. It makes me sad, because my mom is the last person in the world who I would ever want to hurt.

One time I was feeling sad over minor issue I was having (I tend to overreact to things a lot) and I was talking to my brother about it for emotional support, and he stopped me and said, "I think you create issues in your own mind when there are none. You need to stop." He may have been being blunt with me, but but I do admit that he's right about that. I'm trying to be better about not letting trivial things bother me so much.

I sincerely appreciate it when I get constructive feedback.

A friend sheepishly told me that I made him feel uncomfortable. Though it was awkward for both of us, I pursued the conversation - he told me that my staring at him sometimes made him wonder about my feelings for him. I think this made him feel especially "uncomfortable" because he had outed himself to me months before.

I felt a variety of things: regretful for making my friend feel confused about our relationship, hurt because he insinuated that he had felt "uncomfortable" about it for a while but chose a climactic point in one of our fights to bring it up, and just plain angry that all of my neurotypical friends, at some point, seem to get really weird about the possibility of one of us being attracted to the other when those things never affect the way I regard any of my friends. I don't really get attracted to people. Shrug. However, I now have a better sense of what people may mistake for flirtation or physical attraction.

Of course, I explained to him that I'm autistic and don't always know what I should be doing with my eyes

It's taken years but I have something resembling a good relationship with my boss. Example: he's into music so that's a place we can bond away from work concerns. Often when he'll ask me, say, who did such a song, he'll quickly inject "I don't have time for the whole history" which has worked well for me. In the past, I'd launch into the maximum discography and then he'd have to escape which would hurt my feelings. So now he reminds me, "interested but keep it brief."

Snobby, cold, heartless- just plain odd/eccentric. It is quite hurtful.

I've been told a lot of things so it's hard to accept what typical of me or just the person's reaction.

I've been told I look snobby. I'm absolutely not.

I do not show my emotions--like when I took my best friend to meet my "crush" they both told me I showed him nothing--acted like I was completely oblivious to his existence. Which I guess I try to do whenever I have feelings for anyone (because that scares me).

People have thought I was looking at them when i wasn't, or that I "mad dogged" them. That I am strongly opinionated.

IDK--I've been told by un-trusted people that I talk like a robot. Am overly civil, and pause too long before speaking.

It's funny, as much as I acknowledge that every perception is subjective, I can't reconcile this kind of feedback with the idea that I am a caring and loving person. Warm and passionate--which is what I feel I am.

Only online, in writing, where I feel I best express myself have I been told I am a caring, passionate person. What a disturbing wake-up call.

I've had people tell me, as nicely as they could, that I am being rude. Often times I initially feel ambivalent when they say this because I honestly do not see that particular comment/action as being rude at all. So I feel like dismissing their assertion of me being rude as silly. But at the same time, I don't want to be seen as rude to others, so it also hurts to hear. And it makes me worried that there are a whole host of times that I'm being rude and don't know it because someone doesn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me. It sucks because I often times think that the rude action/comment is commonplace or even polite.

I think many of the people who feel the need to give this sort of unwelcome unsolicited advice/complaints are sociopaths and realize they're the ones with the problem. Not the people who show concern, but the ones who are angry because you're not smiling or dressing a certain way.