How do YOU learn from your mistakes?

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This is a subject that can be a complex one and a BIG key to realizing better quality of life. How the heck do we learn from our mistakes in an effective - and especially more efficient - way????

One tactic I've used is to write down past mistakes and look for abstract patterns among them - how were the variables similar, what was the outcome, what led me to believe that the course of action I took was proper...etc. I found that to some extent, this works - I was able to "dodge bullets" by responding (or not responding i.e. keeping my mouth shut!) to situations adequately by having quick recall back to those, once they were more ingrained by rote. There's still some luck involved though, this studying method of mine isn't quite as efficient as NT processing to dodge embarrassment as such.

Maybe it's because we're concrete thinkers, as they say, whose brains don't adapt to see abstract parallels as they accumulate in our lives. Yet many of us (myself included) are very good at abstract reasoning, in terms of giving analogies and making models of concepts and what not - I do that as part of my work and very well at that. So what is it then??

I believe it partly has to do with the infamous Asperger chasm between applied knowledge and theoretical knowledge - neurotypicals seem to have greater fluidity of applied knowledge in situations. The ability to size up a situation quickly and respond properly. Likely this is part of evolutionary psychology, and as I've commented on before, Aspergers seems to be a categorical rejection of evolutionary psych behaviours. To elaborate, and I don't know exactly what it is, but the neurotypical brain seems to have a higher degree of intimacy between experience and intuition, whereas for us, it's more inert - we have to suffer lots of unpleasant experiences before intuition accumulates, we just don't have that "abstract fluidity" in our real-life responses, we just have to keep exercising it through study of errors (filtering out the regret!! which is hard sometimes, I know) and hoping for the best. Lord knows I've had my share of being chided by people with remarks like "well, you didn't notice you were supposed to do B in this situation X, but it's obvious that in situation Y you were supposed to do A which is very similar to B, so you should have known."

Then there's the Tourettes-like (or OCD-like) response of Aspergers that we sometimes have - either as a comorbid or part of AS, can never tell - where I will just say something improper out of anxiety, but I'll realize that it was improper right after. This happens to me far less frequently these days though. This is an error that you can't really correct by relying on a flash of intuition / recalled experience - it's more of a nervous habit than an error in judgement per se.

In summary, let me just add that I DETEST IT when people say we have no capacity to learn from our mistakes. It makes us sound like some hopeless drug addict or parolee with recidivism. WE CAN, with the right tools, strategies, luck, insight, and above all perseverance.

The definition of Autism says that there are deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction and deficits in developing and maintaining relationships.

Making a verbal or inappropriate mistake is not a side effect of autism. That is the very definition. I've tried to work beyond it over the years but have failed.

I now prefer not to make mistakes by remaining alone. That way I don't get rebuffed and nobody looks at me like a freak.

I remember the last time I announced something or did something. If I got the cold shoulder the last time I put my trust in family, I remember the hurt and that reminds me not to do that in the future.

You have a more constrained definition of the problem than that which I was conveying. I was referring to mistakes made not just in the spoken sense, as you were alluding to, but in the performed sense (and especially more so the latter). Thinking of situations where you did something with the intent of benefiting others or making something better, in a friendship, relationship, or workplace context (and here's where I'll say once more, especially the latter ) only to find that you missed something in "the big picture" based on ToM that it should have been apparent that so-and-so would not appreciate your gesture, or that you went beyond unncessarily, or that your action was not in line with overall priorities. That involves errors of executive function, to a large degree - not so much the social/emotional responses in one-on-one conversations. Those are the errors that I have written down, and studied, to look at patterns to increase prevention.