I hate offending people!

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It seems as people with AS say offensive things and are brutally honest. But I'm the exact opposite, unless I'm angry, I try really hard not to offend people and feel bad when I do. I also have empathy for people who have been offended, even more so then when they are in physical pain.

I have never met a person (NT or otherwise), who is like this to as an extreme extent as I am.

I hate offending people, too.

Me too, unless I'm pretty angry with them, and even then I tend to hold a lot back. But I can do it by accident when I don't realise the impact of what I'm saying or doing.

It's an interesting topic because it takes two to create offense - the offender and the offended. The responsibility is often put completely on just one of them, which in my view often leads to tyranny.

I am a very tactful person. I know exactly what might offend someone and so I avoid saying it. If I do need to be honest with someone, I find it stressfully hard, and I try to sugarcoat it as much as I can.

I have a lot of awareness and interest in other people's thoughts and feelings, so being honest is hard, unless I know it will make them feel happy.

seriously, the fear i have of offending people makes me "too nice" in situations where being angry is appropriate. i am blunt a lot without knowing it's rude and so in reaction to that i try to over-nice things--or in social situations where i don't know what's going on/what queues to follow, i just don't talk at all and i say things that i call "catch-phrases" which are like, rehearsed, fake sentences like "oh that's really cool" "wow that's nice" "aww, cool" or "nice!" and if someone tries to really talk to me like, i don't know what to say. sometimes, depending on how the social interaction goes, i'll be so afraid of accidentally offending someone that i run away, literally. it's really embarrassing but my brain would rather embarrass myself then offend others.

^
I always feel trapped when I think speaking my mind will offend. If I keep quiet, I'm minimising myself and asking to be treated like I don't matter. If I express false approval, I feel guilty about lying, and I have some skills in spotting dishonest approval, and it puts me off those who do it, as I hate being lied to, and I tend to think it would be just my luck to lie to somebody who was like me, i.e. skilled at spotting BS and rather unforgiving about it. A workaround is to comment on the good part of whatever it is, and ignore the bad part, even if it's the most important bit. Even that feels a bit weaselesque. Maybe it's best just to be blunt, but I can't seem to do that any more.

^ yea i feel that. i am usually blunt with people i know, which is kinda hard for me because i often end up confusing or hurting them or making them think i'm a certain emotion when i'm not/i'm completely unaware that i've been blunt. my mind goes into "survive mode" when i'm in public with a bunch of people i barely or don't know where i feel like i have to do an act. like, people at work know me as one type of person, my friends at home know me as someone completely different. i try to stop it, and i don't mean to be fake, it just comes out that way and i try to be polite to others when i'm dying to go home instead.

I find this thread offensive D=










































































(The above was not an actual serious response by the way. More like I was pretending to be an antagonist.)

^^ Oh my, yes, I remember the stifling workplace mask I used to have to wear. Always having to pretend to be enthusiastic about working really hard doing boring stuff for somebody else.

^
My mother used to say to me, "one of these days that mouth of yours is going to get you into bad trouble." I don't know how NTs manage to routinely shy away from telling it like it is, without blowing a gasket. Discretion is very hard for me. More recently I've begun to use a workaround, i.e. tempering my criticisms with reassurance and sometimes (to a degree) understating the bad news. Doesn't work on everybody, but at least I come over as "trying to be reasonable."

I hate offending people too.