How bad are you at body language ect?

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would you know greek if you heard it in greece?

I'm laughing.... I cannot even compose a single lucid thought that adequately describes my trouble with non-verbal cues other than; everyone is a "clown" to me with their painted on expressions....

Me was diagnosed this year when I was chronologically 25...retrospectively, it led to some funny moments..., especially with “authority” figures like school principles and such.

My sister's husband comes from an Italian family, and they're REAL big on body language. But not subtle like some people. Instead, they fling their arms out wildly whether they're talking about politics or just some lasagna recipe. They yell when they're happy and they yell when they're angry. They hug everyone as if they want to squeeze them to death but at least they do it to everyone so you know it's not only you they want to squeeze to death.
So in a way it's actually better to be with them, since all you have to do is wave your arms around and yell alot and you fit right in. With most other people the body language is way more subtle and nothing means the same thing so it can be difficult to read it sometimes. I'll be talking to someone and I can't always figure out when they're getting bored or whatever. With the Italian in-law folks, though, it's easy. They'll tell you right up that they want you to "shaddup" and it's all the same waving arms and yelling (they're actually real nice folks).

I get it all wrong I see a lot of the things people do but can never accurately tell what they mean and frequently get it very wrong. People are just too confusing I am very good at reading dogs body language though.

Addendum: now that I’m over laughing about the past, I’ll explain how people appear as “clowns” to me (I believe ZanneMarie stated the cause for this, i.e., my brain computes the information incorrectly).

When someone smiles or frowns; shows any emotion on their face to me they look no different to the painted on and exaggerated emotions of clowns, barring the white makeup of course...incidentally, I've never found clowns funny at all; what's so funny about being clumsy and silly?

I'm getting better at deducing the "real" meaning of body language through retrospection and comparing the evidence; what would have taken me years previously is down to hours.

I have a "calm" demeanour; I show no overt emotion..., even in serious situations like a car accident. Internally, serious situations don’t bother me at all either, but this is due to a constant state of fear rather than related to social cues.

Against the norm in Aspies i have no problem with reading body language and no i didn't learn it i have never had a problem reading people.

I am TERRIBLE at reading body language. I always think people are angry or annoyed.

Thats my general reaction also

i do this... i always think people are pissed of or mad at me... maybe this is a premptive thought process to help kinda be more aware that we might be doing something wrong... like cause it's ingrained in us and arose from early experiences?

people say i say "im sorry" too much

I say I'm sorry all the time, too. It annoys people. You can't win.

That is EXACTLY my feelings, however I had never thought about it that way! I always felt concern for the clowns and wanted people to STOP LAUGHING AT THEM! It was explained to me time and time again it was all in good fun, that they WANTED people to laugh at them, but I just couldn't 'get' it.

I feel the same way about 'shock jocks' on the radio, calling people and perpetrating a fraud or joke of some sort on unsuspecting people. They cause real distress and the people that regularly listen just howl in laughter at the antics of the 'ret*d' people that don't get the joke.
I guess it is bully humor.

Merle

I lived in Italy for two years and you are right, they hug, touch, wave their arms around and yell when they are upset or happy. I still talk with "my hands" like an Italian. It's funny, I will go into that mode when I am excited about an idea. I suddenly become very animated and it takes people aback because I am usually a blank slate non-verbally.

I miss those Italians. I did understand them much better than Americans. They didn't mind my strangeness because they thought all Americans were strange.

Roger...I think figuratively and poetically, well..., that’s what I’m thinking due to what I’ve been screaming to.

Though I never felt concern for the clowns (you’re probably a much nicer person than me), I never understood why people were laughing at them:

They’re behaving like idiots, why laugh?
Would people laugh at me if I acted like them, would I then be liked; being laughed at means you're liked right?
Does it mean that you’re an idiot for laughing at idiots? I’m surrounded by them....
What’s so funny about having a face painted “white”?
Et cetera

When people smile at me they look like the Joker from Batman....

Over the years I've gotten much better at decoding body language and facial expressions, but it requires conscious effort. Sometimes I don't track what the other person is saying, because I'm distracted by trying to decode their expressions. It tires me when I have to do it for hours. Knowing that about 70-80% of NT communications happens through facial expression and body language helps me sort out what is happening.

When I was teen, I actually thought I knew how to read body language. It was one of the great epiphanies of my life when I found out that I didn't really have a clue about reading faces and that I was missing most of message (similar to the day that I discovered that my father had suddenly gotten much smarter ). I've since learned that everyone has specialized neural circuits for certain faces like anger, disgust and smiles. These specialized circuits seem to not be altered in AS. So that would explain why I thought I could read faces.

I could never tell if clown were angry or happy...

I have no idea how well I read body language. Some folks seem to think I'm empathetic. I suspect that part of it stems from my job in high school at a flower shop. Since it takes so long to complete a transaction they taught me small talk. I used it one day on someone who was an anthropology major and she explained many of the cultural defaults that we do because we are "socialized" to use those mannerisms. After that I spent a lot of time watching people from my shop (I considered it like a duck blind from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom).

The one thing I have learned is that many people (the majority that I've watched) are often in denial of what they are really feeling anyway - or at least they deny those feelings to others. A person would loose face if they weren't "a good sport" when someone joked about them, or the stereotypical comment that is played up in many movies and comics where the big, macho guy gets pummeled by someone and says in this squeeky voice "That didn't hurt".

So even if you had a device to interpret things, you would need another device to figure out when you should to publically acknowledge that you saw the feeling. Seems far too convoluted to me. I've given up trying and tell people upfront to be very, very direct and blunt with me. If they don't want to acknowledge it, that is their problem.

Also, it isn't just an AS person who has problems in this area. There are massive assumptions about what someone can read from someone else. There are numerous books which tell people to be upfront and don't expect others to "read their minds". If it is acknowledged in that much literature, I tend to think it is more of a cultural catch-22 than just limited to folks with a less enhanced set of mirror neurons.

Mary