Describe Mind Blindness.

Post Reply New Topic

I'm not sure if I suffer from mind blindness.
I read that if your mind then you find it hard to tell what the person thinks as you think of all the options that it could be, and you cannot make-up you mind.
So would an example be if my girlfriend laughed at me and I took the wrong way persistantly even though she's told me she's not laughing at me.
Or when I ask to use something and they say 'No' as a joke, yet I take them seriously and get offended despite I think it probably is a joke.

Mind blindness is the lack of thought reading. Most people seem to use some kind of black magic to steal other people's thoughts and emotions just by looking each other in the eyes. (I think that's why eye contact is so scary. They are devouring each other's souls. )

Laughter is a good example of the problem. Whenever I walk down the street and there is someone laughing my first thought is always they're making fun of me. When I tell a joke and people are laughing I always wonder why. Do they laugh because the joke really was funny? Are they acting polite in order to protect my feelings? Is there another reason maybe? I can see if a person is laughing, smiling or crying but I can't figure out why. For the latter I always assume it's my fault. I'm no clairvoyant so how could I possibly know?

Another part of the problem is the prediction of other people's reactions. I frequently forget that other people think in different ways than me and know different things than me. I think that also is mind blindness.

I can tell from context whether something is a joke or not most of the time but sometimes I fall for very obvious jokes. Like when my parents said (jokingly) that christmas was called off and I believed it. Several years in a row. But then it wasn't called off... Liars! I think I would fall for it again. Even though I knew it's meant as a joke it would not feel like one. Shame on me for being fooled twice.

Mind blindness or not, you've just read my mind. Whenever I'm with a person or a group of people, and I see laughter, my first thought is that they're laughing at me. Maybe that's because I've been conditioned to associate laughter with negative things, from being bullied all my life. The negative association is starting to go away, but it's still hard to grasp the concept that people would actually not laugh at me.

Aspie 1 wrote:

"Maybe that's because I've been conditioned to associate laughter with negative things, from being bullied all my life. The negative association is starting to go away, but it's still hard to grasp the concept that people would actually not laugh at me."

Yes!! It is hard to grasp that [NT] people can actually like one's company, value one's opinions and may seek one out when one has been bullied from late childhood on. The immediate and automatic assumption one makes [and this is not self-pity] is that one's actions, opinions and being have no worth to NTs in general and that they will ignore one at best and denigrate one at worst.

As you say it is a "negative association" and it takes a lot of self-control and confidence to over-ride the association, so deeply is it etched into one's brain. I suspect most of us will have poor self-esteem as the logical consequence of life experiences of being judged by an NT standard based on an intuitive social-emotional relating that is at the core of NT group function.

Jim Crawford.

I think I may suffer from mind blindness as well. As when my girlfriend laughs when we kiss I always assume it's me, or if as you say walking down the street, or out of politeness.
And I'm not very good at thinking when I make a joke at someone they would be offended.
I often say thinks and people laugh and I'm not sure why.

I never know what people are thinking, or why they're laughing, or whether they mean something they say or not ... And my friends can't understand it.