Negative responses to questioning non-verbal cues?
In attempting to bridge communication gaps with NTs, I know that the selective use of clarifying questions for non-verbal cues/prompts can sometimes do it...but of course, we either tend to use these in the "wrong cases", from the NT perspective. I know that even NTs themselves have to occasionally clarify non-verbals amongst themselves, but they seem to intuitively know when it's appropriate to do so, when the non-verbal nuance really does have some ambiguity to it... but as we all know, we have a lower threshold of ambiguity.
So in trying to build bridges by clarifying non-verbals, we might inadvertently be doing the opposite...an NT might think that we're passive-aggressively tormenting them, or covertly gaslighting them or invalidating their emotions, like a narcissist might do.
Incidentally, one passage from the Specialisterne publication "Ten unfair reasons why autistic employees get fired" in the very first one on not catching on to non-verbal cues says THIS:
"An irritated facial expression, a pointed clearing of the throat, a raised eyebrow, a sudden change in vocal tone - these things either won't register at all because our brains can't read them, or we'll feel something is amiss but we won't know what - and past experience has painfully educated us that it's considered impolite to directly ask."
Yep, that speaks plenty... from my own strong visual memory even pre-diagosis I can recall times when an NT indignantly "answered" my nonverbal clarifying question with yet another negative non-verbal, thus implying that I was passive-aggressively tormenting him/her and he/she didn't appreciate it
They didn't stop to think that some of us might be running a different operating system "up there", but then why would they, right??