How much has lack of ToM affected your life?

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I'm taking ToM here to mean the ability that starts developing in NT kids at about age 4 to grasp that others may have different intentions, motivations, desires, goals, fears, etc. than we'd have if we were in their place. To what extent do you have ToM and to what extent does lack of ToM affect your life in the sense that you make strategic relating mistakes either in simple or complex relating situations?

I have no idea how it affects me. I guess my lack of ability to see that people are actually alive and "real" has some implications in relation to my [lack of] interaction with others, but not as much as not having anything to say to them.

I supposedly lack it, as I failed that little ball in the box test when I was 25.

I voted "other". For years I've assumed that most people want to know the truth in any given situation... for example, if someone asks, "does my bum look big in this," I assume they really want to know. I'd never ask a question if I didn't want the answer.

Recently I've started to realise that this isn't always the case... most people don't want the truth. But given that I've been so very HORRIBLY wrong in the past, I may still be missing something. So, I'm erring on the side of caution.

I still answer questions honestly, if I absolutely have to... but now I'm just putting myself in a position where those questions won't arise.

I voted significant impairment but really it's completely ruined my life. Turns out I'm a bull in a china shop but I always thought I was being careful. Experience compensates a little but to learn anything significant you have to mess up badly first. Then relive the experience for a few years.

I used to have quite a lot of difficulty with TOM. I still don't really have that intuitive feeling that NTs seem to have where they instantly sense another's point of view, but I can compensate rationally quite well.

Hmmm: it's good to know that someone understands what I go through in my life. I'm constantly asking people "why would he do what he did?", "what might be she wanted?", "why do you think he acted that way?", "did I miss something?", "why could X be angry at me?", etc. People aren't very often helpful in this, but anyway if they were, it's always too late, because the only way I have to know that I missed something is by having all hell hang loose with that person.

Like ChangelingGirl, I compensate with reason. But I can't say Theory of Mind has affected my life in any significant way. The people who were closest to me always knew my ways and quirks (as I knew theirs, really), so I felt okay. I have worried about it a little in recent years, as it only dawned on me in my mid-teens that autism comes with a misty ToM and I was missing 'sight' in a sense, but otherwise, I'm still okay.

I think Theory of Mind is a psychologist's myth. NT people have no more ability to intuit what others are thinking or see their point-of-view that we do, nor do they often attempt to hazard a guess.

In general, people don't care about other people, they're concerned only for themselves and the only time they seem to bother considering what another individual is thinking is when they want to manipulate them for personal gain.

I only aquired ToM a few years ago....I am a silver haired granny now! So for nearly 50yrs of my life I existed with very very delayed ToM...........AND then with lots of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I am now at nearly 4th order.

When I discovered other people were REAL, and had real feelings, agendas and lives of their own I discovered who I was and then really began to start living. It has changed my life. FACT.

If you didn't think they were real before, what did you think they were? I don't understand in what way your perception changed.

How can you not know other people are real and have their own agendas without being delusional and believing that you live in a movie and all the other actors are really the characters they're playing? I must be missing something here.

I know it sounds weird and is difficult to explain but I will try my best. Some of what I felt may sound a bit crazy so bear with me!

I knew everyone else was real in the physical sense, I am a nurse so have plenty of experience with beating hearts etc! But were they real in that they had THEIR OWN LIVES, own feelings, own thoughts that were different from my feelings and thoughts. I believed that my feelings were more important than anyone elses and that I MATTERED most! I couldn't 'gloop' into other people or read their facial expressions to be able to KNOW how they thought or felt. I just presumed everyone thought the same!!

And weirdly for me and my second son....we believed that everyone else on the planet was put there just for us! I know crazy but until you realise that actually every single person on the planet has their very own unique mind and life it is difficult to understand. Does any of that make sense? Remember I had seriously delayed ToM.....I survived because I have Echolalia so rather than mirroring others feelings I used my mimickry skills to copy them.

Hope that makes sense! But I am autistic so sometimes it is difficult to explain! All the nature of the beast!

I say that it significantly impaired my life.

Since I always thought I was "normal," I presumed everyone would see things my way, and enough of the time, from what I would see in response to my actions, I seemed to be correct.

However, I was wrong enough that I had very few friends and problems interacting with others.

This is really a strange question, I cant remember when it become clear to me that other people feel and think like me, but well i know as long as think that iam human and other people are basicly too. But otherwise i know that i usually not wasted much though about other peoples feelings when was younger.

But what me really stroke was that many of my friends used to think in terms what other people may think about them. Something i never really cared about emotionally, for me there were rules of behavior like honesty and justice i folowed them cause i thought them as right.

Even lying was some thing i had to learn the hard way in school.

I don't like the 'term theory of mind' either but I've no doubt that NTs know about people's ulterior motives without having to deduce it from evidence the way I'd have to. I can't count the amount of times a I've ignored friends warnings about people only for them to be proven right. Then there's the whole not knowing how bad something sounds until you actually say it and you see the reaction etc etc I beieve those are the kind of things that come under the topic.

It's definintely handy for the average person to have an idea of what others are thinking isn't it? Not so much for personal gain as to avoid personal harm. Personal gain too I supppose why not? As long as noone gets hurt and it's all above board.

Greentea, I honestly don't think we're the only ones here with that problem. I used to ask people too and they mostly seemed embarrassed or defensive. That tells me the things we miss are so obvious as to be so blatant in their eyes that there's no way we could seriously miss them, they then look for a reason why we might pretend to miss these obvious things then ask about them which is when they think/assume we're playing an emotional game with them which either offends them (confusing us) or they start playing the game too (confusing us further).
These days I'm trying to keep in mind the fact I've probably missed something so that it doesn't come as such a shock when it becomes obvious I have. Researching the things I now realise I don't kow about has led to a lot of those kinds of realisations. I think learning about non-verbals is the best way to compensate for theory of mind in real time, you can actually see from things other people do or don't do with their body how they are reacting to a particular thing you're doing as you're doing it. Still it's hard to keep the observational awareness up and being able to know before hand would be much better all round.

I answered "I don't know".

I have been aware that other people have emotions and motivations that are different than mine, but frankly I could not understand why a lot of the time. some people were just downright alien and irritating (in my mind) for crying over things and expecting me to empathize. I can't always do that, although I can try to be supportive if I think they have a good reason for crying... I guess at times I believed the excessive emotional display was theatrical more than genuine... I suppose that might be weak ToM because I figured if I didn't feel it, they shouldn't, and I wanted to withdraw from them for being so weird.

I also couldn't understand at all why someone would be motivated to lie. to me it made no sense, so I got tricked a lot into doing things that were just wrong, plus I spent many years completely frustrated in my former marriage because I thought my ex could see my point of view about honesty, since I told him repeatedly how much I value it. he'd say he did and I would take his statement at face value over and over and be completely thrown the next time I discovered a new deception.

when I had kids, I was fiercely protective of their rights to have feelings that were their own, and ran up against problems with people saying they shouldn't feel the way they did. my question was why shouldn't they? they just do. sometimes I don't recognize they are feeling a certain way until I get enough clues, but I don't tell them they shouldn't feel what they do.

But that's reasonable. What's the point in being told your bum looks nice when actually it looks fat?

If I have to answer a question like that I'll do it as nicely as possible, but I still give the truth.

Like when my online friend who could be a bit of a dick at times asked me 'What do you think of me?' I said 'well you overreact and get too angry sometimes, but otherwise I think you're fine.' Which was the truth. I didn't spew unnecessary vitriol, but I didn't give a sugary white lie either.