Does anyone cover for not understanding something?

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I tend to buy time in conversations when I don't understand something, at least online where I can use google to fake it.

Or at least I used to. My thread about people refusing to clarify was related to an incident where I didn't try to cover my lack of understanding but just asked "What is this?" I suspect I'm better off sticking with google.

Offline, I don't really have many strategies that go beyond asking for clarification, letting it slide, or trying to process it while possibly giving the wrong impression that I understood what I heard. This last happens most often when the situation seems hostile and confrontational.

Just to clarify, I'm not speaking to specific motives. My motivation is to avoid someone putting the brakes on the conversation to demand an explanation as to why I didn't know or understand something, but I imagine there are all kinds.

I find that if you listen to the context of the rest of what the person is saying that sometimes you can put together what they said before. Does not work for everything but it does for most things.

Pluss if someone is speaking to you directly it is not rude to ask them to repete themselves. As you are the one they need to understand what they are saying.

Now I don't mind making ppl repete themselves in most situations so I just act like I miss heard somthing or was distracted and then ask them to say it over.

Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. It depends on my mood.

All the time. I sometimes insert little words or just simple affirmative sounds into the conversation indicating I'm listening. In reality, I understand only partly what is being said. I try to get hold of the main pieces, put together, and fill in / extrapolate the rest intuitively / inductively. Sometimes I'd ask clarifying questions, revealing my "ignorance".

Naturally, I tend to be very honest and blunt about what I don't know, but my bosses at my first job admonished me for saying "I don't know" rather than something that explicitly stated that I intended to find out whatever the particular piece of knowledge was. I didn't feel it was necessary, as it was established that I needed to know and did not know, but I did adjust my habits accordingly on that job.

Yes. My diagnosing psychologist described me as 'a little slow', and he is correct. Sometimes it takes my brain a little time to catch on to what is said, or written, and though I can have detailed recall, sometimes it needs a trigger to pull the memory, and I am waiting for a more useful trigger from the conversation, or my brain coming up with something relevant, and when neither happens I have little choice but to ask for clarification, although that does not guarantee I will be enlightened, as you found in webchat.

This is very close to what I do.

I also end up agreeing to things I don't agree with because I'm trying to process/understand/extrapolate.

Or simply not expressing your opinion. I often do this. I just let them believe whatever they assume. After a while, when I feel confident enough and I assume it isn't risky to the relation, I'd throw in hints.

Sometimes yeah.

Something i cover for in a work/school environment is friends. I can make acquaintances no problem, it's just taking it further that i struggle with. To the people at work/school (who i think i interact with in a fairly normal way), i make them think that outside of that environment i do have friends and am normal. It's a mixture of letting them think that i have friends through first keeping quiet and not giving anything away combined with slightly misleading statements from me. Yes im embarrassed at not having friends but i point blank refuse to let people look down on me for it.

Oh yes, that's me too. Sometimes I'll say "yes, totally", nod, process what the person has just said and go "oh no wait, I can't agree with this!" but sometimes it's too late, when you change your mind on what your values are in 5 minutes people tend to think you're weird..... which of course makes sense, but how do you explain to someone that you were not agreeing, just buying time to fully process what they had said.....
This makes me wonder about self awareness. I've always thought of myself as an intelligent person, but actually I might be what people call "slow". Can you be both?
My main coping mechanism has been to just say "I agree , but ...*insert why I disagree here*" so you can actually say you agree and disagree in the same sentence , NTs use this to soften the blow when they have to tell someone they disagree with them, they won't think you're weird but "diplomatic", which is better
As for the things that just "won't come through", say you're 10 minutes into a conversation and still lacking a very important piece, my advice would be: base yourself on the context and insert something you truly believe in there.
Say you're discussing religion and you can't tell whether the person is speaking about *all religions* or only *his religion*; go for all religions and make a broad statement, and see how they react. I found it's good to sometimes stop focusing and redirect the conversation.

That's exactly how i see myself, a smart slow person. It's like i am actually clever but my train of thought is scarily narrow. To think about anything i need to eject all the rest of the bs from my mind and although it can be prove to be a very powerful way of thinking it also slows me down massively. It's like my brain can only process things at a certain speed and it leads to a bit of bottleneck for processing new information. I DO get there though.

That's just it: I'm not expressing an opinion, I'm using scripted responses so I can process the conversation. But I am perceived as expressing an opinion because of the words I may be using, some of which I may not be fully aware of.

I pretend to get stuff all the time. Does that count?

People get mad when you don't get stuff or think you are being obtuse on purpose. Or they just simply think you are stupid.

Sometimes I might say something along the lines of "I dunno...what if...?" and keep piling on questions that might help me to understand better. If all else fails, well, I'll just bite the bullet and see if what I'm assuming others are trying to get across is right.

For the most part, though, most of my more serious discussions take place online wherein I have more time to think up a response. Most real life friends just consider me the funny guy who really is not much for debate or anything like that. Even then, it is a bit easier when in groups compared to one on one, because you're not always required to say anything on the spot.

This morning I was having breakfast in the small lunch room, when a coworker came in, saying "Happy New Year". Why she did that - I wondered. Then, after some 15 seconds, I enlightened, and asked back if it was her first day in work this week. She had been ill, she told me. Obviously, the right answer would have been "Have you been ill recently?", but the one I supplied was good enough to continue the conversation for a few more sentences...

For the longest time, I didn't understand why plainly stating that I don't know something is almost a social taboo.

I "know" better now but I still end up saying all too quickly that I don't know something I truly don't know and still get in trouble for it/get told that I must have no self-esteem for admitting to my faults without much care.

I generally ask a lot of questions too. "What do you mean?" "Why did that happen?" "When was that?"

It's odd but now that I'm a young adult, most of my verbal communication consists of asking questions. I wonder if that's because I hardly asked questions as a kid.

I guess asking questions is related to saying I don't know someting because asking questions like these apparently makes a lot of people think I'm actually asking for their opinion as if they assume that I think their opinion's actually worth something when I'm just asking out of simple curiosity or out of boredom.

I know that this is how it works but I don't really get why anyone would think that me asking "how do you do this?" indicates that I intend to imitate them or want to get their advice. I sure didn't phrase my question like that.