When did you discover nonverbal was important?

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This totally eluded me throughout my childhood, as I suspect it did many (mostly undiagnosed) Aspies - hopefully for the generation born in the '90s it's more instilled in them from a very early age - my 'fessup is that I didn't truly discover the importance of nonverbal communication until the age of 23, and even then it took me till my late 20s to get better at it. It wasn't so much an effectiveness, but efficiency issue, since I couldn't always accurately & spontaneously process it while absorbing speech simultaneously.

My rationale for not realizing it was important?? Well, I thought, logically, why the heck would we still rely on nonverbal if it's inefficient and prone to ambiguity (can you tell I'm a software engineer?) - I mean haven't we evolved beyond that by now, where we have such a rich and expressive language, and Websters and the Scrabble dictionaries continue to expand without end??

Just my pair of pennies, pals

At 28 I still can't grasp it, I find it way too distracting. I can't concentrate on what people are saying when they're moving around in strange ways or making weird faces. And gosh some people have some pretty ridiculous body language.

I just found out about it's importance 3 years ago. (at 16) Thanks to the power of internet and my frustration that powered some of my curiosity.
It made things sense; that one's intentions didn't matter, but what one's "supposed" reaction. At the same time I found it ridiculous. It was a nuisance to be overly conscious about it.

And I don't consider it universal or 'true' as there's too many cultures differs from it.


And indeed, as important as it is, it controls NT's lives (in mind and heart even). Sometimes even between life and death. Downside to that is that it's one of the best tools of a sociopath or some con man opportunist along with the silver tongue.

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I didn't know it was important until after diagnosis.

I never thought it was unimportant.

I've always been fairly good with all the bodylanguage stuff. I know what expression means what, although I get annoyed whenever someone starts crying and they're not sad.

The only thing that trips me up is the sexual stuff, flirting and so on. I guess I assumed that by puberty I'd learned everything there was to know about nonverbal stuff.

I know NTs consider nonverbal communication to be important, but 99% of the time, I don't even think about it, and when I do think about it, I just have a hard time understanding where to begin with it. There is just so much to it, and it doesn't even come to me naturally.

I prefer communicating with people online, because it's easier for me to understand a person's written tone than their spoken tone, and it's also easier for me to convey a certain tone as well. Emoticons help too.

I process only one channel of input at a time.

Before reading about autism I did not give non-verbal communication much thought. There are a few memorable occasions where I seem to have upset people and I had no clue how or why. I suspect I did not pick up some messages encoded in non verbal signals.

The relevance of non-verbal communication still baffles me, as it is so unreliable and ambiguous.

In fact, verbal communication and even written communication is uncomfortably ambiguous from my perspective.

Software code is somewhat less ambiguous, but anyone who has ever been involved in software standards development or has had to deal with problems of semantic interoperability between xyz-standard compliant software tools, will know that formal specifications are also plagued by issues.

Communication is a wicked problem. And of all the options available, humans favour the most unreliable techniques. Enough. Silence on all channels is golden

too late to do me any good. but that was just a part of it.

I read about it in books so I always kind of knew it was important("She looked up with hope in her eyes" or something like that but not as cheesy). But I only learned about its importance this semester in my Communication's class. We had an assignment to watch a certain form of nonverbal communication (eye contact, facial expressions, hand movement, etc.). Needless to say, I got an F on it because I'm horrible at interpreting it

My mum is extremely NT. She has terrifying amounts of body language. Her arms fly about. Her face is like a frightening cartoon. She puts so much emotion into her voice.

No wonder we don't live together.

I can't read body language and in fact when someone uses too much of it, I find it harder to listen to what they're saying. With my mum I need to concentrate hard, hence why I get meltdowns and then when I get home I have to sleep it off.

I always intuitvely grasped it. I guess there was a part of me that was afraid of it though.

For instance, someone says one thing but their body language says another. I would override the body language and just listen to the words. (After all, why would someone purposely lie? It was beyond my grasp?)

I also had trouble with dating. Sometimes I felt like a girl was attracted to me, but I just kept thinking, well, if they really like me they'll say something... lol... yeah, I tend to value words over body language... it's just hard for me to understand why a person would deliberately lie or cause pain in another.

I've never really noticed body language at all. I find it hard enough to look at another person when they are speaking, noticing non verbals is least of my worries. I guess it explains back in high school why I used to find out 6 months later that so and so "liked me" and I didn't have the foggiest idea. Explains my lack of relationships I suppose

Eye contact was the biggest thing that I realized that is important. I used to not do it because I thought it disrespectful and creepy to stare at people in the eyes.
I recently read on the internet that 93 percent of communication is non verbal. Whether that is accurate or not it does show that nonverbal plays a huge role.
Lack of eye contact for me also made me look more submissive (stupid alpha male bs) when I was just trying to be nice to people. It also made girls think that I was either not interested or just shy.
I try to practice eye contact in public. I try to look at a person until they look away. It is hard sometimes and often I will feel like a creep and dart my eyes away. This too can be draining of my energy just like social situations and I have to take a break until my energy returns.