reneeirena wrote:
My ability to read facial expressions and emotions in voices is limited to happy and not happy. I always assume the "not happy" to be angry.
I am very often assuming people to be angry or irritated with me. Over the years I have lost touch with many friends, and quit jobs, because I felt I regularly annoyed someone and I did not want to be in that position. When my counselor recommended that test where you look at the photos of someone's eyes and try to match the correct emotion, I missed many of them--and by far, the most common response I gave was "angry" or "annoyed" (even when the correct answer was "excited" or "interested"!). This was a real revelation to me, because I suddenly became aware that I was operating on interpersonal assumptions which were false, and detrimental to my self-esteem.
I do ask, "are you angry?" very often, sometimes to the point of actually annoying people, and my husband suggested that I modify the inquiry to something less pointed, such as "have I said something amiss?" or even, "how are you feeling?" or "perhaps I should stop speaking now?" It never hurts to excuse oneself from the conversation if you're getting a negative vibe, and approach the person in a different context with something like, "when we spoke last I had the sense that I might have been getting on your nerves. If that was the case, I do apologize." Sometimes when you are misreading facial expressions, it can be due to your own anxiety in that given situation, and returning to the person when you are more relaxed can help.