Reading other people, thinking vs feeling

Post Reply New Topic

Whew! It's a good thing I don't have a humorous alias. I suppose I could still be a tight ass jerk off, though.

My situation exactly! My husband likes to try to finish my sentences, but he gets my thought wrong more than half the time (and he's mr. social skills). This gets me very irritated. Slow talkers exasperate me, as well. I would not presume to finish their sentences (although it is supposed to be a sign of "connection", I think it is the height of rudeness),but if they delay spitting it out, they've lost me completely. I think you owe a certain amount of attention to your audience and multitaskers are the worst, leaving you hanging while they pay attention to something more interesting.

My wife tells me that I do this. She calls it "running over her." (Then again, she does it to me, too, and she's NT.) Me, I'm usually just trying to cut through what seems like a load of verbal static that she's speaking, unrelated to the conversation's actualsubject, to help her get quickly to her ultimate point. Sometimes, too, this verbal static isn't meaning, but dramatic voice tones and pauses she's using—something like a storyteller's. Cutting through that quickly is my attempt to get her simply to tell me what she's talking about, without extra fanfare. Unfortunately, I've quite often found that the real point, for her, isn't what she's talking about—or solving whatever problem is involved—so much as that someone is listening to her and validating that she has a right to feel bad. Me telling her that I am expressing sympathy—by helping her solve the problem as expeditiously as possible—means nothing to her. Quite often, too, she's thinking out loud as she speaks, so I'd guess she doesn't really know where she's going verbally until she gets there. This is difficult for me to remember or even understand, because I always know exactly what ultimate point I'm going to make before I start speaking.

It would depend on the story or movie. I don' think I'm any better at figuring them out quickly than anyone else.

Not me. Sensing—or divining—others' thoughts and feelings are about equally difficult for me, possibly mostly because I don't know where one leaves off and the other begins. Often, thought and feeling seem almost interchangeable, especially in women. And, whichever it is, I'm generally not accurately sensitive enough to it to avoid looking like I just don't care.

Maybe so. I like to follow actual words rather than try to figure out what else whoever I'm listening to might be meaning but not saying. I go to great lengths to express exactly and directly what I want understood. A sidelong, indirect answer to a question that I've put that much not into, for preciseness, can be irritating.

It's very hard to do this if you don't know them. Trying to guess what they're going to say if you don't know what they're like is a... bad idea.

I'm not good at reading body language/facial expressions, probably because I never bothered trying.

I don't usually pretend I misread someone. I just pretend that there is no social rule since it's not in writing, and if I screwed it up, then I'm starting a new thing. Now when I do misread someone, like if I'm being rude because I thought they were, I usually apologize.

I can't totally read other people like a book. I'm good at reading logical things, or as someone stated, patterns. Like i know where they are going in their conversations pretty easily, and I can generally justify their bad behaviors better than most people, and some things I can read where I'm not sure how I do it (like love and body chemistry... I'm good at that), but I am very lousy at intentions, and rudeness. Like I think people are being rude and hateful when they aren't, and I think people are just saying something when they are being rude and hateful for no reason (until it hits me after the fact).

Yeah, I too as I get older can make better predictions in life. But it seems to me that the better I get at it, the more crazier God throws some loops my way. I suppose it's His Way of keeping my life from being dull. Not only do I seem to predict things in my life, but in general life, like the economy. I'm also very clueless on intent. If someone can't be trusted and I'm not close to the situation, I can see it. But if I'm too emotionally attached to the person (like a guy I think is hot, well before I got married), I don't forecast it too well. What I hate the most is when I'm right about their intentions, but I don't know how to handle it. THat's pretty much how i got fired at every job i ever lost. But it takes me a while to figure intentions, and I base it all on actions. I think in all craziness, of all things, watching Judge Judy has made me better at that. And when it comes to the free gift, I think, Oh great, something else i have to clean and find a place to store, if it's an item. I also think, oh and it will make taxes more complicated cause it's not a gift if it's promotional. Then of course, I know nothing is for free. If there isn't a catch in the deal, it will end up costing you something on a cosmic level... based on my ability to forecast life situations.

I tend to complete other people's sentences most when they can't find the word, and I'm good at finding the word they were looking for, so good thing I married a man with English as his second language as I get to do that a lot. There are even times when I'm like, I know what word it is that you are looking for and I can't think of it either, but I know. Then, like three days later, I remember the word and call them and tell them, and they are like... That's it.

I also tend to complete other people's sentences when I'm arguing with them and getting very impatient about my turn (which I never get with the people I argue with, so if I don't complete their thoughts for them, I never get to have one for myself before they hang up the phone on me as they tend to argue with themselves a lot I guess) and when people are attempting to lecture me about how I'm so screwed up. I hate that too because it's funny how people who want to tell me how to live are never able to help me when I need it, and when they need help, I'm the first person, you know the most incompetent one they know, that they call for help. I remember at one point, I kept finishing my friend's sentences one day, I don't know why, and she kept saying, yeah everytime I did. Well, then she got annoyed, and she kept trying to change it last second, so when I'd complete it, she'd change her thought around to prove me wrong in my prediction which then backfired on her as she ended up agreeing with me about something we were arguing about as she was more focused on changing her thoughts around than she was on the argument itself, and then I pointed out that I knew what she was doing and was so easily able to predict how she was going to do it that I was able to get her to agree with me even though I knew she still didn't really agree with me. So then we went back to the argument, which I think it was the time she said I was wrong when I said cats are better hunters than dogs, and she now just lets me finish her sentences. I really try not to, but when I'm fired up, I have no control. And on the lectures, oh they are so annoying that I have to speed it up before I puke. Yeah it's rude, but no more rude than being lectured by someone who has no room to talk, especially about touchy subjects like the way I parent my children.

Now when I read books, I prefer non-fiction. I'm really loving anything with "for dummies" in the title. Women in the BIble for Dummies was awesome, and now I'm reading web marketing for dummies, and I have like history of the Middle East for Dummies too for my next one.

As far as processing data, I know I do that faster than people talk, slower now that I've had kids (they stole my brain cells at birth, and now that they are out, I've lost my mind). My problem is organizing all that data, looking at the big picture and tying it together for that purpose, and really figuring out what I really think about it. Like if I say, I think my Dr. is wrong, everybody wants to know why, and I'm not sure. And if I'm not sure, then I'm wrong. So then I talk in circles trying to figure out why, and sometimes it's a good point, but it's not exactly why I think that, but when I figure it out, I know. I also tend to repeat myself, but that's because I'm surrounded by people who seem to mess up what I say all the time. LIke that argument with my friend, I said that cats are more instinctive to hunting than dogs, and my friend kept arguing that I meant that dogs have no instinct at all for hunting, but really i just meant cats are better hunters and she's a dog lover, so I tried my best to sugar coat it. Because people either twist my words against me, or because they ignore me half the time, over the years (and I'm talking 30 now), I have learned how to say the exact same thing in 10 million different ways. And I do it now without even being able to ID it a lot, let alone control it.

I think you are right on that. When I was a kid, I was wrong more often than not. My Aspie nephew right now is that way. He acts like he thinks he knows what I'm saying, so then I interrupt myself for him and ask, What do you think I'm going to say? and he gets it wrong a lot. But now I'm much better at it where people claim I'm wrong but can't think of one example of when it happened. I can think of examples when I was wrong, but I then correct myself so I guess that doesn't make me wrong anymore right? LOL

I totally agree on the patterns thing. I'm really big on patterns. I'm also really big on observation. I just notice things more than others, and that was Sherlock Holme's secret you know? Anyway, I'm strange about it. Like this one math problem asked to ID the pattern in a set of numbers...
00111
00123
00136
0014...
Well it was much bigger than that as they kept it going, but for purposes of format on the net, I kept it down to single digits. Now the pattern is that you add three numbers together and put the answer underneath the third number. Like 001 equals 1, and 111 equals 3. Of course, I didn't notice that at all. No, instead I noticed if you repeat the whole block of numbers and move it three spaces to the right adding zeros to that, and then take a number from pattern 1, add it to the number underneath it one space to the left, minus the corresponding number on pattern 2, then you get the number underneath that number. So in this case, you just take like number 1, add 2, and you get 3 (since the pattern 2 has all zeros as far as I went on it). I guess to look at it like

001111111
001234567
001369

000001111111
000001234567
000001369

so like 4 + 6 - 1 is 9. If this doesn't make sense to you at all, it's not because of your math skills. I even had my math teacher not understanding what I was saying at all, and was doubting that my pattern would work to infinity. He said the answer was the only pattern that existed, and I said my way just was another way of saying the answer. Given it was much more complicated, but that's what my brain saw. I tend to do that a lot. I just overcomplicate things. But the pattern I saw in my head would just as accurately guess the next number anywhere on that matrix as the pattern that was the textbook answer.

This is a very interesting post, because I realized some time ago that although I find it very difficult to understand why people do or say certain things, I can usually predict with fair accuracy what it is that they are going to do or say.

I think Fo-Rum may be right, in that consciously or unconsciously, we are very aware of patterns. I.e., it's not that we really understand others' motivations, but simply because we have a large mental database of patterns to draw on, so when we are presented with Action A, and see it lead to B, we can logically assume that given the number of times we have seen A followed by B followed by C, C will likely be the next to occur.

Going back to fiction, I believe that people with AS are much better at picking up plots etc. than NTs due to the logical patterns that fiction usually follows.

Personally, I much prefer fiction to real life due to this; I empathise with fictional characters far greater than real people, probably because their emotions HAVE to be made obvious in order for all of the viewers to understand what's going on. The readers/viewers see everything, and that's what I like. I can feel more strongly about fictional characters than real people, to the extent of obsession. Whereas I don't think that NTs have this problem, or at least not to the same extent.

So when we go into fictional characters, do you have a hard time following their emotions and such when the actor is really bad?

While on this, do you ever notice how most of the bad guys in movies make very little facial expressions and seem like they have no emotions...almost Aspie? I've seen some where the villain has too many emotions, like Batman, but more often than not, villains tend to be robotic in nature.

That's because this scares NT people; if you can't tell what they're feeling on the inside, they could be thinking anything (gasp!). It's like implying violence offscreen; this scares people more than explicit gore because the viewer's mind fills in much more horrible things than the director could ever show you.

Do you think this is why so many people are also uncomfortable with silence? Because if the other person isn't talking, they don't know what they're thinking about - and don't like that?

I've always had this thing were I seem to be able to cut through all the crap someone's saying and boil it down to it's simplest form. I've always called it my bullsh*t filter. I used to think I was right about 50% of the time, but then people started coming to me and referring back to what I'd said, and telling me "well, I said at the time you were wrong, but actually I was just shocked that you were right, and I still don't understand how you knew".

I have a theory that the reason why we have so much difficulty reading facial expressions is because that part of our brain is put to use picking up on the emotional brain waves people emit.

Sounds about right to me. There are plenty of NTs who don't talk much compared to others but if you're not talking and also not giving any non-verbal indicators then people get spooked. I'm beginning to see humanity as more of a hive mind, one cell must know what the next is thinking for the whole thing to work lol