People on this site have more problems than your average NT. I do not think we will be inclined to argue much about this. We do argue about a lot of other things however. I have been in groups of people who are inclined to argument, who joke about that. They say things like if you have three ______s in a room there will be five opinions. I laughed about those comments because they were kind of true. That is before I got to this site and before I knew I was an Aspie. Now, I am sure we have those other guys licked. If you have three Aspies/Auties in a room, I am sure we would probably have more than a dozen opinions.
We may be a cantankerous bunch, but we are very caring and we hate seeing someone who is suffering and we mostly want to do something about it. Our social ineptitide can be a hindrance to our effectiveness in helping a distressed person. I am not exactly a shining example in this sort of thing, but I have been through the school of hard knocks a lot. In spite of my serious social ineptitude, I have learned a few useful things.
One of the things that I have learned is how to use your brains and a logical mind to substitute for social skills sometimes. I thought that I might be able to pass some of this along to help others who are worse at social skills than I am. I already did a few posts in this area. Trying to help solve a few problems in our chat room forcibly brought to my attention that people on this site could use a few guidelines for helping people in distress.
Since the majority of people frequenting this site seem to be men, and male Aspies/Auties are supposed to outnumber females, it seems the guys here could do with a few rough guidelines. Our females are often somewhat less socially inept than the guys, so might not need this.
Sometimes people are not logical and do not think logically, or even rationally. If you can compare this to times when you are in a meltdown, it might make more sense. When you are not in a rational frame of mind, you may not react well to rational input. Sometimes you should not try to talk rationally to a person who is not in a rational frame of mind. If you tell them they are not behaving rationally, they may feel insulted and even hostile. If someone is not rational, insulting them will not help the situation. Think before you say something to someone in distress. You can silently ask yourself whether what you are about to say might be an insult and therefore harmful to them under the circumstances.
I am going to share some of my decision making process for dealing with someone who is not behaving rationally. Since we are all different, you may need to make some adjustments to my process to fit it to yourself.
My reaction to a distressed person is to try to find out what the problem is. I ask questions to find out what kind of problem is causing the distress. Once I have some understanding of the problem, I decide whether the problem is one that I might be able to help with using my current knowledge. If it is something I know, then I use that to help. Often, it is not. If not, then I look for more helpful information. That is usually from the internet. Sometimes it is from people or hotlines that I already have in my phone. If is one of these, I share the information. If I need to get more information, I do that.
Sometimes the person in distress is so irrational that it is so difficult to get them to pay attention to helpful information. An example of a situation that often turns out like this is domestic violence. When a person has been abused it is often counterproductive to try logic or even get any information through their irrational fog. A person in such a situation may not be ready or able to accept helpful information. You may not know when they will be able to accept such information. In this case all you can do is repeatedly offer the information, in hopes they will at some point have the information at the time they are able to accept it.
NTs have a technique that they use in situations where someone is not being rational. It is called the, "broken record" technique. This is much like Autistic scripts, so it may be very useful for us. When the irrational distressed person spews their distressed irrational words, you simply reply with your helpful message you want to get through to them. You need to keep it as short and simple as you can manage so they can understand and remember. You just keep repeating your broken record script at intervals until they calm down. Do not let them make you angry. Stay calm and repeat your broken record in response to their irrational ranting.
Here is a link about the broken record technique :
Broken record
We may be a cantankerous bunch, but we are very caring and we hate seeing someone who is suffering and we mostly want to do something about it. Our social ineptitide can be a hindrance to our effectiveness in helping a distressed person. I am not exactly a shining example in this sort of thing, but I have been through the school of hard knocks a lot. In spite of my serious social ineptitude, I have learned a few useful things.
One of the things that I have learned is how to use your brains and a logical mind to substitute for social skills sometimes. I thought that I might be able to pass some of this along to help others who are worse at social skills than I am. I already did a few posts in this area. Trying to help solve a few problems in our chat room forcibly brought to my attention that people on this site could use a few guidelines for helping people in distress.
Since the majority of people frequenting this site seem to be men, and male Aspies/Auties are supposed to outnumber females, it seems the guys here could do with a few rough guidelines. Our females are often somewhat less socially inept than the guys, so might not need this.
Sometimes people are not logical and do not think logically, or even rationally. If you can compare this to times when you are in a meltdown, it might make more sense. When you are not in a rational frame of mind, you may not react well to rational input. Sometimes you should not try to talk rationally to a person who is not in a rational frame of mind. If you tell them they are not behaving rationally, they may feel insulted and even hostile. If someone is not rational, insulting them will not help the situation. Think before you say something to someone in distress. You can silently ask yourself whether what you are about to say might be an insult and therefore harmful to them under the circumstances.
I am going to share some of my decision making process for dealing with someone who is not behaving rationally. Since we are all different, you may need to make some adjustments to my process to fit it to yourself.
My reaction to a distressed person is to try to find out what the problem is. I ask questions to find out what kind of problem is causing the distress. Once I have some understanding of the problem, I decide whether the problem is one that I might be able to help with using my current knowledge. If it is something I know, then I use that to help. Often, it is not. If not, then I look for more helpful information. That is usually from the internet. Sometimes it is from people or hotlines that I already have in my phone. If is one of these, I share the information. If I need to get more information, I do that.
Sometimes the person in distress is so irrational that it is so difficult to get them to pay attention to helpful information. An example of a situation that often turns out like this is domestic violence. When a person has been abused it is often counterproductive to try logic or even get any information through their irrational fog. A person in such a situation may not be ready or able to accept helpful information. You may not know when they will be able to accept such information. In this case all you can do is repeatedly offer the information, in hopes they will at some point have the information at the time they are able to accept it.
NTs have a technique that they use in situations where someone is not being rational. It is called the, "broken record" technique. This is much like Autistic scripts, so it may be very useful for us. When the irrational distressed person spews their distressed irrational words, you simply reply with your helpful message you want to get through to them. You need to keep it as short and simple as you can manage so they can understand and remember. You just keep repeating your broken record script at intervals until they calm down. Do not let them make you angry. Stay calm and repeat your broken record in response to their irrational ranting.
Here is a link about the broken record technique :
Broken record
