Does anyone else get confused with basic questions, or over-explain your answer?

[Ken]

I know this sounds really elementary, but one of the most freeing phrases that I have been able to say clearly for the past year is simply: “I don’t understand.”

Yes! Took me a lot longer, but I also finally figured that one out.

Not only am I confused by most questions, but also most statements. Basically anything said. What makes it worse is that many people, including my wife, almost never finish a sentence. I can't understand anything said if it is incomplete. I have to constantly remind her to please finish her sentences if she want me to know what she is saying. Also the words has to fit. One word that doesn't fit the rest of the sentence makes me miss the whole thing. They seem to feel that as long as some of the sentence is correct then that is good enough. Sorry, not for me.

I saw a great example of this in the movie, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife". Frequent conversations between two NT's; Callie Spengler and Gary Grooberson were composed almost entirely of incomplete sentences. It's interesting and I think fitting that the movie was written by an autistic - Dan Aykroyd. Also, the movies main character, Phoebe Spengler is autistic. I just love it! Callie is Phoebe's mother. She often told Phoebe, when having to be in a social situation, to, "don't be yourself". It was so amazing how I relate to that, but it's also very funny. I suspect that these autistic sensitivities were written in the movie to express Dan Aykroyd's autistic sensitivities. Also, I thought Mckenna Grace, who played Phoebe, played her role as an autistic really well. One of my favorite movies.

 

[Dagan]

I do this a ton. I always think of the phrase, "devil is in the details" and then think, I sure am evil, then because I love me some details. I detail things to not be mistaken, of course. I have to believe that's why we all are so detailed. We have been mistaken so much that we are defensively detailed to almost no end.

At work, I am often asked why I over explain or why I care so much, and one day I finally replied that I wish people would turn that question around on themselves to finally understand me better - so their questions should be, "why don't I detail much at all and just expect everyone to fully understand what all I am talking about?" and also "why don't I care as much as this guy does?" It definitely widened and raised some eyes in that room full of people that day.

 

[Kisa the tea]

Some of the toughest questions for me are:
How are you?
Are you OK?

Or the worstare when the answer is assumed in the question…
Nice day, isn’t it?
You must be tired, huh?

I feel like "how are you?" is even one where the answer is assumed. How many times can you think of where someone didn't respond with "Fine." or "I'm doing well."?

Maybe I'm wrong but that one always just feels like it's used as a conversation starter and it's considered very abnormal to respond with "Pretty bad, right now." When that is sometimes the case.