i had a problem with lying as a kid as well. i do not like when i sense someone is anxious or angry, because then i am anxious or angry, and i avoid them, and it causes the miscommunication that i dont like that person, when im trying to avoid mirroring their feelings and thus taking it out on them.
Is THAT why anxious/upset people make me angry? I always figured it was something like that but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I know they make me feel upset myself and then I get angry. (Or at the very least feel incredibly awkward because I don't know what to do in the situation, which in turn makes me angry.)
It's a mixed bag for me. Trauma can interfere with your ability to read people. Also, it's hard to verify. You can think you KNOW what that lady down the way is thinking, but you can't know unless you ask her. I've been so wrong at times that it's been downright humiliating. Other times, bang on.
Yep...I've recently learned that I'm better at reading people than I thought I was - I've spent years being gaslit by various people and so I had been trained quite well to believe that my sense that something was wrong was a sign of mental illness and not a sign that something was wrong. So if I felt uncomfortable around a person/situation, I would immediately blame my anxiety disorders instead of getting out of the situation.
It took getting badly hurt (and subsequently realizing what happened) to kick that one to the curb. Since then I've been paying close attention and I've realized that my "gut feeling" is rarely wrong, although I may not understand what it's about until a good deal of time later. I just hold onto the feeling and figure I'll understand in time what it's about and I do.
I also agree completely about not being able to verify most of this. I have no idea how 'in tune' I am with a lot of people, without directly asking them and without them telling me, how the heck would I know? It's the same with missed social cues. I assume I miss a bunch, based on how some social interactions go, but if I'm missing it, how the heck am I supposed to know about it? I can't know unless someone tells me. If I knew about it, I wouldn't have missed it in the first place.
My hypothesis is that we pick up on little things that no one else does (one person here...I think it was Autistamatic but I'm not sure at this point...put forth the idea that we pick up on a vast amount more social information than others do. As a result, we're overwhelmed and don't know what to do with it all). This can lead to us having seemingly really good instincts about people but paradoxically missing the obvious or intended social cues.
Tania Marshall suggested that autistic woman often seem "psychic" (she seemed to mean it more literally but I don't really believe in psychic and think that the more logical explanation is that we pick up on small things that others don't).