Taking someone's words out of context

[epath13]

How often do you misinterpret what others mean? It can be about anything from facial expression, to a school/ work assignment, to a point someone has been trying to get to in a conversation... I have this issue so damn often. If people are not specific about their needs and wants and opinions, I feel like I'm in the middle of the woods at night. When I was younger I didn't give a ****. Most of the times I didn't even pay much attention to what people were saying. Now I have to pay attention but no matter how much attention I pay if people don't lay everything out in a certain way the meaning of the message will be lost for me. I know that it seems to be pretty common issue for spectrum folks but it's one of those things that is not obvious (like some repetitive behaviors or something) and is not understood by lots of NTs and that's frustrating. A simple and a quite silly example: today in a grocery store I was buying a bag of Pretzel M&Ms. I've never heard anyone calling them anything but Pretzel M&Ms, so the cashier asks me: "Do you like M&Ms Pretzel?" And I didn't make the connection. I was standing there staring at her trying to figure out what she means, pretended that I didn't hear. She said it again but this time pointed at the bag. And only then I reluctantly made a connection and replied. I've heard that flexibility of mind can be improved but to be honest, after so many years making the same mistakes over and over again I'm not so sure that it can. I mean it's obvious that your mind does become more flexible if you put some effort into it's development but till what level?

What do you guys thing about it?

One more thing... it might be different with writing though...not always but in some cases.

 

[BruceCM]

Don't know, really. Seems I must be misunderstanding/ misinterpreting, etc, a lot but then I don't understand how NTs think, at all. It seems they actually can believe mutually exclusive versions of the same thing, almost simultaneously, so maybe I'm not misunderstanding, etc, what they say as much as it seems to me. Certainly, not really found any way to sort out what on earth they might mean, if I am doing; they'll trot out all sorts of 'explanations' that don't make sense, to me (for the same sorts of reasons).

 

[King_Oni]

I think it can go either way... you can be limited in own knowledge because you don't have a idea what someone is talking about or you have vast knowledge and as soon as someone spits out a word or sentence you think about all the variations if could refer to.

An example would be urban slang. Some people use it in everyday language, and even in "formal" situations. How am I to understand that someone points out something, of which he actually should be aware that I might just as well not know the term used that way? You can't really, but it's stuff like this, that makes a lot of spoken communication quite difficult for me. I've also ran into situations where I used words, which apparently people didn't know even existed. Where's the general line in that? Yet, in most social conventions people use somewhat similar lanuage. If I relate to those people... for instance, my parents... their lives revolve around "having small talk and watching tv" days without end, which makes them probably more social and less quirky in communication. It also reminds me of the fact that I don't watch tv cause of a lack of interest in most stuff, and I rarely talk to people just for the cause of talking to people.

 

[epath13]

I think I'll add one more thing here... sometimes people say something but it's not what they mean exactly... a simple example of that would be... let's say someone says, "I would love to have a cup of coffee" what I understand - he/ she wants a cup of coffee. what the person actually wants is for me to give him/ her that cup. And that's only a simple 1 action situation, in more complex ones things can become even more confusing. And the weird thing is, somehow, no matter how many times I was in the same situation, I don't always learn. Especially when a person has used the same expression with a different purpose. Let's say, about the coffee again - he/ she would use it not only for asking for coffee at home but also outside, which would mean that he/ she wants to go somewhere for a cup of coffee. It appears so simple to grasp it but for some reason I don't. For me it's like this if you want this coffee, you should say something like: "I'd like a tall mocha from Starbucks on the State street"

 

[BruceCM]

Obviously, it's much more of a problem with talking about, supposedly, serious matters; especially when what's said seems clear, on it's own. For a daft example, if somebody said two plus two equals five, you'd understand what they'd said; that's a clear statement. I use that example because it's an abstract area & generally people seem to think abstract things can't also be true. You'd hardly goto a person saying something like that eg to learn maths, would you? Then, people talk about this 'accepting others as they are' & the only thing that's blatantly obvious is that they don't & can't do that, so it can't mean what it actually says. It's impossible to find out what it means since it's not agree that it actually does mean anything.
Or the claim to 'welcome & celebrate diversity & differences', where it's equally obviously a lot more complicated than that, at least. Strangely, similar enough things get said in Aspie forums, though

 

[Galaxy Freeze]

I complain about people taking me the wrong way frequently, yet I take people the wrong way as well...

It doesn't happen too much, but once in a while, it's very annoying.