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No answer is no answer / Print NAS articles?

Einfallspinsel

I have a colleague I like, she seems patient and reasonable and nonjudgmental. But we are both introverts and kind of private, so we only speak about work-related things. I think we have secondary hobbies in common, and each has one primary hobby that the other one is indifferent about -- which is normal, I've seen other people be friends with less in common.

Twice, I worked up the courage to change the topic to something non-work related, a hobby or viewpoint that *I think* we share. In both cases, she did not answer. I was confused and embarressed about having missed her reply, and hesitated. Then she just changed the subject to something meaningless.

Every time it fails the same way, the conversation ends, and I don't know why. Were we mistakenly both waiting for the other one to say something? Did she not hear me acoustically? Was what I meant lost in translation? Was she annoyed by my attempt to be more personal, and politely ignored me? It could be anything.

I already read all those books and "survival guides" for Aspergers and I apply the advice. I must be partially successful, she is still talking to me (at work…), and at least she treats me normally, what else does one wish for.

I considered printing out NAS pages for her, to explain what the problem was, just to end the awkward confusion. I don't know what the "FAIL!" looked like from her point of view. (By the way, the NAS page recommends to keep first-time info short, so I'll probably just print the "triad…"?)

When she doesn't reply, what do I say? "Without any words, I can't tell what the answer is?" … "I assume your face is the answer, what does it say?" … "Is that silence-yes or silence-no?" … How do I say that politely? Has anyone succeeded in explaining that… whatever "that" is?

Honestly, all my friends are either geeks, on the spectrum, or (interestingly) face blind. I don't meet often with these friends, but we are fine with that. I never have communication problems with them, and they don't have any with me (as far as I know).

But she's an NT, I don't know what to expect. Not trying feels like a wasted opportunity. I am not an emotional or social person, so she would not get anything out of a friendship, I can't recommend myself as a friend. I just want to explain what the problem was earlier, I don't care, we don't have to be friends. It's plain stupid to fail at such a simple task of talking to someone. It's not like I'm trying to date her or anything complicated.

Any ideas how to clear this up?

  • Thanks for your input!

    Goatworshiper said:

    Maybe ask her again. If you get the same response you could say something like: "Has the question I've just asked you offended you? If it has I'm sorry?" and try and go from there perhaps. Good luck.


    Hmmmmm, but what I asked was as unoffensive as, dunno… "You said you like [gardening], I have a [garden] too"… If she was offended, it would be easy for her to avoid me. But today she even waited for me when we had to walk to the same destination. I tried a third time (within a period of several months) to convey that I think we share a cool hobby and -- again, without missing a beat she continued with the previous topic. I now assume she just really doesn't care. Her behavior is just the normal minimum of politeness. And it's fine, we'll leave it at that.

    I'm minimally worried (hah) ;-) that she misunderstood one conversation as criticism -- while in reality I was positively surprised that we agreed. But I only thought that, I didn't say it. Oh well…


    She may not comprehend an attempt to explain a previous difficulty you experienced, simply because she wont have retained it.


    Oh. If that's true, I don't need to bother: the misunderstandings were several months apart. I remember them because I put a lot of effort into planning what I said, and then in analyzing why it didn't work as expected.
    She's likely forgotten about it? Optimal.


    NTs seem to be gestalt thinkers - they derive a whole message from components that  make up more than is accountable from the individual components. They "get" a message made up of speech, inflexion, body language and their own processes for filling gaps (based on inbuilt social skill).


    I call that "making stuff up for no apparent reason", but gestalt sounds cooler. :-)

    What an NT perceives is someone either deliberately or due to ignorance, not fulfuilling all the expectations.


    Well... that's just... inflexible...!

    Yesterday another colleague (also an undiagnosed Asperger candidate) talked to me in the hallway, she often bursts out in monologues about unknown persons' dramas and I kinda just listen. We were standing there, shoulder to shoulder, both facing the same direction, but, looking at our own shoes, basically. A manager stared at us for an impolite while, and when I noticed and said "What? We're just chatting" she left with an unrelaxed smile…

    I second-guess everything I do now, I heard others talk badly about this chatty colleague, and I try to be inconspicuous.

    We therefore appear ignorant, rude, lacking empathy (which I don't think we actually lack), inappropriate, slow, thick etc.


    I also think the empathy is not nonexistent, it's just not easy to trigger cleanly. I say "ouch" when someone breaks the tip of a pencil, it feels like breaking a finger. I feel sorry for broken, damaged, lost, or wasted things. With people, I'm just not always certain whether they are in one of those states. Maybe they just happen to be tired.

    A methaphor that might apply is "cannot see the wood for the trees".

    Right. I wonder what the opposite feels like? "Can see woods without trees?" They all see the same woods but no trees, and they all agree on the woods, and they don't understand why we discuss trees.

    I wonder if most approaches to helping people on the spectrum are overly siimplistic NT perceptions of the problem, that are not really doing any good.


    Hmmm… Interesting thought. Would it help to teach this greater-than-sum-gestalt view? Can one learn that view by listening to it?

    By "pictures of people's expressions" do you mean photographs of faces? I took one of those tests and I can pass it: I get four words, two are negative and two are positive. If the face is either tense or relaxed, that automatically excludes two of them. Then it takes me about 20 sec to decide between the other two words.
    What the heck is that good for! Nobody in reality holds an expression, gives me four words to choose from, and waits 20 sec for me to figure it out!

    @longman: Your explanations are well put into words, it's a good discussion.

  • At the risk of blogging within Einfallspinsel's thread, I'm also intrigued by the visual factor.

    Our eyes perform a remarkable set of processes, which could also be described as gestalt (an outcome greater than the sum of its components). They create colour from the responses of blue green and red receptors, they merge separate images from each eye into one image, and being lenses our eyes see the world upside down while our brain processes it the right way up.

    Part of the gestalt factor is memory and understanding. Most people don't see everything in front of them, but blend the incoming information with memory. One of the reasons we experience deja vu is that our brains are trying to match knowledge with the current scene.

    People on the autistic spectrum, however, see too much detail. We may be overloaded with this detail, or distracted by it, and it may be a painful experience. A methophor that might apply is "cannot see the wood for the trees".

    Hence we may be spending more time trying to sort through what we see, which means that we are less able to quickly process and record the general information of something seen - the "gist" or the essential parts of the visual message.

    Where I feel this is an issue is in attempts to use pictures of people's expressions to help people on the spectrum to understand social interaction, they may be missing the point. It is not that we don't understand facial expressions but perhaps that we are too concerned with other details to take in the essential body language information quickly.

    That may also affect our ability to learn how to create facial expressions appropriate to what we are trying to explain.

    I wonder if most approaches to helping people on the spectrum are overly siimplistic NT perceptions of the problem, that are not really doing any good.

  • Worth considering though that NTs quickly forget/dismiss minor communication breakdowns that might worry people on the spectrum.

    She may not comprehend an attempt to explain a previous difficulty you experienced, simply because she wont have retained it.

    However her apparent not developing a conversation may be her uncertainty how to react to you if she perceives a difficulty - its just that she won't remember individual difficulties, but she will remember that there is a recurring difficulty.

    Alternatively she may be impatient with you or not willing to get involved.

    NTs seem to be gestalt thinkers - they derive a whole message from components that  make up more than is accountable from the individual components. They "get" a message made up of speech, inflexion, body language and their own processes for filling gaps (based on inbuilt social skill).

    People on the spectrum have to try to construe a message from the speech, what they can guess about inflexion and body language, and less experience putting this together in the context of social patterns, but also we don't add the unknown components that seem to create "messages" for NTs. That's why we have misunderstandings and are slower at following social conversation.

    At the same time our contributions are wholly language based, our ability to synchronise inflexion and body language is "all over the place" and we don't know what other components are needed to complete a "message".

    What an NT perceives is someone either deliberately or due to ignorance, not fulfuilling all the expectations. We therefore appear ignorant, rude, lacking empathy (which I don't think we actually lack), inappropriate, slow, thick etc.

    You may be conscious of a difficulty on a number of occasions. They wont be analysing the exchange. They will have a perception that explains our not conveying or reading messages in an exchange, but they wont know the detail.

    I'm sure I've just proved I cannot explain anything properly. And I'm supposed to be a teacher!

  • Maybe ask her again. If you get the same response you could say something like:

    "Has the question I've just asked you offended you? If it has I'm sorry?" and try and go from there perhaps. Good luck.