Spoke my mind

The problem is it only some people care about your intent these days. It’s a rather narcissistic trait to believe that the world should psychically read your mind and then perfectly tuned the language to be exactly that that will convey the appropriate meaning in a form that you are comfortable with.

there is a significant subset of people nowadays They don’t think they ought to have to do any work to try and understand other peoples point of view or where they’re coming from in the communication. As far as they’re concerned any subtext they read into your words is absolute truth and if by some extreme improbable chance you didn’t mean to convey that subtext then it’s your fault for being insensitive enough to phrase things in a way that they could misunderstand it which is just as bad a crime in itself.

individuals like this are beyond placating and it’s pointless to try. Because they  don’t believe they should have to do any work to understand what you’re trying to communicate or accept  that  there is any latitude for them to miss understand what you’re trying to say without you behaving maliciously or recklessly.

of course not everyone is like this. but the few who are ruin it for everyone else. now the more you apologise the more they see it as some sort of admission of guilt and try to use it as grounds to say that you were a malicious and bad actor in the first place. My advice is if someone has misunderstood your intentions politely provide a clarification and move on and draw a line under it. And if people don’t want to let you draw a line under it do not indulge those  people by addressing it again and again.

Hi John,

The 1st step here, is that recognising that you may have upset someone and that you feel bad for this because at times we can be blindsided by our focus and not consider others feelings, so you are halfway there. In hindsight it would have been helpful if we could have recognised this in the heat of the moment but all is not lost. First and foremost, offer an apology if you have upset them and offer to reengage with them as you would like to pitch your thoughts/beliefs in a more objective and respectful manner but also gain their thoughts. 

I usually tell people I have ASD and it gives me foot in mouth syndrome and the reason my mouth is so big is because once I've put one foot in my mouth, I use the other to try and dislodge the first. Unless I've really offended someone, people usually just laugh along with me. When I've stopped cringing, hours, day's, week's sometimes years later I ask myself if what I said was really that bad? Sometimes it was but quite often it wasn't and the other person took offence out of all proportion to the severity of what I said. I think you have to accept that some people are a sense of offence looking for somewhere to manifest and actually enjoy being offended. My ex is one of these and my daughter inadvertantly triggered an episode of him walking about all wounded at nothing, she went up and started sniffing him and when he asked what she was doing, she told him she was enjoying the smell of burning martyr.

“I’m so sorry, the last thing I wanted to do was to upset you”. Typical people don’t necessarily understand honesty as simple honesty. It’s truthful to say you’re sorry they are upset. I sometimes acknowledge that what I said was thoughtless…..unfortunately when we ASD people speak we haven’t always been able/had the time to go through the time consuming process of working out how a typical person will interpret our words. 

I've accepted I just say stupid *** and I can't help it. So I just actively try to say less. I can't think of anything else that would work. I mean I know there's masking and scripting, but I can't change the fabric of my very being.

There a passing acquaintance who arnt aware of my autism, my wife was present and tried to apologise for me but I felt that having to apologise in the first place means I'm having to deny my authentic self,but at the same time I feel devastated that iv hurt someone's feelings.

Sometimes I've also found it's not helpful to speak my mind, and sometimes it's difficult not to because I cannot 'hear' what I want to say until I say it out loud. That said, I have learned that my constant problem-solving is better applied to Things rather than People. Most aren't asking for a psychologist or a solution! 

Then there's the added problem of our using vocal Words according to their literal definition as we've been taught or as is in a dictionary. And then using them with the incorrect syntax. For the neurotypical population, it appears that language is organic and can be used in conflicting ways, which have different meaning depending on all the other Language cues, most of which, Autistics will have difficulty picking up. 

I've become dependant upon either saying my Telepathy skills are wanting or stopping myself from responding if there's a hint of confusion and asking for clarity. This has taken years to master, along with remembering people mostly talk in order to feel a sense of connecting, which means they might just want to feel affirmed and approved of. To this degree I now only have friends who are divergent or Typical ones who work in the social sciences. 

Sometimes, saying "I'm aware I may have said something inappropriate or hurtful, but I'd really appreciate help understanding what so I try to not do it again" will help. If it's a parent or child, this is important - open the dialogue and allow them room to correct you. With children they can be our best asset, I always allow correction. I only correct my son if I see him handling another person in a way that could be better. He learns how to treat me by how I treat him. 

If it's a colleague or someone we interact with on a regular basis, we can express our difficulty with social linguistics / languages (though music is a language and we might not have difficulty with this). We can also try and present an openness. Autistics tend to not take social language personally and this complicates all kinds of things, as a lot of it is to do with social dominance or connecting through a shared repressed 'guilt' (oedipalisation / sublimation or other Defence Mechanism which Autistics don't tend to have). 

Hi John - does the person that you upset know that you are autistic?
If not, then that may be a good starting place - maybe email / message them, telling them about your autism and how it can cause problems with communication.

I had a habit if upsetting colleagues with the way that I communicated / explained things in a very matter of fact way.
This was before my diagnosis and was one of the things that prompted me to start looking into autism and getting assessed.

Once I had been formerly diagnosed, I sent an email to my colleagues explaining that I am autistic and how that can make me come across. I believe that this had a massive positive impact in both how they received me and also gave me awareness of my communication style.