How do you feel when someone responds to a question by pointing you to another resource or piece of information instead of giving a direct answer? Do you find it helpful, dismissive, or something else entirely?
How do you feel when someone responds to a question by pointing you to another resource or piece of information instead of giving a direct answer? Do you find it helpful, dismissive, or something else entirely?
I think some people might have ended up overdoing it a bit on the copy/paste stuff. Of course it is possible that these people do actually get some benefit themselves in browsing various sites and looking for information, rather than just being dogooders.
your response did make me smile, along with some body perhaps pasting a link to a website offering advice on how to copy and paste advice.
I didn't want my initial question to belittle or to make people feel silly for doing what they think is correct, but at the same time I was very aware of (as I think you very accurately put it) the need for the corporate entity of the national autistic society, needing to have an element of cut and paste accountability, against actually helping someone.
But I didn't want to make any assumptions that the way I feel is the way either a majority, significant minority or tiny minority felt.
I've had lots of people tell me I should reach out to others, phone them etc, not for the S word, but for other things, just ask for help instead of struggling along and you know what, when I do nobodies around or answering, so then what? Just carry on getting on and struggle through by myself.
What if your family are the problem? There seems to be a misconception that everybody has loads of family with varying degrees of closeness, but I think thats wrong, I know I certainy don't have loads of family, half of the ones I do have are just names on the bottom of a xmas card and thats getting less and less over the years.
Apologies for the one "we" reference - I'll leave the post as is but please read it as "I'm not a mind-reader" and speaking for myself.
I think most posts and threads are link free TBH - without any analysis
I think this will only become more of a problem now we have the Online Safety Act. Writing about your feelings on 'the S word' might be seen as encouraging it, and a response by a NAS official telling you the phone number for 999, 111, or the samaritans, is a good back-covering exercise for them. It also helps to make the do-gooder who copied and pasted it feel useful at the same time.
For this reason I will not comment on what I have been feeling recently or what I almost did last Thursday, and will leave it up to everyone's imagination.
[FYI: I have a Samaritans leaflet on my desk in case I am too dumb to remember their widely publicised six digit phone number]
With regards to other information, I may link to pages that I've found useful myself, but if I otherwise don't have anything to say then i won't say it.
As an example, one of the things that drives me to contemplate certain unspeakable (but common) actions is loneliness. I often go weeks without speaking to anyone. In response to this I expect some people would be very quick to tell me that this page exists: https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/loneliness.
"Reach out to others, such as family and friends" it says. Well, I thought people with autism etc didn't have friends and family. Maybe if we did, we wouldn't be lonely.
"Join our online community", "Use social media and online forums or gaming to connect". Says it all really.
In that situation all NAS allows us to do is signpost you to samaritans or similar, we're not allowed to discuss things like suicidal thoughts along with a few other subjects.
This appeals more to me also, I didn't know if this was a personal preference, or if perhaps there are a type of person who responds very well to links to other websites.
I could imagine the type of person who enthusiastically sucks up information from all sources, so when they are provided with a link to a web page they will read through it.
I don't tend to process the world like this - I would be very interested to hear from somebody who does appreciate help like this.
Thanks for the response, when you say "we" who are you referring to?I don't like to make any assumptions as to what is correct or not, but try and determine some form of sense by polling opinion. Often people can confuse opinions with a reality, so I didn't want to go down that route.
For instance, when you say "We're not mind readers" who are you referring to? Is this your opinion, or are there a group of people you're speaking on behalf of?
My gut instinct when I read someone's post that they're suicidal and hopeless is to reach out and make a human connection. That's me.
I find the responses which provide a link to Mind, Samaritans, or a PDF on managing mental health dismissive and unhelpful.
If this was just me, I would need to try and reframe my view of help.
If others felt this way, perhaps NAS could take that on board and modify how the advise people to help.
Sometimes it feels like just because we're ASC, we must want to look at everything online rather than have a personal response from our neurokin.
That's also how I feel, but I notice there appear to be rather a lot of it on here.
Being autistic I'm very used to being the only one who feels or acts a certain way, so didn't want to assume that others also felt that way.
Thanks for sharing
personally I find signposting a bit of a cop out in that it loses the personal qualities of a reply. If a question is asked I try to relate to that and answer in my honest way. I will sometimes try to signpost at the end of a reply if I think it is of benefit.
This is not a criticism of others but I do find that there seems to be a constant screed of signposting in most replies in the threads. It is almost as if all human discourse has been replaced by the race to see who can signpost first. This forum is supposed to be a discussion board but sometimes can resemble a website help page.
Keep up the conversations rather than the signposts.
I'm happy when someone offers me help, whatever form it takes
Sometimes links to NAS support pages are OK - there's a lot of NAS webpages so someone posting a few clickable links helps newbies especially get useful info fast, even members who been on here for years, may forget to look there first and a link is a good reminder, of the resources
Sometimes maybe a more specific response is needed.
But we're not mind readers - and have seen many be thankful to getting help, whether that be link or more personal replies.
I somehow feel this post is a little loaded, it may not be. If you asked something previously and just got a load of links back - then why not just politely say that you wanted more direct answer ?
Me too EP, I'd prefer an answer rather than being signposted elsewhere, being signposted makes me feel as though what I posted about is trivial and insigniicant and waste of time. Quite oten what I post is trivial and insignificant, but I still want to tal about it rather than swap links.
If the link to the source is posted then you can judge for yourself if the information is reliable. If someone just answers it may be harder to know if it is just opinion.
Maybe it is not as direct but it gives more context.