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Request for help

Moniker

Hi

I am hoping that autistic people might be able to help me out.  Basically, my problem is that I can't read faces or tones of voice, and my family while I was growing up was not usual, so I have no idea how a normal family "scripts" - as in, when they say something, what are the sort of responses they expect.

e.g. someone comes home from work and tells you about a problem they are having.  The expected script is that you will make sympathetic noises and say things that make them feel good about themself. My standard response to being told about a problem was to suggest how to fix it, which is not following the expected script in this case (and winds people up as a result) and once I knew the expected script I could respond appropriately.

I'm hoping that autistic people have some expertise in figuring things like this out so please tell me what scripts you know.  I'm female, which I suspect makes a difference.  Thank you!

NB1 If anyone is interested, I'm seeing a psychologist who thinks I may be autistic myself, but I have never been assessed and my childhood was so far from normal, I don't know if my lack of body language is a result of that instead.

Parents

  • Hi

    Thank you for replying. 

    I already know I am bad at reading/making sense of body language - it is something I definitely have in common with autistic people, whether or not I am one, which is why I think autistic people could help me.  However, there are other indicators for autism which I don't think I have (e.g. the special interest - I don't have one, in fact I can find pretty much anything interesting if it's explained in a way I can follow as a non specialist)

    The problem is that my family was not normal.  When i was growing up I didn't see what a normal happy family did when it's at home - and most of the examples of families you see in books etc aren't happy so it's difficult to make sense of external examples to give me a script.  I am guessing that other people here have grown up in normal happy families and can tell me how they are supposed to work.  This will mean that I can work out a script for that sort of situation, which at the moment is hard for me - even if I'm with a normal family, they are doing "with a guest" behaviour, which isn't always the same as "not with a guest" behaviour.

    So I'm hoping someone can tell me about how the "not with a guest" behaviour works for a family that is working properly.  Does this make sense?

Reply

  • Hi

    Thank you for replying. 

    I already know I am bad at reading/making sense of body language - it is something I definitely have in common with autistic people, whether or not I am one, which is why I think autistic people could help me.  However, there are other indicators for autism which I don't think I have (e.g. the special interest - I don't have one, in fact I can find pretty much anything interesting if it's explained in a way I can follow as a non specialist)

    The problem is that my family was not normal.  When i was growing up I didn't see what a normal happy family did when it's at home - and most of the examples of families you see in books etc aren't happy so it's difficult to make sense of external examples to give me a script.  I am guessing that other people here have grown up in normal happy families and can tell me how they are supposed to work.  This will mean that I can work out a script for that sort of situation, which at the moment is hard for me - even if I'm with a normal family, they are doing "with a guest" behaviour, which isn't always the same as "not with a guest" behaviour.

    So I'm hoping someone can tell me about how the "not with a guest" behaviour works for a family that is working properly.  Does this make sense?

Children
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