- Hi everyone. Welcome back
to Aspergers from the inside. You're here with Paul. Today's patreon's choice video is on a common miscommunications between Aspies and NTs. So NT stands for Neurotypical,
as opposed to Neurodivergent. So, if you're on the spectrum, your neurology is different from most people in the population. And if you're not on the spectrum, your brain is wired typically. So hence the term Neurotypical, to describe people who are
not on the Autism spectrum. So today I'm gonna share
three common misunderstandings or common sources of misunderstandings between Aspies and NTs. And so the first one is around
misreading body language, and this goes both ways. It could be the person on the spectrum misreading the body language
of the other person, or it could be, and this is the one I kinda wanna focus on today, is when my facial expressions,
or my tone of voice, or my body language is
misinterpreted by someone else. So that's the first
one, I'll go into these, I'll explain these in a
little bit more detail after I've listed them. So the second one is around alone time. Basically, meaning if I want alone time, it's nothing personal, it's not an intended to be a rejection. Sometimes I need alone time away from the people I care about the most, even. And the third one, is
that it's not about you and that is around, the I'm
not doing it on purpose, I'm not trying to annoy you, I'm not trying to elicit any reaction from other people sometimes. I'm just doing my own thing
and doing what I need to do to cope or survive or
regulate my own emotions or organize myself or
whatever I need to do. I'm doing it for myself, I'm not doing it on
purpose for someone else. So if I go back to the first one around the facial expressions, I remember I once worked with a young woman on the spectrum who had a really monotonous tone of voice, didn't put much tone in her voice, and she didn't have much
of a facial expression or expressive body language or anything like that. And not out to make things
even more difficult, She had the most extreme
sense of humor and sarcasm and everything that you could imagine. I had to learn how to understand her because I couldn't rely
on the normal kind of cues of body language or tone of voice to indicate sarcasm, for example. And what's really interesting is, whenever she'd say something, I'd need to spend probably
three or four seconds in, trying to process, was that a joke? Was she being serious? Is she emotional or upset? Or is she just messing with me? Most of the time she was
just messing with me. Right, which is fine. We, I eventually learned how
to read her behavior and, and we got along great. But the point here is that you have to really check your assumptions because misreading body language and reacting to an
emotion that's not there, I thought you were tired, so I did this. Or I thought you were
angry, So I did this. Can be a real cause
of, of misunderstanding and miscommunication. And so interestingly, I had to spend an extra processing time trying to figure out what her... What she was trying to express. And this is what a lot of people on the spectrum experience
on a daily basis. Just trying to interpret what everybody is trying to express through their, through their body language
or tone of voice or, or extra things like that. So the next time you find it difficult to understand someone else, I'm talking to the Neurotypicals here, that is similar to what some people on the spectrum go through every day. Okay, So number two is around alone time. This can be a very challenging one to negotiate especially
with intimate relationships. Because if I need alone
time, I'm not rejecting you, I'm not saying I don't like you, I'm not saying I'm sick of you. I just need time by myself to recharge. And often the reason I'm
speaking for me personally, others might have different reasons. But the reason I need to be alone is because when I'm alone, I
don't have to do anything. I don't even have to do what I want to do. I can do absolutely nothing or something or I don't need to
question those assumptions. Which is very relaxing because
I can listen to my body and do whatever my body
needs to do to relax, rather than my default
state when I'm in society or at work or with other people, where I have to try to do
what I'm supposed to do. Now that might be an
externally imposed thing of I have to do this
because of social reasons or it could be an
internally imposed thing. I have to be working cause
I'm at work right now or I have to be awake cause
I'm at the gym right now or something like that. So when I'm alone I can do
absolutely whatever I want. And this doesn't mean I don't like you. (laughing) And in social situations as well, if you've invited me out and I've said no, it doesn't mean I don't
want to be invited out. In fact, I really love, I've made it a habit to
whenever I decline an invite, I always say thank you for the invitation, please invite me again another time, but I'm not gonna say yes, I'm not gonna accept the
invitation this time. Cause just because I
want to alone time now, does not mean I want to alone time later. So, knowing that can can be a real help. Third, and final one is that very often, my actions are determined by my own
needs of what I need to do. So like I'm bouncing the ball right now. Right? I'm not doing it to annoy you, i know it annoys some people. But i also kind of feel
like it's helpful for others to see what I need to do for processing. So I'm doing this because of me. I'm not doing it because of you. I'm not trying to do,
annoy you on purpose, I'm not trying to manipulate you, I'm not trying to elicit a reaction. I'm just not trying to do any of that. And usually in society it's common to assume and assumpt a... Reason or a motive behind a behavior. Whereas the most useful thing for me is if what I'm doing is
annoying you, let me know. If what I'm doing is you know, you're guessing what I'm , what my motives are, just ask me. It's going to be a lot
easier for everyone concerned if you just ask me why
I'm doing what I'm doing and it's going to clarify
things for everybody. Because otherwise, assumptions
are going to be made and generally those assumptions are not going to be very helpful. One of my biggest pieces of advice when dealing with people on the spectrum, is throw all your
assumptions out the window or actually better yet you
can keep some assumptions as long as you deliberately
check those assumptions. So if I'm bouncing my ball
here and you're thinking, do you need to do that
for processing reasons? Ask me and I'll give you,
I'll give you an answer. Whereas if you assume something, that is probably the worst case scenario because I get judged as something and I don't know why I've been judged and I don't get told that I've been judged and I may or may not
intuitively pick up that, that's happened. And then, so I'm going along here thinking everything's fine, but if the misunderstanding has happened without communicating it back to me, that I've offended someone
by accident for example, because they've assumed that
I've done it on purpose, then we're going to be talking
completely cross-purposes and big, big miscommunications can happen when you do that. Okay, so I think I might leave it there. They've been three really common, miscommunications and misunderstandings that can happen between, Aspies and NTs. I'd really like to hear what your common misunderstandings and
miscommunications are if you want to leave them in the comments. And if you want to have your say in next month's patreons choice video, you can become a supporter of this channel for as little as $1 a month actually is the minimum. But the, to have your
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see you again another time. Thanks. Bye.
