Not long ago

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 15 September 2010 12:40:18

I realized I had autntism

Over the last couple of decades society has begun to recognize that a number of people find it hard to read non-verbal signifiers such as body language or vocal intonation. Such difficulties make it tricky to function in society, but the increased understanding, and the naming of the condition, help to alleviate some of the effects.

What I've realized lately is that I have almost the exact opposite condition. When people speak to me I seem to only respond to the non-verbal content, and seem unable to take in the actual words being said. A typical example was when a colleague asked me a question recently. The intonation he used made it clear that he expected me to know the answer because it was the sort of basic knowledge that everyone in our line of work should know. Unfortunately I didn't know the answer, and I spent much of the rest of the day feeling like a worm because I was so clueless. His unstated expectations of my knowledge left me feeling a failure.

It was quite a long time later that it dawned on me that he didn't know the answer either. Of course, at one level, I already knew that - I knew full well he wasn't asking me the question as a trick or test, but he was asking because he genuinely wanted to know the answer and didn't. And yet the full impact of that eluded me for ages, because I was so busy responding to the unstated assertion that everybody in my position should know the answer. Since he didn't know the answer, I eventually reasoned, he probably didn't expect me to know the answer, merely hoped that I might. If I ask someone a question and they don't know the answer then I may be disappointed, but I'm highly unlikely to think worse of them as a result, and yet that is exactly what I was expecting my colleague to do.

And this is just one example of a regular occurrence. A friend can express gratitude for a present, but I'll be listening out for the edge in their voice that says it wasn't actually what they wanted, and all the gratitude then counts for nothing to me. A friend can compliment me on the way I did something, but there'll be something in their intonation which shouts to me that I didn't do it the way they would have done, or as well as they would have done, and their words then evaporate.