River: Insight of the day

[mdlbear]

I explain myself a lot. Too much for some people, Colleen among them. I realized that I'm so used to having my words and actions misunderstood, after decades of it, that I have an uncontrollable need to keep explaining until I get a response that indicates that the other person has, in fact, understood what I said or did.

Which would be a great idea, if the normal person's reaction wasn't to get angry and stop paying attention because, to them, I'm either repeating myself endlessly, or contradicting them.

... and in a somewhat different direction, yes, I did catch myself apologizing for a miscommunication between Emmy and Colleen. Possibly because I kept trying to ask questions that were intended to fill in the gaps, and they both kept brushing me off.

They really are, when you think about it, parts of the same problem. I can easily see the gaps in other people's logic (I'm not taking about my own logic, you'll note -- it's always easier to debug someone else's code than one's own), and they barge ahead anyway, either not noticing or not caring, and thinking they can easily fill in the gap with what they're quite certain the other person was trying to say.

I'm a lot less tolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity than most people seem to be.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

From my very earliest childhood, I used to wish I had an identical twin, because I believed that we'd be mutually telepathic, as well as having very similar thought processes, and then there would be one person in the world I wouldn't have to keep explaining everything to! (Later in life, I did meet a few people who at least seemed to understand what I was talking about - I slept with three of them before I figured out that they were mainly bullshitting me.)

[septemberlilac.livejournal.com]

>I have an uncontrollable need to keep explaining until I get a response that indicates that the other person has, in fact, understood<

Yeah, that's pretty much what I personally call communication. Regrettably, others don't seem to perceive it the same way. What's worse, if they will not follow my example and explain themselves until I'm sure *I* understand, then how can I be certain that I *have* understood? It's hard being an alien.

[mdlbear]

People keep telling me I'm not an alien. But I probably just didn't understand them correctly.

[septemberlilac.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps they just didn't listen to enough of the explanation for it to become clear to them ;) I explained so much and so long, they finally started saying, "Y'know, she's not just sort of weird, I actually think she's an alien." I try not to explain quite so much anymore, for obvious reasons.