A drive on the River

[mdlbear]

Colleen and I went for a nice long drive yesterday; around the long loop up the coast and home through Half Moon Bay. It was mostly good, but some disturbing things came up toward the end and I'm afraid my mood crashed pretty badly. Yes, my baseline mood has improved recently (Colleen confirms it, and ordered me in no uncertain terms to stay away from gluten from now on). But the amplitude and frequency of the swings has also increased considerably.

This will be briefer than I would have liked; details have already started to fade. But some of it is very important, at least for me.

Somehow, probably in response to me asking her to clarify something, we got back on the subject of my attempts to get her to answer questions when I didn'tunderstand or didn't hear the original answer. She blew up at me. You may remember a post upstream titled Why I asked. Yeah, that again. Plus something that triggered memories of last March and April when she feared she was losing me (which I've touched on under the title of The Silicon Mistress). And didn't believe me when I said she wasn't, because she was paying more attention to my attitude than to my words.

The combination sent me into a tailspin, wondering whether our relationship had deteriorated to the point where she no longer wanted to talk with me about it. From further conversation, I don't think so. I hope not. She also came up with a fascinating bit of information. It raises more questions than it answers, unfortunately.

She was under psychoanalysis for years, from a very young age; it left her with a lifelong hatred for and distrust of the whole profession. It hasn't stopped us from getting the kids help when they needed it, but she reacted vehemently when I asked whether we would benefit from counseling. I wouldn't know -- I've never done it.

But apparently my way of asking questions, multiple times with different wordings to try to come to an understanding of what she said, sounds to her exactly like what a shrink does. No wonder she rejects it.

Question: what in Hell can I do about this? I can't stop asking her for clarification: if it was important enough for her to say something to me, it's important for me to understand it. Is there a way of asking for clarification that doesn't make me sound like I'm trying to psychoanalyze her?

Public service announcement #1: When I ask you a question I am not trying to psychoanalyze you. Nor am I trying to see whether you know something, the way I would with a kid drilling for a test. I'm just trying to get an answer. When I ask a question it's because you know the answer and I don't. If I ask again in different words, it's because I didn't understand the first answer, or because it sounded like the answer to a question I didn't ask. If I paraphrase your answer and ask you to confirm it, it's because I want to make damned sure I understood what you said, because it seemed to be important.

Public service announcement #2: Please listen. I will usually tell you why I am seemingly asking a question again. If I do, I mean exactly what I say. Please listen to the exact words of the question, too. Don't respond with the answer to the question you think I was going to ask: it will only confuse both of us.

I don't know how I can make this more clear. Suggestions welcome.

Comments

this sometimes works

[carmiel.livejournal.com]

I sometimes have to tell people "I'm sorry, I'm being obtuse today. I don't understand what you mean. Can you explain a little more please?" Saying this with the attitude that you know the error is on all on your side of the conversation is vital.
If they dont' want to, they at the very least know that you're just being clueless and don't have any other agenda, i.e. questioning their choices, opinions, etc.
If she doesn't want to explain further, accept it. If you want to repeat that you don't understand but will talk about something else because she wants to, try it and see if she still gets angry. Often with me, it takes time to figure out *why* I feel the way I do and can't explain until I take the time to figure it out. So, her anger might be frustration if she gets in the same place I do.
I won't promise you it works all the time, but with Colleen, she might accept "obtuse" as a signal word that you are just lost and confused - nothing else.

Good luck regardless. (hug)

Re: this sometimes works

[mdlbear]

Thanks -- that sounds like a good approach if I can remember to do it. I think I try to do that, but forget more often than not. And unfortunately I often don't notice there's a problem until she's already gotten angry.

Yeah; she's not as articulate as I am, and often can't explain how she feels. Yesterday was a welcome exception: figuring out where a lot of the anger was coming from helped a lot.

"Obtuse" sounds like a pretty good code word; I usually use "stupid old bear".

*hug*

[kyrielle]

Sometimes it is not a matter of making things clear, but of changing behaviors, especially if the trigger is back in someone's childhood.

For example, I have a net-friend with whom my friendship has been very rocky. She's on the autistic spectrum, probably somewhere at the high-functioning end of autistic rather than the Asperger's part, I believe. And she is very, very literal. The sad fact is that no matter how much I know that what she says, the words she uses, contain all of her meaning, and the subtext and non-verbal cues are not part of it at all, knowing that doesn't keep me from reacting to them. I often don't realize WHY I react the way I do to something she says until she is surprised by my response, and I go back and analyze what was said and go "oh, crap, part of that was tone." I try to be very, very careful when communicating with her, but I still get it wrong - and that level of care requires barriers to keep up. Slow thinking, lack of emotional involvement. It works mostly okay because we aren't close-close friends and because we communicate on the net. In person I know the non-verbal cues would be more of a problem. It's hard to detune those things.

Normally, I'd suggest counseling might help her, but in this case there's a nasty irony to that, and it certainly doesn't seem likely. What I'd suggest instead, then, is that it might help you. Perhaps a counselor, just seeing you, could provide some objective input for how you come across and what you can do about it. (If Colleen is comfortable with it, it might be helpful if she could provide the counselor some information on her background and perceptions so that it isn't getting filtered through your understanding - perhaps in written form, so she never has to talk to the person in question, and thus can't get triggered? I don't know, just musing....)

[mdlbear]

*nod* Definitely some of the same problem with subtext -- she sometimes reacts more to what she expects me to be saying, based on some context I'm totally unaware of, than to what I actually said. Psychiatry being a case in point.

The "in written form" would be good except that she doesn't express herself well in writing, and her arthritis makes typing difficult. A phone call might work, though. She's very comfortable with that.

I really have no idea how to go about expressing myself in a way that makes it clear that I don't have a subtext -- I can't see them, either in my words or in others'. Sometimes I'll sense something in tone of voice, but I always have to confirm it because my initial guess is almost always wrong.

[kyrielle]

Just my opinion, but i think you can't. Tone if voice, phrasing, pacing, body language are all part of communication for most people. Complete neutrality comes off as either indifference or clinical -- neither good and the second particularly bad in this case!

What you may be able to do is learn a way to make the subtext echo what you say in this post - to make it feel to her like "confused bear" instead of "head shrinker." You may also be able to learn to recognize sooner when you are near that edge and back away from it, maybe returning to the topic later to get clarification, maybe letting it go.

[mdlbear]

That might work. I probably do sound "clinical" now that you mention it: I take refuge in clarity and precision when I'm confused or feel that there's a misunderstanding on either side.

Tone of voice, phrasing, and body language are things I've never learned to control -- I don't know how, and don't know how to learn. Don't even know whether I'm capable of learning them. (Acting school might teach that kind of thing, but my limited experience in that direction suggests that it would be at least as disastrous as psychiatry would be for Colleen. Not an option.)

[kyrielle]

That may actually be where a counselor could help you. They know what NT's are expecting, and may be able to teach you a bit of what you're "saying" (with tone and body language) that you don't mean to. An acting school could teach you, maybe, how to fake things; a counselor may be able to teach you to understand them, at least somewhat, by translating. Even if all you get out of it is the ability to recognize when the conversation is spiraling into frustration, that might be useful, and since you've said she can't adapt (which I can understand: it's easy to ask those things, but it's hard to do them in my experience, and I'm not sure I'm entirely NT, though I am at least mostly)...it seems like the other option is you adapting. As well, you're making an effort to learn this stuff and bridge the gap (and as artbeco said, that is wondrous - you are doing a LOT, or you wouldn't even be seeing the things you are now, I think!), and this is another area where you might be able to. But I don't think text can provide enough info for you to bridge it, you need some forum in which information can be supplied on visual and audio channels as well as simple text info, because no amount of describing certain things is going to make them as clear as a model of them, I think.

[mdlbear]

And you're right, I probably can't. I've been completely unable to get Colleen to listen only to my words. Or to listen to them at all, sometimes.

It's apparently been going on for years. The difference is that now I know that it's happening. I'm feeling a lot like the cartoon coyote, finally looking down and noticing that he's not standing on anything anymore.

[artbeco.livejournal.com]

And yet it seems to me that the very fact that you're seeing it now and seem determined to work on it is a wondrous thing. I think you are too hard on yourself, and there's no doubt, from the outside looking in, that Colleen loves you to pieces. This River delving you've been doing is very brave and admirable, in my humble opinion.
*hugs*

[mdlbear]

Many thanks.

Things are getting better, slowly. Perhaps less "brave and admirable" than a case of "fools rush in...", but it's rewarding and mostly fun. At least to write about.

[kyrielle]

But...she's still there, and has been all that time. So there's probably ground close by and maybe even under your feet, just not what you expected and hoped was there.

As far as getting her to change...part of the problem is that, as far as I understand it, these are reflexes for most NTs (they sure are for me), formed very early. Worse, they're "survival" reflexes in some degree, and hard to change, because they would mess us up in conversation with other NTs if they were missing.

As I was going to sleep last night I came up with an analogy, which may or may not be useful. It's a bit strained, but I'll share it anyway in case it's any help.

Think of it this way: when you learned to drive, you probably had to think about everything you were doing. But then, muscle memory and habit took over. You still think about the difficult or odd situations, and something out of place draws your attention, but it takes little or no effort to reflexively slow down if you see the guy in front of you start to slow and his brake lights come on. Indeed, you are probably slowing even as your conscious mind registers the fact that it happened - if it bothers to at all (in rush hour traffic, that's so common that unless I'm fuming about the delay, or he brakes unusually hard, I don't even tune in). Road signs, lane markings, etc. - all require little thought (at least in the country where you learned to drive!).

Now someone tells you that on one road - to be sure, a road you drive every day and have no route around and don't want a route around because it's such a pretty drive - doing that will annoy your fellow drivers or possibly get you injured because it's not the right way to do it. Oh, brake lights still mean the same thing, but the color and spacing of the lane dividers has a different meaning, and the signs are different colors/shapes than expected, and possibly some information removed or added. "Just learn it," they tell you.

But your driving is a habit, built over years: modifying it will take time. Worse, if you learn the new lane dividers and signs, how do you tell your brain to use the new paradigm on this one road but the old one on all the others? It's even harder to figure out what to do when this road intersects with another, perfectly normal road - the signage is bizarre for everyone. You can probably do it, but only with near-constant, conscious attention to what you're doing on one type of road or the other.

It's easier to go with keeping the existing habit, and putting a lot of conscious attention on driving on that one road. But now you can no longer enjoy the scenery, because now you're focusing on remembering what color the next speed sign is going to be so you don't miss it. Driving the road becomes tiring, and difficult, and when you get distracted you forget about the signs again until you're reminded by the horns behind you (if anyone bothers to honk, if the slip-up is one that they can recognize to complain about at all).

Social cues that NTs use, such as tone and body language, are much subtler than freeway signage, and much harder to interpret consciously. And they were learned at a much younger age than driving is. That's not to say they can't be modified (counselors exist partially for that reason, among others, dealing with when they've been mis-formed or are being problematic), but they're not easy to modify, and they're not really something you'd want to eradicate if you had them - only bend until they're accurate to what society expects, so you're "speaking" the same "language" as others, or close to it (we're actually all in dialects, I think).

At the same time, they are, as you've noticed, very mal-adaptive with those at the literal end of things, who go mostly (or in some cases entirely) off word choice, ignoring or not noticing body language and tone (or only responding to the extreme examples of them).

For what it's worth, I know someone who tells me they had exactly the problem you're facing, and they were able to learn to read NT body language/voice. That doesn't mean you'll be able to, but it does at least mean it's possible. I suspect being aware that you're missing some of it and caring about it is the most important starting point for that.

[mdlbear]

Good advice; many thanks. I've been slowly coming to the same conclusion.

I'm gradually learning to read body language and voice; what I'm really worried about is whether I can ever learn to send it in a way that NTs can read accurately.

You've gotten good advice

[capplor.livejournal.com]

but has anyone ever advised you to learn when to just drop it? I know, you're used to understanding things, and you WANT to get to the bottom of everything, but sometimes there is nothing you can do that isn't digging yourself deeper. You've already lost the game, the best you can do is minimize the cost. It WILL put you ahead of where you are. (Trust me.)

Re: You've gotten good advice

[mdlbear]

We're working on that. Sometimes I can recognize when it's not useful to continue, and I'm working on having Colleen tell me when she wants me to drop it. It's hard; these are lifetime habits we're trying to break.

Re: You've gotten good advice

[kyrielle]

For whatever it is worth, the person I mentioned did manage to change presentation also, and is quite good at it today. Or last time I saw them in person, anyway. So at least in theory it can be done.

Re: You've gotten good advice

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

What you need is a safeword for conversation. (No, as far as I'm aware, there isn't an appropriate comic from xkcd to suggest for this!)

Re: You've gotten good advice

[mdlbear]

*grin* We sometimes use "Basingstoke", but it's somewhat off-label in some of the conversational contexts where we need something. Maybe with a qualifier, since at least it's easy for a couple of old G&S fans to remember.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I can't stop asking her for clarification: if it was important enough for her to say something to me, it's important for me to understand it.

This part bothers me. You may need a clarification, but unless it's life-or-death, you don't necessarily need the clarification immediately. If you and/or she are getting frustrated, take a break from it. Talk about it again later, maybe, when you've had some distance from it. But just pushing and pushing is a good way to make sure you have a screaming row about the subject.

[mdlbear]

It varies, of course. If I'm trying to get directions while I'm driving, it really is important right then. In most other cases, yes, but one of the other things I have trouble with is recognizing the end of a conversation, or a thread, when I come to it. As usual, it's a matter of signals I'm not picking up on.

There's the additional factor that I'm not likely to remember to go back to it -- I have a very bad memory for spoken words, and especially if I didn't understand whatever it was, I'll forget almost immediately. But in a lot of cases she'll remember telling me, and when I ask about it again she'll get angry because she has to keep repeating herself.

Worth trying in those cases where I think of it.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

It seems to me as if you need to keep using expressions like "Please repeat that - I didn't understand it," and "I'm sorry, could you run that by me again, please?" ("Please" and "I'm sorry" and "Excuse me" are important, though to you I daresay they're so much semantically-null noise. For neurotypicals, they're a form of interpersonal lubrication that keeps conversations from becoming abrasive.) Those don't sound as much like what most psychologists/psychoanalysts say. And you probably have to keep reminding her that you mean everything perfectly literally, although I'm a bit surprised that she hasn't grasped that by now.

I myself have a huge problem with the whole field of psychology and all its various types of practitioners - I, too, had a lot of it done to me when I was a kid. So did my son, far more than I did... and now he is a psychologist. (He says he wants to do it right, to make up for all the appalling malpractice he experienced.)

[mdlbear]

Yes, that sounds right.

I do -- or did; I probably need to listen to myself more to make sure I'm still using it -- use "excuse me" to flag the places where I didn't hear correctly. I used to use "sorry", but it turns out that constantly apologizing was another trigger. May need to unpack that more, to say something like "you said something before 'aardvark', but I didn't catch it" or "who did you say that was?"

There seem to be some things she's not capable of adapting to. Weird.

[septemberlilac.livejournal.com]

For me personally, sometimes just knowing that I have a choice helps immensely, whereas I may go into self-defensive attack mode if I feel trapped or boxed in. So I wonder, would it help if you had a code word that came with options? E.g., a code word that meant "Still not getting it -- can I a) pursue this some more or b) should I drop it for now?" That would alert her to the fact that there's an unresolved communications glitch that needs to be addressed but also give her the choice of putting the discussion on hold until you're both calmer. In my case, merely feeling that I have some measure of control over such situations goes a long way toward defusing them. Needless to say, mileage may vary.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

"Sorry" is an imprecise word - it can be a direct apology, or an implied apology for something you're about to say or do, or it can simply indicate sympathy, and the ambiguity of meaning drives some people nuts. Anyway, you can drop "sorry", and stick with similar (but less ambiguous) expressions like "excuse me", "pardon me", "how's that again?", and so forth. And don't forget to drop a "please" in there every once in a while. Also try to make it clear that you're not blaming her for your communication difficulty. (Would it help if she observed you behaving the same way with other people?)

[mdlbear]

Good point; I've been largely successful in dropping it in favor of "excuse me"; adding more detail would be an easy improvement to work on.

Hmm. She already knows that not paying attention and not hearing well are my problems, but I suppose it never hurts to emphasize that occasionally. Again, more detail will help.

Thanks.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

What I've found that helps, both in talking to someone who is likely to blow up, and when someone is talking to me (same thing, really) is a bit of a preamble -- others have suggested this too -- but to say "really, I was listening, but I'm not sure I heard what you intended to say/understood what you meant -- this is what I heard/understood". That sort of breaks the stride, potentially disarms the impending avalanche. As long as the other person really is listening and not just looking for a reason to jump on you. (Not accusing C -- but I know me, and in some moods once I've been set off, there is nothing that the other person can do.)

That said, there was one thing that you said that has been niggling at me since I read it:
because she was paying more attention to my attitude than to my words.

I do understand being upset that someone wasn't listening to my words. I said them for a reason, and they are what is going on in my head.

However I've been on the other side. Someone telling me he loves me, and doesn't even like X, but spending as much time with X as he can, and avoiding me. And eventually moving in with X. Uh huh. Another telling me he'll do this task, that task, or the other task, getting angry with me when I do them, because he SAID he'd do them... but a month... or a year later they're still not done. Perhaps you have a better track record, but this might be a conversation point the next time you're assumed to not be speaking the Truth. I.e. "when I say X have I _ever_ not done/meant/believed X?" You might get her to think, and realize you haven't (and thus lessen the chance of her believing that of you in the future -- building a more accurate perception), or you might get a response that leads you to understand that either you _have_ slipped up, or that she believes you have... which might be more conversation...

[mdlbear]

Good advice; I'm working on that.

As for words vs. deeds, true. In this case I think it's not so much deeds as perceptions, but I can certainly understand what happened from her point of view. I was an idiot.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

(And the next task for the increasingly clever bear is to not say bad things about himself. You might have behaved in a rather less than optimal manner, you might not have noticed some things in your environment, but it is probably not appropriate to say you were an idiot. _My_ next task is to follow my own advice.)