Communications, or lack there of
I have written this sentence at least 5 times already. Each time, I erase it and start with another attempt at explaining the frustration in my head. One of the greatest challenges I have faced as an adult is my inability to communicate properly. This has affected my personal life and my professional life. Even now, when I am sitting down to the computer (one place where I feel the most comfortable) I find it difficult to express my thoughts and ideas easily.
The extent of my communication problems is not as simple as writers block though. An example of my most frequent challenge is at work. In the course of my job, I frequently need to call sales reps and discuss projects and products we need. Usually, I am able to do this without too much trouble. But there are some days when, for no apparent reason, I can not force myself to pick up the telephone. If I eventually am able to do it, the conversation is painful. My stomach becomes upset and I completely loose my ability to listen during the conversation. I also can not develop any words to express my thoughts. The same seems to apply at home with family and friends.
Another problem is my lack of ability to express emotions in my writings. For some reason, when ever I write something, it tends to sound more akin to a technical manual then an expression of my feelings. When I look back to high school, I find the most glaring example of this. I was taking an English course on short stories and received an assignment to write a story using imagery. So, I wrote a story about an incident that was a rather traumatic incident to me. In the story, my description of the events was rather unfeeling and almost meticulous in the details. To properly describe any emotions, I had to use imagery of the weather. Even in doing that, the one response most readers offered to me was it didn’t seem like the reactions of the person in the story (who was actually me) were right due to the lack of emotion. Don’t miss understand, I have a great deal of emotions, but describing them and being able to properly identify them is very difficult.
I am not sure what the answer is to all of these communication problems, but I do know one thing: I need to post this message now before I erase it, as I have my other 20 attempts to talk about communication problems.
2 Comments:
Hello Autistic Jedi. Your blog title is great; I wish I had thought of it!
I know what you mean about telephone user's block, or whatever you want to call it. (I ought to be making two telephone calls right now, but instead I am procrastinating and reading blogs.)
Still, I don't think you ought to describe yourself as having an "inability to communicate properly." Ballastexistenz just wrote an excellent post about why we shouldn't try to force-fit ourselves into other people's concepts of what is proper.
Society needs to learn how to deal with autism, and that includes dealing with how we communicate, too.
Hi Brian,
I think you write really good and you manage to describe a situation with all the richness of detail and without loosing the track. As I read your stories my mind mostly makes them into a movie. I like it when that happens.
Me, my mind has a habit of hopping around, sidetracking and getting lost in irrelevant details and stories. Not uncommon for someone with ADHD.
I too recognize the aversion of making phonecalls, at home me and my husband always tend to try making the other one pick up the phone or make the phonecall.
When I receive a call, it sometimes is really difficult to engage myself to the conversation, as I was busy with something else.
On the job, I have days that I first need to talk some courage into myself, before I can start making the calls...
And on other days it's so easy...
San
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