[brains, AS]
Jun. 28th, 2005 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wispfoxSomething which has been percolating at the back of my mind for a while decided to come to the forefront and be writable last night. Good thing I'd brought the laptop home and hadn't sent it in for service yet, 'cause otherwise the post would have had to wait until I had net access from home. :)
I am known to be very poor at that thing known as 'common sense', which appears to cover an _amazing_ array of things, from basics physics knowledge, to where privacy boundaries should be, to knowing when and how to offer help/knowledge to people and when not, to knowing what kinds of things are likely to require advance permission and what not, to... and the list continues.
For me, most of the things which bite me are interpersonal related, but _all_ - every single one - relate to a lack of deep down understanding of a topic. It seems, very strongly, to be yet another symptom of my difficulties with extrapolating information from lots of small, but apparently related, bits of information. Or, put another way, to get from details to generalities, or from vaguely related experiences to approximating something that I have not yet experienced. Possibly also relates to my difficulty with getting from book learning to useful, experiential knowledge (this last amuses me, considering that I'm also known to have trouble separating something I've read from something I've seen from something I've experienced, if it's far enough back in the past).
Considering how easily and frequently this can be a problem, I find it somewhat odd that I always feel _terrible_ (generally, all out of proportion to the actual result of the lapse) when I realize that I've had a failure in my ability to realize that there was something that I "should" have known to do or not to do (perhaps, a failure in my ability to empathize in the non-woowoo kind of way most people mean by that word), based on the available information, but which lack of personal comprehension caused to not occur to me, so the mental connection was not made. Generally feels like I should have tried harder, or something. Even though the actual problem is that I didn't realize there was anything to be trying to _do_ or think of.
The fun thing, of course, with the fact that I feel so terrible, and the fact that I've dealt with it my entire life (but much more often as a kid), is that my first instinct (which I'm reasonably good at fighting at this point) is to want to hide from my mistake, no matter the actual import of it. This can, and has, meant that I quite literally have forgotten doing something in this category, where I was terrified of the reaction when whatever occurred was found out (I don't know why things not occurring to me causes that reaction in me, but it does), then caused myself to forget it. All unconsciously. Thankfully, the last time this happened was also the first time I was made consciously aware of this happening, and I've worked _hard_ on it since. Still have the initial wanting to hide from it reaction, but I refuse to let myself forget it or deny it. May or may not always succeed in not denying it, depending on my general mental health, but I think it's been a while since that reaction escaped past my mental filters, at this point.
Interestingly, it's generally the case that the major problem cases are things that I did that I should have asked about first, but the problem with my very first reaction to that knowledge is that it's not possible or sane or healthy to want to ask about anything that I do, ever, before I do it, if it has any possibility of affecting other people. (may as well just stop trying to interact with people, at that point!)
This whole problem with understanding how others might react to things does make me wonder how much of the sense I get of people, and how well I can read someone, really relates to how frequently their reactions and beliefs and such are sufficiently similar to my own. Perhaps I pick up on that at a really deep level (since I can get a sense of a person, and be able to read them reasonably well, nearly instantly, although that's rare). Or, alternatively, how likely they are to adjust well to the fact that I _will_ do stupid things, and it's not intentional, nor is there much that can be done to avoid it. (and, in this latter case, how good a sense I have of _that_, so that I really believe it)
I know that my own difficulties with all this is at least part of why I tend toward not expecting people to think of things which affect me if they can't understand it. Things just won't stick, or won't occur to me (or both). This is also part of why I tend to be so very forgiving; I tend to wait to find out the intent, rather than just looking at my interpretation of what has occurred, because I know how easily and frequently I can make 'I simply do not understand this' mistakes, so why wouldn't everyone else?
I also have trouble with avoiding doing this kind of thing in the future, since the only way I have to avoid it is to commit that small subset of things to memory, which is not sustainable (since it's case-by-case, rather than an overall understanding of a generality), and not very helpful when my memory isn't very good, and when the problem is that something didn't occur to me in the first place. I try to set flags, but that is hardly perfect.
That which tends to bite me the hardest, and upset me the most, is when I should have thought to ask people that I care about and/or respect about something relating to them, which later ends up upsetting them in any way. This is probably why I try to tend toward too much information when things in my head affect other people vs too little. But, of course, the problem comes up when it doesn't occur to me that something might be an issue. So it's not in my head long enough to consider that it might need to be worded before acted upon. Or at all.
I also have to wonder if this all is why I cope so poorly with people whose tempers seem to be very close to the surface. I have no reason to believe that they won't randomly flip out at me, and no reason to believe that I won't inadvertently cause flipouts on a regular basis. I _know_ I can be frustrating, partly because I frustrate _myself_ often enough, especially if dealing with people I can't really comprehend.
*wry* Sometimes people tell me that I tend too strongly toward people who are similar to me in thinking. I am _so_ not surprised! I can't _deal_ with people whose thinking is too far from my own, not really. Not effectively. Is almost certainly part of why I could never be in a position in which I have to deal with politics of a situation; I don't understand it. Not really.
I am known to be very poor at that thing known as 'common sense', which appears to cover an _amazing_ array of things, from basics physics knowledge, to where privacy boundaries should be, to knowing when and how to offer help/knowledge to people and when not, to knowing what kinds of things are likely to require advance permission and what not, to... and the list continues.
For me, most of the things which bite me are interpersonal related, but _all_ - every single one - relate to a lack of deep down understanding of a topic. It seems, very strongly, to be yet another symptom of my difficulties with extrapolating information from lots of small, but apparently related, bits of information. Or, put another way, to get from details to generalities, or from vaguely related experiences to approximating something that I have not yet experienced. Possibly also relates to my difficulty with getting from book learning to useful, experiential knowledge (this last amuses me, considering that I'm also known to have trouble separating something I've read from something I've seen from something I've experienced, if it's far enough back in the past).
Considering how easily and frequently this can be a problem, I find it somewhat odd that I always feel _terrible_ (generally, all out of proportion to the actual result of the lapse) when I realize that I've had a failure in my ability to realize that there was something that I "should" have known to do or not to do (perhaps, a failure in my ability to empathize in the non-woowoo kind of way most people mean by that word), based on the available information, but which lack of personal comprehension caused to not occur to me, so the mental connection was not made. Generally feels like I should have tried harder, or something. Even though the actual problem is that I didn't realize there was anything to be trying to _do_ or think of.
The fun thing, of course, with the fact that I feel so terrible, and the fact that I've dealt with it my entire life (but much more often as a kid), is that my first instinct (which I'm reasonably good at fighting at this point) is to want to hide from my mistake, no matter the actual import of it. This can, and has, meant that I quite literally have forgotten doing something in this category, where I was terrified of the reaction when whatever occurred was found out (I don't know why things not occurring to me causes that reaction in me, but it does), then caused myself to forget it. All unconsciously. Thankfully, the last time this happened was also the first time I was made consciously aware of this happening, and I've worked _hard_ on it since. Still have the initial wanting to hide from it reaction, but I refuse to let myself forget it or deny it. May or may not always succeed in not denying it, depending on my general mental health, but I think it's been a while since that reaction escaped past my mental filters, at this point.
Interestingly, it's generally the case that the major problem cases are things that I did that I should have asked about first, but the problem with my very first reaction to that knowledge is that it's not possible or sane or healthy to want to ask about anything that I do, ever, before I do it, if it has any possibility of affecting other people. (may as well just stop trying to interact with people, at that point!)
This whole problem with understanding how others might react to things does make me wonder how much of the sense I get of people, and how well I can read someone, really relates to how frequently their reactions and beliefs and such are sufficiently similar to my own. Perhaps I pick up on that at a really deep level (since I can get a sense of a person, and be able to read them reasonably well, nearly instantly, although that's rare). Or, alternatively, how likely they are to adjust well to the fact that I _will_ do stupid things, and it's not intentional, nor is there much that can be done to avoid it. (and, in this latter case, how good a sense I have of _that_, so that I really believe it)
I know that my own difficulties with all this is at least part of why I tend toward not expecting people to think of things which affect me if they can't understand it. Things just won't stick, or won't occur to me (or both). This is also part of why I tend to be so very forgiving; I tend to wait to find out the intent, rather than just looking at my interpretation of what has occurred, because I know how easily and frequently I can make 'I simply do not understand this' mistakes, so why wouldn't everyone else?
I also have trouble with avoiding doing this kind of thing in the future, since the only way I have to avoid it is to commit that small subset of things to memory, which is not sustainable (since it's case-by-case, rather than an overall understanding of a generality), and not very helpful when my memory isn't very good, and when the problem is that something didn't occur to me in the first place. I try to set flags, but that is hardly perfect.
That which tends to bite me the hardest, and upset me the most, is when I should have thought to ask people that I care about and/or respect about something relating to them, which later ends up upsetting them in any way. This is probably why I try to tend toward too much information when things in my head affect other people vs too little. But, of course, the problem comes up when it doesn't occur to me that something might be an issue. So it's not in my head long enough to consider that it might need to be worded before acted upon. Or at all.
I also have to wonder if this all is why I cope so poorly with people whose tempers seem to be very close to the surface. I have no reason to believe that they won't randomly flip out at me, and no reason to believe that I won't inadvertently cause flipouts on a regular basis. I _know_ I can be frustrating, partly because I frustrate _myself_ often enough, especially if dealing with people I can't really comprehend.
*wry* Sometimes people tell me that I tend too strongly toward people who are similar to me in thinking. I am _so_ not surprised! I can't _deal_ with people whose thinking is too far from my own, not really. Not effectively. Is almost certainly part of why I could never be in a position in which I have to deal with politics of a situation; I don't understand it. Not really.
