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I’ve had to have several conversations with my wife about her not using a bad mental autofill.
So much of the time (especially with important conversations), she’s already decided what I’m saying within the first few words (of an entire conversation) and then the conversation gets way too long because it is very clear she’s not getting what I’m saying because she’s locked into her autofill. She’s gotten better over time, but man is it frustrating.
Holy cow, you are also married to my wife!?! She’s got some splainin to do.
Usually in this community we only allow “me too” and “neurotypicals are so annoying”.
It’s refreshing for someone to come and call this out like that. I’m surprised you’re not downvoted to hell.
Yeah i have this problem with my partner. I say something innocuous, he creates a whole cinematic universe about what I meant with the sentence and refuses to adjust once I explain that he misunderstood. It’s absolutely tiring.
They think they already understood.
Well, especially if it’s someone you know well… say… your wife… you definitely can know quite often. It won’t be 100% but it can be a high enough percent that you’d rather the sentence be over w a ~10% chance of misunderstanding than to have to keep listening to a sentence that you’ve already assumed the end of and are thinking of a reply to.
My wife thinks she knows what I’m going to say all the time, and she’s often wrong.
Assuming she has adhd, maybe she just could use some meds to help her tame her mind and just listen. But even off meds, if I was demonstrably wrong at a high frequency, that fact would at least leave me reserving my speculations on your point until I was more sure, or till you fully explained it.
She doesn’t. She’s as neurotypical as they come. I’m the ND one, in a way that makes me a bit of a slow talker.
My first draft of that comment was a bit ruder and put the blame on you talking slow… shoulda gonna with that one. Damn.
Not a problem, I didn’t take any offense or perceive any ill will or anything. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, in the context of the conversation, your comment was completely appropriate. I should have been clearer in the first comment I made, but I am still waiting for coffee to catch up with me.
I think the larger point I was thinking of was that “finishing someone else’s thought” is not only a ADHD or ND thing. I know that when my wife either finishes my thought directly, or interrupts to respond to what she predicted my thought for me, and she’s wrong, it is extremely frustrating, causing me much consternation. I know she’s only trying to be helpful, but in the moment, my expressions are obvious. Then she feels like “we were just having a conversation, and now you’re angry and I didn’t do anything.” The fact that she is able to put together cogent thoughts into spoken words much more quickly than I can escalates the pace, too, to a point where I can feel like I’m barely able to keep up as the train crests a hill, I’m trying to keep up and put on the brakes at the same time, and I don’t know how steep the other side is. It can feel like I’m about to fall off a cliff, and the lizard brain reacts in fight/flight/freeze mode.
Wow. That kind of makes more sense of all that than I’ve ever really been able to put together before. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Good Ted talk, thanks 👏👏👏
But also, I’d be careful when bringing up the whole “X isn’t just an ADHD thing” thing… because it’s true for almost every single aspect, the whole point is that we have issues X,Y,Z to the degree that it has significant negative effects on our lives. Dismissing issues as “not just adhd” undermines the seriousness of ADHD which is already chronically underrated as a disability. (I’ll take suggestions for alternative wordings to “underrated as a disability”)
My Dad has a strong tendency to talk in circles, slowly working to his point like one of those penny rolling machines you used to see everywhere, and it drives me round the bend sometimes to the point where I end up having to prompt him to just get to the point
Is he also ADHD/ASD? Sometimes having to tell the whole story is like an OCD trait, you can’t just get to the point. The whole story has to be relayed because that’s how it exists in your brain.
The flip side is just giving someone the punch line or answer to a situation and getting frustrated that people haven’t reached the same conclusions as quickly as you have.
Yes, those people
Especially when they drag their point out for dramatic effect but the point was so glaringly obvious that it comes off as smug on top of the tonguebiting you have to do to not just torpedo their pathetic attempt at tension-building.
I sometimes finish the sentence for them to speed things along. It’s a bad habit of mine and I try not to be rude about it. Hopefully it just comes across as understanding and supportive rather than usurping the conversation.
