Processing Speed, Decision Making, Changing Your Mind Pt1

I was told when I tested that because my processing speed is so high, that I tend to make firm decisions very quickly. And when I make those decisions, because I make them so firmly, I am unlikely to change my mind.

Usually, I make decisions based on a lot of research and a lot of logic. I don't just make careless decisions. I can't tell you the exact process of how I may change any of those decisions. I know it isn't going to be because someone argued with me about it.

Which is a point all in and of itself. No one is going to change their mind because you argued with them about it. Which makes things a bit more complicated than you would think at first. First of all, usually someone tells someone else off because they are trying to get someone's attention to their thinking or whatever being wrong. You see this in movies all the time, where one character finally tells off another character for whatever flaw they have. 

This doesn't work in real life, not really anyway.

The thing to consider is online communication, and new friendships.

The thing is, what's missing from online communication is tone.

People often say that people with autism don't notice or understand tone, that we have a lack of change in tone, we speak rather dryly. I don't think this is the case, not really. We might have a different way of speaking, but at least for me, I am very sensitive to tone. Just like with empathy. It's just that I don't know what to do about it.

I can hear a tone in someone's voice, or hear something in their face (yes, hear their face), they are trying to hide it, but I end up feeling VERY uncomfortable. I can just tell something isn't right. And since they aren't opening up and sharing it, I feel very awkward. I don't know what to say, do or how to act because they aren't letting me know whats wrong or how they need me to act. 

Online, there's no tone, just words.

Even if you know someone well, and especially if you don't, you will not be able to hear their tone. You will not be able to feel for whether or not they have good intentions in what they say. 

The problem is, apparently, humans are really really good at picking negative tone, and we can apply that tone to just about anything anyone says, and make it feel negative. Then we can go on and on about how hurt we are, or how we feel pushed, bossed, rejected, put down, ignored, or not heard. The list goes on and on too. We can quickly and easily put all kinds of meaning and inflection on someone's online words. Then, we think we have a reason to go on the defensive, and tell them off for "hurting our feelings" or something.

What ever happened to thinking the best of someone? What ever happened to the thinking that a friend is just that; a friend, and someone who is just looking to help you, not enter into a verbal fistfight? Why don't we assume to the good, not to the negative? 

I'm just as guilty as anyone else of making wrong assumptions. I have a very wise 6th grade teacher that had something to say about assumptions; that they make an a$$ out of you and me. Pretty clever, I guess. 

We really need to stop putting words in people's mouths. We need to stop assuming based on one line here and one line there that we know their intentions. We need to stop assuming we know their thinking, their opinions, their life, their hearts, their relationship with Jesus, their family values, or the meaning of their words, based on the little we see. It isn't fair to your friends to assume that their intentions are to hurt you. It isn't fair to YOU to make those assumptions either. There is no reason to get all upset, get your body physically worked up, and risking ruining or scarring a friendship over something you assumed about someone else or their words. 

It just isn't fair. Life's too short. Life is hard and we could use all the opportunity for friendships we can get. Especially when you have aspergers. I can't count the number of times I didn't realize what I had with a friend. Sometimes it takes years for me to realize how good a friend I have with someone. Sometimes what I think is just a causual friendship is actually something more to them, and I just didn't realize it. I wish and pray for a deep best friend, and then I realize I have one. At least, for a time. Getting upset over something isn't worth it, especially when you're assumption is faulty.

And, to be honest, we need to really watch it when we do the same to our Bible's. We need to stop assuming we know everything, first of all. There is always something new to learn. No one is all knowing except God, and He can and will keep teaching you something about His word every time you read it.
But more than that, we need to watch out that we aren't taking a line here or a line there and putting our own spin on it. We need to be sure we aren't making assumptions about things God does based on what WE think of something. 

We need to be more careful. We need to be more kind. We need to constantly pursue thoughts, feelings and interpretations of others that are higher than they deserve. Think the best of others. Think of how much they must love you to have picked you for a friend. Whether it's a friendship of decades, or days, they saw something in you that they wanted to be a friend. Even if love isn't the right word, you have to think they don't mean to hurt you. Even if they do, who wins? You do, because you are taking the high road, feeling good about yourself and your choices, and you aren't sitting around wallowing in self pity and self doubt! 

This post when in a completely different direction than I intended. I guess maybe I make two posts tonight! :P 

Thanks for listening.

Saw It, Loved It, Reposting It: Sensory Processing & 90% Cure Part 2

Today I saw this VIA Karla's ASD Page on FB:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Karlas-ASD-Page/155369821204141

I loved it! Here it is:

The message posted with this photo is as follows:

"The three root causes of social communication differences in autistic people are directly impacted by said person’s ability to process sensory information. Both overall energy (need for down time or alone time) and real-time processing are affected when sensory processing skills are poor. 


It is absolutely ridiculous to think that teaching me social skills will help me in most social situation

s due to my severe sensory processing issues. I am lucky to process even some of what is said in most areas where there are more than 2 people gathered and talking.

It is mandatory that caregivers start to recognize some of the root causes of our social differences and to accommodate those versus forcing us into all these social skills classes.

Yes, if a person has no sensory processing issues and high abstraction abilities, it may help. The rest of us.... I think it hurts much more than it helps. Teach advocacy first!!! " - Karla's ASD Page


I was told when I was tested that I have high processing speed. However, I still require tons of alone time.  I have social anxieties because of bad past experiences (not distant past either, recent past too!). I can't process information well when there are other things going on around me. I DO take a long time to get to a point because I'm usually trying to figure out what I'm saying and how to say it.

The middle box struck me today. Just yesterday I had a disagreement about what is or isn't respectful with someone in a group I was admin in. There was a post that was, to my understanding, posted for the sole purpose of making fun of another person. Granted, the photo showed something that was not "normal" or "conventional", but the way that it was being shared with the purpose of teasing, making fun of and insulting another person was what bothered me. I felt the post was disrespectful. Top that off with a person who had just made it clear they wanted us (admins) to limit the invites to the group because we didn't want it to become a place where there was a lot of drama, and we all want respect for all members so we would all feel comfortable. We had done so good over election season, no political posts and arguements at all. It was great. However, this post had gone too far, and I simply started by saying that I hoped we wouldn't continue to post material like that. (Because if one person posts it, that opens the door to someone else posting something else, and someone else posting something else.. until someone goes too far.)

Anyway, it seemed, as the disagreement went on, that this other person and I had completely different understandings of the words "admin" and "respect". We did not share the SAME DEFINITIONS of these words. I am rather sure my definitions were the literal interpretations/definitions. The other person's definitions were definitely different, as it didn't appear making fun of someone fell under the category of disrespect.

See how this can create a problem? I wonder how many times in my life that I have taken a more literal meaning of a word or method or whatnot, and gotten into disagreements with others over certain topics because their meaning was completely generalized, or broken down to mean something else. I DO NOT see things the way other people do. I know that already. But I had never before broken it down into the fact that I literally take different meanings to words or ideas.

And now knowing this, how on earth do I explain it to another person? Am I going to have to walk around as a human dictionary, telling people my definition of words simply to avoid disagreement? It is a rather mind blowing idea, that my DEFINITIONS are so different that they are causing disagreement. This is rocking my world, in a good way.

This goes along with my post Diagnosis Is 90% Of The Cure. Each time I learn something else about Aspergers, I learn something else about myself, which gives me more tools and information about how to deal with the struggles I face DAILY in my life. It gives me a MORE EMPATHETIC view toward other people who have disagreed with me in the past, and it almost makes me more tolerant of those views simply because I can understand a difference in definition, for example!

Anyway, it rocks my world. And to have this post the day after the event I described is like such perfect timing that I know this journey that I am on is meant to be. I am going in the right direction, with purpose, for the first time in my life. I've never been more grateful for diagnosis.

Processing Speed, Decision Making, Friendships

So, if you look back at my first post, you will see that I scored rather high on something called processing speed. This seems like a very self-explanitory thing, but its also very complicated. I am still in the process of understanding what this is, and all of the places in my life that it applies.

When I went to my results meeting, the example that she used was in football, the players have to be able to think fast to make the play. I responded that its like when I'm reading music, I will be reading the notes several notes ahead of where I'm actually playing. Yup, thats processing speed. Also, letter/word recognition is faster, making reading easier. It is likely, then, that I learned to read early on because of this high processing speed; learning quickly what a word looked like, not through phonics or sounding it out, but through just remembering what the word looked like, and recognizing it helped me know what the word is. This all would explain both early reading, and the speed reading I did in my childhood. I could read an entire book in a few hours. I remember I read a lot of "Babysitters Club", and the Sweet Valley books, among others. I could polish them off in as little as an hour.
I also beat a math teacher on times tables. He used to time us doing 100 times tables from X1 to X12. I was always rather fast at this, but I did eventually beat HIS best time, which was totally awesome.

However, there are other ways that I'm told are affected by processing speed. My ability to take in information and make a decision based on that information is also a part of processing speed. If I acquire some knowledge on a subject, I quickly make a decision on the topic. These decisions are hard to be changed. I am almost always SURE of the decision I have made, no matter what. It takes a very long time to adjust or change my thinking. This isn't because I'm stubborn or bullheaded. This is because I processed previous information, made a concrete decision, and that decision feels like a "final" decision for me. Over time, I can adjust and change my position, but it usually takes a lot of additional information and study, as well as patient and understanding people who are willing to understand that I just don't see it any other way. Again, this is not a stubbornness. This is just the way my brain works. I don't know WHY it works this way, it just does. 

This can work about subjects like parenting or religion, both of which get me into hot water with people. But I can see pretty well how this works for people as well. 

Friendships are hard for me. They always have been. I don't remember "real" friendships as a young child, I pretty much kept to myself because I didn't know what to do and I was way more interested in reading a book or something than what the other kids were doing. I remember always liking the teachers, and trying to help them out was something I preferred to do. (Though, there were a few teachers whom I did NOT like.)

I did have friends, but usually they didn't have anything in common except that we were all outcasts. We didn't really fit in anywhere else, so naturally, it was together. Even with them, I was not sharing a lot of common interests, and certainly not a lot of social time outside of school!

As an adult, I still don't understand how friendships work. When I meet someone, I might think that they seem great, but I don't ever know how to make the first move. I don't ever know what to say. My son has been a better icebreaker than anything else in life, but even then I'm hesitant because he is SO forward that sometimes the kid he's talking to has no idea what to do with him either!

But once I feel I'm friends with someone, I have quickly (remember processing speed) decided that this is a person I can trust. This is a person who is my friend! They must like me if I feel like they are friendly with me, right? Yay! A friend! 

This often leads to me feeling very open with them. I'm a "you've been here once, you're family" type person, so once you're in, you're in. Then I have no problems sharing, talking to, being with this new friend. (Clarifying, still, not all the time or anything, and the talking to is more complicated than just talking to them - I stilll suffer for what to talk about....)

The problem with this is that apparently other people aren't like that. First of all, other people usually cannot and sometimes even should not be trusted that quickly. I have learned the hard way more than once that feeling like I'm friends with someone does NOT mean we are friends. Just because someone is nice to me does not mean that they even like me. (Why do we pretend to like someone? Please don't do that to me.) And I can tell you that I have ended up being used, gossipped about and "burned" from feeling like I'm friends with someone who had no interest whatsoever in being my friend.

 Second, people apparently don't trust me back right away. I have this crazy belief that I can trust people. Whether they are a new friend or an old friend, once a person feels like a friend, I trust them. Again, I get burned because there are people out there who are apparently willing and able to take advantage of my naive trust and openness. I tell them things that they probably don't want to know, or that they aren't "close enough" to be told yet. There is only one line in the sand with me. In. Out.

See, in my mind this is heartbreaking because I trust people, and they don't trust me back. It hurts because I feel like we're friends, only to find out we aren't. I show such interest in a person, I shower them with compliments, thoughtfulness, gifts, and I get nothing back in return. 

Then I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I shouldn't be the kind of friend that always expects something in return. I shouldn't be the kind of person who does something just to see what I get back. And I don't think that is the problem. I just misunderstand how friendships work. To me, you are either a friend, or you are not. There is no "almost friend" or "acquaintenance". I don't work into a friendships through these steps like everyone else apparently does.

In my life, more than once, and throughout my whole life, I have trusted in people who seemed to be so nice to me. I latched onto them and expressed my appreciation for them in my life through crushes and loving behavior and feelings. Looking back, even I feel like I was crazy.

 It was always refreshing to feel like I was special to someone, and I wanted to make them feel special too. I felt as if I made a difference in their life, as if my feelings of friendship weren't mistaken. It was always nice to be considered a person that they valued. 

The problem was that there were more of these "friendships" that were with, perhaps to be described as "inappropriate" people. Typically, they were never people my age (kids my age were not safe), and they were people that I technically were "safe" from. They couldn't really hurt me, because they weren't really allowed IN my life. They were in my life, don't get me wrong, but it isn't like we hung out or went places together. They were "safe" people to put my interest and friendship and even love toward, because they really couldn't reject my feelings because they couldn't accept my feelings either. 

Does that make any sense? I don't know if I'm making any sense. Basically, I focused a ton of obsession, energy, time and money into people who were so nice to me, but who were "safe" enough that they COULDN'T be mean to me. (Also, they wouldn't, I don't think, because they were not an immature stage of life, like many of the people my age were. I just didn't/don't have time to play games in friendships. I'm not a dramatic person really.) 

This was very confusing for me because my feelings of love for them weren't "really" love, yet I felt completely enamored with them. People who know me rather well know specific people this applies to, but it was more than just one person, because it happened from as early as I can remember, all through school, and even into college. I can honestly say, however, that since my husband and I married, I have not really had those feelings about another person in a long time, though I still struggle more with those people I was enamored with than anyone else because what do I do now? How do I reconstruct any form of relationship with them? Again, I feel like either we are friends or we aren't friends, the middle ground isn't someplace I like to be with people.

My feelings of friendship are intense. When I meet someone that I feel I can trust, I have a hard time holding back. I almost want to know everything about them in one sitting, and to share everything about me with them as well. I want to KNOW a person almost inside out, and to have them want to know me back. I used to write down everything I knew about people, like a teen magazine would write a celebrity's favorites list. Apparently, this doesn't work for the vast majority of the people in the world, and I have watched people "run" because, it seems, I have scared them off with my intensity about it. 

What I really want is just to be understood here. I want people to know that I'm not insane or nuts for wanting to be close friends right away. It should be a sign that I trust a person, not a sign that I'm coming on too strong. Luckily, I can count at least 2 people in my life who responded positively to my forwardness of friendship, and those friendships seem to be completely fine. 

The worst part is probably that I'm not aware until its already over or past that I'm coming off so strongly. Or if I do realize it, all I know is that it feels so good to feel accepted that I'm not willing to back down and be the cause of a faded friendship. I'd rather come on too strong than be accused of not coming on at all. It probably hurts more when I'm eventually rejected, but I put myself out there for someone I thought I could trust, and for some reason, this is ok. 

I hope some of this made sense. I was kinda just writing as my thoughts came out, so I'm sorry for length and probably a poor interpretation of processing speed, but it is an insight into my head maybe?