Niceness Conditioning

I technically go nonverbal sometimes, in the "can make mouth sounds but can't actually Words" sense. I have to be super panicky for that to happen, but...it happens.

Oddly, I don't think I got a huge amount of niceness conditioning despite being AFAB? But then again, my parents never liked the idea of pushing gender norms on a kid, which might have something to do with it. And my mom is pretty sharp-tongued herself, so...yeah. I do have fears of being assertive but those are pretty clearly trauma-linked in my case.

Finally, auditory processing disorder. I've got it big time, and didn't even realize what was going on until maybe two years ago. AND YES SUBTITLES. Subtitles are God's gift to spergs. <3

So uh...that's my anecdata!

 

Don't forget - the thread is MOSTLY about niceness in the face of the nonverbal things. Anecdata about why and when and how you deal with it and if stuff like being AFAB is part of the "being nice when you want to slap them with your AAC device"

 

"I cannot tell you that my auditory processing is making it impossible to understand you because that would be RUDE. So instead I will nod and make listening noises and hope I don't accidentally heck up in the process."

 

And see, I'm generally not like that when I'm nonverbal. If anything I get more belligerent.

 

I have been known to walk out of a meeting and when asked why I tell them "because the twit invited a nonverbal person and then didn't provide any translations for his diarrhea of the mouth. I wasn't going to just sit there listening to babble while I have real work to do."
I usually don't get invited to meetings more than once :)

 

Wow I actually do that a LOT! I'm not sure I frame it in my head as Rude so much as Frustrating For Both Parties, but end result is similar. Like just recently I told my boss that most of the time I don't really hear what she says, I listen to her tone to infer what sort of message she wants to convey and guess what action will resolve it. We've worked together for ten years and she had no idea, so it seems I guess pretty well. It doesn't help that she frequently says the wrong word so even when I can understand her I may still have to interpret.

You are so awesome, I love seeing people just refuse to take shit ^_^

So I do seem to have internalized some niceness training, in that I have a hard time being assertive or confronting people - though presumably it would have been more extreme if I were afab. I dislike when people try to get dominant with me and typically respond with an aggressive need to prove that I could be the dominant one if I chose, which is probably part of my amab socialization. Since I've perceived my auditory troubles as hearing loss, I've found it pretty easy to just claim that "my hearing isn't what it used to be," despite being 36 and often being read as younger.

But i get hugely frustrated when people ask me to repeat myself - I can snap at people pretty badly if I feel like they're just not listening. I always figured it as just a pet peeve, but it may simply be that I'm burning up extra resources by verbalizing twice. (When I find that certain individuals need repetition often, I have recently started asking if the have any hearing loss or auditory processing difficulties I should be aware of, so I know if I need to allocate extra patience for them, and warn them that my niceness may fail despite my best intentions).

So... Yeah, I guess I've always kind of known that the world expects me to expect things my way, despite my discomfort with taking advantage of that privilege.

 

Baby just says "sedidawready" ( said it already ) and goes on, ignoring any requests to repeat what she said.

 

So I´m going to an appointment with an autism org on Thursday. I am very likely gonna go nonverbal because overload and stress. Can someone help me with a script for getting people to let me communicate by writing. I don´t need them to write just to read my words.
By script I mean actions, for obviously reasons.

 

meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
it's terrible and I can't even ask people to repeat themselves unless it's absolutely 100% necessary--like when I was filling out SSI forms. then it was necessary. the rest of the time? no, I'm just gonna nod and smile and make listening noises.

 

And then there's phone calls. When I have to make one, more often than not, I understand absolutely nothing the other person says. I'll just repeat "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that" until they get too frustrated and hang up.

 

Possibly off topic here but if you expect to go nonverbal (or its a distinct possibility) maybe...i was gonna say call them but thats probably difficult. I hope they have email? Ask them ahead of time like "i will likely need to switch to written communication during my appointment, please notify me if that will present any issues for your office" maybe?

Or idk tell them very first thing during the appt that you may need to switch to writing. And have a thing typed or written up for if/when you lose words that says youre going to be writing starting then

I hope thats at least a bit helpful? I've only gone sort-of-nonverbal once so im not an expert.


Personal exp: i' diabetic and ive had to interrupt my very long-winded then-landlord to get across the idea that i needed to. juice? now, sorry, bye, thanks, yeah, thanks,

The windup to that was like five minutes of me getting progressively more sweaty/wobbly as he just talked and talked about whatever.