Suddenly Autistic Taking Things Literally
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- In this video, I explore my relationship with literal thinking. I question what it is, whether I, as an autistic person do it, whether I always think that way and if not, when it's most likely I will.
Taking things literally is to absorb information in the way that it was presented, adding no sub-text, wider context or relational meaning to it. Autistic people are commonly thought of as being highly literal but I'm not sure it's that simple. While I have found myself to be more literal than I imagined, that only described the initial relationship I form with this new input. What happens after that is highly contextual, depending on my environment and the nature of the input. In terms of inputs I identified the level of action I'm required to take and the level of emotionality inherent to the situation to be key factors in whether my thinking expands beyond the what-you-see-is-all-there-is or not. I dive into this further in this video and also consider how my personal history influences how inputs are received and how likely it is I'll get stuck on a literal interpretation of events.
Overall I found this topic to be much more challenging and interesting than expected. As always my thoughts and insights come from my own experience, I'm not professing to be an expert in this topic and neither do I wish to speak for all autistics.
I hope you find the video and accompanying slides useful and must warn you there are a couple of mild swear words and a little smutty humour included.
A couple of observations from my own experience:
When I know that something is meant non-literally, one of my favorite forms of humor is deliberately interpreting it literally.
When something is not meant literally but I'm not certain this is the case, I *think* what usually happens is that I'm aware of the non-literal interpretation and that it is likely to be what was intended, but when in doubt literalism wins. I guess my feeling is that if I'm wrong, I've got a reasonable explanation-that's what the words mean. Whereas if I go with the non-literal interpretation and I'm wrong, the explanation is probably going to involve assumptions about the motives or mental state of my interlocutor. Even when those assumptions are completely innocent, people (myself included) don't like having motives incorrectly attributed to them, so the risk of acrimony is inherently high.
Very interesting
Well put. In real-time conversation situations I've had a habit of trying to guess the latter (the likely non literal meaning), which is part of masking. How good I am at getting it right depends on my energy levels ("spoons") and other factors like the sensory load of the situation. I'm learning to just.. ask for clarification.
Interesting examples. A lot of my stupid "dad joke" humour is like that, I know what's happening but my brain is still sniggering like Beavis & Butthead. Ironically we (and especially non autistic people) can take the "taking things literally" thing too literally.
This makes sooooooo much sense. My entire childhood was like this but my father was such a prick about it that I ended up thinking every step of the way through and through in order to see the nuance.
Yes! There's so much mental load that goes on behind the scenes though isn't there! I
I also relate to your box example…I have seen it as me being ditzy…and can often laugh at myself.
The thing at the end with the box is something I would totally do.
Yes I'm definitely curious about this aspect of autistic thinking. It appears the least affected by personality, trauma or intellect.
At this point, I reserve the right to just take the literal interpretation of requests, as it's much too much work to parse out that "Would you like to..." means "Please ....". It's not really worth my energy to parse it out and try and guess the correct meaning, that just puts me in a bit of a death spiral. Yes, I normally can figure out what's intended, but it is an awful lot of work when people can just tell me what they want.
When I saw the ad for the film The Triangle of Sadness, my brain read it as The Sadness of Triangles, which I found an intriguing title. When I looked at the picture, I lost interest altogether.
Lol now that's another interesting take. I can already picture the math department trying to elicit emotion from their triangles
That made me think of the famous Heider-Simmel animation which was originally used in psychological studies in the 1940s but has also been applied in autism studies, I believe ruclips.net/video/VTNmLt7QX8E/видео.html
I do that a lot, mostly when I"m tired and I'm reading some of the words with one eye and the rest with the other.
@@eubique Yes me too!
Hello, whilst I rejected organised religion after becoming disillusioned very early on in life. I really relate to taking literally stories about Jesus and indeed the example he set us. I thought it was good and right to help people in a self sacrificing way I thought Jesus did, even if that ultimately led to my crucifixion. It means I have stayed in situations and relationships that were or became harmful to me, I thought it was the right thing to do. Thanks for sharing and for creating videos.
I've never really been a fan of organised religion either. That said, I do find myself reading the jesus bits differently these days. There's no way he wanted us to be sheep. That's the control freaks talking. We should never sacrifice ourselves in the service of others & should never expect that of others.
Sacrifice as in Not being humble? Mind if you can clarify?
On the one hand, Organised religions contain both the Exoteric and the latter Esoteric teachings, Exoteric represents the bulk such as Mainstream Christianity, Ruist Confucian or Menciunism, Ahmadeism, Paganism and the modern Sunni & shia Islam : known as the Exoteric school, whilst the lesser known Organised religious 'Orders' are the Esoteric, which looks in-wardly as opposed to the external suffering framework, also colloquially as the Occult framework, like the Rosicrucian, Mandaens, Sufis, Zen Buddhist and Taoist Supreme purity, including other names they both have vast different objectives like exoteric knowledge are Used "by the controllers to control" while the Esoteric are secret eye opening view of the World.
What do I mean by all this, I agree with you on particular parts (both the original commentator and your response) but the commentator makes the false equivocation, that "Jesus is a literal being".
It is not ideal to respond to Organised religions, as it's a whole new can of Pandora's box, by asserting religion foster "Sheep like mentality", because a religious person could use the No true-scotsman fallacy to rebuttal defend their Religious Exoteric faith, is reductionist and seems to disrespect entangle your points to the religious audience.
Interesting 😊
Taking things literally is something that I relate to.
The saying I didn’t get for the longest time was “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”
Also I couldn’t understand the term “soap opera.”
That said, I do love word play, especially puns.
what i am about to say will be spiritually liberating. there is a scripture in the bible that say ( and I am paraphrasing) in the book of Matthew.
" what comes out of your mouth reveals the core of your heart" so by that biblical logic their shouldn't be a problem taking someone's words literal or serious. perhaps the problem is the person not thinking before they speak regardless if they are joking, being sarcastic, serious or not. its fair game to critique or to ask for understanding after the fact. perhaps the problem is your discernment is revealing their true intentions. " the lips profess whats on the heart at all times according to the bible. and if its not the case then maybe we as people should do more thinking before we speak. but to call it autism is something i will not agree with when the bible tells me otherwise.
Thanks for sharing and yes, I agree and feel that words have so much power and we should choose them carefully. That's why I found your last sentence a little off. Calling it autism may well be a modern word created by our modern world to describe a variance of being human that's as old as time. Language is relational and relationships are dynamic. I believe we are wise to reference the past sentiment to guide current and future actions (as a teacher) but to implement those lessons in real time. Therefore calling how I experience the world and myself (I'm autistic in my relationship with myself and, therefore my 'god' in private too) is right.