bite
een the undemonstrative one myself, and the problem is, you don't even realise you're doing it. You just assume everyone else in the world can see through your blank expression and neutral words to what you're feeling, and your focus on what's "within" can make you blind to gestures and symbols that are really important to others. I don't know if it's self-absorption, a failure of manners, a trait that needs fixing or simply the way some of us are.
The way I experienced it it's a strange rut you're in, part not noticing it's important or worth the effort to communicate and part having no means at your disposal to communicate. Once you've had the epiphany that it's important, be it simply because someone told you (probably because you've been pissing them off) or because you've had that lightbulb moment on your own, there is no going back to your old ways. When you find yourself not communicating properly you just can't help but think "this isn't really clever and you know better."
There are a few very handy tools to promote noticing like perspective-taking thought experiments, making the habit of mirroring others and asking meaningful questions about how they are perceiving situations. When all is said and done, it's pretty much skills you can learn and automatize, though just going through the motions can be detrimental, too.
All of the above I would phrase differently should this apply to a cognitive-divergent person.
last edited at Feb 19, 2016 2:43PM
