I was listening to a podcast about add/adhd the other day, and the hosts were talking about social/communication problems we have. I know I can't be the only affected member, so I thought I would go ahead and post them here.

We aren't always aware when we are communicating too much or too little. We can make ourselves a pest when we are communicating too much. We can hurt people's feelings by forgetting about them for long periods of time. Time is experienced very differently for many of us, and we tend to get entirely involved in the thing that is right in front of us. We can have poor impulse control. We forget to close loops in conversation - so we often don't complete a conversation the same way others might. We have trouble categorizing or differentiating "important" details from minutia. We have a lot of trouble with follow-up and follow-through. Our minds don't stay on topic, and we may often veer or pingpong from one topic to another. A third of us display some OCD tendencies, and many of us struggle with depression, anxiety or are bipolar. We can be very inattentive listeners and readers. I myself am a very slow reader and often I will impulsively respond to something half-way through reading it.

We are generally accepting and liking of others, though more formal and rigid rules of friendship are often impossible for us to understand or maintain. Through years of living with add/adhd, many of us have developed a learned helplessness in response to the negative results of our unintended behaviors. We reach overwhelm quickly and many of us carry around shame regarding the results of our neurological differences. Many of us grew up being told we were lazy, that we just needed to apply ourselves, that we should understand how to follow the rules, that we need to listen better, that we need to stop talking or daydreaming and pay attention, that we need to organize our whatevers.

Anyway, I thought I would put this here because it's a neurological difference that leads to different communication approaches and styles, and it's a relatively large amount of people who have it.

Oh, and we often forget things, which can really irritate people too.

One thing I really like about this site is the existence of the reps and thank you buttons an visitor messages. Having a brain that's always telling me to respond respond respond respond, these multiple options give me more access to being able to respond without disrupting or derailing a thread, and the thank you button has especially helped me be a better listener/reader.

What I personally find interesting is that I seem to have a different communications style at work than I do in my personal life. At work, I am ham-fisted blunt and I sometimes interrupt people. I mean, to the point where I have written on the back of my hand "shut up and listen" before I go in to a meeting. My job is to steer the communications/public relations image for an entire organization, so when I see people veering off the path I have put us all on that's when I become the interrupting, way too direct prick, I think. And when dealing with certain members of the media, I am the same way. Yet, it seems to work for my boss, who heads up the entire organization, and prefers that I am pro-active and aggressive -- interesting that this is the way she sees it, though, compared to how I view it, right?

In my personal life, I am just the opposite. When I meet someone, they usually tell me how quiet I am.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I have spent the last 4 years in therapy working on communication issues. What I have come to learn is that so much of how we communicate is shaped by experience since birth. I was brought up in a house where shiny, happy children were seen, but not heard. And then given no basis for emotional intelligence as a child, I found myself behind the learning curve as a young adult. While I am still painfully shy, I find it much easier, thanks to therapy, to communicate my needs, desires and to tell people no. "No" is one of the first words we learn, but it is often the most difficult to say. The other big part of communicating, of course, is listening...and I think a lot of people forget that. It's just not about talking, but being an engaged listener as well.

Jake

Great thread Medusa. I don't think I saw this noted yet (apologies if someone's already mentioned this), but the Center for Nonviolent Communication (cnvc.org) has an interesting perspective on communication:
"NVC begins by assuming that we are all compassionate by nature and that violent strategies—whether verbal or physical—are learned behaviors taught and supported by the prevailing culture. NVC also assumes that we all share the same, basic human needs, and that each of our actions are a strategy to meet one or more of these needs." The website actually has a list of needs and a list of feelings -- the exercise is to identify the feelings that arise when our needs are being met and the feelings that arise when our needs are not being met. The very first day I skimmed the lists I experienced a shift in perspective that allowed me a greater capacity to hear other people. :rrose:

Some of actually do ask
And usually it's before the can of Whoop Ass comes out, lol

A question for folks:

Is understanding the responsibility of the person wanting to be heard or the responsibility of the person listening?

Thoughts?

Personally, I think it's a two way street
We are each responsible for our own actions
If I'm truly listening and I can't understand I should ask more questions
The same goes for the person wanting to be heard, if I'm that person,
I want to answer all your questions until you get me even if we're never on the same page over the discussion

I'm with Wolfy on this one...
Too often I think misunderstandings/conflicts happen because each side of a discussion is so fixated on their point of view and how they want to express it that they aren't flexible or patient.
Sometimes it takes people a few tries to make their point, or to understand something they haven't considered, or potentially to change their point of view after hearing and considering new input.
I think both sides need to be willing to keep trying - without being aggressive or defensive or judgmental, etc. Just stay open and keep communicating....and be willing to keep asking questions, keep trying different ways to express what you think, and keep listening as well.

To extend June's example:

"I think Arizona is a racist state, and here's why"
"I don't think Arizona is a racist state, and here's why"

People saying, "I think Arizona is a racist state, and here's why."
They give their reasons and then people come in and say they are accusing every Arizonian of being a racist. To many of us this is not at all the case. People can either read the reasons why people feel that isn't the case or continue going round and round and saying yes you are accusing us of being racist.

My example:

I believe the United States is a racist country.

When I say that I am not saying every single American is a racist or that every single American supports everything that makes the country racist. I don't support racist policies, racist people, racist thoughts, culture, action, etc. However, unfortunately they do exist and unfortunately as a white person I do in many ways benefit from this being a racist country. I do feel I need to acknowledge this and do what I can to speak out and work against this rather than crying "don't call my country racist and it's not my fault anyway."

I think this is a really compelling question. I think my answer is, "both and neither" and, "it depends."

I think it's human nature to want to be heard/understood by others - especially if one is invested in relationship with said others - and even more so if the non-understanding party is actively harming or promoting the harm of the party wanting to be understood.

I think it's also human nature to be more receptive when one feels heard, understood, accepted, respected and not too stressed out. Even under those circumstances, few people want to feel like they are being preached at or condescended to.

The burden of being understood is so great when it comes to populations outside of overculture expectations. I do think the privileged party in any circumstance has a greater responsibility to attempt to understand the dynamics of inequality, because the burden to teach and see understanding is too high for those who do not share a privilege. And ignorance when it comes to issues of equality leads directly to perpetuation of said inequality. Sometimes I think one of the biggest problems - in the U.S.? in the world? In humanity? - is that ignorance benefits the privileged while harming those who do not share the privilege. Because there is no apparent and strong loopback for most people's harmful behaviors associated with classism, racism, heterosexism, sexism, etc. - there is little to no incentive for most people to learn or change behaviors.

There's a saying: "When the student is ready, the master will come." We all have times in our lives when we have the opportunity to teach or to inform and we all have times in our lives when we have the opportunity to listen and learn. Often within a single conversation, all parties experience both roles. If you put the information out there, those who are ready and willing to receive it will do so, and those who aren't ready are not likely to be able to hear it at all.

If a person feels they have relevant information to share, I think the responsibility of that person is to share that information in a way that does not demean the intended audience. I don't think it does all that much good to repeat and repeat and repeat the same bit of information in the same way and expect the intended audience to become more receptive to it. Ideally, one could act as a sort of midwife to the intended audience's understanding - because new understanding really has to gestate within the person - but I think that takes more skill than most of us have.

As for the responsibility to listen: In this day and age, we are all bombarded with so much information that none of us can take it all in. I think it's a choice whether one has the time and inclination to hear another person, though if there are indications that one's actions or inactions are causing another person or group of people *harm*, there is a greater responsibility to learn or self-examine. If one is invested in the relationship, part of that investment is the willingness to do one's best to *hear* the other's perspective and to accept the limitations another person has to hearing.

People have to be in the right place to share information in a way where it has the best chance of being received, and people have to be in the right place to be receptive to hearing and/or understanding. *Even when all parties try their best, I think it's to be expected that much of that effort will inevitably fall into a sort of black hole. In fact, I think an effort-black-hole exists in every relationship - where a certain amount of effort is never recognized by the other party. It's like a tax for being in that relationship.

(My use of the word "relationship" in this post is not referring to romantic relationships, but to any relationship between two or more people - up to and including an entire community).

Outside of all that, there's also basic learning theories to consider. When a person is first exposed to new information, it's helpful if it's related to information they already know. People can't go from zero to sixty when learning, so if a person really wants to be heard and their intended audience is not *getting it*, I think it's unreasonable to become too frustrated with the intended audience. If you are really invested in having another person understand you, you have to be willing to meet them where they are, be willing to spell it out and be receptive to learning from them as well as sharing information with them.

Easier said than done, all that.

I don't think anybody on this site said all arizonans were racist or even that the state is full of racists. Did somebody say that?

Aside from the Arizona issue, because I'm speaking generally here, do we (the people on this site, the people we encounter, the humans on this earth) tend to ignore folks who say things like "ALL x, y, z group of people are X, Y, Z" when we are out in the real world more than when it happens on the Internet? Why or why not?