Communication 101: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[Nat]

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.