refuzz:

thebibliosphere:

jenoh77:

thebibliosphere:

instantbanana:

my-mental-pile:

itsme98z:

YES. Make things clearer and more specific

Especially the first one! I have a really hard time knowing if somebody actually wants me to do something unless they are specific about the task and direct it towards me completely. 

This is some adhd/autism solidarity Mood™️

Passive vs direct communication.

Some people are capable of having entire conversations in passive tone through subtext. I’m one of them (it’s not healthy), but this completely falls apart when you encounter someone only used to dealing with direct communication.

It’s one of the things ETD and I actually struggle with. I was conditioned never to make direct statements or requests of someone, because it was considered “rude”. The end result of this of course is that people don’t actually understand what you’re saying, and then spend a good portion of their lives feeling upset and hurt that no one seems to deem you worthy enough to listen to, and you just end up wiping the table clean yourself in frustration because why fucking bother to ask, no one listens.

Except you didn’t ask, did you. You made a statement. And some people won’t view that statement as anything other than a passing comment about the table needing to be cleaned.

(You could argue that on seeing the table needs cleaned, it should be done anyway, but that’s another topic for discussion.)

Life gets so much easier when you stop speaking in subtext, and actually say what you mean, both for those who require direct communication to navigate the rollercoaster that is social schema, but also for yourself in general.

@thebibliosphere

For people who would struggle to move to a direct form of speech in one go, what do you think about a halfway house e.g. “That table needs to be cleared when you have a minute please.”

Oh it’s absolutely not something you can adjust to in one fell swoop. This is something I’ve been working on for years, but still slip into, particularly if I’m not certain of the people I’m talking to.

With that more directish kind of request, you still have to account for the fact that the person might think “it’s not an issue right at this second, so I’ll get to it in a while” rather than dealing with it as a direct request that needs dealt with sooner if not immediately.

If you’re fine with that, cool, but also don’t be surprised if you still get annoyed if the person doesn’t react immediately or how you want/expect them to. They’re not intentionally hurting/ignoring you (generally speaking, there is always an exception to any situation), though it’s easy to feel that way when you have a life time of passive communication and passive aggression to process.

But whatever you can do to make your meaning more direct and better understood is helpful and beneficial, and something you can keep working on, both for your benefit and the benefit of others 🙂

I wish my manager had communicated with me directly