There’s an old phrase of advice that says to “listen to understand, not to respond.” This wisdom encourages people to engage deeply with someone with whom they are having a conversation rather than only thinking about their next chance to talk. This is particularly important in arguments where, instead of truly understanding the perspective of the other person, we’re only listening for mistakes or errors that we can jump on to gain the upper hand. When we don’t truly listen, we may be able to have a conversation, but we’re not able to have a connection. The difficulty in this for autistic people is that it takes us much longer to process information. In a world where conversations happen in a “you talk, I talk, you talk, I talk” pattern, there is often not enough room in a conversation to take the time we truly need to process what the other person just said. If we were to simply pause or not respond, it would lead to an awkward encounter. Our conversation partner may even assume some emotional reason for the pause. We can always make the choice to say “can I pause a moment to process that?” but what does that do to the flow of the conversation? More often than not, we feel pressured to listen to respond, picking up on key details so we can provide an adequate response when it’s “our turn,” essentially the auditory version of “skimming the text.” In conversations with other autistic people, conversations can sometimes go slower, with both people needing that time to pause and recognizing that need for the other. However, even then, we can fall into the force of habit of striving for the neurotypical communication style that we’ve been trained in all our lives.
This can lead to so many misunderstandings and just shallow conversations where we don’t truly feel we were able to connect with the person as much as we would have liked. We miss details and we stress over saying the right thing instead of spending time with the other person and we leave exhausted. This continues to be an ongoing struggle for me but it’s also why I love written communication like texting. While I can misinterpret tone just as much over text as in face-to-face encounters, texting gives me the time to fully process what someone says before responding. I can read and reread what they say and I don’t have to keep wondering what I forgot as my brain scrambled to fill in the blanks. Texting is often dismissed as a shallower form of communication and there are certainly important aspects of in-person relationships that make me feel less lonely and disconnected. However, texting allows me to fully understand people and more clearly articulate my thoughts in ways that I can’t always do verbally. I need both forms of communication so I can truly listen to understand and I’m not always forced to just listen to respond.
Comments