Adventures du jour!
It feels like my brain’s gonna melt early today, so I’m gonna jot some things down before they’re gone, then call a friend
and go read books. If the hormones give me a break I’ll write; otherwise I’ll just weather it.
Last night I tried to listen to a friend’s video and my brain kept sliding out. I tried again this morning, and the brain escalated and did the thing where it slid out seemingly on purpose: I “felt” like I remembered what was in the video, but couldn’t actually remember any of it.
I got up sore, cranky, crampy, and restless; I skipped yoga and went out for a walk to think about it, not the video but the process of “feeling” like I’d been listening when I hadn’t. Brain slide.
Because I’m me and I’ve had the past I’ve had, I’ve learned to notice when other people are brain sliding on me. I don’t always get it right, mind you, but it’s helpful for establishing when the other person is having a reaction.
Signs:
–“I am big and you are small” body language, tone, positioning. Often this involves literally looking down on me or otherwise invoking the other person’s status, authority, age, “adultness,” etc.
–“They are watching us” body language, tone, positioning. Often this involves pulling in the shoulders, learning forward, and lowering the voice.
–“In one ear and out the other” body language, tone, positioning. Often this involves very supportive-seeming gestures, like touching the arm, smiling, nodding, cracking jokes/using humor, followed by little or no memory whatsoever.
There are probably others, but those are the main ones I pick up on. I’m the third one, “in one ear and out the other.” However, because of the ADD stuff, I also monitor for “oh god what did I miss now” situations constantly, so I sometimes catch myself after, or sometimes during, a brain slide (like with that video).
I have watched all three types of people, sometimes in the same sentence, start to say something they’d rather not know, do what they need to do to defend themselves, and completely erase knowledge that they’ve done so.
I remember one particular conversation with me and two friends where friend A put herself down, friend B and I said, “Hey, be nice to yourself,” and friend A lowered her voice, leaned toward us across the table, and said, “I hate it when people put themselves down, don’t you?” or something very similar. Friend B and I looked at each other, like, “WTF?” and I said, “[Friend A], you literally *just* put yourself down.” “Did I? No I didn’t.” I may not be remembering it exactly, but that was the gist.
Sometimes the “big/small” and the “they’re watching” people remember; often they don’t. (My mom rarely did; she used all three tactics, often in quick succession, until she found the one that worked with other people.) It’s probably a good thing I’m not a con artist; once you know what type of brain slide a person favors and what situations trigger it, you can dump a bunch of that trigger on them whenever you need to make them avoid a certain, completely unrelated, topic or just generally question their sense of reality. The ex was a master at it, with multiple tactics at his disposal.
One of the ideas I’ve been playing with lately is that we, as a society, trigger brain slides constantly to control individual behavior.
TW: disability.
I recently ran into a trigger that was “disabled people/people in difficult situations have to perform the same actions that abled/entitled people do, in order to be considered good people.” I posted a thing about judging people who don’t put their shopping carts away and got a lot of pushback that I was lashing out at people with disabilities.
Okay, I’ve been known to put my foot in my mouth a time or two (perhaps even in this case), but the real issue seemed to be that people who are disabled were being pushed somehow to think that they should feel guilty about needing extra resources. DUDE. TAKE THE RESOURCES WITH MY BLESSING.
I’m not sure how the trigger is being built, other than getting confronted with questions like “Are you really disabled?” I really need to pay more attention.–If you’re feeling triggered right now, you have my sympathies. It’s not you. It’s selfish fuckery.
…End TW: disability.
TW: ND.
Another example is when my neurodivergent friends say, “I can’t read subtext.”
Now, with the ADD stuff, I tend to exist in a messy space with overlapping layers of meaning, context, memory, and perspective, such that navigating them isn’t always easy. I didn’t have gaydar naturally, for example, but after I’d taken in the commonalities of people I knew who were gay (as well as given my own attractions a closer look), I acquired it.
I knew there was something going on. I just didn’t know what it was.
Anyway, recently I asked for feedback on whether people “talked with their hands,” were neurodivergent, and how well they could lie. It was a messy set of questions, more just to explore ideas than to prove anything.
What I got was:
–Many of my friends communicate with their hands, often because they come from a background where that was necessary or common to ensure clear communication. (Me too.)
–Many of my friends are neurodivergent, in a wide variety of flavors. (Me too.)
–Many of my friends hate lies. (Me too.)
–Several of my friends can themselves lie spectacularly well. (I can really only pull off a direct lie via fiction or if someone’s health/safety are on the line, but I’m good at misdirection. Other people mentioned they were also very good at misdirection, or basically filling up the subtext “space” with so many truths that the pertinent truth wasn’t clear.)
I also know that many of my friends have a good sense of humor (if sometimes *very* dry and probably easier to miss) and are able to negotiate smaller in-person gatherings–delightfully so.
And I know what it’s like to be conscious of being gaslit.
Put that all together, and what I suspect is: “I’m bad at subtext” may be more of a well-crafted trigger than actual fact.
I value my ND friends’ ability to call me on bullshit, either directly (cough) or patiently, over time, by nodding thoughtfully as I faceplant on something.
And in fact, when I am at a place where I’m overwhelmed socially, I will beeline toward them because they’re the sane ones. They will also stop what they’re doing and ask if I’m okay. They even navigate my dumbass jokes easily, when they have the context to do so.
None of this is indicative of being bad at subtext, but it’s pretty consistent with someone going, “every time you call me on my bullshit, I’m going to make you second-guess yourself, until you think that your ability to spot bullshit is flawed, and I’m gonna tell you that it means you’re bad at subtext.”
“But I never know when X!”
“I never know when people are flirting with me” is the main one I hear, although mine is usually “I never know when people hate each other.” “I never know when people are being abused” is probably another one. “I never know when I’m right and the other person is wrong” seems another.
If you’re bad at reading subtext in a situation where revealing X has a lot of social cost, then maybe you’re not bad at reading subtext, but are encountering other people’s attempts to protect themselves, often through a fog of lies. (Or your own attempt to protect yourself, if finding out X means you will have to take actions with a social cost. I attempted to protect myself from the social cost of leaving my ex for years, by forcing myself not to know what he was doing to me.)
Both of my therapists have said that at least I’ll never get fooled the same ways my ex and my mom got me, because I’ve done the work of picking apart the illusions a bit and have a basic gut instinct of when other people are or aren’t doing it. (More work in progress; I’m defusing the more extreme panic/run reactions for things that aren’t actually a danger.)
Anyway, point being: I wasn’t oversensitive per se, just living with someone who used the word “oversensitive” to gaslight me. It’s not being oversensitive if you’re sensing things that are actually there. And “you can’t read subtext” might just mean that you’re reading it a little too well for other people’s comfort (or your own).
…End TW: ND.
In the end, it was a good walk. I’ll work on the brain slide things I’m aware of (as if they were being summoned, several more opportunities to deal with them emerged while I was typing, which is good). And I feel more mentally with it, so apparently typing this all out to try to get it straight in my head was what I needed.
And maybe some chai with coffee. Yes. A good day.
My apologies if I pissed you off or otherwise triggered you; feel free to message me if you want to vent. Just know that I probably won’t get too deep into things unless you’re funny, interesting, or just in need of support. In which case don’t get snippy, just ask for hugs. >.>