bacondrink wrote:I was just thinking of this when I stumbled across this board. I'd spent an hour and a half composing a very short email to a friendly acquaintance about meeting up, weighing every word, deciding whether or not to include certain bits. In the end I didn't send the email.
I think part of it maybe to do with verbal reasoning. I believe I'm right in saying that some dyspraxics perform above average in verbal reasoning tests, and I reckon this bleeds over into every day interactions. When we communicate, so much of what we say isn't overt and is merely implicit. So if you're very good at understanding the conceptual baggage of a sentence, it stands a good chance that you're much more aware of the minute differences of meaning in two fairly similar statements than most other people would be. You get that what you're saying has all this other meaning, and everyone else is blissfully unaware. This is particularly difficult as language is a far from perfect medium for communicating things (counterintuitively)
So in this email I was writing, the whole issue was whether I would come off as overly presumptious about the status of my friendship with the recipient. My issue was that if I acknowledged the fact that I was asking to meet outside the official pretense under which we normally meet (uni stuff), I would then have introduced the idea of the official stuff, which would make the meeting a kind of quasi-official catch up. At the same time it seemed remiss not to mention the fact that hitherto this point we have always met for the same reason. It's difficult to describe without going into specifics but it was driving me round the bend.
I'm now deliberately not going to agonise over this post, although I should say, I really really want to.
Excellent post, I immediately understood precisely what you meant. The hindrances of an above average verbal reasoning - perhaps trying to compensate for our other shortcomings? - is a fascinating point you raise.
I'm looking at my CAT scores (anyone remember those? Cognitive ability tests you are given in school at different stages 9, 10, 11, 14?) and for my verbal reasoning, aged 11, I was in the 96th percentile. I was in 97th for quantitative and 63 for non-verbal. The huge 33/34 percentile drop came courtesy of dyspraxia, but even still it was better than 62% of similar aged children. That makes it clear to me that our other powers of reasoning can and will compensate for the failings in areas that dyspraxia affects us.
It leads to, in my view, a lateral approach. We
have to devise ways of bypassing areas of perception, analysis, memory and understanding that aren't fit for purpose, that don't work for us, especially those years diagnosed (those test scores apparently raised no alarm bells.Was spotted through an Art teacher!) wherein we must operate within the confines of systems that take such abilities for granted. At the very least, systems that like to pigeonhole: you're either below, above, or merely average as a whole. If there is a difference between your performances in different areas then it's placed at
your door: how many times did we get lazy, easily distracted, lacks attention, unmotivated, doesn't follow instructions, doesn't listen e.t.c. I mean if you can get 20/20 on your spelling test, why can't you do some simple cutting and sticking?
So I think other areas overcompensating mean you can hone, say, very powerful verbal reasoning. You gave a perfect description of exactly how I've experienced it: I have an intuitive understanding of every word I'm using, I can just appreciate the subtle differences between words people usually class as interchangeable. I hate the thought of being misunderstood, because I know when I read something I give every word attention.
Maybe this is why, as the OP said, they get very nervous around people and conversations. When you grasp the depth of your vocabulary to the extent we do, we are constantly evaluating the permutations of every word both in itself and when used as part of a sentence, and finding the perfect combination of words to express our thoughts feels essential. The problem is that most people this flies over their heads and the subtleties are lost on them: not only do they not always appreciate the nuances of what we're saying, but they often don't appreciate the nuances of what
they're saying, leaving you to fret over some inference you've made into the way they phrased some off-hand comment they had no idea could or would be interpreted the way we manage to. That is the final, embarrassing nail in the social coffin: anxiously pressing the unbeknownst person into a full explanation of something they didn't even know they'd implied in part. They're bound to think we're weird... paranoid/oversensitive, even. However you want to phrase it.
But, honestly, I am happy to think this way... I feel a twinge of dyspraxic pride that deficits in some areas have led me to develop an almost unique reasoning power others: I love that I see the world and perceive things around me differently, because I've realised it isn't my (or our) mistake. And understanding this has helped me completely change my outlook. I shouldn't be depressed about the failings of others, just aware that I need to do my best to accommodate them but importantly, stop blaming myself first. Trust my own intuition no matter what, even if 90% of people around me think differently. I've never looked back
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