As children we are told we should always tell the truth. No one ever tells us we should lie or be deliberately deceitful. As adults we say to people “Tell me what you think, honestly” when what we really mean is “Tell me what I want to hear not what you really think” and you see here we have a problem.
What ever anyone wants to believe I have always told the truth. At the very least it’s the truth as I see it and not a lie. If I’ve spoken my truth and it has not been true, then it wasn’t a deliberate intention to mislead. You see I don’t really see how lying can get us anywhere. You tell one lie then you have to remember what you’ve said and it probably leads to another lie and another lie until you can’t remember what it was you said to begin with. And that to me seems like a lot of hard work.
I have memories from childhood of getting told off for being too honest around adults. As a child you expect an adult to be pleased you remembered something they’ve forgotten not to get a knuckle on the knee for reminding them! An example of this is being sat in a government office back in the 1970’s with my Dad (sorry Dad but I’m telling this one!) as he is trying to negotiate the vehicle road tax for a van he has owned for a while, but hadn’t got road tax for. I remember quite clearly when he got the van, it was the day before my birthday which meant we were able to go out for my birthday treat to the swimming pool. We are sitting in this office sometime in April, and when asked when he got the van my Dad said he wasn’t sure, maybe a couple of weeks ago. To which I pipe up (all smiles because I was about to be VERY helpful) “Oh no, it was 8 February!” “No it wasn’t” he replies giving me a ‘look’ “Yes it was” I retorted, “It was the day before my birthday which is the 9th February because we went swimming” a hard knuckle raps on my leg, which I know isn’t a good thing but leaves me very confused. “No it wasn’t that long ago” he says. I go to pipe up again but see the look on his face and I feel confused and hurt that I don’t understand what I did wrong. This isn’t a one off for me throughout my childhood. It’s also the reason I don’t like secrets. I can keep secrets if people ask me to because I always do what I’m told, I just really don’t like the way it makes me feel – VERY uncomfortable.
I don’t get it. Wouldn’t the world be a whole lot easier if we all just told the truth?
Well, no, I guess it wouldn’t, because apparently lying to people helps to save their feelings. This notion of ‘little white lies’ is something that as your awareness of empathy becomes more developed you instinctively know, and understand how to use, unless you are autistic and you have the bypass mode fitted, as I do.
A colleague once described me as being robust. He said that the organisation needed more robust people, because sometimes it helps to keep things moving forward instead of going round in circles trying to keep up the ‘niceties’. I like this description of me. It’s a nice way of saying I can come across as blunt. I know this. But I don’t always know I’m doing it. I just see a solution to a problem and that’s where I’m heading. Sometimes this means I may walk right across someones feelings without even realising it.
I have realised this from maybe my late 20’s early 30’s and have tried to ‘reinvent’ myself self more than once to ‘fit in’. It never works. Because I can’t rewire my brain. What I have now is a system. It’s been in place for longer than my diagnosis ,but is partly responsible for me trying to get diagnosed in the first place. I call it ‘sense checking’. And it is REALLY REALLY draining.
When I have to spend a whole day in my office I keep my sense checking switched on as much as possible. I can’t guarantee it will hold as it does depend on my *current mental state and how many days continuously I have had to do this (I now have at least one working from home day a week). I assess every conversation as I am having it, to make sure I am not being too honest/overly robust in my responses. I write all my emails as I would and then I go back in and ‘fluffy’ them. My team know I do this and we do laugh about how good I’m getting at it – some might even be convinced I can do social chit chat by now! Telephone calls are difficult for me, but with a bit of preparation and reminding myself to breath before answering people I can manage them fairly well now.
Rhetorical questions are probably the hardest of all. They’re the only ones that don’t require answers, but I’ll be damned if I know when someone is asking one. Quite often I will ask “Is that a rhetorical question?” just to be sure. As a child, and especially teenager, these got me into the most trouble. My inclination when asked a question is to answer it. And as I struggle with working out how someone is feeling I quite often totally missed the point. This is not helpful when someone uses a rhetorical question at the end of telling me off “…do you understand Kristianne?” Me, “Well, acutely no because….” further reprimanding follows. This was like a pattern for me growing up. It has to some extent followed me into adulthood, but I have become better at recognising it and can catch myself before the instinct to answer kicks in.
*This can depend on how many days consecutively I’ve been working in the office. Who is also working in the office. Whether there are noises or smells that set off my hypersensitivity. If I’m experiencing any part of a RMC, neither side is no better than the other.
Awkward Demographic 