I keep hearing that this is frowned upon, but I cannot help it. After I share, I circle back and explain how and why I connected the two stories to try to recenter the other person. Is this annoying? How do you want ND people to respond in that case?
I’m NT. The reason it’s considered rude is because it can feel like you’re trying to compete or to make it about yourself. Usually when someone shares a story like that, they want the focus to be on them for a bit. It’s fine to say, “I can relate,” or, “I know how that feels,” but it’s usually best to save the whole story for later.
Hm, well it doesn’t feel like, shallow to just get the “that must have been hard” standard issue comment after sharing something vulnerable? To me that just kinda feels dismissive, like the person saying “that must have been hard” is offput, or it would stop the conversation
Sometimes when people are feeling a lot, all they want to do is get it off the chest or just simply be heard. “Good listening” usually means “paying attention and not saying a lot in response”. Allowing or helping someone to get their story out is usually the most important thing in situations like this. This is where stereotypical “therapist questions” like “How did that make you feel?” fit in.
ND here, and yeah, I’m just as surprised by that response. But fucking noted, damn. My whole life I’ve done that to try to connect with the person, and I never realized everyone around me thinks I’m rude. It kind of circles back to my definition of friend: an actual friend would have told me it’s considered rude and why.
As a fellow NT, this hits it on the head. This can be considered rude for exactly what you say: it can come off as one-upmanship or an inability to not have the conversation be about you. Obviously, the flow of conversation, relationship, tone and topic can change just what exactly this feels like, because there are situations where it can come off as empathetic or an attempt to showing common ground. Like most things in human interaction, there are not hard and fast rules. But if OP needs hard and fast rules because of having trouble parsing things like tone and flow, I would err on the side of not sharing personal story unless specifically asked.
An assumption of needing hard and fast rules because deficient parsing of tone and flow is peak NTness.
And honestly communication does come with pretty stern (unwritten) rules, the people doing them just don’t necessarily notice them, because they are very automatic and given. The NT rules have a lot of aspects like face-saving that can be entirely foreign to ND people. And on the other hand the upfrontness of ND people can be very umcomfy to NT people.
The rules are only noticed when someone does not follow them and this is where people with different communication styles get into trouble.
Everybody does this ND and NT alike, it is natural to want to share how you can relate to another’s situation.
Depending on the context, it can be seen as trying to “one up” somebody else, it really depends on the person and your relationship. I would say generally the closer the relationship, the more likely they do just want to vent and need a friend to listen.
Personally I would almost never get offended if someone shares how they can relate to me, and probably actually prefer it, but that’s just me.
Neither NTs or NDs are a monolith.
It’s a common thing for ND people to do as it allows us a a way to demonstrate empathy. The problem is that most NTs can interpret it as being off topic or making it about yourself. What they probably want in the conversation is to vent/express their emotions to another person. If you bring up a similar event that happened to you, they don’t get that opportunity.
A good way to channel that impulse is to bring it up briefly and then immediately bring the topic back to them. Show them that you understand but still keep the conversation centered around them and their feelings.
“Hey, my mom died recently so I’m not feeling great.”
"I’m so sorry, my mom died last year so I know what you’re going through. How are you holding up, do you need anything?
Not NT but halfway decent at “translating” my thoughts into socially acceptable behavior.
Not NT, but going to just say that this is one of the ways NT and ND communication differs.
It’s pretty common that Actually Autistic, ADHD and some other neurodivergent brains share relatable stories as a way to connect and empathize.
While all parties can in these situations work to better accomodate the other, ND folks are a minority and more vulnerable in their position. A NT person can ask us to not share stories and explain they just need to vent, but them getting angry at us for our relatable story sharing is not ok and is a problem that forces masking and dismisses our completely valid communication style.
Yeah, but I guess I wanna hear from someone who is NT how they perceive it when it happens. A lot of people just aren’t direct at all so I feel it would be more likely that someone would just pull away or share less with me or other people who communicate that way. I also hear this often but haven’t heard that it’s off putting directly from an NT person before so I just wanna know what goes through each person’s mind and if the way I circle back is helpful or not
I’m also interested in what NT people perceive and what the NT expectation in a situation like this is. In my mind, the story sets the theme of the conversation so it only makes sense to relate similar stories. Am I just supposed to say, “Wow, that’s awful. I feel for you.” and leave it at that?
That’s exactly why I’m puzzled about it! The standard issue responses don’t feel genuine, or like you want the other person to open up more. But I guess that’s all people want, usually. Surface shit
Pretty much. The more hollow I make my communications with NT’s lately, the better reception and response I get, but I honestly feel like I’m being rude for not trying to relate.
CW death of parent and dog
spoiler
ok so im autistic and i have had this issue with another autistic person. i would talk about my dead mom and then for like the next 20-30 minutes she would talk about her dead dog. this made me feel bad because i do not think the lost of a dog is comparable to the loss of a parent. i also did not like that it felt like for every one minute of talking about my mom she would spend five munites on her dog, i didnt feel i had the space to get into my feelings without having to then comfort her instead. to the point i would simply stop bringing up my mom at all around tihs person because it was emotionally draining. now if im talking about my dead mom and someone else talks about losing their parent that very diffrent in my mind and is in fact a comfort.
