do any neurodivergence havers also have the issue of trying to balk for like a good few turns from a conversation where you tried to bring up a point or suggest an alternative to something but you misread the room and it turns into what I can only perceive as the other person taking what you thought was an off-hand idea that you have no real attachment to and turning it into their own personal mission to, I honestly can’t tell why so I'll just say how it looks to me, submit to their way of thinking? Maybe they want to change my perspective? Maybe they want to win in the marketplace of ideas?

Anyways, then you’re like stuck in a dialogue loop where you keep saying “I literally have zero real attachment to this idea and I brought it up for the sake of conversation” and they scold me for deigning to bring the other idea up and we will not stop talking about this until I physically exit the room or grovel at their feet in tears begging for forgiveness for my dastardly nonsequitur? Or something else that I genuinely don’t understand? Am I missing something? It feels like a dominance routine from my perspective and it’s happened to me enough times that I think I’m just misunderstanding something?

I thought it was a neurosis I picked up from my conflict-avoidant behaviors but my sister is more confrontational than me and she also has this issue sometimes so I’m wondering if it’s an ADHD thing. Had a convo yesterday with a friend of mine that was like this and I genuinely felt like shit afterwards, it's one of the instances where I genuinely don't know how to amicably resolve it, I'm trying to be pliant and flexible here, please let me exit this conversation naturally I don't want to make this an issue I am trying to communicate that please let me leave please please please

This has happened to me dozens of times and every time it feels like the realization of a nightmare. I’m so genuinely actually sorry for attempting to help you by wantonly-suggesting alternative perspectives to cover what I perceive to be unnoticed angles in what you are saying hoping that maybe it could be rolled into a consensus point that might be helpful, I didn’t think this was a venting/rhetorical discussion, If it was I missed those cues, it will not happen again to you now that I know you do not gel with it, I’m sorry, I’m Harrier DuBois the sorry cop, this is my sorry song, please dismiss me from this conversation so I don’t have to literally walk away, I don’t want to leave lingering resentment for something I genuinely thought was innocuous nl-despair

  • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
    ·
    24 days ago

    I don't know if I've experienced the same exact thing you're talking about, but I've definitely brought up something in a light-hearted way, like "isn't this funny" or "can you believe this thing" and had people respond with "no it's not funny, I take this very seriously." So maybe that's just me being bad at reading the room. For example, the other day I learned that in some states you don't need a teaching license or college degree to teach at a private school, and brought that up to my coworker. He got kinda defensive because apparently his wife used to teach at a private religious school, and didn't have a teaching license.

    One thing I've noticed while talking with liberals especially is that they'll say "I just can't understand what [conservatives, Putin, Hamas, whoever they don't like] are thinking" and expect me to agree with them that that person is ontologically evil and can't be understood by normal good people. But then I start bringing nuance and history into the picture, like "well if you remember what happened with NATO in the '90s..." which is not what they wanted to hear, and they think I'm agreeing with the person they hate.

    I also sometimes don't notice that the conversation has moved on, and tend to bring up something that everyone else had finished talking about 10 minutes ago, but it had been percolating in my brain since then.