NeuroBetweenity

Message to a friend -

TL;DR... I find conversations that turn like that too much... And I think our friendship is worth preserving so this is my attempt to help prevent repetitions.

Maybe you won't like this and I will not be continuing the conversation tonight. To be honest, I am not quite sure how this will be received... But, as I said, valued friendship, so I will say it anyway.

I had a big realisation after that message clarifying what you experienced earlier. And I am sharing because I believe it is relevant.

Whilst I do sincerely apologise for hurting you earlier, to avoid the same volatile miscommunication in the future, I need you to accept that sometimes I need a bit more processing time during conversations than I think I realised, or that you might expect of me.

I am very quick thinking re subjects that are "mine" - that I know or am prepared for.

But when I am blindsided, (which includes unexpected tangents) or when I miss or misunderstand a word a tone or some part of the conversation, (as happened earlier), my cognitive processing is often too slow to successfully avoid the escalation that happens like it did. It's also a little different to typical in that the words & the tone + syntax etc do not always match. Especially if I have lost my place in the conversation. So I have no idea what tone you heard earlier, but I am pretty confident (based on how the convo went) it was not what I meant.

The result is that in those moments, I am left confused as to wtf has happened as I try to catch up, & well...it just gets messy because it appears to you that I am making excuses, or whatever it appears like at different times. I also process verbally (or in writing). Often many words are literally me thinking aloud in order to make sense of what I am thinking.

In this instance, there were two slightly but very significantly different threads of convo happening. It was only when you said something in a different way, & then I asked that question that "ended" the civil (ish) convo, that I finally twigged about what you had meant. Before then, that was not something that connected in my mind. (Saying the same thing in a different way matters a great deal sometimes - more than for most people.)

Now, you can either believe that I am making excuses just now by saying this...

Or you can (& I hope you do) accept that I literally mean that it literally took those minutes for me to process what you had been saying. Usually I am allowed time to process either in words or just time, and I I never explicitly connected the dots re this type of convo with you.

If the topic is not triggering for you (or me) then there is time for me to catch up with no harm done. But if it feels like I am personally attacking (?) you, then obviously there is no time for me to catch up & you are left believing what you wrote above. And apparently that is not the first time you have genuinely believed so little of me.

The jist is that I do need the benefit of the doubt sometimes because communication easily gets tangled between different neurotypes (using the broader definition that includes us both).

When you cannot cope with me processing (too slowly), then I need you to disengage because there is precisely nothing I can do to short cut or change that process; just as there is precisely nothing you can do to avoid feeling triggered AF... Such are our brains & nervous systems!

What you wrote above is not even remotely what I said earlier, and I completely appreciate that it is absolutely what you heard. Both statements can be true.

Anyway, I hope you can appreciate that I have shared this in the hope that clarification & understanding can create more peaceful conversations.

Love this!!!

And it is so true that adults also need support to maintain balanced capacity.