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Authors: David Finch
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level of mind reading. I eventually got there, but not without months of unnecessary, painful eruptions. My tendency had been to enter into our emotional discussions like a raw nerve; nearly everything could provoke an extreme reaction. Kristen would take a second longer than I thought necessary to answer a question, and I’d explode: “Silent treatment?! Fuck it! I’m outta here.” Now that we are aware of my propensity to misread things, Kristen takes these outbursts in stride, while I do my best to preempt them: Calm down. Don’t assume you know what she’s thinking. Use your words.
To overcome all of this, Kristen suggested strategies for recognizing and dealing with my emotions in real time, telling me when I had reacted inappropriately and showing me different ways to respond to my feelings. (Again, but worth repeating, this was something that she had never bargained for.) When I came unglued one evening because the kids had gone to bed late—eight fifteen instead of the normal seven thirty bedtime, pushing my entire evening schedule back forty-five minutes—Kristen sat me down and worked me through it:
“Listen. It’s okay for you to expect a certain bedtime, and it’s okay for you to get upset. But it is not okay for you to rant and rave in front of the kids when we stay up later than usual. They’re absorbing everything you do. They’re learning by your example, so if you’re not careful we may end up with two little spazzes on our hands.”
As I cracked open my notebook to write down some thoughts, she suggested a better way of dealing with bedtime: “If you start feeling freaked out, you have to tell me, ‘It’s almost bedtime. Let’s get them ready.’” Or, she told me, if I really wanted to take a step in the right direction I could simply get the kids ready for bed myself. (Duh.)
While Kristen worked diligently with me on expressing my emotions, I began to take a keen interest in casual conversation. Before we started all of this, the ability to talk casually with people seemed to me to be on a par with the ability to juggle or to do a headstand. As my ability to express myself improved, I couldn’t help but think that I could extend this discipline to casual conversation. I figured that could make life easier for me in untold ways. I also suspected that if I were generally better at talking to people, then Kristen would like me more.
But I wasn’t born with the gift of gab. Instead, I was born with something along the lines of anti-gab: my instincts don’t just inhibit productive interaction, they defeat it altogether. I might laugh at inappropriate times, or meow. I sometimes win my audience over in one sentence and alienate them in the next: “I hope your sister is doing better since her divorce. I mean, let’s face it, she was lucky to have found anyone, really.”
Luckily, my brain does an excellent job of observing people and memorizing and copying their behaviors. Kristen has said that I sometimes resemble someone with a multiple personality disorder and that I should be grateful for it, and I suppose she’s right. I use the characteristics I observe in other people to create characters that I can assume at will: Outgoing Man, Boyfriend Guy, Quiet Dude. This ability helps me to seem normal enough to get by in life, but I knew that I could do better, especially considering the progress I’d made in the first couple of months after my diagnosis.
I decided that I needed a role model—someone I could study, from whom I could learn. I had always listened to Howard Stern in the mornings, and if he could earn millions of dollars for making four-hour conversations sound interesting, it seemed a good place to start. I began taking notes about what made Howard so effective at communicating, though this was always at the expense of being on time for work. My boss wanted to know why he could see me sitting in my car in the parking lot at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, nodding
To overcome all of this, Kristen suggested strategies for recognizing and dealing with my emotions in real time, telling me when I had reacted inappropriately and showing me different ways to respond to my feelings. (Again, but worth repeating, this was something that she had never bargained for.) When I came unglued one evening because the kids had gone to bed late—eight fifteen instead of the normal seven thirty bedtime, pushing my entire evening schedule back forty-five minutes—Kristen sat me down and worked me through it:
“Listen. It’s okay for you to expect a certain bedtime, and it’s okay for you to get upset. But it is not okay for you to rant and rave in front of the kids when we stay up later than usual. They’re absorbing everything you do. They’re learning by your example, so if you’re not careful we may end up with two little spazzes on our hands.”
As I cracked open my notebook to write down some thoughts, she suggested a better way of dealing with bedtime: “If you start feeling freaked out, you have to tell me, ‘It’s almost bedtime. Let’s get them ready.’” Or, she told me, if I really wanted to take a step in the right direction I could simply get the kids ready for bed myself. (Duh.)
While Kristen worked diligently with me on expressing my emotions, I began to take a keen interest in casual conversation. Before we started all of this, the ability to talk casually with people seemed to me to be on a par with the ability to juggle or to do a headstand. As my ability to express myself improved, I couldn’t help but think that I could extend this discipline to casual conversation. I figured that could make life easier for me in untold ways. I also suspected that if I were generally better at talking to people, then Kristen would like me more.
But I wasn’t born with the gift of gab. Instead, I was born with something along the lines of anti-gab: my instincts don’t just inhibit productive interaction, they defeat it altogether. I might laugh at inappropriate times, or meow. I sometimes win my audience over in one sentence and alienate them in the next: “I hope your sister is doing better since her divorce. I mean, let’s face it, she was lucky to have found anyone, really.”
Luckily, my brain does an excellent job of observing people and memorizing and copying their behaviors. Kristen has said that I sometimes resemble someone with a multiple personality disorder and that I should be grateful for it, and I suppose she’s right. I use the characteristics I observe in other people to create characters that I can assume at will: Outgoing Man, Boyfriend Guy, Quiet Dude. This ability helps me to seem normal enough to get by in life, but I knew that I could do better, especially considering the progress I’d made in the first couple of months after my diagnosis.
I decided that I needed a role model—someone I could study, from whom I could learn. I had always listened to Howard Stern in the mornings, and if he could earn millions of dollars for making four-hour conversations sound interesting, it seemed a good place to start. I began taking notes about what made Howard so effective at communicating, though this was always at the expense of being on time for work. My boss wanted to know why he could see me sitting in my car in the parking lot at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, nodding
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