Mind-Blindness

Last week my husband and I started The National Autistic Society Early Bird Plus programme. It’s a 10 week course designed to educate parents of children diagnosed on the spectrum so that they can understand Autism and their children better. Of course we are taking this course because our six year old son is Autistic, but my husband came out of the class saying that he had found it more helpful in understanding me. The one thing that we both picked up on that helped to explain the way my brain works is mind-blindness. I was familiar with the concept before, but this is the first time I have heard its name.

Mind-blindness is the inability to understand that other people think and feel differently to the way we do, and that people don’t automatically know what is going on inside your head. This can cause a number of problems when it comes to interacting with other people and I think that it’s been a very important factor in the breakdown of many of my friendships over the years.

If I’m upset about something, whether I’m with my friends or not, I always expect them to know that I’m upset and I then become frustrated and angry with them when they don’t rush to support me. It could be that I haven’t seen or spoken to them for a week, that I haven’t told them that I have a problem, and that they have no way of knowing I need them at all – but I will still not understand why they aren’t calling me or coming to see me. Time and again I have been deeply hurt by a friends apparent neglect, when in fact they don’t have a chance to start with, because of course they’re not mind readers.

For the same reason I know that relationships that I thought were still strong have died while I wasn’t paying attention. Because I was still thinking about my friend, still caring about them, still nosing about their lives on Facebook, I still felt that the friendship was strong – but without making actual contact how were they to know I still cared? Unfortunately I have a specific problem with initiating contact with anyone, even my closest friends. I am much more likely to wait for a text, a phone call, an invitation, than I am to get in touch with them first. Eventually people must think that I have lost interest in them and no longer want to be friends. The result is that one day I turn around and realise that people I count as my closest friends aren’t even my friends at all anymore.

The inability to understand or accept that other people think differently to the way you do and can’t immediately understand what you want from them can also cause a lot of frustration. I have seen it in my son who will never tell you what he wants to do, but rather insists on asking people to tell him what he wants to do, and then becomes frustrated when they don’t know. Often he will say ‘Look inside my head and tell me.’ My husband has pointed out that I do much the same thing when I ask him to choose what we are to watch on TV, but then will become irritated at everything he picks until he picks the programme I want. If, god forbid, he settles on something that wasn’t my first choice, it’s likely to end up in me storming out of the room and giving up on an evening together entirely – because I’m angry with him for not automatically knowing what I want! For some reason I am unable to express what I want, I need him to arrive at the conclusion by himself.

It’s the same when I’ve arranged to do something with a friend and they ask me ‘what do you want to do.’ No one should ever ask me this, because the answer will always be ‘I don’t mind, you tell me.’ I usually do mind, but I will never under any circumstances make that decision unless I am with family.

Conversations can also be extremely frustrating, because the chances are I’ve already run over in my mind how I expect a given conversation to go. I’ve already played out both parts in my head, heard specific responses to what I’ve said based on how I think people should react. When I then carry out the actual conversation and the person I’m talking to reacts in their own way, and not the way I expected them to, I am extremely unsatisfied with the conversation and may even try to repeat it in the hope that this time I will get the response I’m looking for. I drive my husband mad with repeating the same thing again and again until he gives me the ‘right’ answer.

I think that mind-blindness is perhaps one of the leading factors in the feeling of isolation that I carry around with me constantly, because it makes it extremely difficult for me to understand other people and the way their minds work, and causes confusion, disappointment and frustration when they don’t understand me the way I expect them to. I am hoping that with my new understanding of this particular problem I can work on overcoming it, but I also know that although I have a voice that is extremely verbal and often doesn’t stop talking, I have another voice that is locked away inside my head talking away to an imaginary audience and there are some things that most people take for granted that I can’t do any more than I can fly.