Misinterpretations

ive just realised ive been doing this to a certain extent. cause people have been misinterpreting me ive ended up feeling very defensive especially about certain topics, so i've been misinterpreting some things myself because of that. so just wanted to say if ive upset anyone, i'm sorry.

i often wonder if the way that i say words or make facial expressions don't match the way i intend them to appear to others. i sometimes get into arguements over the way i've said something.

i remember when i was 10 i was walking to school and my neighbour and mother of a friend was driving her kids there; she stopped and asked me if i wanted a ride. i said "no thank you i can walk". the mother never talked to me since and insisted i was a rude child, even after i had called to apologize for unknowingly being snotty.

i've also been asked why i 'made a face' at something when i didn't think i had...

Oh Kat, I do this too. I'm always afraid that my opinions are going to hurt someone's feelings or make someone get triggered. I hope that I haven't offended you in any way. I truly would never mean to.

I try to remain helpful and courteous on here, but sometimes my whiplash tongue gets the best of me. Just like in real life. Always back to square one.

Anyways, hope you're having a great day! :0)

AMP

rabeeto wrote:i remember when i was 10 i was walking to school and my neighbour and mother of a friend was driving her kids there; she stopped and asked me if i wanted a ride. i said "no thank you i can walk". the mother never talked to me since and insisted i was a rude child, even after i had called to apologize for unknowingly being snotty.

Sounds kinda snotty of her! - nothing wrong with wanting to walk

MissAli wrote:Oh Kat, I do this too. I'm always afraid that my opinions are going to hurt someone's feelings or make someone get triggered. I hope that I haven't offended you in any way. I truly would never mean to.

I try to remain helpful and courteous on here, but sometimes my whiplash tongue gets the best of me. Just like in real life. Always back to square one.

Anyways, hope you're having a great day! :0)

AMP

Thank you Ali, & thank you for relating to what i said. i just seem to interpret things backwards sometimes, like the wrong way round and the worst they can be when sometimes its not what anyone is saying at all As far as im concerned at least please don't worry about triggering me with opinions, i would never want to put you on eggshells. ((((hugs))))

kat-

Thank you. you always make me feel so good! You're a great posting-friend. I always appreciate what you have to say.

I was wondering, do you ever completely hear something other than what the person just said? Like, if they say, "oh the weather isn't the great today", MY mind hears "what a sh**tty freaking day, I'm having a bad day, etc" and I think that I just hear a little bit of what someone is saying, then I just run in my own direction with it. I think that is hurtful for my own self, because I'm taking things to a dramatic level when there is no need.

A good pdoc once told me that I hear the first 3 words out of someone's mouth, then my brain starts its own thread of communication.

How true. I hate that!

LOL! It is wonderful, however, to know that I'm not the only one :0)

AMP

I know what you mean there! I've had to try very hard just to force myself to stop - mostly just stop thinking at all, it used to be so bad i'd read a 2 or 3 word txt and then could pull a whole other meaning out of it cause you can say those few words in so many different ways and they could mean different things... and typos, typos can lead my mind off in all sorts of directions if they come out the wrong way. its the number 1 reason txt messages would be so hard for me. In the end i just had to force myself to just stop, and just see the words, and only allow myself to interpret it like just the plain words on paper, no thinking allowed! lol.

Is there anything you find helps?

Its got MUCH better, but I know exactly what you mean with hurtful to yourself to take it to a dramatic level cause its ourselves that we are hurting most by doing it, and our own lives that we are making painful.

I hate it too! But its got so much better over this last year... still a few problems at times tho, lol.

No, you're not the only one.

OMG, I am trying to retrain myself completely because of it.

I have found that I do NOT have the best listening skills. It's better for me to read others' posts, because I find that I want to hear the whole story, and not just jump to conclusions. Which, I'm extremely good at. And that gets me into trouble.

I have to concentrate on listening to what someone is saying without daydreaming myself into a whole 'nother conversation. I have found that if I listen in segments (meaning, process what I can for the moment and not let it all run together), then I can sometimes come up with at least something CLOSE to what they're saying without making the story into something it isn't.

Typos drive me nuts, but I am getting better at being tolerant of them. It drives me absolutely GONZO when someone types "you're" instead of "your" and vice versa. It makes me want to pound sand. Maybe, in thinking, that would be a great idea for me to do. Much safer.

Regardless, sometimes I count to three before I respond, just to give myself an extra few seconds prior to spitting out my gut-reaction.

Nothing great, but that is enough to get me by. At least people have stopping saying to me, "That wasn't what I said at all. Were you even listening?"

LOL.

AMP

for me its not so much daydreaming as just jumping to wrong upset conclusions and seeing the first (worst) thing that gets thrown at me. like i see words on the paper and the meaning somehow just doesn't get read quite right.

oh the thing with typos with me is more when someone puts a word into their phone and it comes out the wrong word cause of the predictive text thing, and then my mind comes up with the worst possible solution for what it means and i think the typos are there on purpose or something to take the piss.

i'm not too bothered by grammar cause its not as easy to mistake, just words. lol

yeah going over things before actually responding seems helpful.

Do any of you find yourselves replaying conversations over and over in your head, trying to figure out if you might've said something that offended someone or hurt their feelings? I do it constantly.

I also have the misinterpretation problem Katana mentions, where I jump to the wrong, upset conclusions about something said to me. This usually happens in a verbal conversation, though, I must admit. When I was younger, my mother and I fought all the time because of the slights I perceived from things she said to me; when I would calm down and think back on what she'd said, I would realize that she hadn't actually said anything that was meant to be offensive. I still have that problem sometimes...this has caused me to not stick up for myself as much as I probably should, because when I think someone has said something offensive to me, I question myself and wonder if I'm just making something out of nothing.

I feel really dorky admitting this...