Re: What you may be doing that keeps you from making friends

[Anonymous]

bricolage – From my experience it doesn’t matter how well you articulate yourself. With some exceptions, most people don’t think objectively. By age 30 or so most people’s personalities, belief systems, biases, preconceptions, prejudices, etc. have formed and settled and no matter how well you express yourself they will interpret your words through the filter of their preconceptions and prejudices and rarely hear what you actually want to convey (of course this depends on the complexity of the subject and the context in which it is being told). I don’t mean to imply that everyone is close-minded, only that it becomes more difficult to get them to understand your point if it contradicts an entrenched preconception. They may sincerely try and want to understand but how you perceive the point in your mind may not fit into their elemental understanding of things. Not knowing your minds are thinking on different wavelengths, they can only assume you think like them and therefore are trying to explain it on their wavelength and you are doing the same and not understanding why they aren’t getting it.

I consider myself well spoken, intelligent, a good critical thinker, and a good debater. I am very knowledgeable about Adult ADHD, what the symptoms are, what is happening in the brain to cause those symptoms, and most importantly, I’m very knowledgeable about the scientific evidence proving the neurological causes of ADHD as well as the scientific evidence disproving the many myths surrounding ADHD. I can describe the specific areas of the brain involved, explain the roles they play in a “normal” brain and how they carry out that role, and I can explain how the symptoms seen in people with ADHD are caused by the inability of those areas of the brain to do their job properly. I can and I have done so dozens of times for friends, family, and others. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, the best I’ve been able to accomplish is my wife and one or two others accepting ADHD has a neurological cause. Everyone else, no matter how well explained, no matter how much evidence I provided, continue to believe it is psycho-babel and/or excuse making. Even my wife, who has supported and stood by me through many hardships still gets angry and accuses me of making excuses or not listening to her if I forget something or don’t get something done because I’ve been in a hyper-focus trance for five hours straight without even realizing it. None of these people are stupid or jerks or just don’t like me. They just have preconceptions of how things are supposed to work and I’m telling them, essentially, they are wrong.

My point is, people have preconceptions about everything and sometimes, no matter how well one communicates his message, he’ll still fail to get them to understand. So, don’t always assume it is your failure to communicate that is the problem. As often as not, or more likely, more often than not, the problem is the receiver not the transmitter.

Cheers,

WW

BTW – Preconceptions about the person delivering the message can also get in the way. For example, I have a moderately high IQ and have loved learning everything there is to know about stuff I’m interested in since I was a child. However, because of the ADHD I couldn’t stand school and would skip classes or whole days frequently (usually to stay home and read about things I was interested in). In spite of always getting A’s on my tests and exams I rarely did home work. I got to 11th grade on C and D averages before it finally caught up with me and I ended up dropping out of high school. I got a GED High School diploma and tried to pursue degrees in college three different times over the years but never succeeded. As before, I got A’s in the classes that interested me and F’s or Withdrawals in all other classes. In spite of all that I have educated myself quite well over the years and can hold my own against PhD’s in many subjects. Unfortunately, because of my background and no degree on the wall I have frequently been ignored or had my input dismissed out of hand on the assumption I couldn’t possibly know what I’m talking about. I hate that. It is very frustrating.

WW

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