There's a "tone" to my voice that everyone hates

[memzak]

I still have a problem with sarcasm. I often have to take a deep breath and stop for a second before I speak. It is especially hard when I am tired. On two mornings last week I had to get up a couple of hours earlier then usual after getting to bed late and had to appologize to my friend I was staying with more than once. I think the sarcasm problem is mentioned in the book “you mean I’m not lazy, stupid or crazy?”

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[Geoduck]

Sarcasm is hard. The problem is that it’s not universally recognized. I spent a lot of time on the East Coast, then moved overseas, then to the West Coast. The people there, especially in Seattle, just don’t use it. They don’t get it at all. I would make a perfectly timed witty sarcastic remark and they would go, “Really?” like I was serious. I stopped using it altogether until I moved to OK, then people just didn’t appreciate it as sarcasm, no matter how hilarious, is considered rude. I moved up here to KS (KC area), and I guess it’s close enough to the midwest, where people use it and love it. I’m back in my element.

I’ve also noticed that the tone is not the same from country to country. That was even worse than the Seattleites. I’ve learned to cut the sarcasm completely with non-native English speakers. It just makes for very uncomfortable situations.

I tend to use it when I’m trying to be funny, which is usually when I’m nervous. I was pretty shy as a kid. Nobody believes that now, but I tend to overcompensate with humor in these nerve wracking situations, I suppose.

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[Tiddler]

Interesting thread. I really feel for you, Sean. I hate it when people don’t understand me and when you’re misunderstood to that level it can be really hurtful and confusing.

I don’t misread other people’s emotions much (I don’t think so anyway) but I do have other people misinterpret me quite a lot, which I’m now thinking is my fault not theirs, like I have always assumed!

I rely a lot on facial expression and body language so phone conversations are often tricky, especially if I don’t know the person I’m speaking to. That’s when I usually wind people up but I don’t know why. My default expression is to smile at people, but I can’t rely on that if they can’t see me.

Minefield all this isn’t it!

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[Tiddler]

Ooh. I didn’t see the posts on sarcasm. I have similar issues. I’m quite deadpan when I am sarcastic and often people think I’m being serious – no matter how obvious it seems to me.

eg when I was studying (English lit) someone made a negative comment about Shakespeare and I leapt to his defence (why? He’s dead. Why does he need defending!?)

Anyway, so I said, ‘Yeah. His writing is full of cliches. Couldn’t he have come up with something original to say?’ Given that he coined most of these phrases that are so over used now, I thought this would be obvious to the group (who were after all studying him) but my tutor was horrified. Duh!

It makes me really embarrassed then I can’t point out that I was just being sarcastic and people think I just don’t know what I’m talking about. Grrr!

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[Anonymous]

Hello, all!

I wonder whether I am allowed to dig up a 4-month old thread? Probably, if I totally fit the subject and it helps concentrate all reflections on a particular issue on the same spot? At least, I hope so. This thread was extremely enriching, informative and intriguing to me at the same time. I am not at all familiar with the issue at hand, so I hope you won’t mind answering my questions.

I am not in the following case, but I have observed it regularly: apparently, some people are expected to graciously accept whatever nasty things or words people constantly do or say to them without any understandable reason. Others, friends and family included, just don’t mind and/or play deaf or blind and no one ever cares to jump to their defense when they’re under unjustified attack. But! Like the OP and others in this thread, they can’t seem to say anything – whatever insignificant, harmless, neutral or innocent – without everybody taking offense.

Those people are called “crazy” behind their back – I know two different cases, same thing – although they’re absolutely not, and they’re both found to have an “angry” facial expression, judging by the comments I heard. Their humor is very deadpan, too, and often mistaken for idiocy (but I get them most of the time, and I find them hilarious, although I have been told that I was exactly as aggressive as the others at first, but I really cannot remember that). When they’re understood, they’re interpreted as “arrogant”, although they’re absolutely not, either.

Moreover, both guys I know – one is a guitar player (and a rather famous one, at that; he is 48 y.o.) and the other an electrician (39 y.o. relative of a friend of my brother-in-law) – seem to encounter the same organizational problems exactly: they temporize indefinitely, try every way to escape their immediate duties, have a hard time concentrating on certain issues. And both have (private and honorable, but inconvenient) dependencies. It’s like I start seeing a pattern, here. Do you think they might have ADD? Should I tell them (both have complained about the way they use to be treated and asked me for advice over time, but I couldn’t see everything wrong with them; they’re nice guys, rather cool guys in fact, so the animosity toward them has long been beyond me)? Would it help them cope with their rather problematic social relationships?

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[Anonymous]

If we don’t protect ourselves…..by developing, maintaining and communicating our own strong boundaries, verbally and otherwise….should we have an expectation that others will/should do it for us?? Hmmmmm…..I don’t know, it begs the question….to do so, may be enabling, which may in turn serve to further hold a boundary-less person from critical development.

Coming to the defence of one who is unable to protect themselves…..is a whole other issue, and I don’t think that is the topic here??

To participate or condone such behavior speaks more to the condoning party than the perpetrators maybe???? After all “All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good people to do nothing” (Edmund Burke).

Toofat

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[Anonymous]

Thank you for the response, Toofat!

Well, to be perfectly honest, as long as I hardly knew them, I expected someone more intimate to protect them from the abuses they were obviously exposed to. Not that I was indifferent, you know; but it would have been weird if a perfect stranger like myself had jumped to their defense, whereas their own relatives seemed unaffected by it all. Now that we’ve been acquainted for quite some time, I would of course react differently.

If I can, I’d really like to help my mate (the guitar player), because it seems to bother him a lot, although he keeps it to himself and feels somehow “guilty” (!) for being victimized, which takes the cake, IMO. Because, well, he certainly is cool in about every sense of the term. Where all the instinctive animosity comes from is beyond me. “A tone” – What tone? A look? What look? Something indefinissable. I was asked and didn’t see anything. Eventually, he thinks he’s got a “bad aura”, his terms. Well, I am a down-to-earth Cartesian mind and not into this kind of things. But his fatalistic attitude, if that’s what you meant, certainly encourages abuse. It’s obviously an acquired trait, though.

As recently as a week back, I was still totally ignorant, as far as ADD is concerned. It seems to fit him well, but I am perhaps mistaken?

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[Patte Rosebank]

ADHD brings some of the same communications difficulties as Asperger’s, in that we have difficulty interpreting the non-verbal cues (and communication is 90% non-verbal), so we often have difficulty communicating with others. We miss what they’re saying to us, and aren’t aware that they’re interpreting our non-verbal cues (that we’re not even aware of) in a negative way.

There’s a trick that often works. If you have to be firm with people, try speaking with a smile. That smile comes across in your voice.

That way, you’re more likely to be what they call “polite, but firm”. And people are much less likely to take offence…and a gate…and a small potting shed. 🙄

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[Anonymous]

Offence…and a gate…and a small potting shed!! LOL!! I have trouble being impatient with my husband. I FEEL impatient with others sometimes, but I only GET impatient with him. I have a terrible time with boundaries and luckily haven’t been in too many situations where that was really important. The one situation where I needed to be firm, though, and wasn’t, cost me a lot of money. (I was helping a homeless person with housing and she failed to keep up her end of the bargain–that of gradually assuming responsiblity for the payment of the rent herself.) I meet once a year for a three day stay with my four cousins and my sister and they are all much more assertive than I am. I am the oldest but not by much. I rarely “stand up for myself” and sometimes I put up with something for too long and then my cousin says I overstep the line and become “aggressive” rather than assertive. I feel like such a nicompoop. I wish I could learn to do it “right.” The trouble is: if you don’t speak up for yourself as it (whatever It is) is happening, it gets much harder to speak up later, and everything gets worse.

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[kc5jck]

Larynxa – you reference a point about which I have pondered. That is “body language.”

You point out that people with ADD are poor at reading body language and social cues. That’s apparently true in my case. So I wonder, if body language is something we cannot interpret or “hear” properly, is it also something we cannot speak (use) properly or as you say people are “interpreting our non-verbal cues (that we’re not even aware of) in a negative way.” Such would seem to be the case with me.

Anyone?

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[Anonymous]

@MonkeyBarb

“Impatience” is the word, you know, but it seems to be the other way around in their case. They are very patient. Waay too patient, if you ask me. But as soon as they express themselves, which is not very often, the people around them show every caricatural sign of impatience, which never ceases to amaze me.

“Assertiveness”/”aggressiveness”: spot on! It’s like they constantly absorb the stress, but one day, bam, something unexpectedly snaps and it’s Armageddon revisited, haha. And just don’t stand in their way when they’re like this. That does no good, either, in my opinion.

@Larynxa and kc5jck

Body language. Well, it totally sounds like it over the net, right. I think so, too. But it must be very subtle, you know (hence the curious “aura”-idea, I suppose). I used to be a bouncer when I was younger (and a roadie, that’s how I first met the guy in question), and thus I have become quite astute at reading negative body language accurately. How comes that I am “immune” to the effect he has on others? I can’t spot anything wrong. Yes, sure, he can be considered slightly eccentric or introverted at times, I don’t know. Anyways, I have been told that I had the same attitude at first and looked at him “as if he came from Mars”; well, I can’t remember that. I take his word for it. It must happen on a subconscious level. But, it’s beyond the point anyway. He most definitely has ADD: I’ve read the threads on hyperfocus, etc. – that’s it, totally. My main problem, now, is how to tell him. “Hey, you probably have ADD, go to the doctor!” How to say it tactfully, I don’t know. Better give it a serious thought before I say anything. No hurry, anyway, since he lives in Florida and I am in Switzerland.

I very much hope that this thread will go on, as it evidently touches a main issue in ADD, which remains to be solved and it appears to be very helpful and informative. I will refer my mate to it. Many thanks to all of you for responding!

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[Anonymous]

I used to be told that I ‘looked soo organized’ sigh, and me being totally in chaos, I wasnt impressed with

how humans thought i ‘appeared’

Also always got called on my tone. and on attitude, which seemed often to be from having the bad habit

of not using small words and “you know’s.”

It could be Aspergers as well, I can’t read body language, often feel as if I am speaking to an unknown

audience that may or may not understand, but likely wont say so. And I talk fast, all the words and ideas

gushing out .. likely listeners lose where I am going and give up.

At times, I think “fukk it”. I am 60 and retired and unemployable by and large, why waste the little money I have

on changing decades of behavior? Is the goal to feel better about me .. or to fit in better with the other humans?

laughs I suspect that I am guilty of taking myself too seriously.

Should be outside seeing the first snowfall of this winter.

Yes, we had almost 2 inches of snow and that is all we have had since November.

So nice to be away from Ontario .

Just started to rain, snow nearly gone .. perhaps there is a point there..

I think that it is my anger that permeates my tone, and some days it is an effort

to say anything nice .. I get hung up on the various doctors and specialists that failed

to diagnose me at all until last summer .. a bit of OCD as well.

I know ADHD isnt terminal, I could easily be much worse … just need to change attitude . lol “)

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[Patte Rosebank]

If you haven’t already read Rick & Dr. J’s new book “ADD Stole My Car Keys”, do it! I just finished reading it, and it’s all in nice little bite-sized chunks, so it’s not overwhelming to the ADD brain. There’s so much in it that refers to the ups & downs of living with our little “gift”, and some of those bite-sized chunks refer to this very issue of difficulty communicating—including non-verbal cues, staying on-topic, and learning to see ourselves as others see us so we can solve the mystery of why people can get frustrated with us (and it’s not our fault!)

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[anniea]

I hope Learner checks back…

I have been thinking about speaking up for someone who didn’t for themselves nor did people who are closer in the intimacy circle. If you saw someone kicking a dog, or mistreating a cat or child, would you have said something? I have been the attacked person, and I have been one who did the attacking because of “my tone” NEITHER postion is plesant.

It took me years to listen and hear what people were saying to me…cutting remarks.. It took couseling and years of Ala-non… and I have been able to identify and cut some people loose

I have not always realized how I SOUND at times, and even told my crew I worked with, “please come and talk to me if I sound too harsh…I need to know how I come across.”… I was charge nurse day shift, and had more noise and commotion going on than I can even try to explain… so…. I KNEW I sometimes barked orders…I did not suffer fools well …. especially after weeks/months of talking, talking talking…. Some came and got to know me and my “ways” and I was so thankful for the input and feedback..even if at the time I didn’t. It truely has made me a better person….

I hve also been so thankful for people who have said something to the effect of… “whoa, did you MEAN that the WAY it sounded”? when someone said something to me, AND I did not catch it….. No truely it happened….

Monkeybarb IT IS UNBEARABLE when you CAN’T speak up for yourself…. but when you DO LEARN …WATCHOUT…I swung the other way for a while…(years).. and NOBODY got away with an eyebrow rise without me…wanting to know what they MEANT by that?? and then I mellowed out some… I hope…. I work on it all the time…. sometimes I have to call a neutral third person and bounce my reaction off of them. They know me, but can give me an other perspective.. it is progress not perfection…

This being human is messy business… we need all the support we can get…and give … and to quote Maya Angelou….when I know better I can do better…

Thanks for the thread… and the ideas and the chance to ponder out loud on paper..

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[Anonymous]

Tone, body laungage! That’s ONE of the mayor issues only household. I too can be absolutely fine, wife asks if I will pop to freezer ( in shed ) and I say yes. Now this “yes” some how comes across as a sullen teenager! ( I’m FINE), if it’s not sullen then I’m told it’s aggressive! (IM FINE), what the hells going on!!!! IM FINE!!!!!!

Same story at work, too aggressive in my tone! I train staff and suffer no fools, work customer facing and deal with all types of problems. If a customer gets aggressive with any of my staff I step in and sort it, but I’m told I am that customer a lot of the time! Jesus world (I WAS FINE)!

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