The view from inside my head, part x of n

[catsidhe]

I had a thought last night about how to describe how I see the world, in such a way as it might be understood by others. This is hard, because I don't know how others see the world. And, yes, I know full well that no-one really fully understands other people's points-of-view, and all that, but still, there seem to be qualitative differences between how I experience the world and how most other people describe it.

One of these differences is in the experiences of the face. Other people talk about seeing expressions. I have difficulty with this. But it's not that I can't see expressions at all, that I can't tell a smile from a veil. It's more subtle and insidious than that.

The analogy I came up with last night is that I am dyslexic for faces.

Think about dyslexia: dyslexics can learn to read, but it's harder for them, and it's never as easy. Dyslexics have difficulties with distinguishing ‘d’ from ‘b’ or ‘p’, for example. They have difficulties seeing a word as a word, instead of a collection of letters. They will always see reading as work, as a chore, and rarely pick it up as something to do for fun, to relax.

That's what it's like for me and faces. I see each part of an expression, but have trouble with the whole. (Like a dyslexic having to read out the letters, rather than seeing the word as a whole.) This means that I miss any temporal cues and many subtleties, even if I am able to see such things, especially if I'm tired or rushed (like when dyslexics might not be able to see the difference between ‘wired’ and ‘wierd’ and ‘weird’ at first glance). Even then, there are some things I just can't see, or can see but not make sense of. (As if a dyslexic was simply unable to see or comprehend the difference between ‘a’, ‘á’, ‘ą’, ‘å’, or ‘α’.)

I can tell if you are smiling, but I can't always tell if it's a happy smile, or resigned, or sympathetic, or with gritted teeth. Genuinely happy or feigning? NFI. Emotions like ‘surprise’, ‘shock’, ‘disgust’, ‘alarm’, ‘fear’, all basically look the same to me. When TV science shows depict people showing how good they are at disambiguating these expressions, I'm at a loss how they do it: I simply cannot tell one from another.

Where most people seem to have a facility for reading faces, for interacting face-to-face, for me it's work. It's something I have to concentrate at. Even if normal people get it wrong sometimes, they seem to do it effortlessly. For me it is not effortless, it never has been.

Which is why social interaction for me is work, it's a chore, no matter the rewards I get from it, or the pleasure of being with friends, just as a dyslexic may love literature, but hate the act of having to read it.

And just as dyslexics have talking books to bypass this deficit, I have the internet.

Comments

[splodgenoodles]

This is like what you were describing the other day.

As far as I can tell (what with all those disclaimers about points-of-view etc) you've described it pretty well.

The reason I think this is because on Sunday the way you were talking me through it *was* making me think about my own experience in seeing faces and realising it's a process with many steps and therefore, many alternatives. Once you realise the process is not set in stone you can listen to how other people experience.

Does that make sense?

[tangent_woman]

Reading expressions is something that took me a hell of a lot of learning. I suspect that there is too much information, and too often what the face says conflicts with what the owner of the face wants to convey.

I think that working with different species of livestock and pets really helped me with the 'body language as communication method' thing, too. Signals faint and subtle, nuances of posture and gesture forming a primal language -- a language that it is crucial to know if not knowing it can get you kicked by half a ton of horse, or inadvertently indicate to the lead cow that no, really, the herd should not go through the gate, but run like hell to the very back fence of the farm again.

I'm still working on picking up human non-verbal communication, and I'm getting better at it myself, but I still forget, stuff up, fail to concentrate. Sometimes I catch myself looking blank when someone is expecting a response in my expression and I have to hastily concoct something approximately appropriate.

I also try to cultivate ways of stating in plain verbal language things which I, and other people who are not confident about their ability to pick up all that undercurrent stuff, would sometimes like to know: "Hi, I am glad to see you." is not a formality, but means just what it says. "I enjoy your company." "This conversation pleases me." "I look forward to conversing with you again soon." The hell with subtle; I think that less ambiguity and formality would increase social comfort for a lot of people, me included. And I've not had a negative reaction yet.

[catsidhe]

I feel really uncomfortable saying something meaningless or untrue.

So when someone greets me with “How are you?”, “fine” does not feel like a suitable answer, especially if I am not. Which is why I respond with “Not dead yet.” Accurate, implies my mood, and is usually taken as witty dark humour.

As for making expressions, I have realised that when I make expressions, it is rarely as a reflection of my feelings, but it is almost something I say, a deliberate motion made to communicate something, but it rarely means anything. I am coming to think of the various facial gesticulations I do as ‘making monkey faces’.

[tangent_woman]

I respond to "Hi how are you?" with "I'm surviving." Which is also true.

My statements of social conviviality are often redundant but harmless, and where they are not redundant, they have potential to be extremely illuminating.

My facial expressions are mainly reflexive. But I can switch them off when I have thoughts and feelings I do not wish to convey. And sometimes when I am not concentrating, I cease to engage that part of my brain at all and have "facial expression fail". Oh well.

Your monkey faces, that I can figure, are less often at odds with each other, your general demeanor or your words than they are in other people. Your face to face communication systems are coherent.

Some people freak me out because of the high levels of conflict between what they say and what they look like they are saying. I can't really tell whether the problem is with my perception or their communication or their insight into themselves... in any case, some people are confusing, and really hard work.

[catsidhe]

Lying with body language is still lying. I am really bad at hiding how I feel.

[tcpip]

Emoticolons are less ambiguous, eh?

[catsidhe]

Sometimes. Sometimes it helps that they are present at all. Sometimes, even when they are not there, I am not disadvantaged because if I don't get the emotional subtext, then neither will anyone else. It's brought everyone else down to my level, where I have the homeground advantage on extracting much subtext from little data.

It's not a panacea. But it can be fun watching others flounder in my world.