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Is empathizing by sharing experience not normal?
So I've watched this If Neurodivergents Conducted Job Interviews Like Neurotypicals and one thing struck me as odd. Is it not like normal when somebody tells you they've been sick recently for you to share your own experience with similar condition?
I do have ADHD and automatically share when this exact situation comes up, but is this like a no-no among neurotypical folks?
I have ADHD as well. I learned that when someone shares about a distressfull situation or event, they often wish for a space to further elaborate on their grievances. If I answer too quickly with a grievance of my own that might be perceived as ending their turn prematurely, as they may stil have emotions to work through even if there is no additional information to exchange.
I try to resist the urge to expose my own grievances too soon. Ideally I would wait for an entirely fresh conversation to present itself. But sometimes I think it's okay to say it right away. It depends.
I think the important thing (applicable to most conversations) is to not get too self-absorbed and pay attention to your conversation partner. When I realize that I've shared my similar experience too soon, I usually try to quickly relate it back to whatever the other person was talking about, which seems to work well. "When was sick, I had such and such problems, how did you deal with that in your situation?" or somesuch. You won't recognize the situation if you are only paying attention to yourself and what you're planning to say next though.
I think being sensitive to who your audience is in that moment matters too. People who are outgoing, have strong conversational skills, or are just in a good mood will reinsert themselves in the mix naturally, so immediately sharing your experience is a good way to relate and add to the conversation. Others might feel like you talked over them and possibly resent you later for it.
This is how I feel literally every time I talk with my mom. I try to share something about my life, get no more than 2 sentences in, and some word I said sparks a thought in her head about her own life and then she starts talking and I never get to finish what I was trying to say.
Given the thread, I have been diagnosed with social anxiety and suspect I have some characteristics consistent with autism, though that’s just me feeling like I resonate with a lot of the things people with autism say. Which makes me suspicious.
I've been trying to learn to resist the urge as well, and it's been really hard! I try to reframe it for myself as a way to expand on the shared experience by always asking if they want to "vent, commiserate, want advice, or want me to take down the patriarchy" for the person sharing, and that seems to help with the urge to share my own experience, and to help the other person (usually an NT) express what they want to say all the way.
Though I do still struggle with people speaking too slowly during this process, and being able to tell what they're going to say and just want someone to get on with it, lol.
And, in a way, I just shared my experience to empathize with you! <3
I feel like this only works with ND people, though. I have this urge to try to "read the room" super hard, probably because being explicit is something I feel (after all those years of conditioning) NT people frown upon a lot. Then I fail at it and start a monologue that bores everyone to death.
I am meeting an ADHD friend of mine this weekend and I am super stoked about that, since we'll just talk like 3 topics at once and won't get weirded out by our respective oddities and we'll share our experiences plenty, but usually like "Whoa, I can't trump that! I mean I had this similar thing happen to me, but that's like not even 20% as intense. That must have been crazy!" And when we get somewhere where we don't want to go to, we'll just tell each other. OMG, heaven!
To cosign what other folks have said, it varies, but it does tend to be a way ND folks share empathy, by sharing an experience. And sometimes that works better than others. It often is less supportive for the friend when the focus gets fully diverted conversationally to your situation from theirs.
One way to hit a middle ground on it is to give an expression of empathy
"Oh that's rough." or "That really sucks"
Followed with a very short expression of shared experience
"I had a similar thing happen at that store." or "I know when I had the flu I was laid out for days."
And possibly followed by a return to focusing on them
"How're you coping?" or "How can I support you?"
Another good tactic is before you start sharing your own experience or offering feedback to ask "What do you need, venting, solutions, comiserating?"
Obviously, all of this should be worded in ways that feel natural to you, but those are two strategies that can help ND folks feel less oblivious/be more supportive to their friends.
I think, like many parts of neurotypical socialization, it depends, and it depends on rules that aren’t particularly clear or strict. I think that I do this more often than many other people that I know, but I am also more eager to form meaningful connections with strangers than many other people I know. I think that some folks would be put off by someone engaging to that level with something they considered offhand or smalltalk? I don’t know that that’s a common reaction necessarily though. And I suspect that there are people who, in social gatherings, are sharing a story as a mechanism for gathering the group’s attention, rather than attempting to connect, and for those people, responding with your own story could feel like “stealing the spotlight”.
Overall though, I see this kind of connection-through-reciprocal-sharing constantly from both neurodivergent and neurotypical friends, so I wouldn’t classify as a no-go by any means.
Noise, but I have a question: Who falls under the neurodivergent umbrella?
Is it simply an alternative way to describe autistic people and/or people with ADHD specifically? Or does this include others, as well?
I’m asking because, frequently, when this term comes up online, it seems not to match the definition as I have understood it, so far, offline, at all.
It can be as broadly used as to include anyone whose brains work in a way different than is considered "typical"
Most frequently though it is referring autistic, ADHD and OCD folks.
Also covers social anxiety or someone recovering from trauma or someone with sensory processing challenges or oppositional defiance etc (edit: it becomes hard to distinguish between a neurotypical person going through something vs someone naturally predisposed who has certain circumstances trigger more challenges)
For me, neurodivergent or neurospicy feels more descriptive because we're all unique mixed bags of some of these symptoms but maybe not all. Sometimes when I say, I have ADHD, I'm [edit: met] with hostilities or disbelief because I don't "fit" their mental image. It's like if I say I have a leg condition and someone says oh really you were walking fine ... But if I say I have a disability there might be less skepticism.
Also, there's not good "identity first" ADHD language, so I can say "neurodivergent people" but not ADHD People... and I hate forced person first language. (But when it's just about ADHD folks or autistic folks, it's worth being specific.)
Ive noticed its really just a way that people who are diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder describe people who are like them, and most of the time that happens to include folks with ADHD.
Theres the “socially normal” people and then the neurodivergent “socially aware of sensory issues” people, and the two ways of communicating are mostly opposite.
So speaking as one individual basically neurotypical example person, with a lot of chronic illnesses... If I were to tell you (who I don't have a close relationship with) I have a migraine, and you responded with "I get those too!" I would feel a bit of kinship. Compared to what I often get, which is, "oh, yeah my (sister, neighbor, whatever) used to get them until she (drank vinegar, went paleo, injected protoplasma from a starship's hyperdrive...)" If we were close, and I told you I had a migraine, I'd expect a bit more attention to my situation (Oh, I'm sorry! Is is a bad one? or whatever) before you moved on to your stuff.
I've had some luck achieving those two things by
This made me smile with nostalgia, though if it's an expression that you feel like you are among a hostile alien race, I am sorry for you to have that experience.
A couple questions from a person who identifies as neurotypical, if you or others are willing to share. If you don't feel up for it, please ignore.
I often see ND folks sharing, as you did, something like "here is my algorithm for dealing with NT folks in this scenario. It usually works in situation X, but here are the exceptions when I don't use it." Would you say that's accurate?
If so, I am curious if developing algorithms is the way you approach other things as well, or if that is specifically a strategy for for fitting in with NT folks? That is, does it feel like an application of a natural way you approach the world, or does it feel like an artificial coping skill pushed on you by NT norms, or something else?
When you deploy an algorithm in a conversation, how does it feel? I.e. does it still feel like establishing some connection, or doea it make you feel isolated? Disconnected? Something else entirely?
Do you have relationships with NT folks that are not governed by this? What makes those relationships different?
What could an NT person do to make a conversation feel more natural to you or to allow you to be more fully yourself?
Not for me. I don't have an algorithm. I just like making lists in markup. If I am trying to help someone feel better I play it by it ear. It isn't a recipe, it is an art.
I am an NT.
If I am dealing with an ND person and I am trying to make them feel better I will do mostly the same things, but offer advice or my view of their situation in very black and white, unvague terms.
I think the answers for a lot of these will depend on if the person's neurodivergence is primarily from ADHD, ASD, or something else.
Before my diagnosis, I interacted with people based on how I would want to be interacted with. I assume this is quite common for neurotypicals, and I think this is the default for neurodivergents until they learn some of the techniques you are referring to. For me, I don't really learn algorithms and try to follow them. I just learn that certain situations are interpreted differently by neurotypicals. In this example, my default interaction method would be the ND style of commiserating by sharing similar stories. Now I know that this will not be interpreted well by the majority of people. I can often tell if people are neurodivergent, even if they don't know that about themselves, or it is below the level that could be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. So I usually know before an interaction if I need to modulate my default interaction style.
As far as what a NT could do to make a conversation more natural, just be understanding. If you tell a story and someone else jumps in and tries to "one-up" your story, just have the understanding that this might not be their intent. I am sure I could never list all the ND idiosyncrasies in conversation, so if something feels off or rude, try to come up with another explanation. Don't just assume they are a rude person. Don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to neurodivergence.
"I have an algorithm for social situations " is something that more or less echoes something I've seen on a lot of autism assessments. Though it's probably not exclusive to autism, as I've got some situations where that approach helps me cope with anxiety as well. But memorizing a set of "social scripts" for different situations is something I've seen frequently described as a coping strategy lots of autistic people use.
Note that as someone with ADHD, I mostly don't do this. There's a lot more "play it by ear" in most social circumstances for me.
I'm coming from the opposite direction. My partner has severe ADHD, diagnosed and taking medication, and they hate it if they say something is going on with them and I respond by sharing experiences as a form of empathy ("oh man, that sucks, that happened to me once and I know how painful it is", etc.). They see it as "trying to take the spotlight", even if it's just a quick acknowledgement that I know what something feels like. So now I just let them vent and make "hm"s of agreement.
NB: I don't know if I necessarily qualify as neurotypical, but I don't have autism or ADHD so probably counts for the purposes of this question. For myself, whether I want empathy via experience or to just be given a space to complain basically depends on whether it's something I can actually do something about in which case experience is welcome even if it doesn't come with advice, or something I can't do anything about and I just want to release steam.
I've felt this way a lot in the past. Not only taking the spotlight, but outright seemed selfish and self-absorbed. I have had to work on it quite a bit to realize that they are not actually trying to take the spotlight, that it's just their way to empathize. It does really suck though when some, not all, don't ever bring it back to whatever I originally came to them with. Like one friend/acquaintance maybe asks how I'm doing (out of courtesy since I asked how she is first) and whatever I say, she will respond with empty platitudes or even nothing at all, and go on to talk about her own problems at length, particularly about her studying and job. And that definitely always feels like taking the spotlight when she just never asks any other questions but just talks about herself. I'm still sad to have lost touch with her but it's simply because of her lack of actually being interested in me. I message her maybe once every 2 or 3 months whereas in the past, we would play FF14 together a lot, we were in the same classes, etc., but now she's just busy or we've drifted apart and she seems to not care in the slightest.
I realize it's not the same situation, ended up rambling a bit, sorry about that
Basically it comes down to timing and how much you are sharing of your shared experience. Also, I am generalizing and also speaking from learned experience given I also do have ADHD.
As far as timing goes, people with ADHD tend to share their experience the second the other person stops talking. This has a few issues:
As far as the amount you are sharing goes, generally speaking a lot of people with ADHD tend to overshare and go into extreme detail about the shared experience. This, for many people, is too much. Others already talked about this in this thread as well. But basically you want to ask them first how they are feeling, doing, etc. Basically, people want to hear that you sympathize in general, not through shared experience, even though that feels natural to us.
There's a degree to which this is related to neurodivergency, but there's also some degree of variation on this front related to culture and personality. I recall a discussion on Tumblr about turn-taking in conversations (which isn't the same as this but is similarly very often a place where neurodivergent people differ from their peers) that brought up Deborah Tannen's work on New York Jewish conversational style. The author of the Tumblr post was pointing out similarities between their conversational style as someone with ADHD with this New York Jewish conversational style (afaik they weren't New York Jewish themselves). How appropriate this type of sharing is will depend so much on context -- cultural context as well as context more specific to each individual conversation.
Anyway I'm pissed I can't spend my life studying this academically because I find this type of stuff fascinating.
What a fun video :) and there are probably interviewing panels full of neurodivergent people....esp in stem teams....