Coaching Asperger

Dear Mom,
These are good ways to respond, usually you would just use the easy method if you were really busy or couldn’t figure out what to say. The Direct Response method seems like the one most people would expect, but the Feeling Method seems to show that you care enough to analyze the message like that.

Darren

Dear Darren,

Last time I said I would teach you ways to make responding to messages easier for you. Because as we noticed, if you don’t respond at all, your silent message sends a negative message. So I’m going to describe three ways to respond to messages. The feeling method, the direct method, and the super-easy method.

The feeling method is to find the emotional message behind the words and respond to that. To discover that hidden emotional message, ask yourself, “How is the person feeling, that prompted him or her to contact me?”

For example, I text messaged you from Mexico. I wrote a little thing about geckos. To use the emotion method you would ask yourself “How is mom feeling that prompted her to contact me?” Maybe I was happy or excited about geckos. Or maybe I was happy or excited about Mexico or vacation. Or maybe I missed you. All of those would be good guesses. You would respond to one of those guesses. You would say, “Hey, glad you're enjoying Mexico!”

This is really just the reflection technique we talked about before. You’re reflecting my feelings and making me feel heard and understood.

The direct method is to find the topic of the message and respond to that. In this case the topic was the geckos. So you would say something about geckos. You could say that you read that geckos don’t really have sticky stuff on their feet. They can walk on ceilings because they have millions of tiny hairs that conform to the surface so closely that surface tension keeps them stuck to the ceiling. Or you could tell me that you’ve seen lizards but never a gecko. Or you could make a joke and ask if any geckos have fallen onto my head yet!

The super-easy method simply acknowledges the message with a reasonably appropriate one or two-word response.
“Great!”
“Wow!”
“OK”
“Gotcha”
And so forth. The only hard part about the super-easy method is make sure the emotion in your response is appropriate to the emotion of the message. If someone is sad, you’ll want to say, “Oh, so sorry” or “bummer” rather than, “Great!”

Mom

Dear Mom,
I read your text message and smiled, but I really didn’t think about sending a reply. I don’t like using the phone keys for words and in general, I think e-mail is for when you won’t talk over the phone, and text messaging is just an unusual phenomenon that there isn’t a real use for. I did not think about how you would feel if I didn’t reply. I chuckled to myself and went on with my life. I never thought about sending a reply, I never thought about how you would feel.

Darren

Darren,

I went to Mexico. When I got there, I sent text messages to both you and your sister. I spent a few minutes to think of something different to say to each of you that I thought you would enjoy. I wrote something funny to Laura, and to you I wrote something about geckos. Soon, Laura wrote back. So I wrote another a line or two. After a message or two we stopped writing, but a day or two later, we wrote a few more messages. It was fun to feel connected from Mexico.

But you never wrote back. I waited patiently for a couple days. Then I tried again by sending another message. I tried to think of something else funny or interesting to say to you, so you would be sure to respond. But I didn’t hear anything back.

I bet you didn’t realize that you actually did send a message. You sent a message twice. Two silent text messages. What did those messages say? Those messages could have said a number of things to me. They could have said things like:
“You are not important to me.”
“I don’t care about what you just said.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I am mad that you went to Mexico and you didn’t take me with you.”
“My cell phone is dead.”
“I am dead.”

OK, I’m exaggerating on that last possible message, I didn’t really worry that you might be sick, injured or dead, particularly because I know you well and know all about Asperger Syndrome. I was not surprised when you didn’t answer my messages, even though I was disappointed. But do you see how other people might get a negative message from your silence? You silence actually said something. I wasn’t sure what you were saying, but it didn’t seem positive.

Plus, we missed out on a chance to have a potentially fun conversation. I know that conversations can be hard work for you. Next time I will talk about how to make informal text messages and email conversations easier.

Love,
Mom

Dear mom,
You don’t love me today. At the end of every letter, you always say “love, mom,” but this time you just wrote your name. This gave me the impression that you don’t care enough to write love at the end, though it’s probably just that you’re busy and it slipped your mind.

Anyways, about what you said, that sounds like a good idea. You’re right, often we’re so wrapped up in what we want that we don’t think about what’s good with other people’s ideas and what’s wrong with ours. We like to just focus on the positive of our ideas and the negatives of others, so we really need to try to take a step back and look at all ideas equally, and then decide if maybe the other person’s idea is good as well, or even better.

Darren

Hi Darren,

Last time I talked about the useful trick of having a second option in your mind so you don’t get too frustrated if you first idea doesn’t work out.

Today I’m going to talk about the more advanced trick of how to accept other people’s ideas when their ideas are not the same as yours.

Often with Asperger Syndrome, it is easy to think that you have the one and only right idea. It can be hard to agree with other people’s opinions or ideas. But sometimes it is respectful and kind to let other people have a chance to make some of the decisions too.

So how can you learn to accept their ideas?

Here is something I did the other day that helped. It was lunchtime and I was intending to eat Mexican food. I like Mexican food. But John said, “Let’s eat Italian food!” To me, Italian food did not sound like a good idea at all because I had already decided to have Mexican food. But instead of saying, “No,” I said, “That’s an idea. Let me think about it.” And then I thought about it. I wanted to think about all the reasons why I love Mexican food. But that wouldn’t have helped. So instead, I tried to think of something good about Italian food. It was hard a first, but I kept trying. After a few minutes of thinking about as many good things about Italian food as I possibly could imagine, I was ready to agree to go and happily eat Italian food.

So the steps are:
1. Buy time to allow yourself to get used to their idea, by saying something polite and neutral.
2. Then spend that time wisely! Don’t just waste the time by reinforcing your own stuck thinking. Try hard to expand your thinking and try on the other person’s idea. Think as positively as possible about their idea. And maybe you’ll actually be able to get there!

And even if you still think your idea is best, sometimes it’s worth agreeing to their idea just to give them a chance to have their choice sometimes too. And if you decide to let them have their first choice, be sure to go along with a smile. If you’re grumpy about it, no one will have any fun. Then next time they won’t want to have you along. But if you succeed in thinking positively about their idea, you’ll all have a great time!

Mom

Dear Mom,
That is a good idea. I myself have noticed that if I have multiple things that I would like to do and ask someone to choose, I am more happy with them choosing a lower choice than if I had just come with my favorite choice and been said no to.

One problem with that is that you might have more than one option that depends on things out of your control, so you always need to have an option where nobody can say no and nothing else can go wrong.

Darren

Darren,

Here is a trick to help you not get so disappointed or frustrated when things don’t quite go your way. It is common for people with Asperger Syndrome to want things in exactly one way. And it can be very frustrating for you when things don’t happen in the way you expected.

So here is the trick to help you be less frustrated: always remember to have a second option ready in your mind. Think of an alternative, and convince yourself that your alternative is just as good as your first idea.

This will keep you from getting so frustrated, and it will help you not try to control other people.

How does it work? Let’s keep using the example of when you wanted me to play your new game with you and I didn’t want to play. You were quite disappointed and frustrated. So the trick would be to think of a second option that is nearly as good. Maybe the second option would be to play a video game. Or maybe it would be another activity that you enjoy.

The key is for you to think up a second option ahead of time, whenever you realize there is something you want. That will help you keep from being so frustrated when your first option doesn’t come through for you. And it will help you allow others to say, “No thanks.”

Love,
Mom